Director: Joe Johnston
Screenplay: Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely
Starring: Chris Evans, Hayley Atwell, Stanley Tucci, Hugo Weaving, Tommy Lee Jones, Dominic Cooper, Samuel L. Jackson
One-sentence summary: During World War II, Steve Rogers is selected to undergo a process to create the world's first super-soldier.
Review: I'm going to be frank. I've never been particularly fond of Captain America as a character, mostly because I've felt like he stands for a particular brand of ultra-patriotism that isn't necessarily conducive to the kind of diplomatic relationships we need to foster today.
That said, I think it was pretty brave of Marvel to go ahead and commit to developing Captain America as a film franchise, and I think they did a great job of it. If nothing else, Captain America: The First Avenger sets up The Avengers beautifully, introducing the Tesseract/Cosmic Cube that we first saw in the stinger at the end of Thor.
But again, I'll be honest: I probably won't come back to the movie again.
Captain America: The First Avenger is a vital movie to the Marvel Cinematic Universe because it brings together seemingly disparate ideas already planted in Thor and contextualizes it in a way that doesn't make The Avengers seem haphazard. Not gonna lie, I geeked out when I realized that the entire beginning of the film was all about Red Skull (Hugo Weaving) getting his hands on the Tesseract, and he had this whole spiel about Odin and Yggdrasil and the power of the "gods."
That aside, it's not like Captain America: The First Avenger is a bad movie, it's just not up my alley. Yeah, the action sequences are great, and it's nice to understand why Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) was selected for the super-soldier experiment, and Stanley Tucci is awesome (as always). But something just felt a little off, and I think it was because I kept coming back to what Captain America stood for. The movie does a good job of employing tunnel vision and not reminding you of just what else was going on while Captain America was hunting down HYDRA, but it's hard to see a movie set in World War II and not think about what else was going on at the time. World War II is a downer.
Like I said earlier, I see Captain America as a relic of an age gone by, and he's not necessarily the hero we need anymore. However, I am fully prepared to see what they have in store for him in The Avengers and Captain America 2.
Final word: Captain America: The First Avenger is a good popcorn superhero flick with nothing inherently wrong but some may find it lays the patriotism on a little thick.
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