Captain America Review

[oselle]

Yes, I probably wouldn't have gone to see this movie if I didn't have the impetus of imagining Jensen in the title role instead of Chris Evans. But I was also in the mood for something lightweight but not offensively loud n' stupid (q.v. Michael Bay), and since this movie had gotten surprisingly good reviews, I figured it might be somewhat elevated over the usual summer-movie crapfest.

Let me preface by saying that I know absolutely nothing about the Captain America or Avengers mythos, so I don't know how much of the movie was new and how much was sourced from the original comics. There was some stuff that was kind of weird and seemed like it must have been made up just for the movie.

Take Red Skull for example. I found it deeply weird that a movie set during World War II had to invent a villain who was, literally, worse than Hitler. Not a villain who was working for Hitler, or side-by-side with Hitler, but one who had gone so rogue that he actually wanted to blow up not just New York and Chicago but Berlin as well. This put me in the bizarre position of wondering what it meant that the Allies and the Nazis were now on the same side, at least as far as Red Skull was concerned.

This also made me sit there comparing Captain America with the far superior Raiders of the Lost Ark -- a situation not helped by the film's own shout-out to "Hitler digging for trinkets in the desert." (Note to filmmakers: Do not deliberately remind the audience of movies better than yours.)

Raiders was not timid about letting Nazis be the bad guys. Seriously -- why do you have to make up a villain when you've already got Nazis!?!? It was almost like the filmmakers were afraid to let Captain America exist in anything approaching the real world, because they thought it would be a downer, too heavy for summertime fare. Baloney. It would have been so much better if Captain America had been fighting real Nazis instead of some prosthetic lunatic who, regrettably for the film, happens to hate Hitler. It's kind of hard to really hate someone who hates Hitler.

Frankly, this was an overall failing of the film -- a lack of foundation. I wanted something lightweight, not spun-sugar flimsy. There was a great deal of action but none of it seemed to mean anything. I always find action to be extremely dull if there's nothing underpinning it and there really was nothing here. The best part of the movie was when the newly buff Steve Rogers gets pressed into service as a traveling USO act instead of the soldier he wanted to be, but that passes all too quickly and then we're left with little but explosions and infuriatingly implausible feats, like a 400-man troop of POWs somehow marching unnoticed from Austria to Italy. None of the characters ever feels real, and again I found myself thinking of Raiders, where despite the action-movie trappings, everyone from Indy to Marion to Sullah was so vivid and satisfying.

Raiders also did a much better job of capturing the 1940s feel and look, which Captain America, lushly staged as it is, somehow does not. Part of this may have been on purpose; maybe they were going for a comic-book look and not vintage 1942. It doesn't really work, though, everything just winds up looking like a set instead of a real place. It doesn't help that the film also strives for a gender and racial inclusiveness that is jarringly anachronistic -- there's no way the U.S. Army of that era would ever have made frothy propaganda films with black soldiers in them, and it would have been equally impossible for a woman to tag along on a combat mission.

I did like Bucky, and was sorry to see him go, and I also enjoyed the Hughesesque Howard Stark and all of his beautifully bechromed Art Deco gadgets. Hayley Atwell reminded me too much of Kate Beckinsale in Michael Bay's abysmal Pearl Harbor, and like most things in this movie, her relationship with Steve just didn't feel real or meaningful at all.

There was an...interesting use of CGI at the beginning, where Chris Evans's head was somehow merged with the pre-transformation body of a 90-pound weakling who still had Evans's basso profundo voice, which sounded hopelessly strange coming out of that birdlike throat. The overall effect was very disconcerting. Just as disconcerting was the fact that Chris Evans still looked a bit like CGI even post-transformation, but at least the voice matched the body.

As to the side benefit of imagining Jensen as Steve Rogers, that sort of faded away pretty quickly. Jensen simply would have looked too mature for this character -- and that's in no way a swipe at his looks. You all know that few people love to extol Jensen's beauty as much as I do. But Steve Rogers is basically a kid, untested, with a virtue born out of his very naivete. Jensen just looks a little too worldly for that. That said, I think Jensen would have brought a whole other element to the role, provided they tweaked it to make Steve Rogers older and wiser. I think he could have grounded the character in a way that Chris Evans did not...but that may have been exactly what the filmmakers didn't want.

Not to mention Jensen's talents would have been totally wasted, as Captain America only got smacked around once, and not very badly at that. Which reminded me why I don't really like superhero stories: they're no fun. I like stories of ordinary people who do super things, not people who have been juiced up with vita-rays, radioactive spider bites or genetic mutations so that they're basically as impenetrable as a Sherman tank. Boring.

In a word, the movie was unsatisfying and left me with that hollow feeling of craving a lot more than it was able to provide. I wonder if anyone is capable of making action movies as good as Raiders anymore, or if all the CGI and pyrotechnics have finally trumped story, character and genuine movie-making for good.

Comments

[cafune.livejournal.com]

red skull was, believe it or not, originally from the comics. admittedly i am shaky on my pre-avengers cap stuff (my loyalties begin and end with tony stark, who, by virtue of constantly being smacked around prettily, is someone you might like) and i rarely read cap outside of the avengers, but i pretty distinctly remember him not being against hitler in the comics like he was in this. i think they just needed him to be like that so they could have hydra and therefore have the technology to introduce the cosmic cube.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I just found all that "Heil Hydra!" stuff so odd. It made me feel like the good guys suddenly had a common cause with Hitler, and that's not at all a good creative choice, IMO. They could have kept the cosmic cube and still made Red Skull a bonafide Nazi. Raiders had no problem with having the Nazis pursuing mythological occult-powered artifacts.

I'm afraid I don't find Robert Downey Jr. pretty enough to want to see him get smacked around, alas.

[cafune.livejournal.com]

yeaahhhhhhhhhh i agree. i liked the movie but i can admit a lot of that is just me liking comics steve and the love transferring over in a weird sort of "i want this to be good and loved" way. this was very much a lead in to the avengers, i didn't feel like it was a complete movie; which is probably why the trailer at the end of the credits induced more joy in me than the entirety of the captain america movie. red skull was much more of a complete nazi in the actual WWII comics, but as he's...hmmm, evolved over the years, i think they chose to go with his more recent 2000's characterization. which didn't really fit.

ahhhhhh that's a shame. well, depending on the artist, tony in the comics can be very pretty indeed in my opinion. at least when they aren't inexplicably making him a complete beefcake.

and i feel like a creeper, so i figured i should just let you know i follow you on twitter! i'm a legitimate person. kinda.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

the trailer at the end of the credits induced more joy in me than the entirety of the captain america movie.

One of the things that attracted me to this movie was the WWII setting -- I wouldn't have been as interested in a film set in modern times and full of glitzy tech. The trailer didn't really do anything for me, but as I said, I'm not an Avengers geek so the coming together of these characters doesn't stoke my fire the way it would for someone invested in this 'verse.

Never mind the creeping, I've got plenty of creeps around here! :)

[ariadnes-string.livejournal.com]

:( I was hoping it would be better--I was thinking of taking the boys to see it tomorrow (for exactly the same reasons that inspired you!).

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I think the kids will probably enjoy it more than you. I found myself getting pretty restless halfway through. I don't know how old your youngest is, but I think it will be too much for any kid younger than seven or so -- the people next to me had a little boy of about five with them, and he clearly couldn't follow the movie because he kept asking what was happening, and I think there are some visuals that would be a little too intense for very young children. There is no sex though, and the violence is pretty bloodless.

[oxer12.livejournal.com]

I saw it today and liked it well enough - but I also fell asleep for about 10 min. near the end. During the major action sequence on Red Skull's plane. Oops.

Was Jensen up for this part at one time?

[oselle.livejournal.com]

During the major action sequence on Red Skull's plane.

OMG I know. Why on earth was the big climax so achingly dull? I didn't fall asleep but my attention wandered so much that all of a sudden Red Skull was dead and I didn't even know what had happened!

Was Jensen up for this part at one time?

Yes, but I don't know if he was ever seriously in the running or if he was just one of the actors who auditioned for it. Selfishly, I'm glad he didn't get it, because it would have meant the end of Dean Winchester (noooo!) and plus, I know I would have wound up blowing $12.50 on Captain America at least two or three more times, dull or not. Hell I probably would have wound up blowing more than that, because if Jensen was in it, I'd have HAD to see it in 3D at least once.