Captain America: The First Avenger

Rating: 5/10 (13 February 2014)

(see original at http://cobyscomics.blogspot.com/2014/02/captain- America-first-avenger.html)
Captain America. My least favorite movie in all the MCU (yep, liked it even less than Iron Man 2). I don't know what it is about the movie that I found so unimpressive. It was a sleek movie with some big action spots. If I was an old-time movie buff, I probably would've loved The First Avenger. Maybe that's it: maybe it was a little bit too authentic. Maybe it felt too much like the grainy WWII flicks that my grandparents used to watch. This guy hit on it a little bit in his review, "Whatever happens, wherever it happens, its like watching a simulacrum of reality instead of a fully-realized world." Which, yeah, that's not bad, but, it's just kinda... dull and boring, I think.
Regardless, the movie had some great big action sequences and told a story that definitely needed telling (the Super Soldier serum is referenced in nearly every other aspect of the MCU as the Holy Grail of scientific achievement), so I can't be too nitpicky.
Skinny Steve
I will be nitpicky about the grotesque body-modification, though. I mean this in more than one way. First, while I appreciate all the work the CG effects people put into going through frame by frame and either resizing Chris Evans or swapping out his body with his skinny body-double, he still looks creepy and weird. I don't know how they could've done this any better (in one of the behind the scenes interviews, they mentioned they didn't have time for Evans to go through the whole "Tom Hanks in Cast Away" thing); all I know is, I had trouble seeing this as anything more than a floating head attached to a skinny neck.
Second, what kind of a message is this sending to any teenage boys out there self-conscious about their own body? So Steve Rogers has a big heart, is always honest, and is the quintessential America patriot, but he only gets accepted into the Army to be a guinea pig and he's not truly accepted for his values until after he adds on a hundred pounds of muscle? I know this story is nearly a century old, but still, what kinda message is that to be sending to the kids?
The Howling Commandos
Did you know that's who these guys are supposed to be? They didn't call themselves that the whole time, and not a one of them was ever named, as far as I could tell. Maybe they only made them so recognizable as a nod to the comicbook fans and figured the mainstream audiences wouldn't know or care who they were, but still.... I think maybe the first quarter of the movie (with Skinny Steve) should've been shortened by about half, and they should put some time into telling the story of the Howling Commandos--they should've gotten more a story than a quick montage that focused on Captain America, is what I'm saying. But, hey, at least they left the black guy in and didn't "accidentally" re-color him....
I did like what they did with Bucky Barnes, however. The way he went from being Steve's protector to Steve's sidekick was pretty cool. The first time I saw The First Avenger, I somehow completely missed the part when he fell from the train and "died".
I mean, I saw it, I just didn't get the significance of it. Cuz, you know, he's gonna come back as The Winter Soldier, and it's gonna be AWESOME.
"I Don't Want to Kill Anyone" Remember that part? The part where Steve says he doesn't want to kill anyone? Yeah, forget about that. I mean, I won't question the morality of Captain America killing tons of Hydra Henchmen, as I did with Thor and the Frost Giants, because we all know, if anyone deserves to get killed by Captain America, it's Nazis. But, still, he says he doesn't want to kill anyone, but then he kills a lot of people. He even takes a gun into battle. That's part of the whole heroic thing about Captain America, is that he has a shield, not a gun. He goes to war carrying a weapon of defense (which he still uses to crush people's faces in, but, you know, regardless...).
So, what's the message to the kids here? If you get picked on and beat up a lot, take some artificial substance to enhance your body, then go and murder all the bad guys in their face. For America!
Red Skull
First of all: yuck. Ripping Hugo Weaving's face off to reveal the Red Skull wins for grossest part of this movie (besides maybe when that Hydra pilot got chopped up by the propeller in a Raiders of the Lost Ark nod).
Secondly, I don't understand the Red Skull's motivation. So he wants to blow up the world, but why? Is he just a nihilist who wants to worship chaos, or is there some master plan there where he hopes to rule over the ashes? I guess this villain-for-having-a-villain's-sake is a motif carried over from the original Captain America stories (in one of the featurettes, co-creator Joe Simon even mentions that the motivation for the Red Skull was a literal cherry on top of a fudge sundae, and he created him simply to be someone for Cap' to beat up, fully expecting to only do one issue with him in it). And I guess there maybe there is no motivation for the Red Skull, he's just an evil maniac. Luckily, Captain America murders him stands by while he dies the Tesseract beams the Red Skull up to Asgard.
Rating
I give the movie 5/10 stars. A little harsh, I know, but these WWII movies aren't really my thing, and the story felt more like something that I needed to see rather than something I wanted to know about.