Not everyone can do a Batman.

Rating: Null/10 (31 July 2011)

Watching Captain America, it's hard to believe that both the Cap and his fellow crime-fighting hero from a different universe, Batman were produced from the same era. Yet looking back, both share the same kooky, somewhat terribly written, pseudo-patriotic propaganda comic appeal that, at least for comic books' key demographic back in the day—kids—was enough to secure a healthy pay-check at the end of the month. Some sixty or seventy odd years on however, and the political landscape, and the landscape of entertainment itself, has shifted dramatically. So much so that even Batman—the same guy that starred in that super goofy TV series back in the day—has adapted himself into something of a cultural phenomenon, making himself matter once again by switching gears and adapting to that change in the way society views a hero, and in turn, what that means.
It's something of great interest then to pop into a cinema hall and sit down to watch Captain America. How would, or could they adapt a guy so plainly written, and so intrinsic to the whole 1940's social paranoia and patriotism thing (and ultimately canned air without) without alienating audiences? Surely something huge would have to change—surely he's not going to have a magic boomerang shield, wear the American flag in bright red, white and blues, and shove everything righteous, holy and great about his country's ideals down our throat like its 1942 all over again? Surely not, right? Well, guess again, chump! You see, sitting down to watch Captain America is like subjecting yourself to two hours of overblown bombast with little to no resonating cues. It's a series of one-liners that fall flat on their back and a movie so into making itself look iconic that it loses all of its steam thirty minutes in. Sure, they try to justify all these pedantic details that do nothing but pander to hardcore comic fans, but in the end you get the idea that maybe Captain America isn't the kind of character you want to invest in at this stage—that not everyone can do a Batman.
Taking the form of every other origin superhero story that you've seen thirty times already in the past decade, Joe Johnston's adaptation of the Cap's story is something of a blundering mess rife with heartless melodrama and harmless, neutered action. Aside from the fact that nothing happens here that some other superhero hasn't done before in many different, more interesting ways, there's just something about watching this ridiculous superhero in action that never resonates. To be fair, I guess there isn't much that Johnston could have done with Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely's lightweight, by-the-numbers script, and blame shouldn't squarely be pointed in his direction. Walking into the movie, I at least expected some decent rapport between the cardboard Chris Evans and the somewhat energising Hugo Weaving—but the very most we get from these two is something along the lines of, "Don't you ever give up?!", to which the ever-quick witted Captain America retorts, "Nope!" Okay, so he's not Peter Parker, sure, but can't we at least have a little more rebuttal? A little more jazz? A little more, life? Composer Alan Silvestri sure tries, but perhaps too much— punctuating all this nonsense is a bizarrely self-conscious score from 1940's hell. Fight the fight! Save your country! Drink Coca-Cola! This is a super-hero-movie-from-the-seventies score!
I guess, in the end, that's the central problem I had when watching The First Avenger; just like those older Golden-Age comics, the general idea here is primarily to make money by being as safe and exploitive as possible—money doesn't require personality, and, well, how else are we going to shift all this popcorn, right? I mean, sure, the movie does have its finer points, yet much of them die alongside Stanley Tucci who plays the only character with any discernible personality traits not soaked in melodrama or silly caricature. Instead, viewers are treated to a romance as tepid as overnight coffee and action written and performed with as much vigour as one would do drinking it. It's the kind of thing that even your average soap or daytime special might do with more feeling and plausibility—indeed, much like the entirety of Cap's origin story, the very idea comes off as a perfunctory afterthought in the wake of something greater—or at least, more profitable—than itself.
You see, in the vein of what is actually made watchable in this movie, the concluding ten or so minutes which foreshadow coming events in the upcoming Avengers movie provide what is arguably the only reason the preceding 110 minutes were made (though fail to justify sitting through them, unfortunately.) In the end, despite poor Steve Rogers waking up 70 years later, and despite him not having aged a day, it's a shame that the movie itself feels and looks nothing of the sort; with a character rooted in the forties and movie-making that's stuck in the nineties, Captain America: The First Avenger is a stilted, banal and disappointingly forgettable affair that fails to distinguish itself amidst much more formidable and relevant foes rendering much of the experience entirely forgettable.