The Lamest Show On Earth: Captain America

Everybody has their "sad movie." For some, it's Old Yeller, for others its Titanic. For me personally, I'd go with What Dreams May Come. Having actually read the book and gotten all choked up from that, I can say without a doubt that it is one of the saddest (but coolest, visually) movies you can watch. Unfortunately, Captain America: The First Avenger also made me sad. But not the same way. Captain American held such promise...only to deliver a turd of a film.

Skip to review, my darlin'.

In the present day, an arctic expedition comes upon a large find. Among the frozen ruins, a red, white, and blue object lies frozen in the ice.

In March, 1942, Johann Schmidt (played by The Matrix's Agent Smith, which if my German serves me correctly is roughly what the last name Schmidt translates to) is in Norway hunting a mysterious object of power. He breaks into a church and, destroying a fake cube found inside a tomb, discovers the hidden location of the Cosmic Cube (although I'm not sure the object is ever referred to as the Cosmic Cube, the object in the comics was so named, so that's what I'm callin' it). He leaves the building in disarray with his new prize in tow.

In New York, Steve Rogers, a meek little man with a big heart and more courage than he knows what to do with is rejected again from joining the fighting in World War II. Later, while watching a newsreel in a movie theater, Rogers calls out another patron who derides the war footage in favor of cartoons. Being a bit outmatched, Rogers and the patron find themselves in the alley behind the theater with Steve getting the crap beat out of him. But, he refuses to back down, even though at an obvious disadvantage. As his assailant is about to lay into him again, he's stopped by Steve's friend James "Bucky" Barnes. Bucky admonishes Steve for fighting when he should run, but still admires his tenacity. Bucky invites Steve to the World's Fair Expo with a date in hand to take his mind off the war. At the expo, a levitating (for a few seconds at least) car is demoed by Howard Stark (father of Iron Man Tony Stark). While the crowed enjoys the show, Steve sneaks off again to enlist. A doctor overhears Steve explaining to Bucky why he wants to enlist. This doctor enters the room to speak with Steve and make sure his convictions are sound. Convinced of Steve's intentions, Dr. Erskine accepts Steve into the army.

Accepted into a recruiting program for the development of a "super-solider," Steve finds himself greatly out of his league. Undaunted, Steve pushes on, going through all the training exercises and working through his own shortcomings (and those forced upon him by his fellow recruits). In a display of brains over brawn, Steve and the rest of the recruits are running when their drill sergeant stops by a flag pole which marks the halfway point of the run and, after proclaiming that no one has been able to bring down the attached flag in his time as drill sergeant, offers a ride back in a jeep to any man who can bring down said flag. As the men scramble over each other attempting to climb the pole and get the flag, they find it impossible and the drill sergeant tells them to fall back in line. Steve, who'd been lagging behind the pack, walks over to the flagpole, removes the retaining bolt, and collects the flag from the now fallen flagpole. He hands it to the drill sergeant and takes his seat in the back of the jeep.

Still unconvinced, and leaning toward a more fit candidate, the colonel in charge of the super-solider program, played by Tommy Lee Jones, performs one last test, throwing a grenade into the group of soldiers as they're doing calisthenics. Seeing the "live" grenade, the men scatter, but Steve jumps on it in an attempt to blunt any explosion. But no explosion comes. The grenade was a dud, and Colonel Phillips allows Steve to be the first subject of the super-soldier program. The night before his treatment, Dr. Erskine meets Steve in the barracks to tell him about the procedure he will undergo, explaining that it had been performed once before, but the formula had not been perfected and, while it produced a superior soldier, it had disastrous side effects. The formula, Erskine explains, takes the nature of the subject an enhances it. It makes a good man better, and a bad man worse. In this case, the bad man who was the first subject was Johann Schmidt.

Meanwhile in Germany, Schmidt and his lackey Dr. Zola have found a way to harness the power of the Cosmic Cube to power their weapons of war. Schmidt also learns that Erskine is about to reproduce the super-solider procedure that gave him super strength, and sends an assassin to stop the doctor. In America, Steve undergoes the super-soldier procedure, and after a few tense moments where it looks like the procedure might have to be aborted, the treatment is completed and Steve emerges much taller and stronger. The assassin, who had managed to get into the viewing gallery of the experiment, kills Dr. Erskine and escapes with a sample of the super-soldier serum. Rogers gives chase, finding he now is far faster and has a much higher stamina than before. Steve eventually chases down the assassin as he's escaping in a submersible. The assassin break off a cyanide-filled tooth, bites down, and dies before he can be interrogated. When Steve gets back to the lab where the experiment took place, Col. Phillips assigns Steve to a lab at Alamogordo for further study. With Erskine dead, Steve is the last source of the super-soldier serum. Nonplussed, Steve is approached by New York's Senator Brandt and offered the opportunity to serve his country in a more active role.

Steve is provided a script, a costume, a shield, and a line of chorus girls. As "Captain America," Steve becomes the face of the war effort. He travels the country encouraging the purchase of war bonds and punching out a mock Hitler in front of a gaggle of dancing gals. After several stops, Steve finds himself in Italy on the frontlines. Steve finds himself playing a truncated show for a group of soldiers who, being the remnants of several decimated battalions, are less than interested in hearing about the efforts back home and more interested in the dancing girls. Steve learns that his old friend Bucky is not only in country, but has been captured and possibly killed in a nearby fight with Schmidt's forces. Refusing to believe that his friend has been killed, Steve takes his new skills and, after being dropped from an airplane flown by Howard Stark, infiltrates Schmidt's facility. Confronting the forces of Hydra, Schmidt's personal attack force with whom he plans to take over the world (even overthrowing Hitler), Steve rescues Bucky, along with a slew of other captured soldiers who would have been put to work in the dangerous task of building Hydra's terrible weapons. Sensing his facility lost, Schmidt initiates a self destruct. As the facility starts to go, Steve and Schmidt come face to face, and Schmidt reveals that as part of the transformation process, his face was transformed into his namesake, "Red Skull." Schmidt and Dr. Zola escape, and Steve, Bucky, and the others attempt to flee the Hydra facility.

Back at basecamp, Col. Phillips has gotten word that Steve rushed off into battle. Assuming Rogers to be dead, he is preparing the note home declaring such when Steve and the rest of the freed soldiers arrive at camp. With the news of the destruction of Schmidt's facility, Steve is given the opportunity to recruit a team of special operatives that he, as "Captain America" will lead around the world to destroy additional Hydra installations before they can become a threat to the rest of the world. Steve is set up with better equipment by Howard Stark, including the famous circular shield made of vibranium (an ultra-rare metal that only exists on Earth, as Stark informs Steve, in that shield). His crew includes a bunch of soldiers taken from comic's Nick Fury and His Howling Commandos, a World War II era comic (in what has become a Marvel movie staple of throwing random characters into another super hero's movie). Together, they take down several more Hydra installations.

Finding an opportunity to capture Dr. Zola, Steve, Bucky, and one of the other men zipline aboard the train Zola is riding. In attempting to capture him, Bucky is blown off the train to his death. Zola is captured and turned over to Col. Phillips. After explaining the situation over a nice steak dinner, Phillips convices Zola to give him the location of the Red Skull's final base of operations.

» How does it end? «

Spoiler spoiled:
Captain America: The First Avenger held such promise. Being a big fan of the other Marvel films and, while never collecting Captain America comics, having read Cap's origin story in elementary school (in some giant white books that I wish I could find again, along with the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, and Spider-Man), I was thrilled to see a modern movie being made. Although there already exists a Captain America film, made in 1990, I've never seen it, and most of the reviews indicate it's terrible. Though I understand there is a quite bitchin' Cap Motorbike in the film...not that it really helps the film at all. But anyway, so Captain Fuckin' America, the original badass: a wimpy loser who, through the miracle of mad science, becomes a superman and uses his powers for good against first the Axis Powers with his trusty sidekick, and later, after being frozen in time, against more modern enemies. Really, how could you go wrong? I dunno, but someone found a way, and they filmed it, polished that turd up nice and shiny, and called it Captain America: The First Avenger.

First the good: it's an OK movie story-wise. You meet Steve Rogers, see his struggle to serve his country, and finally ascend to Captain America. There's a somewhat unnecessary lull in the middle as Cap is reduced to a status symbol, but the we're thrown back into the fight against Hydra and The Red Skull. Chris Evans is a pretty good Cap, although it's going to make things a bit rough when Cap encounters the Fantastic Four and he's forced to Jean-Claude Van Damme himself. There's a few good cameos, include Tommy Lee Jones and Stanley Tucci. And Hugo Weaving does an OK Red Skull. That about covers the good.

Now the bad: Everything else. The film follows Cap's origin in the comics for a bit, and then goes off on a tangent by making Cap sell war bonds; stealing characters from The Howling Commandos, and apparently the original Union Jack; and throwing in a goddamned shit love story that serves little purpose. The relegation of Cap to a prop for selling war bonds was not needed. Who in their right mind goes "Hey, we just juiced the shit out of this guy, made him fuckin' Superman minus the tights. Let's add the tights and have him hock shit instead of kickin some Nazi ass." No, shouldn't have happened. Even though the government is dumb, I don't think they'd be all for tossing Cap aside, especially not in his own damn movie. The Howling Commandos were somewhat OK, because they were from WWII, chances are no one would recognize them, and they give Cap a strike team. Not that he fuckin' needs one, but there's gotta be someone to blame if shit goes wrong, right? But the topping on the shit cake is the love story. What the hell. There's no need for it, at all, hence why I left all mention of it out of the summary. And it doesn't even develop all that well, because ultimately Cap has to get frozen in time, so either he wakes up and she's an old bag, or she's dead. Plus, being super powered, he'd probably break her if they did it. So once again we have a movie that isn't helped by some forced romantic involvement.

Next up, holy shit, the CGI in this film. So some movies are aided immensely by slick CGI. Some movies, like 300 or Sin City revolve almost entirely around CGI scenes, so they take the time to keep it looking good. Captain America said fuck that noise, and built a movie around CGI scenes without giving two shits how good they looked. There are a handful of times where Chris Evans' head on the little Steve's body just looks ridiculous. I'm not sure if there was a better way to handle it, but think Marlon Wayans in LiTTLEMAN, but much sloppier. And the scenes of all CGI were just terrible. Cap stuck out like a sore thumb, the action looked hokey, and I don't know if they were trying to go for some kind of comic book-esqe feel, but they failed miserable at whatever they were trying to do. It was fuckin awful.

Finally some nitpicky comic book things:

Bucky was Cap's sidekick, not some kind of older brother figure. And in the comics, Cap and Bucky are attempting to defuse a runaway rocket when it explodes, killing Bucky (I know, no one is ever dead in comics) and throwing Cap into the freezing ocean where he's recovered from suspended animation, not this bullshit train death bit.
The Cosmic Cube has nothing to do with Odin or Norse mythology whatsoever, even though the movie presents it as such (again, just calling it a tesseract, not the Cosmic Cube, but it's almost the same damn thing).
Cap was a bad ass from the get go. Just because the guy that gave him the serum got killed doesn't mean he was shipped off to be a lab rat. The guys in charge recognized a Grade A ass kicker and put him to work kickin ass, not dancin around kissing hands and shaking babies...or vice-versa...

So, to sum it up, what we have here is not the movie Captain America: The Last Avenger could have been. We don't have the great film that takes the Star-Spangled Avenger and raises him up to meteoric heights. No. What we have here is some shit thrown together and called a movie, just so it wouldn't seem weird when Cap shows up in The Avengers. That's it. The references to Norse mythology, the lack of any real strong plot development, the being found by SHIELD instead of the Avengers themselves, it was all a fuckin' lead up to the goddamnned Avengers movie. Hopefully The Avengers is so awesome, it overshadows how shitty this movie ended up being.

Ron Perlman's a stickler for stickin' to the comics (see Hellboy), so he feels what I'm saying. However, he does recognize that it's still Captain Fuckin' America, so he's a little lenient.