I guess this is what Marvel movies are going to be from now on

Rating: 6/10 (24 July 2011)

There is a high level of craftsmanship on display in this film. It's packed with funny lines, expertly juggles a huge supporting cast and has some of the best super-hero fight scenes yet. Captain America: The First Avenger is also shallow, superficial and contrived in all the negative ways one used to mean when using the phrase "comic book" in a derogatory way. So while the technical storytelling is quite good and entertaining, this movie is not just substantively a step or two below Spider-Man 2 or Iron Man. It's heart and soul also doesn't measure up to far less proficient super-hero flicks like Thor or Ghost Rider.
Let me be clear. This is a fun movie and worth seeing. It's basic competency puts it far above thoroughly flawed works like Spider-Man 3 or Green Lantern. But it joins Thor as another indication that Marvel super-hero films are evolving toward commercially adept but creatively barren products. They're turning into a new version of the buddy cop genre where filmmakers never attempt to reach the audience in anything more than a trivial fashion. When done well, they can be a perfectly acceptable diversion. When done poorly, they can be a waste of time. Good or bad, however, they barely even attempt to say something thematically, dramatically or emotionally to the viewer.
Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is a scrawny kid from World War II era Brooklyn who desperately wants to join the fight against the Nazis. He's too physically infirm for the military, but gets inducted into a secret program to create an American super-soldier. Steve's puny body is transformed into the ultimate of athletic perfection and eventually finds himself caught up in the struggle to stop renegade Nazi Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving) from taking over the whole world, though how and why Schmidt is going to do that is pretty foggy.
Captain America: The First Avenger is divided up into three sections which are all well written and well framed but have progressively less and less creative worth as they go along. The first part is about Steve's scientific transformation from puny man to superman and it is as good as any super-hero origin in cinema. It gets more screen time than most origin sequences but it is expertly done and is, by far, the best part of the movie. The second part is all about how Steve ended up in his red, white and blue uniform. It spends more time than any other super-hero flick that I've ever seen or even heard about explaining and justifying the main character's costume, which is just inescapably odd given how well established the conventions of the genre have become.
The second part is fairly clever and well performed, but to no effective purpose and some cracks start to show up in the script. For example, the general in charge of the super-soldier program refuses to let Steve fight on the battlefield and then mocks him for becoming a USO performer instead. But the only reason Steve is on the stage instead of the killing grounds of Europe is because the general wouldn't let him fight. That doesn't make any sense and is a little window through which you can see that there's nothing going on underneath the surface of this story.
The third and final chapter of Captain America: The First Avenger is a constant stream of action scenes that are well performed but with hardly any plot or direction or personal involvement from either the characters or the audience. It's all pretty to look at but has no meaning or impact beyond that appearance.
There are two great examples of what I see as the hollowness of this motion picture. First, a very big deal is made about how Steve Rogers is perfect for the super-soldier program specifically because he's a physically weak but morally strong man. The chief scientist behind Steve's metamorphosis essentially says that making a strong man stronger will only produce a bully and it is only the weak man made strong who understands the value of strength. The film goes to great lengths to establish that it is Steve's compassion that will truly make him into a hero. But then absolutely none of Steve's personal qualities have anything at all to do with the rest of the story. He's nothing more than Generic Action Hero #12587 and there's no reason why anyone else couldn't or wouldn't do the things he does.
The second illustration of the emptiness of Captain America: The First Avenger is the character of Johann Schmidt, know in the comics as The Red Skull. For reasons I can't quite fathom, though perhaps it has something to do with the upcoming Avengers movie or an expected sequel to this flick, The Red Skull is almost totally de-Nazified and left without even a trace of identifiable Aryan ideology. He's reduced to having no identity or motivation other than being evil, like the worst sort of cardboard villain from a 1940s movie serial. I've watched this movie and read a bunch of Cap's comics over the years and I have no understanding of what The Red Skull actually wanted to do in this story, why he wanted to do it or how he planned to accomplish it. Does he want to take over the world? Does he want to destroy it? Precisely how will his giant flying wing do either of those? I mean, Doctor Doom from the two crappy Fantastic Four movies has a more defined agenda and personality than this Red Skull.
I may be a bit too hard on this film because it is a well above average piece of entertainment. It's simply hard to ignore how it is fundamentally less creatively and narratively interesting than the best super-hero movies of the recent past.