Star Spangled Man

"Captain America: The First Avenger"

I'm sure that ever since the first X-Men film grossed over 150 million dollars domestically back in the year 2000 a sigh of relief swept over the film industry.  Studios now figured that any comic book was open for adaptation.  This also meant they would not have to spend tons of money for some "original" idea franchise.  Comic book adaptations were going to be a huge success at the box office.  

Now here we are in the year 2012 and there have been countless comic book franchises made.  Some of them have been failures and others have soared as high as their central protagonists.  It was announced several years ago that Marvel Studios wanted do an adaptation of their Avengers series. The Avengers is a geek's ultimate dream come true.  All the favorite Marvel superheroes (Thor, Iron Man, The Hulk, and Captain America) come together to fight super villains.  What more could you ask for?    Putting together this cinematic marvel was not going to be an easy task.  

As the tag line for The Avengers says, "Some assembly required."  Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk already had their day in sun, but there were still a couple major players that were part of the team that had their stories yet to be told.  Last year Marvel knocked off heroes Thor and last but not least Captain America.  I'll say this about Marvel; the films that involved the first three characters they needed to put together their Avengers initiative flick are all good but not great films.  Captain America: The First Avenger is also on par with these films.

Chris Evans plays the hero of the film.  Evans is no stranger to the Marvel universe as he was seen in The Fantastic Four and its sequel.  While Evans was the best thing about those films as Johnny Storm: The Human Torch, the role of Captain America is far more interesting superhero to take on.  Dr. Erskine (Stanley Tucci) sees something in the short and scrawny Steve Rogers, determination.  Rogers gets his powers from an experiment that Dr. Erskine and the U.S. government developed in hopes of creating a new breed of soldier, a super soldier if you will.  The U.S. needs something to combat Hitler and his Nazi thugs.  The Nazi's also have a science division of their own known as HYDRA; which they are quickly losing control of.  HYDRA's fearless leader is Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving) aka Red Skull, whose facial appearance suggests he is suffering from the ultimate sun burn.

Is there anything else you really need to know?  Keep in mind that the film is adapted from a comic book.  This particular mind set helps rather than hurts Mr. America's cause.  He’s living out every American's dream at the time, beating the crap out of Nazi soldiers.  You can bet those were the highlights on the news reels from the footage that was being sent back home.  Who wouldn't want to root for this guy?  Evans embodies this gung ho attitude quite well.  His character was bound and determined to get into the army unwilling to take "no" as an answer from Uncle Sam, despite being rejected four previous times.

The screenplay holds together well enough as you'd expect from something like this.  Although Red Skull's master plan of harnessing some sort of über source of power stemming from the gods is written rather thinly and never really explained.  This in turn doesn't make him out to be a very evil, wicked, or menacing foe for Captain America which is real shame.  In fact Red Skull is the film’s weakest component.  He just isn’t much of a villain.  His motivations are boring and uninspired.  Weaving tries the best with the material he is given but the intrigue and complexity that should be there from a bad guy clearly is absent. 

Captain America: The First Avenger is exactly what an audience should expect from a summer blockbuster.  It's a big, loud, unrealistic, piece of fun entertainment without ever being completely brainless, dull, or dumb.  Director Joe Johnston swiftly recovers from his Wolfman debacle and knows exactly what this film is and doesn't try to make it out to be anything more than that.  Captain America: The First Avenger is an enjoyable popcorn cruncher.  The action scenes are well done and the story has its faults but by no means falls apart.  Evans understands the responsibility of playing such an iconic superhero and knows his role for upcoming Avengers film.  Let’s hope that in The Avengers and any Captain America sequels we’ll see our hero fight some better, more fleshed out evildoers.