Captain America - Will Lau

Captain America 

This movie was an excellent showcase about how to do a summer comic book movie right. Especially with a well-established character in the comic book realm that you’re trying to make relevant to the audiences of today who, due to modern technologies and sources have a much shorter attention span then they may be used to. 

Directed by Joe Johnston who is famous for directing The Rocketeer which has sort of a similar style of this future meets 1940’s clash. He is also famous for Jurassic Park 3 which I know a lot of people disliked but personally I thought was great and a redemption to the abomination that was The Lost World, Jurassic Park 2 which he didn’t direct.

 

The reason I think this movie worked so well and the reason I enjoyed it so much was that they didn’t just rush into making this movie with this stereotypical action hero mentality where they introduce you to this character and here he is and he’s going to be your hero damn it and things are blowing up. The bad guys are going to be killed, and wham bam there you have a ready-made formula movie ready for packaging for DVDs and posters and lunch boxes. Instead, they took the time to flesh out the main character’s personality, where he comes from, what drives and motivates him.  They touch upon these ideals that he’s supposed to embody and at the same time avoid being too drawn out, like a prepackaged section to the movie.




Now if you’re familiar with the character or even if you’re not and you read the name Captain America, it kind of evokes a very cheesy almost cringe inducing feeling in your stomach even when you hear the name or when you see this guy basically wearing an American flag. That was the biggest challenge I thought the makers of this film were up against. That is always the thought that I had with this character and I always thought, wow what a lame guy. I don’t even care what this is about, it’s just too cringe inducing for me. However, the makers of this film handled it very well I thought by downplaying it with its show tunes explanation of the costume and how it was originally just Steve Rogers (who is the real name of Captain America), just going along with what other people wanted him to be but accepting it as a way to help his fellow man however he can.  There are several elements like this that make you forget about the cringe factor and say, hey this guy is actually pretty interesting, he seems real, let’s see where this goes.  Originally I did not go see this movie when it came out largely because of this reason and the fact that it changed my mind about it so completely really says a lot about it to me because this is such a complete film.

The casting is fantastic and begins with Chris Evans who does an outstanding job as the likeable underdog Steve Rogers who is chosen to be the test experiment by the US in an attempt to create super soldiers to send overseas to fight the Nazis in World War 2. The CGI in the movie to make Chris Evans look like 90 lbs is very impressiveand I am glad they spared no expense for this effect because without it this movie just does not work and they would have instantly lost credibility.  Chris does a very good job playing a humble young man who has been picked on all of his life, doesn’t have a love life to speak of but has an overwhelming unselfish desire to help fight bullies in the war.  What I got out of it was that it seemed more like he was concerned with helping his fellow Americans fight evil regardless of whatever other political or personal reasons the war or whatever war it was going to be stood for.  He’s the type of hero that doesn’t give up, doesn’t back down even though nature and life have given him every reason to. So Chris Evans does an fantastic job of this and having seen his performances as characters that are almost on the other end of the spectrum in The Losers and the over the top character he played in Scott Pilgrim where he is kind of a typical jock, I think this showcases a bit of his acting prowess where he’s already shown more range then the likes of someone like Keanu Reeves or Nicolas Cage. So good on him for this and we’ll see where this movie can push his career after the Avengers movie.

The other characters were also very well cast. I did like Hugo Weaving in the Red Skull role as he did look very bad ass but I thought he didn’t separate himself enough from the Agent Smith character. Then again, with a role like that I am sure it’s not easy to do. Which isn’t a knock on Weaving; I am not saying he’s bad in this in anyway other than him being a total badass in it. The Red Skull character is very important. And one of the things that annoys me the most about movies is that they always build up the hero so well and when he goes fight the main baddie it’s like ok, who is this chump that the hero is going to fight and why does he seem like he’s totally unworthy? Usually in films like this, like Iron Man 2 for example, never did you ever think the bad guy really had a serious chance at beating the hero. Never for a second did you think Ivan Vanko was going to best Ironman and not to mention War Machine at the same time. Give me a break.  However, in this film they did enough of a backstory and explanation for Red Skull and built him up throughout the movie enough to at least let the audience think, wow this guy is seriously evil and seriously badass. In one part of the movie it is implied that Hitler’s Nazis weren’t evil enough for him and his forces. He needed to be even more evil! I guess who better to hire to showcase this than Hugo Weaving.

The Red Skull character itself is perfect in this role as he has basically gone through the same process that made Steve Rogers into a super soldier only with a slightly more visible side effect. This makes him the perfect yin to Steve Rogers and Captain America’s yang. To me something like this is very important to a movie. It’s almost as important as the main character himself and maybe more so.  A matter of believability is what I mean and when you’re trying to make a movie, even say a comic book movie, there is still a degree of believability that you want to show audiences to bring credibility to both good and evil otherwise you just end up with a John Cena wrestling match.

I don’t want to over hype this movie to those who haven’t watched it. I guess I’ll do this by saying that this movie is a very good movie. It’s good in many aspects from storyline, pacing, character development, acting, soundtrack, special effects etc. But it doesn’t do any of those things to a mind blowing extent and this is kind of the beauty of it. I think by not going to mind blowing extents you keep this movie within it’s timeline in history that it should have taken place.  Save for maybe the giant lasers but hey, lets also not forget this movie exists within the realms of Marvel and the likes of characters like Thor and Hulk. It just balances it perfectly in a way where you’re not sitting there thinking, OK what’s the next load of crap this movie is trying to get me to believe. Overall score 8.5/10. Loved it, got the blu ray, will watch it again in a few months.