The worse Marvel flick of the summer. Bummer.

Rating: 8/10 (22 July 2011)

I couldn't even tell you the last time I went to a midnight movie showing. My guess is last summer, but cannot recall the title of the featured film.
First of all, I just want to get the whole 3-D jabber out of the way. If you have read any of my other reviews, you know I am not a fan of the 3- D film movement. It's just not perfected yet to have a greater impact on the entertaining outcome of the film. It hurts my eyes, it's too dim, and sometimes I get a headache afterwards. My knees hurt enough as it is to sit in a theater for 2-and-some hours. Captain America is no different. The only thing cool to see in 3-D for this movie would be when Mr. America throws his shield as a weapon. That's pretty much it. I'm so glad I saw it in 2-D. Save the four bucks.
It's hard to top X-Men: First Class. And, Thor was better by a little bit.
On to the actually movie itself.
Captain America: The First Avenger is seemingly mediocre as far as a movie goes cinematically, but I did enjoy it and recommend seeing it. If nothing else, view it as a predecessor for The Avengers, which I have high hopes for. Hopefully there will be even more action than Captain America, which could have easily had more; assuming he's part of the military I thought there would be. So the Avengers are a group of Marvel characters such as: Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), and the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo, voiced by Lou Ferrigno). They are brought together by the leader of S.H.E.I.L.D., Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), to protect and serve the peace of the world. Only one world describes that situation if ya ask me: epic. The release date is May 4th of 2012.
So as you can obviously figure out merely from the title of the movie, Captain America is the first Avenger.
Being somewhat of a Marvel Universe nerd, I was a big fan of just the story about Captain America. Before this movie I hadn't had any prior knowledge to the genesis of the Captain America character, except that he was apart of the military during World War II and up against Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Most of this movie took place in the Marvel Universe-alternative 1940s, which was pretty cool. Reminded me of the setting and situation in Watchmen.
What's up with villains in some of these sci-fi/action flicks? If you read my recent I Am Number Four review, then you'll be able to sympathize with me on that question. In Captain America we see the antagonist known as Johann Schmidt or the Red Skull (played by Agent Smith from The Matrix movies, a.k.a actor Hugo Weaving) with a horrible make-up job. Red Skull works for Hitler as the head of advanced weaponry. They really should have made him look better; perhaps by adding more of a skull image with maybe some black like in the comics. It annoyed me. He looked like an even worse version of Hellboy from Hellboy. Also, Red Skull's minions, the HYRDA, reminded me way too much of Storm Troopers from Star Wars. In the comic they are green and yellow, not black. Oh well.
I thought actor Chris Evans did a pretty good job portraying Captain America. He really became the small-boy Steve Rogers character form Brooklyn that never gave up to one day ultimately become Captain America.
Actress Hayley Atwell also did a fine job with her character of Peggy Carter, an officer of the Scientific Reserve and love interest of Captain America.
I'm still not sure if it was intentional or not, but Tommy Lee Jones was hilarious as Colonel Chester Phillips. I still can't decide if it was his dialogue that was funny or the way that he said it.
Overall, if you enjoy comic book movies at all then I'd go see this in 2-D. That's just my opinion.
8/10 Stars (probably would have been 7 if I saw the 3-D version).