Captain America
I loved it. I mean, it's not First Class, it didn't have the deep character development or the morality/humanity issues, but it was good, interesting, and Steve going around as a chorus entertainer? HILARIOUS. I did enjoy Tommy Lee Jones' character a lot, and the evolution of Steve was nice (if, again, not as deep as Charles or Erik).
But, can we talk about how apparently all Nazi evil geniuses are named Schmidt? I mean, I realize it's a common name, but Herr Doctor and Red Skull? Someone, somewhere, left their creativity home the day one of those two was named.
BTW, the way Jon Stewart described the Red Skull CRACKED ME UP*. Also, that it was played by ElrondHugo Weaving was AWESOME. I love him.
Really, though, it was an ALL-STAR cast. Why was everyone talking (only) about Chris Evans when it had Tommy Lee Jones, Stanley Tucci, Hugo, DOMINIC COOPER, and Neal McDonough? I expected it to be a bunch of no names.
Speaking of Dominic Cooper (whom I'm in love with, FYI), how much did I love him as Howard Stark? SO FUCKING MUCH. My love for RDJ and then Cooper as his dad? Seriously, I literally squeed in the theatre.lol Although, here's a question for you comic book fans. At the end, Fury tells Captain America he was asleep nearly 70 years. So, how old was Howard Stark in CA and how old is Tony in Iron Man era? Because, even if we assume Howard was 30 and Tony is 50, that leaves a gap of 20 years before Howard became a father. So he was 50(ish)? Or are we to assume Stark is a genius who was around 20 or 25 during the Captain America time frame? Even then, I always thought of Stark around 40 and since he's not a mutant (all X-Men, even those who don't have Logan's healing powers seem to live much longer), he might live longer due to the heart, but would he still look only 40? I'm just not sure they thought that through.lol
One of my favorite lines? When they're about to get on the train and they're told they have just split moments to time it and the British guy goes "mind the gap". I absolutely laughed out loud. And was the only one to do so. *sighs* No one is cultured, apparently.
So, this square of power that apparently belonged to Odin...is that what powers the arc reactor and thus Tony Stark? I mean, it's blue, it's a major power source, Daddy!Stark deliberately gets it off the sea floor...
Anyway. Those were a lot of my thoughts on the movie. Basically, I was trying to combine and see where it combined with the whole Marvel 'verse (and you KNOW I want to get X-Men in there somewhere because Iron Man may have been my first foray into Marvel, but it's First Class that made me interested). And in doing so, I created my own little version of events and Steve's thoughts because I find the heterosexual romantic plot line dull and predictable and I discovered via zhadra_ahni that apparently Steve/Tony Stark is the biggest Avengers slash pairing and I thought, I can get behind that...
So, this is the way MY story goes:
*Make note I haven't read the comics so if something wildly swings away or is somehow spot on, I have both excuse and "hey, I'm just that good!" in my favor. I also haven't watched Thor yet. That's tonight's movie.
Steve Rodgers wasn't just small and bad with the ladies. He also thought he liked men, though he'd never had an opportunity to try. The same was true of women, actually. But Steve did have a little crush on his best friend Buckley for years but he's known it had always be doomed because he looked like he did. Even more so because James is as straight as they come. And so there's a one-sided crush that Steve has, and keeps, and it's okay that Buckley doesn't like him that way because he's a great guy no matter what and he's never been so happy in life than when he finds his friend safe and alive in that Hydra outpost. But of course, he's also developed a crush on the lovely Agent Carter and he thinks he could really have something special with her, though he sees the way Howard looks at her, too. He almost feels bad for Howard, because once it's revealed that "fondue" never meant anything more than food, his eyes begin to open up to how Peggy barely looks at Howard as anything beyond a friend (hey, he's just learning this romantic social interaction thing, now, give him a break) and he knows from 20 odd years of experience what it feels like to never be the one the ladies want. Howard's a nice guy; a smart guy. Steve could come to like Howard, too, given time, and a lack of competition over a lady. No one could replace Buckley, of course. And then Steve gets his kiss from Peggy and thinks to himself - when he realizes the only way to stop Schmidt's plane is to take it down in the ocean - that he's going to die a virgin and that's just unfair because while getting laid wasn't his number one goal, it would have been nice to take advantage of the new body he was given. An amused regret mixed with a sense of satisfaction at stopping Hydra are his last thoughts before he wakes up with the wrong baseball game playing and he breaks free to discover a strange city covered in strange lights that somehow smells like New York but isn't really. And then he's recruited by some guy with an eye patch who says he works for an organization called SHIELD and that he's not alone. There are now other super heroes out there. Some have been changed by radioactive bugs, others by science experiments gone wrong, some are the fabled gods returned to Earth, and there's a whole race of mutants out there battling each other and humanity for the right to live because apparently powers via science is okay but somehow power through natural mutation isn't. Steve isn't really sure what to think about that one. Steven joins, because what else is he going to do in a world he doesn't really understand and he's always wanted to stop bullies be they Norwegian gods or terrorists. He's given an updated uniform and he also meets Captain Britain, the only other super soldier bred like him. They both have shields and Steve's new one is made of some metal called adamantium and it's even stronger than the last one; a thousand times stronger than diamonds and possibly from outer space. And then, there he is one day, just calmly sitting at the SHIELD center of ops, a lovely ginger by his side who is desperately glaring at Black Widow across the table. Tony Stark. And he looks so much like his dad...and his mom. He's also gotten his father's talent for engineering and machines and roams the Earth as one of the few out super heroes, much like Steve was in the day. And it's wrong, so wrong, but over time, working together, Steve finds himself growing to like Tony not as the son of a man he respected and the woman he loved, but as having the best of their qualities and then in spades. He does research and discovers Tony wasn't always this way, that he used to be a play boy who hardly cared what his father's company did with the weapons of mass destruction it made, but he's changed, whether because of his experiences or the replacement heart he had to manufacture, Steve doesn't know. He wasn't there. But he finds himself growing attached to the snarky man's one-liners and his gruff style and intense genius. And Steve knows there's something wrong with the universe when you fall in love with the son of the woman you once loved, but there you have it.
YUUUUUP. That's my head!canon. I love comic books.
*The Daily Shows website doesn't seem to be working, so try this link, vid at bottom.