Alright, let's get this going here as well....
Captain America: The First Avenger
The story: A super skinny dude wants to kill some Nazi’s so a friendly German scientist and Tony Stark’s dad turn him into a super soldier. He meets a girl, loses a pal, knocks out Hitler over 200 times, fights a dude with a red skull named, you guessed it, Red Skull before finally turning into a human Popsicle.
Captain America: The First Avenger is not only the first movie we’re covering here, but also the only MCU movie to date that I’ve previously reviewed. However, I can sum that review up for you pretty succinctly by saying that I enjoyed the movie itself but didn’t like Chris Evans as Cap at all. In fact, I went as far as saying that I would have preferred Sebastian Stan in the role. Amazingly, I’ve done a complete 180 on this and can’t believe I disliked Evans so much back in 2011. He’s so good at playing the lawful good superhero; something that I feel is integral to Cap’s believability as a character. In fact, the only person I can safely say ever did lawful good better was the late Christopher Reeve as Superman, which I think puts Evans in pretty super company. Not to mention, I’m glad Stan wasn’t cast as Cap seeing how well he handled the role of Bucky both here and later on down the road. The only other thing about that review that I thought was interesting is that I mentioned the inevitable Cap sequel would be well served to use the Winter Soldier storyline, which of course it then went and did. That’s right bitches, I’m clairvoyant. Deal with it.
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"Well, if this Cap thing doesn't work out he can always try pitching a live action Small Soldiers movie."
So with that little bit of history out of the way, what did I think about Captain America: The First Avenger when I watched it again? Honestly, it’s pretty solid if not as mind-blowingly awesome as some of the later MCU films. Obviously the origin story was handled well, with Stanley Tucci a standout as the kindly Dr. Erskine. The chemistry between he and Evans is pretty strong and, to his credit, Evans does a good job of expressing shock and sadness when Erskine buys the farm almost immediately after his experiment turns out to be a success. Previous to this, the introduction to the Howard Stark character at the future expo was a nice touch and a cute shout out to his son’s own future expo, which we’ll be looking at when we reach Iron Man 2. We also get to meet good old Agent Carter herself, played by the classically hot Hayley Atwell. Ah, forget classic, she’s just hot…period. Love those legs and I don’t think any man (or most women) would argue against how impressive they are.
"Face it, there's no way you wouldn't give your life savings to this much man."
The next portion of the movie, featuring Cap in the USO shows, is my favourite in the film and one of my favourite scenes in any Phase One feature. I’ve always been partial to war propaganda and big band/swing music, so it pretty much pressed all of my buttons. It also serves as a great segue into the next sequence of events, as Cap finally becomes so fed up with his position that he risks discharge in order to go bring the boys back home. Among these boys is of course Bucky Barnes, Cap’s good buddy from back home, and Timothy “Dum Dum†Dugan, a great minor character played really well by the always awesome Neal McDonough. These two, along with some others, form the Howling Commandos, which were led by Nick Fury in the comic books, giving us our first major change from print to film. No biggie though, the Howling Commandos rule no matter who’s in charge. Cap, along with these awesome fellas, proves to be a thorn in the side of the Nazi’s and keeps them on the run at all times.
"Damn it Zola, I TOLD you not to use the Tesseract to power the tanning beds!"
Meanwhile, another guy who’s having problems with the Nazi’s is Johann Schmidt, played really well by Hugo Weaving until he takes off his face and becomes the Red Skull, who is also played really well by Hugo Weaving in a mask. Yep, he doesn’t like the Nazi’s interfering in his business so he decides to kill them all, or at least the ones in his way, by using power harnessed by a blue cube called the Tesseract. He’s aided by Dr. Arnim Zola, played with delicious glee by Toby Jones. Zola becomes such a talked about figure during the latter days of the war that the commandos are sent out to capture him, and they do so, though not without great personal cost. You see, poor Bucky tragically falls to his death from a train, never to be seen again. Okay, we’ll see him again, although at THIS point nothing was certain and the sequence is handled very well considering how far it strayed from the source material. This serves to piss of Cap even more and so he pretty much single-handedly takes out everyone from HYDRA (oh yeah, that’s Schmidt’s cool name for his organization of psychos) before dispatching of the Skull himself on an airplane. However, the plane is going to crash into New York and Cap realizes he has to make the supreme sacrifice and ditch it into the water, which he does in a rather depressing scene where he tells Agent Carter he’s going to have to miss their date. Sorry, there’s something in my eye.
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Oh shit, Cap’s not dead guys, he’s just frozen stiff down there in the, well, I don’t really know where he is but it doesn’t matter because someone does and they find him, thaw him out and try to deceive him into thinking he’s still in the 40’s. This plan shockingly fails, but a man named Nick Fury pops up to calm him down, sort of, and offers him a new mission; trying to save the world. I wonder what that’s all about. Overall I really enjoyed Captain America: The First Avenger on the re-watch and would gladly catch it again as a stand-alone movie. Certainly better things are still to come for our man out of time and our awesomely evil pals from HYDRA, but this was a suitable starting point and a solid introduction to one of my personal favourite characters in the entire MCU. Oh, not Cap, although I like him a lot as well. I’m talking about Peggy Carter of course, and we’ll be looking at her post-Captain America antics…NEXT~!
