Captain America
So I just saw Captain America: The First Avenger, and all I can say is, "Avengers Assemble!"
Wait, are you kidding me? This is me. Of course I have more to say….
I didn't take my notebook along with me and a certain person kept my hands busy with little caramels, so this is going by memory only and in no particular order.
1. Ok, stevenglassman and box_in_the_box, I have seen the Spider-Man trailer, and Spider-Man looks like a basketball. Also I am assuming that the blonde girl is Gwen Stacy and that someone is going to tell me why we need yet another Spider-Man origin story film this soon where Spider-Man looks like a basketball.
I'll just add that based on that trailer, I will not be seeing Spider-Man in the movie theatre; it's going to make me ill, and I really don't need a bouncing webby basketball making me ill. Onwards!
2. Captain America is a surprisingly decent film, given everything that it has to accomplish: be yet another World War II movie after countless, countless World War II movies, insert a rather pointless bit of plot about Odin and Asgard to create a connection with the Thor movie and the upcoming Avengers movie, convince an audience not overly enthusiastic about American international intervention that Captain America, the symbol for American international intervention, is worth cheering on (wisely, this origin story has him fighting evil Nazis that even the Nazis think are dangerous and evil), and quietly deal with some not so minor racial issues on the hero's side while chasing down Asgardian power sources. (After all, a not so small part of Captain America is that the Americans are trying to build a super race, too, and deliberately choose a white pro-military New Yorker to accomplish this.)
Oh, and tell some jokes.
Amazingly, it does all this. The Asgardian tesseract thingy is a little awkward and people who have not seen the Thor film are going to be going, huh, what? (And even people who have seen the Thor film may end up going, huh, what?) It only works because we all know Hitler had a Nordic fixation so it makes sense that one of his henchmen would have one too and would go all the way to Norway to find some tesseract energy pumping thing that is kept…hidden in a door… decorated with Ydddrasil. The second lesson of this film is not to trust Norwegians to hide Asgardian objects in subtle places.
And the romance is surprisingly good for a superhero film. Steve Rogers is terrible with women, and knows it, but he's terrible for a reason. He has absolutely no self-esteem, and even when he temporarily gains some thanks to his film and fundraising appearances, he's quick to lose it. His flinging himself on a grenade, his rescue mission - yes, these are heroic, but also stem from his thought of, well, all of these others are clearly more important than me. He still believes this at the end of the film, which explains why, even after a major and daring rescue of his friend and 400 others, he still doesn't think he's good enough for a kick-ass woman like Peggy. It helps that she's genuinely kick-ass.
It takes another woman (Natalie Dormer, proving she's going to be awesome as Margery Tyrell in the next season of Game of Thrones, and also looks better with dark hair than as a blonde) to convince him that yes, really, now that he's done a rescue mission, he can be attractive to women. And even then, after Peggy has shown some outright jealousy, he's still terrified of pursuing her. (To be fair, she just shot him three times.) It's well done, making their final scene together all that more heartbreaking. It helps that's she interested in him even before his transformation - not he sees this - and having a romance that helps to showcase a character, rather than just plastered in because the film needs one and the main lead has great abs (see, Thor).
The film has issues, minor and major. Its knowledge of European geography and flight patterns in 1943/1944 could use some work. It makes sense for Tommy Lee Jones (playing Tommy Lee Jones) to send Steve Rogers off for some more lab tests, but it makes very little sense for everyone to waste Steve Rogers on fundraising stuff (I suppose they were trying to pay for all the money they spent on the project that developed him, but still) when, you know, everyone's fighting a war, no matter how much money is needed.
None of us could figure out why the Evil Nazis had helpfully painted the names of major American cities on their four bombs, in English, no less, so that the audience could know exactly where the bombs were heading. (Our audience wanted to save Boston. Just so you know.) (Also, Chicago is nowhere near the eastern Seaboard. Philadephia's calling, and feeling really left out.) And we were all sad that nobody told Captain America if Peggy was dead or still living in a nice assisted living center in Florida somewhere. (If you had seen our Florida audience, which also had a lot of kiddies, you would have believed the second.)
And the Red Skull makes, um, pretty much no sense. Partly this is because of the Asgardian tesseract thingy, but mostly, dude, if you're planning on attacking Berlin and then later the world, why exactly are you killing Hitler's minions, just the sort of thing that might make the Fuhrer, you know, cut off your funding.
3. Things I did love: the sneaky Indiana Jones reference (this film was produced by Marvel Studios, but distributed by Paramount, which produced the Indy films); the bit where the pre Captain America Steve Rogers figures out how to get the flag; and Captain America reading Thucydides.
4. Things I regret: Not bringing the notebook: it was a good film, but it needed snark. Next superhero flic, the notebook will be brought!
Wait, are you kidding me? This is me. Of course I have more to say….
I didn't take my notebook along with me and a certain person kept my hands busy with little caramels, so this is going by memory only and in no particular order.
1. Ok, stevenglassman and box_in_the_box, I have seen the Spider-Man trailer, and Spider-Man looks like a basketball. Also I am assuming that the blonde girl is Gwen Stacy and that someone is going to tell me why we need yet another Spider-Man origin story film this soon where Spider-Man looks like a basketball.
I'll just add that based on that trailer, I will not be seeing Spider-Man in the movie theatre; it's going to make me ill, and I really don't need a bouncing webby basketball making me ill. Onwards!
2. Captain America is a surprisingly decent film, given everything that it has to accomplish: be yet another World War II movie after countless, countless World War II movies, insert a rather pointless bit of plot about Odin and Asgard to create a connection with the Thor movie and the upcoming Avengers movie, convince an audience not overly enthusiastic about American international intervention that Captain America, the symbol for American international intervention, is worth cheering on (wisely, this origin story has him fighting evil Nazis that even the Nazis think are dangerous and evil), and quietly deal with some not so minor racial issues on the hero's side while chasing down Asgardian power sources. (After all, a not so small part of Captain America is that the Americans are trying to build a super race, too, and deliberately choose a white pro-military New Yorker to accomplish this.)
Oh, and tell some jokes.
Amazingly, it does all this. The Asgardian tesseract thingy is a little awkward and people who have not seen the Thor film are going to be going, huh, what? (And even people who have seen the Thor film may end up going, huh, what?) It only works because we all know Hitler had a Nordic fixation so it makes sense that one of his henchmen would have one too and would go all the way to Norway to find some tesseract energy pumping thing that is kept…hidden in a door… decorated with Ydddrasil. The second lesson of this film is not to trust Norwegians to hide Asgardian objects in subtle places.
And the romance is surprisingly good for a superhero film. Steve Rogers is terrible with women, and knows it, but he's terrible for a reason. He has absolutely no self-esteem, and even when he temporarily gains some thanks to his film and fundraising appearances, he's quick to lose it. His flinging himself on a grenade, his rescue mission - yes, these are heroic, but also stem from his thought of, well, all of these others are clearly more important than me. He still believes this at the end of the film, which explains why, even after a major and daring rescue of his friend and 400 others, he still doesn't think he's good enough for a kick-ass woman like Peggy. It helps that she's genuinely kick-ass.
It takes another woman (Natalie Dormer, proving she's going to be awesome as Margery Tyrell in the next season of Game of Thrones, and also looks better with dark hair than as a blonde) to convince him that yes, really, now that he's done a rescue mission, he can be attractive to women. And even then, after Peggy has shown some outright jealousy, he's still terrified of pursuing her. (To be fair, she just shot him three times.) It's well done, making their final scene together all that more heartbreaking. It helps that's she interested in him even before his transformation - not he sees this - and having a romance that helps to showcase a character, rather than just plastered in because the film needs one and the main lead has great abs (see, Thor).
The film has issues, minor and major. Its knowledge of European geography and flight patterns in 1943/1944 could use some work. It makes sense for Tommy Lee Jones (playing Tommy Lee Jones) to send Steve Rogers off for some more lab tests, but it makes very little sense for everyone to waste Steve Rogers on fundraising stuff (I suppose they were trying to pay for all the money they spent on the project that developed him, but still) when, you know, everyone's fighting a war, no matter how much money is needed.
None of us could figure out why the Evil Nazis had helpfully painted the names of major American cities on their four bombs, in English, no less, so that the audience could know exactly where the bombs were heading. (Our audience wanted to save Boston. Just so you know.) (Also, Chicago is nowhere near the eastern Seaboard. Philadephia's calling, and feeling really left out.) And we were all sad that nobody told Captain America if Peggy was dead or still living in a nice assisted living center in Florida somewhere. (If you had seen our Florida audience, which also had a lot of kiddies, you would have believed the second.)
And the Red Skull makes, um, pretty much no sense. Partly this is because of the Asgardian tesseract thingy, but mostly, dude, if you're planning on attacking Berlin and then later the world, why exactly are you killing Hitler's minions, just the sort of thing that might make the Fuhrer, you know, cut off your funding.
3. Things I did love: the sneaky Indiana Jones reference (this film was produced by Marvel Studios, but distributed by Paramount, which produced the Indy films); the bit where the pre Captain America Steve Rogers figures out how to get the flag; and Captain America reading Thucydides.
4. Things I regret: Not bringing the notebook: it was a good film, but it needed snark. Next superhero flic, the notebook will be brought!