Captain America: The First Avenger
Now we have entered the winter of discontent in the modern era of comic book superhero films, as evidenced by this 2011 release that served as little more than a teaser for the big Avengers movie that followed it. Worse, it carries with it the one thing that NO “summer movie event” should: a polished, straight off the assembly line feel to it as if they just wanted to bang out the title character’s origin story so that he too could say that he has his own big budget movie out there in circulation, and whereas the past age of comic book movies such as Superman, Batman, Spiderman, and most recently The Dark Knight truly felt like something special, here it just seems like the same ol, same ol. Sad in many ways, because in some circles the Captain has just as large a following as the Man Of Steel himself. Perhaps if this had been made 10 to 15 years ago it would have constituted something special, but after Iron Man kicked off the whole “Avengers” angle (and made THAT character the primary member of the group), this effort just comes off as utterly stale. Couple that with an atrocious, obviously cranked out script, that fails completely in the character development department and portrays Steve Rogers as a frail weakling who wants to serve his country for the simplistic reason that he “hates bullies”, not to mention the pseudo-gay overtones of giving this seemingly masculine guy an almost complete aversion to the opposite sex, results in the viewer being so little invested in the portrayals on screen that each action-filled CGI setpiece ultimately seems to come across as very tedious instead. And that’s not even mentioning the most cardinal sin: whereas in the comics after Cap is “created” he’s immediately sent out into the field to kill Nazis, here he’s inexplicably sent out on a USO tour instead, meaning when we first see him in the iconic suit he’s shown singing and dancing and basically making a complete fool of himself, thus destroying any mystique that the character could have had and showing up the patriotic aspect to be painfully ironic rather than inspiring. Even the flawed 1990 attempt at a Cap movie, which suffered from a low budget, terrible directing, and a b-level cast, managed not to make these mistakes. As for the acting, it varies: Chris Evans as Cap thankfully does not show any signs of hangover from his performances as The Human Torch in the Fantastic Four movies, but what we get instead is a slack-jawed, dumbfounded turn with hardly any foundation to stand on; Tommy Lee Jones as the Colonel overseeing the project gives the usual laconic, tough guy Tommy Lee Jones performance we’ve seen a hundred times before; newcomer Hayley Atwell as the British agent who helps to train Cap is also another character type we’ve seen before, that of a beautiful, alluring female who nonetheless can kick a man’s ass at a moment’s notice; Sebastian Stan as the best friend of Cap’s (whose capture behind enemy lines FINALLY motivates him to go into action) is pretty much utterly useless; and really the only bright spots here are Stanley Tucci getting some nice, understated moments in the all too brief role of the scientist who creates the Supersoldier Serum, plus it’s nice to see the character of Howard Stark (a.k.a. Tony “Iron Man” Stark’s father and played by Dominic Cooper) play a major role as the main engineer behind Cap’s creation, and Hugo Weaving in the Grand Villain role of the Red Skull (commonly known as the Joker to Cap’s Batman), subject of experimentation himself (and deformed because of it) who leads his own special force within the German military, and ultimately betrays the Nazis too so that HE (and not Hitler) can be the one to take over the world. Despite similarly being let down by the script, Weaving makes up for it by displaying enough snarling intensity that would give even Jack Palance pause, though after his virtuoso turn as Agent Smith in The Matrix one wonders if Weaving (a great actor no matter what role he’s given) got the part merely via typecasting. That said, the film also introduces us to a supposed “team” of elite commandos who accompany Cap who have no outstanding qualities whatsoever except for the different ethnic backgrounds they each possess, and farcical plot developments like having the Skull, upon seeing Cap lead a ragtag POW revolt and despite having access to laser weapons that immediately disintegrate its victims upon impact, choose to simply self-destruct his headquarters and fly off in an escape rocket instead. Indeed, the Skull is shown to have developed his advanced technology from some kind of energy source he recovered in a monastery (which is never fully explained) and later harnessed by the Stark character (presumably to use in the Iron Man suits later), but all of the CGI can’t hide the fact that the writing here is severely lacking, along with the gee-whiz approach of director Joe (The Mummy) Johnston, creating a final product that despite all of the money up on the screen is relatively lifeless…
4/10