Captain America: The Yo Jooooe!!! Review

[niky]

Warning: Spoilerrific spoilers contained herein! Read at your peril!

So, you haven't watched Captain America yet? Need a compelling reason to? Need a compelling reason not to? Well, read on, true believers, and I will give you your reasons!

Captain America is Steve Rogers, a young lad from Brooklyn who desperately wants to be a soldier. But Steve is the archetypical ninety pound weakling, beaten up by bullies when his friend Bucky Barnes isn’t around, with a medical chart as long as his skinny arm. He gets kicked out of every recruitment center in New York.

But he gets his chance when he volunteers to trial a "super-soldier" serum... the rest, as they say, is history.

Captain America is indeed historic. It's one of Marvel's first wartime franchises (before they were Marvel) along with the Human Torch and the Submariner. (No, I didn't have to wiki that), as part of the Invaders (I had to wiki that, I’d forgotten the team name).

While the other two have changed much over the years, Captain America's early career and life are set in stone... thanks to the trick Marvel used to revive him in the 60’s. And this is what makes Captain America’s origin story so easy to get right. It doesn’t matter what else you do with him, kill him with a time-travelling bullet, turn him into a werewolf, make him an outlaw... bring him out of retirement in 1960, 1980, 2011... his origin will always remain the same.

Thus, the movie is mostly canonical... except for the Red Skull’s origin and the Cosmic Cube. Parts of the movie veer into a strange alternate universe that mixes fact and fiction. After his exploits become public, Captain America becomes a travelling stage show and media circus (newsreels, movies, recruitment posters, photo-ops), to sell war bonds. This is what all comic book and cartoon characters did for a living during the war, and it was a nice touch, and a light-hearted way to show the original Captain America costume and shield.

Then it segues into a serious war-time movie, as Steve learns that Bucky has been captured by the Red Skull’s elite troop: Hydra. The same organization that killed his mentor and creator, Dr. Erskine.

Tired of being a circus performer and being called a red-booted Tinkerbelle, Steve trades his goofy costume for some real military duds, dons a blue helmet from a go-go-girl and goes out to save his friend. He keeps the shield, though. (I wish they'd have kept this costume for more of the movie...)

As he rescues Bucky, he also rescues a bunch of oddball misfits (and about 390+ other guys who don't really matter). I was chortling with glee when I saw Dum Dum Dugan’s distinctive bowler hat and moustache in the movie. I knew what was coming next...

Alternate history! Yet again! In the comics, Captain America’s World War Two exploits were published during... errh... World War Two. Sergeant Fury’s Howling Commandos saw action in World War Two in the sixties, before Nick Fury became head of S.H.I.E.L.D. But as the movie-makers couldn’t explain away Nick Fury being forty-something when he should be a hundred years old, Samuel Jackson sits this one out as Captain America leads the Howling Commandos against the Red Skull’s elite Hydra forces.

Which is a shame, because when fighting Hydra storm troopers aboard a moving train, it would have been nice to hear Jackson spout: “What are these mother****ing snakes doing on this mother****ing train?!?”

That’s probably the biggest, and only gripe I have with the movie is those Hydra troopers. Those funny helmets and masks, the laser guns, the HISS tanks, that neat little logo... Every time I saw them do the “Hail Hydra” salute, I wanted to shout: “Co-braaaaaa!”

Everything else is pure bliss. The montages and action sequences move the movie along nicely, there’s a real chemistry between Steve and his love interest, Peggy Carter. Howard Stark (Iron Man’s dad) never really feels like an intrusion from another series, but an integral part of the secret operations group overseeing Captain America’s fight against the Skull’s minions... his own private “Q”, developing his shield, armor and bike. Though someone should tell movie producers that metal that absorbs vibration shouldn’t ring like a crash cymbal every time it’s shot at.

The new Bucky Barnes feels more real as a Super-Soldier’s sidekick than a kid in spandex would have. Tommy Lee Jones and Hugo Weaving may be completely typecast here, but they wear their roles like gloves. I’m wondering if Hugo Weaving’s salary included the awesome car.

I would have demanded it, myself.

The movie is satisfyingly packed with action and moves briskly along in the final hour to its inevitable conclusion. I love the part where the Nazgul chase Cap through the forest... or was that the same Storm Troopers who chased Luke and Leia? Whatever... you’ll know it when you see it...

At the end, they tie everything neatly together with a little bow, leaving bits and pieces here and there to be picked up for the upcoming Avengers movie.

The ending has its humor, but it feels slightly out-of-sync with the rest of the movie. I felt that Cap should have been given a moment to grieve for his lost life. The script strays far enough from the comic books that you actually hope that they’d change things to give Cap at least a moment’s worth of happiness. Alas, such is not to be.

And yet, maybe the ending fits. Despite all his hardships and loss, Captain America still remains that upbeat optimistic skinny little guy inside who faces down bullies, super-villains and even death. I’d feared the movie would descend into “Rah-Rah-America” territory, considering the character... but instead, it focused more on the values that make Captain America, and Golden-Age America itself, great.

Captain America isn’t as well-rounded a package as Iron Man or X-Men First Class. It lacks the humor and wit. But compared to those two, the story it tells is gold. This one is worth adding to your DVD collection when it comes out.

Realistically: 8/10

Personally: 10/10

 

[rocko100]

Did you stay after the credits like I did? There's a preview for The Avengers.

 

[niky]

I did. Not that impressed with the trailer, but hey, it got us several more minutes of AC, so that wasn't bad.

 

[FoolKiller]

That’s probably the biggest, and only gripe I have with the movie is those Hydra troopers. Those funny helmets and masks, the laser guns, the HISS tanks, that neat little logo... Every time I saw them do the “Hail Hydra” salute, I wanted to shout: “Co-braaaaaa!”

While I agree that keeping the image more in line with the comics, while making them appear to be an offshoot of the Nazis does give them a very Cobra-like appearance, I am sure the goal was intended to be much more of the comic version of this:

But so was Cobra, which likely is what led to the similarities.

 

[niky]

True. But it didn't help that they did that silly double-fist pump every time they saluted.

A nice note from web-cartoonist Scott Kurtz (Player Vs. Player Online), he liked Erskine's comment: "People don't realize that the first country the Nazis invaded was their own..."

As part Japanese-American, and with a Grandfather who was part German, it heartened me... because it would have been so easy to fall into the trap of classic WWII films where there was a definite color of bad guy, and that all Germans and Japanese were inherently "evil".

Of course, having something along that line during the stageshow would have better reflected the mood of the time, but the producers probably decided to make it as politically neutral as possible.

 

[FoolKiller]

True. But it didn't help that they did that silly double-fist pump every time they saluted.

A nice note from web-cartoonist Scott Kurtz (Player Vs. Player Online), he liked Erskine's comment: "People don't realize that the first country the Nazis invaded was their own..."

As part Japanese-American, and with a Grandfather who was part German, it heartened me... because it would have been so easy to fall into the trap of classic WWII films where there was a definite color of bad guy, and that all Germans and Japanese were inherently "evil".

Of course, having something along that line during the stageshow would have better reflected the mood of the time, but the producers probably decided to make it as politically neutral as possible.

The stage show played up to the propaganda of the time. There was no public discussion of Germany falling to a single party's extreme views. No one mentioned that if a drafted soldier had chosen not to fight his own commander would have killed him. That wasn't the public image.

Now, what a foreign scientist would see, know, and say about the enemy behind closed doors is a different thing altogether. Plus, it works really well with the "I don't want to kill anyone. I just don't like bullies." line.

 

[PeterJB]

I'll be honest, I wasn't particularly impressed with this. I watched it having previously never read any of the comics or even knowing who Captain America was! He seems like a slightly bland superhero, since the serum doesn't seem to give him any obvious superpowers, just some above average strength and an impenetrable shield. The way everything ran seemed particularly unoriginal, what with the rather cheesy romance that wasn't particularly captivating, and the standard hero sacrifice at the end (even if he didn't actually die).

But then again, the comics were written before any of the stuff it resembles was, but the way the film was done seem pretty unoriginal to me.

5/10