Culture Blues

Let’s Review Captain America: The First Avenger!

As the Culture Blues Intern, it is my duty to record the post-screening discussions of my editors, so that they're not required to "sell out" and write actual cogent criticism.

Ugh

Intern here. I’m keeping up the illusion of being at Comic Con, so this review transcript is being recorded via satellite. When I patch into the Culture Blues office, I find Jeff and Jeremiah sulking around the television, watching Avengers cartoons.

Jeremiah White:  This is so much better than that Captain America movie.

Jeff Hart:  I know! Cartoons don’t exhaust my patience with an hour of plodding exposition that leads only to a second hour of flaccid action.

Jeremiah:  I’m not sure which one of Captain America’s numerous problems to begin with.

Jeff:  Let’s start with the 3D. We were unlucky enough to have to watch our screening in this abominable fad. In the case of Captain America, the 3D was added post-production and does absolutely nothing to improve the film. The action sequences aren’t more thrilling, the locations aren’t made more interesting. One of the few things director Joe Johnston actually did right was shoot in a rich, old-timey, sort of Sky Captain looking color palette, but that’s all wasted when forced to watch the film behind sunglasses.

Jeremiah: I’ve been very slow to condemn 3D outright, but this film is a great case for simply scrapping the whole thing. It’s incredibly dark, and like you said, adds absolutely nothing. I think it’s safe to say that anyone who goes to see Captain America should avoid 3D at all costs. Not that you should necessarily go see Captain America. It’s boring.

Jeff:  They really stagger through the traditional Marvel origin story steps. It’s very much in the pattern of Iron Man and Thor, but while Favreau/Downey Jr. and Branagh/Hemsworth were able to liven up the formula, Johnston/Evans never do more than go through the motions.

You look like Hellboy

Jeremiah: It all feels totally lifeless and devoid of imagination. The story is basically non-existent, the dialogue is rote and trite, the romance is off-putting, the action is mindless. Not to mention, the enemy hardly seems worthy. All we need to topple Red Skull and Hydra is one super soldier and a handful of POWs. They hardly even put up a fight. Bucky might be the best part of this whole thing.

Jeff:  Yeah, well I think we can officially stop giving Chris Evans superhero roles now. Enough is enough. His natural bad-boy charm is tamped down in the interest of making Steve Rogers the Rudy of jingoists. Even when they CGI’ed his head onto a tiny body, I wasn’t buying it.

Jeremiah: I read that they actually digitally shaved away parts of Evans’ own body…

Jeff: Who cares? The lengthy nerd ascension portion of the origin story didn’t get me invested in Rogers. It didn’t make me sympathize or even root for him.

Jeremiah: I’ll disagree just a little bit here. I wouldn’t say it got me rooting for him, but his unshakeable desire to enlist, based on a sense of duty, a dislike of bullies, and most importantly a feeling that he’s less of a man because he’s at home while others are risking their lives, are the beginnings of a potentially interesting hero. None of that really goes anywhere though. He becomes nothing more than a super soldier.

Jeff: The closest they came to getting me on the hook was during Cap’s brief propaganda tour, a fun sequence where Evans finally seems comfortable in his red boots. But all the hacky attempts at pathos are for naught, really, because this WWII stuff isn’t what makes Captain America interesting. It informs the character he becomes, but it doesn’t deserve the movie treatment.

Jeremiah: It certainly doesn’t make him interesting here. They waste a lot of precious movie time on things that could have been glossed over to similar, if not better, effect. I don’t have much experience with Cap in comics, but I find him most amusing when they play up the fact that he’s a walking anachronism. He carries himself differently than everyone else, he talks differently, he lives by a different set of rules. It’s hard to play that angle when he’s still in the 40s, but there’s nothing in this movie that makes me think anyone at Marvel wants to see the character like that in the Avengers. Despite his bad-boy charm, I think Evans is capable of carrying off that role. It would make good use of his comedic timing and the stiffness displayed here.

Jeff:  I could see Evans growing into the role in the Avengers films to come – Cap is certainly a more compelling character when transported to the present. He’s also better when he’s part of a team, although I’d say the same is true of Iron Man and Thor, and it didn’t hurt those movies.

Jeremiah: Those were in much more capable hands. I think Favreau and Brannagh had a good idea of the kind of movies they wanted to make. Johnston seems to be just borrowing from himself, his Lucas/Spielberg overlords, and others. I can’t count the times this movie made me think of The Rocketeer, Raiders of the Lost Ark and, yes, Rudy. And none of it in a good way.

Jeff:  You’re a well-documented hater of the upcoming Avengers movie. With this being the last of the set-up, how do you feel now?

Jeremiah: With Joss Whedon in charge, I think a Captain America level stinker is nearly impossible. And I think despite Cap’s natural leadership tendencies, Downey will get to do a lot of the heavy lifting because his character is the most established in the Cinematic Universe and he’s their best actor. I am worried about the weight of Cap’s getting-up-to-date storyline and finding time for Ruffalo as the Hulk and Black Widow and everybody else. I’m pretty psyched to see Iron Man, Thor and Hawkeye again. I think they can all be counted on as fun onscreen presences (even though we only saw Hawkeye for a total of like 30 seconds in Thor).

Jeff:  Also, and this is an admittedly odd complaint, but were you at all creeped out by the amount of soldiers getting disintegrated by Nazi ray-guns? Something about that really rubbed me the wrong way. Almost as if they intended to tone down the horrors of war by having people disappear in bursts of plasma energy, which then freed them up to kill a shitload more people.

Jeremiah: Throughout the movie, I had to constantly try to stop myself from thinking about this stuff. I kept reminding myself that it’s just a comic book movie and not to take the war element too seriously. But it was hard. I think you nailed their intentions with the ray-guns. There’s a moment during the climactic siege when Cap tries to kiss Peggy Carter, while the soldiers that 90 lb weakling Steve Rogers so desperately wanted to be an equal to are presumably dying all around him. I wouldn’t have even commented on this, but some of the overwhelmingly positive reviews so far seem intent on selling the idea that this isn’t just a great superhero movie, it’s also a credible war movie. That’s absolute hogwash, and it’s insulting. This is a limp superhero movie, to be suffered through to get to next summer's Avengers. Nothing more.

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