Movie #267 Captain American: The Last Avenger *2011*

Another midnight showing.  This time I went with somebody.  Somebodies to be exact.  I tagged along with my geekiest friend and his equally geeky family.  I say that with the utmost respect and love for the geek culture of which they prescribe.  This was a good night.  The dorks sitting in front of us joined in on a conversation about spiderman and his homemade web shooters.  As the light went down I thought I was going to be in for something special.

There were negitive elements to the night as well.  I was expecting an acne riddled audience complete with shields and capes or whatever it is Captain America wears.  Instead the crowd was broken down like this:

80% douche bags
15% comic book fans
5% film geeks (me)

Unfortunately the 80% felt the need to mock the events on screen through out the entire movie.  They made their opinions known loudly.  Which were negative from even before the film started which makes me ask "why even go to a movie if you KNOW you are not going to like it". The only answer could be to irritate others that might not share your opinion.  Therefore earning the title of douche bag.

Once I was able to get past that, and the literally 30 minutes of trailers, the film started.  This is the first "new" Captain America story.  Therefore the film makers felt the need to do another origin story.  They also felt the need to do this origin story in the traditional chronological manner.  They also felt the need to drag the "getting to be Captain America" part of the movie out to 3/4 of the run time.

During that time we see the meek and meger Steve Rogers transform into a super soldier by means of a device created by Stark Industries.  All this was to be expected.  The next part of the story caught me off guard and became my favorite part of the film.  Because he is an experiment, they won't let him fight in the war and instead he is relegated to being a performer for USO type entertainment troupe.  That was fascinating and visually stunning.  Through this job he finds himself in a war zone and then must fight to save his friend.

If you have read my blogs about the superhero movies I have seen you might know that I think that superhero movies succeed and fail based on the strength of their villains not the heroes.  We all know that Superman is capable.  To make a story compelling you need to undercut his abilities in a believable way.  The problem with Lex Luthor is that he is never even close to competing with Superman.  I know Superman is going to come out on top.  That is why The Dark Knight is such a great movie.  I really thought that The Joker could get the best of superman.  Much like Captain America Batman doesn't actually have any superpowers.  He has gadgets were Captain America has a shield and big mussels.  Grounding The Joker in reality and undermining the principals that Batman adheres to was a wonderful way to diminish the dark knight.  However in Captain America Red Skull is the villain.  He is a former Nazi turned monster by a glowing cube.  He is sinister no doubt, but his motivations were never clear and I don't remember seeing him actually face off with Captain America. (I should admit that I dozed off for a few minutes right at the climatic scene where the Captain stops a bomb.

The thing is you have a supernatural bad guy verses a normal Joe.  Yes, it is a Joe pure of heart that will fight for freedom and the American way.  He is a Joe that will never give up, but none the less he is fighting a supernatural being.  Red Skull should be mopping us the floor with the Captain, be he seems scared of him and for no reason.  To be honest I didn't really understand a lot of what was happening in Captian America.  In the movie Thor from earlier this summer they spent a lot of time setting up the Avengers movie and much of that didn't make sense to me.  Here I think the script was sort of a mess.  It got the rah rah America stuff down, but too many character motivations were unclear.  That is right, I am complaining about lack of character motivations in a superhero movie.

Some positives:  I liked the relationship between Captain and Peggy Carter.  I wish they had explored it more.  I like Tommy Lee Jones in this.  He is having a lot of fun.  Stanley Tucci was great.  Maybe the best performance in the film.  The CGI was sort of hit and miss.  The skinny Captain looked perfect.  The extra fast running looked really sketchy (maybe that was a 2D issue). The score was fun.  Howard Stark was played with frivolity by Dominic Cooper.

All in all it was a good time.  I only fell asleep due to lack of sleep and not from boredom.  To be clear.  Now all I need to do is catch up with The Hulk to be totally ready for next years avenger movie.  I give Captain America ★★★.  PS Charlie, the Spiderman trailer still looks like crap.