Where to watch Captain America: The First Avenger
4 Stars
Director Joe Johnston has covered this area before in the underrated Rocketeer some 20 years ago. This time around, and presumably working from a much larger budget, Johnston and his creative team have outdone themselves. The period setting is alive visually and detailed with the kind of precision usually reserved for Oscar dramas or Scorsese pictures. Yet the look of the film has a modern/retro/sci-fi infused glow that sparkles and toes the line between fantasy and Norman Rockwell inspired art pieces. It’s a beautiful film to simply gaze at.
The screenplay from Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely is a lot more coherent than is the norm for the genre. Characters are given the time to develop and therefore have greater significance as the story progresses into its action filled climax. If there is a fault with the film it’s that the action isn’t a non-stop splattering of special effects. Yes, the action set-pieces are effective but the first hour of the picture is dedicated to the development of Rodgers into Captain America and then the subsequent propaganda machine that becomes of the ‘hero’. Unexpected turns in the story arc like this are common on the pages of comic books but their cinematic reincarnations have been so routine as of late that simple effective storytelling like this is noteworthy.
Sure the last five minutes are pure set up for next summer’s Avengers film, but after seeing the adventures of this First Avenger I’m far more interested in seeing a direct follow up rather than an ensemble piece that may relegate Cap to the sidelines. He deserves more than that and on the basis of this first picture he should be re-monikered The Most Interesting Avenger. A comic book movie for those that swore they’d never see a comic book movie.
Director: Joe Johnston
Stars: Chris Evans, Hugo Weaving, Samuel L. Jackson, Hayley Atwell
Captain America was good. I thought the plot was a bit too big to fit into a two hour film, however. By the time that the origin was told, that left little time to develop characters and end conflicts to wrap up the story.
For instance, Captain America’s commando team was introduced late in the film preventing character development that might have created some very interesting and dynamic exchanges. As it stood, too many characters remained two-dimensional. Furthermore, intricate attacks on Red Skull’s hideout occurred without much setup. Slam, bam, boom! Battles started and finished. Move on to the next scene.
This is the problem with origin stories. It takes a lot of time to set up a super hero’s foundation for battling evil. This is why I think a lot of comic hero films fall short of greatness because it is so difficult to balance how a hero got their powers and leave enough time for a conflict with the villain at the end of the film.
No matter, Captain America is still a good movie. Hopefully, the upcoming Avengers film will not disappoint. It promises to be great but with so many heroes, I hope it doesn’t lead to overkill. Remember, there are a number of heroes that were introduced in Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America, but little said of their background. Therefore, will the Avengers movie suffer from too much background information and not enough plot? In twelve months we will find out.
I’m dying to see this film! Hopefully I will get a chance to watch it tonight.