There Are Ghosts In My Sinuses!

I like Captain America. I read his comic book exploits for years, and generally enjoyed them. I like the concept of Steve Rogers, being a symbol for the American ideal. Not the Aryan super soldier ideal, mind you. I'm not talking about a master race. Steve Rogers is a character who is honest, who stands up for what's right, who defends the defenseless, and believes in the concepts of liberty and justice with his whole heart. Basically, he's what we should all aspire to me, aside from the sci-fi steroids nonsense. He's such a pure and noble character, that not even the dubious talents of "artist" Rob Liefeld could destroy him.

Truly Rob Liefeld's Masterpiece.

I'm a fan of Captain America, so I was very much looking forward to the motion picture. It had a good cast, and it was wisely set (almost entirely) during Cap's early World War II days, which was a great idea. But was it enough? Was it enough?
Is This Even A Review?!

Captain America: The First Avenger  tells the story of Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), a rail-thin, sickly young man who desperately wants to join the fight against the Nazi menace, but is rejected by military recruiters time and time again. For good reason, I might add. Despite Steve's "never say die" spirit, he's simply not physically fit for active duty.
But kindly Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci) thinks the kid has what it takes to become the first test subject for Operation: Rebirth, a top-secret experiment conducted by the U.S. government to create an army of super-soldiers to "personally escort Adolph Hitler to the gates of Hell", as project overseer Colonel Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones) puts it. Long story short: the experiment is successful, and 98-pound weakling Steve Rogers emerges from a snazzy steel pod as the beefy soldier of tomorrow.
Unfortunately, a Nazi spy blasts poor Dr. Erskine into infinity and wrecks the laboratory, leaving the newly-minted super-soldier alone with no way to recreate the experiment. Meanwhile, egomaniacal Nazi scientist Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving) has decided that Hitler is too much of a pussy for his tastes, and takes his super-science division "HYDRA" off the grid, formulating a plot to take over the world (of course!), taking his weasel pal Dr. Zola (the other Truman Capote) with him.

Schmidt has harnessed the power of the Cosmic Cube (I know the films insist on calling it "the Tesseract", but it's the fucking Cosmic Cube, and that's what I'm going to call it), and is using it to create ray guns. Lots of ray guns. Ray guns that dissolve people (sometimes). That's about it, really. Considering the amazing and bugfuck crazy history of the Cosmic Cube, I'm a little disappointed that this is as far as the film goes. To be fair, the post-credits sequence of Thor teased that the Cosmic Cube would be a significant part of the upcoming The Avengers, so I'll refrain from further complaints.

Back in the good ole' U. S. of A., Colonel Phillips relegates his golden boy Steve Rogers to U.S.O. duty, traveling the country with a cadre of sexy back-up dancers, punching Hitler in the face and hawking war bonds in a "ridiculous" costume as the anonymous "Captain America". This does not make Steve happy, because now that he has the physical means to fight, he's being deliberately kept from the battlefield by his gun-shy superiors.

This all changes in Italy, during a U.S.O. tour of an American military base. Steve hears that his pal Bucky has been captured by the Nazis, and learns that no rescue operation is being planned, being deemed "too dangerous" by the brass. So he sets off in costume, with the help of Iron Man's daddy and a... very well-rounded British Intelligence agent named Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell). Steve saves his pal, along with the motherfucking Howling Commandos, and comes face to face with Schmidt, who reveals his true identity as the nefarious "Red Skull" for the first time.
The Red Skull reveal is cool, because the make-up looks great. I always thought a cinematic Red Skull would look rather silly, and to be fair, the Hugo Weaving make-up does look a little silly, but in a good way. Do you understand? It doesn't look realistic, but that's what I liked about it. The make-up looks like it came right out of the comic book, and I enjoyed it for that.
Backtracking a bit, I am a little upset about the inclusion of the Howling Commandos in this film. It's not in their representation, but rather in the fact that they're so unimportant to the plot that they're never even named. Not a single one of these characters is ever introduced by name, not even their ringleader, 'Dum Dum' Dugan, who was played by one of my favorite "B-team" actors, Neal McDonough.

I had to look up the film on IMDB to discover their names, and the film couldn't even get those right. Only Dugan and Gabe Jones from the comic books are represented in the film, with the rest of the crew made up of characters created specifically for the movie. Why? Why was the British soldier not named Percival Pinkerton? If his name is never uttered in the film, why make up a brand-new moniker for what is essentially the same character? And what about Izzy Cohen? Where's Izzy Cohen?! They replaced him with some random French dude. To make the cast more "international"?

Maybe I'm making too much out of this. I liked the characters in the film. I found them rather entertaining in their limited screentime. But what was the point? Without Nick Fury around, the Howling Commandos just aren't the same. We get stuck with the "Ultimate Universe" version of Nick Fury in our Marvel movies, and that sucks.

Created by Mark Millar and artist Bryan Hitch for their run on The Ultimates back in 2002, these goons apparently thought that turning him into Samuel L. Jackson would be "awesome". And when the bigwigs over at Marvel Studios decided to shoe-horn Nick Fury into that cute epilogue to Iron Man, they had the same idea. And now we're trapped with Samuel L. Jackson phoning it in for a series of pointless cameo appearances in Marvel movies.

It would have been great to see Nick Fury leading the Howling Commandos in Captain America: The First Avenger. In the comics, Fury became a test subject for the "Infinity Formula", an elixir that drastically slows the natural aging process. That's not so far-fetched in a series of films that include an irradiated giant and a fucking Norse god. Having Steve Rogers fighting alongside the Howling Commados without Sgt. Fury is a missed opportunity. Steve waking up in the modern day, being greeted by his old war buddy, having not aged a day would have made a cool moment.

I suppose I'm just bitter because being cast as Nick Fury would have given Kurt Russell another opportunity to wear an eyepatch on film.

Moving on, having proven himself in his lightning strike rescue operation, Colonel Phillips changes his mind about Steve's combat potential, and throws him into harm's way with a brand-new uniform (blech!) and a brand-new shield (yay!). Steve and his anonymous brothers in arms systematically track down and destroy the Red Skull's top-secret HYDRA bases one by one, in an attempt to thwart the villain's vague doomsday scenario. This does not work.

Despite their best efforts to hamper the Red Skull's progress, he still manages to finish his ultimate weapon, which is really just a big Stealth Bomber powered by the Cosmic Cube. His plan: to fly around the world, dropping Cosmic Cube-fueled atom bombs (?) on every major city in the world, and... I'm not quite sure. Does he intend to become the eternal emperor of an irradiated wasteland? Oh yeah, and Bucky falls off a train and dies. Did I forget to mention that?

Steve stows away onboard the Red Skull's bomber, beats up a few henchmen, and has the most underwhelming, anti-climactic final battle with the Red Skull himself on the bridge of his fully-functional battleship. This fight consists mostly of the Red Skull sitting in a chair and talking, and culminates with him being consumed by the Cosmic Cube, apparently dying, although it's really just a lame set-up to resurrect the Red Skull in a future film. Steve heroically crashes the plane in the Arctic, safely away from civilization, and the film ends on a shot of kids playing "Captain America" in the street, a perfect slice of Americana.

Then it keeps going, with Steve waking up in the modern day and freaking out, before finally meeting Nick Fury (for the first time. Sadness.), who hints that America has need of its Captain once more. This modern-day footage really should have been placed after the end credits like in previous Marvel movies, or at least midway through the credits, like the Sinestro reveal in Green Lantern. It simply doesn't belong where it does, after that lovely shot of the children playing with the garbage can lid painted up to look like Captain America's shield. This link explains my problems with the film's ending much more elegantly than I ever could.

Exiting the theatre, I realized that I didn't really care for Captain America: The First Avenger. The performances are uniformly good. Tommy Lee Jones and Stanley Tucci are particularly fine in their roles, with Jones being given some surprisingly funny moments. Chris Evans is a great Steve Rogers. I have no complaints on the acting front. The first act of the movie is very good, and it remains good (for the most part) until after Steve saves Bucky from the Red Skull's clutches in Italy.

Then the film just degenerates into a montage of action sequences that gloss over Steve's campaign against HYDRA. We never get to spend any time with Steve and his companions after the big prison break, and that's a mistake. The film speeds toward the big finale with the Red Skull, and the final battle collapses like a soufflé that's been shouted at. Even after Bucky's untimely death (his body is never recovered, leaving the door open for some Winter Soldier action in an inevitable sequel), Steve never dwells on it. The movie just... moves on.

The most badass bellhop the world has ever known.

Despite being played marvelously by Hugo Weaving, who adopts a soothing Willem Dafoe in The Life Aquatic-esque accent for his performance, the Red Skull never feels like a credible threat. He mostly stands around and threatens people, rarely doing anything of note. And as I mentioned earlier, his climactic duel with Captain America is pointlessly, insultingly short. Ball. Dropped. The over-reliance on fucking ray guns over real ordnance gives many of the battles an unfortunate G.I. Joe cartoon feel. The decision to focus on HYDRA instead of the Third Reich also hurts the film, I think. I saw no reason to separate the Red Skull from the Nazis. What does it accomplish?
In the comics, Schmidt started out not as a gifted scientific mind, but rather as Hitler's fucking bellhop (!?), recruited by der Führer to become his right-hand man, eventually appointed head of Nazi terrorist activities! But in the movie, Hitler wasn't "extreme" enough for Schmidt's tastes, so he fucked off to do his own thing. So instead of Captain America facing off against the ultimate Nazi, he instead fights the head of fledgling international terrorist group HYDRA. Are Nazis not cool villains anymore? I don't get it.

Maybe this is a nitpick, but I also don't care for Captain America's uniform. I think it looks bulky and stupid. I preferred the costume he wore during his U.S.O. tour, because it actually resembled the uniform he wears in the comics. Sure, it looks a little goofy, but only because it was purposefully designed to look goofy in context. It's a cheap costume thrown together for a stage performer. And it still looks better than what Steve ends up wearing in the second half of the film.

Honestly, I would have preferred the uniform briefly glimpsed at the beginning of The Ultimates #1, during a W.W.II prologue illustrating Cap's last mission before going M.I.A. It looks practical enough to exist in the real world without losing the heart of Captain America's traditional uniform.

Overall, I was disappointed in Captain America: The First Avenger. It's got some good moments and some great performances, but it doesn't add up to anything I could ever recommend. It manages to get the character of Steve Rogers right, and Chris Evans knocks the role out of the park, but it's not enough.

And on a side note, doesn't the first act "pre-Captain America" Steve Rogers look a little creepy?

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go listen to some Jethro Tull.

P.S. - A new podcast is coming, as are reviews of Cowboys And Aliens, Horrible Bosses, and Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes. Also, a special event. A very special event.