With the release of Captain America: The First Avenger now out, the comicbook summer of 2011 now comes to a close. We had our ups with X Men First Class and our downs or at the very least dissapointments with Green Lantern but when the Golden Age hero Captain America now hit the big screen, the summer was going out on a high note.
The movie takes place with Captain America's origin, during WWII with Steve Rogers, a stringbean of a man who cannot get enlisted into the Army cause he's a sickly and jittery little man. A scientist in the army however sees potential in Steve and gets him chosen to go into a super soldier experiement that transforms Steve into a taller, stronger man of peak physical skill and strength. The project is however halted when Hydra, Hitlers super secret sciense division tries to steal the formula that created Steve Rogers into the man that he is.
The army is ready to write off Steve for more tests but he is at least able to serve in another capacity, that of a PR man by donning a silly costume and performing in cities with USO girls to boost Bond sales (a great series of scenes that show how silly that old Captain America costume was) but when his friend Jim Barnes is reported missing, Rogers heads off to the facility where Jim and others are held and smash open the gates and destroy a Hydra research base. It is here where Steve meets Johann Schmidt, the head of Hydra who sees that magic and myth are a reality and uses this basis to create Hydra's technology which he will use to take over the world.
After this mission is a success, Steve is given a new costume (based on the Ultimates Captain America costume and we can thankful for that) as he leads a team of men consisting of Barnes, Dum Dum Dugan and others across Europe to destroy Schmidt's bases.
The pluses are that as far as a lot of the recent Marvel movies, this one gets more action into it's run time then any others. It isn't the the opening or first act action scene, with one in the middle and then a brief but awesome one at the end. Almost the entire third of this movie has action filling in here and there with only a few breaks in between so we don't feel winded or run down. Chris Evans I'm happy to see got another chance at Marvel glory after the silly and dull Fantastic Four movies and he is great as Captain America, though it's not a hard role to screw up. All you need to do is act and look like a fit and patriotic boy scout, not too tough. Hugo Weaving as Schmidt continues his typecast villany as the leader of Hydra but he isn't terrible. Stanley Tucci and especially Tommy Lee Jones all get good screen time and scenes.
The minus? I can't think of any of then for a movie about a colorful superhero, there sure are a lot of brown, gray and other desaturated colors in the backgrounds. Maybe it's to play up the colorful Captain America.
Captain America's origins, at least the important parts are told to us intact with little fiddling for the point of fiddling Disney's avenger pitching which they did in the past couple of movies is thankfully kept down. Should Cap return in his own adventures, it will be nice to see as this movie already sets up another villain for that movie and with the Avengers movie in the near future more of Marvels timeline can be put into that film too. The best thing is, I won't have to wait 70 years for it to happen.
