Captain America: The First Avenger – Movie Review

Brief Personal Note: While I do teach, I also worked for five years at Borders Books and this midnight screening of Cap was also on the last day that Borders operated as an actual bookstore before going into liquidation today. So, it was kind of the last thing my coworkers and I will do as coworkers. And if you go to a closing Borders to scavenge for graphic novels, remember that all the workers there are essentially fired already and most of them don’t have other jobs to go to.

On with the review…

Two Iron Man movies. One Incredible Hulk. One Thor. And now Captain America, Marvel’s fifth movie by their own studio, and the last piece of the puzzle before Avengers next summer. And with five movies, they have shown something remarkable—they really know how to make good movies. None of them are perfect, but all of them are at least very enjoyable (some might disagree on Incredible Hulk, but at least that one didn’t have Hulked-out poodles. You really can’t get worse than a Hulked-out poodle). Really, Captain America: The First Avenger was their last chance to really screw up the Avengers, but luckily, that didn’t happen. In fact, The Avengers didn’t even feel like it was a real movie that would be coming out until the credits began to roll on Cap (and the end credit surprise just sealed the deal). But as great of a stepping-stone as it is, it certainly isn’t a perfect movie.

One thing that did work well was the story—it had a much more defined narrative than all of the other Marvel films so far. Sure, it’s an origin story, but one with more depth than Thor—Cap and Peggy Carter actually have time to develop their bond as opposed to Thor and Jane Foster’s one night on the roof. Well…I suppose we don’t really know what happened on that roof.) and more heart than Iron Man (Rogers wants to do good because he’s a good man…Stark wants to do good because he built weapons of mass destruction. There’s something about Rogers’s nobility that strikes a chord). As far as story-telling, the script was pretty solid with just one or two minor annoyances. When developing the shield, Cap picks one from under a table that Howard Stark designed as a prototype and was seemingly going to throw away in favor of something more…Iron Man-esque. Yet when Cap asks what it’s made of, Stark says it’s an extremely rare metal called Vibranium and that the shield he was moments ago calling a prototype was most of the Vibranium in the world. So…why on earth would you take this remarkable metal and use it to make a prototype you don’t even care about? It might be a small problem, but man did it bother me. And Bucky…first, there wasn’t enough of him, and while I won’t spoil it, I will say that I wasn’t a fan of the changes to his story. Sort of a “if it wasn’t broke, why’d you fix it” thing.

However, a good script in the hands of a terrible cast and director can’t turn into a good movie. When I heard that Joe Johnston was going to direct it, I cringed a little, but held faith. I mean, Wolfman? Jurassic Park 3? I mean, Rocketeer and some of his others were good, but his bad films were really bad. Yet Marvel did put a lot of faith into Jon Favreau for Iron Man, so it seems they know what they’re doing. And Johnston does a great job with Captain America. First, you can tell that he has a lot of respect for not only the comic, but the period the story takes place, and films that harken to that period. There is a Raiders of the Lost Ark kind of feel to it (Hopefully a sequel won’t have a Kingdom of the Crystal Skull feel) that makes it a lot of fun, but also lets it stay grounded. Thor was a lot of fun, but it was about a god. Grounded isn’t really a possibility. The only thing I wish Johnston focused more on was Cap’s use of the shield. There was definitely some great shield action, but he was mostly a slugger. I wanted to see more of that shield-mastery he’s so known for. And the pacing of the movie was a bit off.  Either the second act was too short or the third act too long, but midway through the movie it starts to feel a bit slow even with the awesome action, and then randomly picks up again.

This is also a very well-casted movie. Stanley Tucci is wonderful as Erskine, and Tommy Lee Jones steals scenes like he’s Danny Ocean. And congratulations Toby Jones for playing the first likable Nazi, Arin Zola—by the way, when the evil organization makes Nazis not look half-bad, that is a really evil organization. Haley Atwell was surprisingly fun to watch—maybe because she’s the first Marvel love interest who doesn’t just need to be saved. Betty Ross, Jane Foster—twice with Pepper Potts, all they did was look pretty and need to be rescued by the hero. Not Peggy. She straps one on and joins the fight. Which says a lot—all of the other females in Marvel movies are in present day but still act as the typical damsel in distress, yet the one character from a time ripe with stories of distressed damsels is the strongest and most independent. Dominic Cooper was also a pleasant surprise. First because I thought Howard Stark was going to be more of an Easter egg cameo than an integral character, but he serves the story well, and that you could believe this guy would eventually father Tony Stark, but while also being a womanizing genius, he didn’t simply act like Robert Downey Jr.; he made the character his own. Which leads us to the last of the supporting players, Sebastian Stan’s Bucky. Honestly, I was convinced he was Rogers’ friend, but I didn’t get to see enough of him being Bucky to buy that he was Bucky.