No offense to Captain America but, technically, wasn’t Thor de “First Avenger”? Dis de first qwestion dat cross monster’s mind, followed by “Dis entire movie a period piece?” and “Did me forget to buy cake mix for Grover’s potluck supper next Toosday?”.
Monster sit down to watch Captain America wit an open mind and, while me pleasantly surprised by rip-roaring first half, overall movie make it abundantly clear dat Captain America be a flawed hero. He not as cool as Iron Man or as mighty as Thor or even as interesting as Spiderman. At de end of de day, he about as awesome as Linoleum Girl or Unsweetened Oatmeal Man. Still, Cap’s alter-ego, Steve Rogers be a very interesting charakter – for about half de movie anyway and, at de point when it become less about Steve and more about action and speshul effekts, dis film flounder for me like, well, a flounder.
Movie open on diskovery of crashed ship in Antarctika. Inside, men find frozen star spangled shield. What it be? What it mean? Well, for answer to dat, we flashback to…
1942 where evil nazi (As opposed to what? Good-hearted, lovable nazi?) kill old village priest and steal glowy cube. What it be? What it mean? Well, for answer to dat, we go to…
Steve Rogers, a skinny, sickly guy who want to enlist in de army but refused because he TOO skinny and sickly. He get bullied, beaten up, and generally feel bad about staying behind with all de girls while lucky guys go off to war. He get taken in by kindly German scientist who offer him opportunity to serve. Steve agree to undergo experimental serum treatment and, before you can say “Hulk smash!” he be transformed into dreamy hunk!
Monster here must make speshul mention of spektacular visual effekts dat transform aktor as handsome and ripped as Cookie Monster into gawky geeky Grover-looking guy. It truly a fascinating achievement.
Anyhoo, spy kill German scientist and we treated to transformed Steve chasing down bad guy and saving de day. Suddenly, skinny/sickly Steve (moderately) super fast, (moderately) super strong, and (moderately) super agile. He obviously destined for great tings! He destined for…
BROADWAY!
Seriously, dude.
BUT when Steve find out his old buddy Bucky be captured by nazi’s, he decide he want to go reskue him. And because he display such great onstage dancing ability (????), he happily dropped behind enemy lines in his Broadway attire and shield.
As Captain America, he infiltrate nazi facility and face off against super-nazi called The Red Skull. Why he be called Red Skull? What dat mean? For de answer to dat…
You have to watch de movie instead of reading dis review but let’s just say he be called Red Skull for a very good reason. Dat has someting to do wit him having a red skull.
Captain America so awesome, he reskue Bucky and bunch of prisoners, den walk dem all de way back from Germany.
Government suddenly realize full potenshul of Captain America and cast him in off-off-Broadway produktions of “Kick Nazi Ass!”. He go on various missions where he…Kick Nazi Ass! He lead team against Red Skull lab and nazis armed wit energy weapons dat demolecularize people but, for some mysterious reason, bounce off Cap’s shield.
Cap showdown wit Red Skull on super jet carrying atomic bombs, each one carefully labeled so grievous error not made like dropping New York atomic bomb on Chicago. How embarrassing would DAT be?
Captain America steer jet safely into ocean where it crash and he lost until…flashforward to…
Steve wake up and freak out. He find himself in modern day Times Square where he shocked to hear it be 70 years later! And de Chicago Cubs still haven’t won a World Series!
Verdikt: A movie dat start surprisingly strong and interesting but become less so as focus shift from charakter to action and speshul effekts. Ultimately, it straightforward and kind of bland – like its hero.
Rating: 7 chocolate chippee cookies.
100% Bland is the word. i´m with Cookie this time.
Yep Cookie, pretty much spot on. I actually rather enjoyed the first part, pretty much up until the montage where he was doing all the hero type things, then it became pretty much a pot-boiler action movie. Still, not a bad one.
I did start to take a disliking to the continuous attempts to tie it in with the Avengers movie by having Howard Stark be in it so much. It was sometimes a distraction from the actual character of Steve Rogers. It felt sometimes that this movie was only done as a direct tie-in to that film, rather than letting it mostly stand on its own.
I agree that the effects to make the “wimpy” Steve Rogers were very, very well done. And I did like the premise that what made Steve *really* strong was what was in his heart, not his physical stature, and that giving him physical strength only served to let that inner strength come out.
Some other observations:
Why does his shield “ring” when Agent Carter fires at it, even though the metal is supposed to “absorb all vibration”?
In the motorcycle chase through the forest, did anyone else think of the speeder bike chase through the forests of Endor?
I had to laugh as well at all the bombs that were helpfully labelled with the ultimate destination.
When the mega-bat plane is falling/diving, at least they got the physics of how objects when falling together (the people inside appear weightless) correct. Unlike a certain space-based movie that is currently in theatres. 🙁
Why didn’t at least TRY to land the plane instead of crashing it? Even if it was in the Arctic? (Or Antarctic?) Surely he knew enough about planes to at least pull back on the stick.
Overall though, it wasn’t a bad outing. I might even go as far as 8 cookies for this one!
hi, joe,
i’ve gotten into the stargate novels (sg1 and atlantis) recently, and when i was reading the ‘sga legacy series’, it gave quite a few bold hints that sam and jack were together. the legacy series would have been sga’s 6th season.
the people writing the books were once fanfiction writers and damn good ones. some fans must have asked them what was/wasn’t considered canon in their books, and here’s the answer –
“We weren’t given any information at all about this and were told there was no showrunner’s “bible” for us to see. So all we can do is extrapolate from what we see on the screen, the same as you can. We were told to regard canon as what we see in a filmed, released scene, either that aired or as a DVD extra, and to disregard interviews, commentary, things said at cons, things in scripts that weren’t filmed, etc on the grounds that those were conflicting and often not final. What we have to work with is what’s on teh DVD sets, and that’s it.”
my question relating to this, joe, is: would the deleted ‘trio’ scene between sam and keller, where they spoke of their love lives and sam literally admitted she was seeing jack… would that be considered canon?
Speaking of the Jack and Sam thing in SG-1, you can’t help but admire all the little but obvious hints that they had feelings for each other, almost throughout the shows run even.
They had this thing, you know, a thing. Unique to them.
Spot on, Cookie!
…No, seriously, you’ve got a spot on you, Cookie.
Loved the “destination bombs” as it reminded me of something you would see in one of the US war propaganda movies from the 40’s.
As a longsuffering Cubs fan, I appreciate the shout out of disbelief … and am totally on O’Neill’s side of taking the Ancient Time machine back to 1908!
Cookie….I rarely watch movies based on comic books. I think the writers and producers often clash between script dialog, action scenes, and overall storyline. I find, most of the time, actors don’t fit the roles they play which makes the watcher frown about the movie. The less CGI, the better.
I really liked this one because it was more story than over-the-top action. It felt more…mature.
I dropped you an e-mail Joey, not sure if you got it.
das
I personally preferred this movie over Thor (a more interesting romantic lead for one!), but admittedly, it was bland in comparison to the Iron Man movies and Avengers. That said, I loved Bucky and the look into Tony’s past via a younger Howard Stark.
I must admit, as a regular reader, the only days I skip reading are the Cookie Monster reviews. Just a personal pet peeve, but I can’t stand the characterization and attendant misspellings.
Another excellent review.
I thought Chris Evans was good as the captain.
I got bored half way through the film.
I did think Tommy Lee Jones was funny though.
Aw, I loved the first half of the movie, then it kinda was a blur. I loved the scene at the World’s Fair with that big globe, but my fave was the glimpse of the Rocketeer uniform. I was so moved when he threw himself on the grenade, but then he ruins the scene by asking something like “Did I just rescue everyone selflessly?” Talk about a humble brag, bleh.
I’m still in a GoT daze this week, I’ve got the gorgeous “Mhysa” song from the GoT OST on replay,
@ Nola, it’s true that Cookie is not the most gifted writer, but you should know that he has dyslexia. Just like Tom Cruise, and yes, Cookie jumped on that couch first but nobody remembers that. Poor Cookie, will no one ye think of him now?
I agree. Overall the movie was good, but my biggest complaint was actually the part where Rogers is convinced he has to ditch the airplane. Why, exactly? “How it should have ended” deals with exactly this: http://bcove.me/gxctp8nl
Captain America is my least favorite out of the Avengers movies. I agree with Cookie Monster, it started off good and then slowly lost my interest as it went.
Had to say goodbye to our old Springer Spaniel, Gumbo, today. Sweet boy, he will be missed. I am so sad.
http://i656.photobucket.com/albums/uu284/pbugsmom/happybirthdayfromgumbo_zpseb635c14.jpg
@magsol: Exactly!
Gak! Too busy to write a review today so I’m late!
I enjoyed Captain America quite a lot.
My one quibble with it was that because of the scene at the beginning when they find the plane in the Arctic (Arctic, Cookie. The fastest way to New York from Germany is over the Arctic not the Antarctic.) I was expecting the movie to stop being a period piece flashback and finally catch up to the present day. It wasn’t until three quarters through that I realised that the whole movie will be set during WWII and that the present day bookends were simply tacked on to tie the movie in with the forthcoming Avengers movie. And they were just tacked on. I imagine that the script for this movie had been floating around for a while . . . possibly for many years . . . and it wasn’t until it was decided to make an Avengers movie that they pulled the script out of mothballs, added the bookends, a couple of extra references and added Howard Stark, and went into production.
I didn’t have a problem with the last half of the movie. I think it was a good balance of plot and action.
The wimpy Steve was awesome. I remember the experiments we did during The Lord Of The Rings testing out face replacement techniques for the Hobbits so we could put the full sized actor’s faces onto small body doubles. It was bleeding edge stuff back then and didn’t really work. I think only one shot made it into the movies and it was lens flared so much to hide how crappy it looked. Things have come a long way in 10 years!
I’m afraid I can’t watch Hugo Weaving (Australian, by the way 🙂 ) in anything without thinking of Agent Smith from The Matrix. Even with the Red Skull makeup I still kept expecting him to say, “Mr Anderson!”
What’s up next? Chronicle?!?!?!? Never heard of it! Where are you finding these stupid movies from?
Aww. So sorry to hear that, Deni.
Maybe he should have joined the team on Inglorious Basterds. Sounds like they did much better.
@ Line Noise: Ha! I, too, have trouble watching Hugo Weaving in a movie without flashing back to one of his previous roles — only in my case, it’s “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert”. That was the first thing I ever saw him in. When I saw the Matrix, all I could think was “Isn’t that Hugo Weaving? What’s that crazy voice he’s got going on?!?” It was very distracting!