Movie Review: Captain America
We saw Captain America this weekend (spoilers beneath cut)...
Chris Evans ... hot. I love how Captain was portrayed in his 90-pound-weakling model, not just after they turned him into a superhero. Especially as a 90-pound-weakling, the Captain had lots of character which then made the superhero Captain believable. Special effects were pretty decent. Had I not seen IM2, Howard Stark as the Stark patriarch would have been marginally believable, but after seeing the obsessed Howard Stark depicted in IM2, it felt like they were trying to helicopter the younger, irresponsible Tony Stark into the father's shoes. The whole retro-1940's thing worked. The acting was basically sound.
Now for the whining. Marvel has been so busy using each 'feeder' movie to hype up the next Marvel movie that this entire film felt like a quickie-rush 'let's get the whole Captain America origin story out of the way so we can teleport him to 2012 Avengers.' The film starts out with finding the Captain's shield in the present day, and then flashes back to WWII. Which was fine. But then they tried to cram the entire origin story, which takes place over the entire WWII, into a 2.5 hour movie (yes ... it was long). For such a long movie, much of it felt rushed. Some of the best acting by supporting characters was so rushed it detracted from the movie. His sidekick and inspiration for wanting to be a soldier, Bucky Barnes, never got enough time. His love interest, Peggy, never got enough time. Then at the end, poof, it's 2012 and he's waking up with Nick Fury in his face. It suffers from the same ailment Iron Man 2 suffered from ... the movie was basically filmed as a big fat lead-in for Avengers and not as a great American hero in his own right.
Still ... I saw it on the big screen and didn't regret the $8.50 I plunked down to see it on 2D. It's a PG flick. Safe for the kids. The bad guy might scare them a bit and lots of good guys get dissolved by a bad-guy ray, but it doesn't show lots of gore (unlike Transformers ... T&A and lots of body parts). I will probably buy the DVD once it comes out for the kids to watch. It had that feel-good feel to it despite my gripes about Marvel.
Chris Evans ... hot. I love how Captain was portrayed in his 90-pound-weakling model, not just after they turned him into a superhero. Especially as a 90-pound-weakling, the Captain had lots of character which then made the superhero Captain believable. Special effects were pretty decent. Had I not seen IM2, Howard Stark as the Stark patriarch would have been marginally believable, but after seeing the obsessed Howard Stark depicted in IM2, it felt like they were trying to helicopter the younger, irresponsible Tony Stark into the father's shoes. The whole retro-1940's thing worked. The acting was basically sound.
Now for the whining. Marvel has been so busy using each 'feeder' movie to hype up the next Marvel movie that this entire film felt like a quickie-rush 'let's get the whole Captain America origin story out of the way so we can teleport him to 2012 Avengers.' The film starts out with finding the Captain's shield in the present day, and then flashes back to WWII. Which was fine. But then they tried to cram the entire origin story, which takes place over the entire WWII, into a 2.5 hour movie (yes ... it was long). For such a long movie, much of it felt rushed. Some of the best acting by supporting characters was so rushed it detracted from the movie. His sidekick and inspiration for wanting to be a soldier, Bucky Barnes, never got enough time. His love interest, Peggy, never got enough time. Then at the end, poof, it's 2012 and he's waking up with Nick Fury in his face. It suffers from the same ailment Iron Man 2 suffered from ... the movie was basically filmed as a big fat lead-in for Avengers and not as a great American hero in his own right.
Still ... I saw it on the big screen and didn't regret the $8.50 I plunked down to see it on 2D. It's a PG flick. Safe for the kids. The bad guy might scare them a bit and lots of good guys get dissolved by a bad-guy ray, but it doesn't show lots of gore (unlike Transformers ... T&A and lots of body parts). I will probably buy the DVD once it comes out for the kids to watch. It had that feel-good feel to it despite my gripes about Marvel.