Captain America the First Avenger
Captain America was never my favorite superhero. Far
too obvious, far too patriotic, Far to one dimensional, he’s a literal
superman except instead of embodying the Nazi ideal he fights for
America and punches a lot of Nazis, including Hitler.
He’s also been around since the 1941 and gone through
a lot of changes but the story has always remained the same. Steve
Rodgers a 10 pound weakling volunteers for a super soldier project where
a secret serum turns him into the peak of physical perfection, he is the
perfect human as strong as a human can be, as fast as a human can be, as
smart as a human can be. He also carries an indestructible shield which
he likes to throw at people.
This movie doesn’t re-invent the wheel in this
respect; the film stays fairly true to the accepted origin story as well
as having nice nods to lots of Captain America law. Even including
“Bucky” his sidekick. The uniform that Captain America sports goes
through lots of iterations mirroring the transitions in the comic books
through the ages. What is clear however is that this film is gearing up
for the Avengers next year and in that respect it tries to push the
cannons together. For instance Tony Starks (Iron Man) father is a key
player in this film, being a genius, flying planes and womanizing whilst
having a highball, the only thing he doesn’t do is put on an Iron suit
and fly around. There are lots of little nods here and here to other
superheroes including a passing Indiana Jones reference at the start
which really made me like this film right out of the gates.
The bottom line is that I liked this film a lot more
than I thought I would, Hugo Weaving is brilliantly hammy as the Red
Skull and clearly enjoying himself enormously, the much vaunted CG that
show Steve Rodgers first as a tiny weakling for once doesn’t disappoint
and is entirely convincing, Tommy Lee Jones is great as the exasperated
but funny as hell Cornel, there’s action a plenty and the design of
everything is great. The script is even good. For a superhero film this
is very good indeed, it seemed that Thor got all the attention this year
but it was Captain America that deserved the praise, you want an Indiana
Jones style adventure? Forget the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. This is
where it’s at.
Special Features:
The best thing on the Special Features is the Marvel
One Shot: A Funny thing happened on the way to Thors Hammer a short
starring Agent Coulson from Iron Man and Thor. Most of the rest of the
stuff there is self congratulatory fluff about how good a job they did
with the film and how amazing Hugo Weaving is. Some deleted scenes that
don’t add up to much and a commentary with more about how great Hugo
Weaving is.
Video: As mentioned above, a little soft for a
Blu-Ray and not up to the quality of sharpness that we are used to.
Audio: Good 7.1 DTS HD audio but it is also really
soft, I had to crank my amp really hard to get much sound out of it.
