Avengers Week: Captain America: The First Avenger

The Avengers is out now in UK cinemas! So why are you reading this blog? 

Captain America is the final pre Avengers movie in the series, after the thunderously good experience I had with Thor I felt as though Cap was going to be a sure thing. Director Joe Johnson was a good choice, whilst his third installment of Jurassic Park was bobbins and the Wolfman was a cluttered mess, it’s his previous superhero movie that made me believe this was a perfect match.

His 1991 wartime adventure The Rocketeer is a sorely underrated movie, I featured it many Sunday’s ago as part of the Sunday Afternoon Movies section.

In short, I love that flick, and my expectations were unnaturally high for Captain America. I made the mistake of seeing it in 3D when it was released, however re-watching it for the first time since cinema, I enjoyed it far more second time around without the 3D distraction.

Chris Evans is an engaging Steve Rogers, despite spending the first half of the movie with his shrunken head digitally grafted onto a smaller man’s body. He has been an actor on the cusp of big things for a while, Fantastic Four nearly put him on the map but failed to take off as a franchise after a disappointing sequel.

The supporting cast are an eclectic mix, Stanley Tucci is always a joy to watch, Tommy Lee Jones eats a steak and Hugo Weaving cranks the camp-o-meter up to 12 as Red Skull. We’ve long since established that a hero is only as good as the villain, Weaving seems to forget he’s been a worthy bad guy before, and Red Skull is a huge let down as the movie’s big bad.

The women in Captain America are shamelessly given very little to do, but such is the way for most superhero movies it seems. There are some nice touches like Dominic Cooper as a young Howard Stark (very neat indeed). That said there’s no escaping this is a boys own club and all the female parts are quite poorly underdeveloped.

The action set pieces are impressive, everything builds towards a climatic fight which seriously fails to live up to expectations. The ending leads nicely into the present day, I hope we get to see more adventures from Cap in his wartime setting but that seems unlikely.

Overall it’s a solid origins movie but considering the quality of the previous entries in franchise, Cap just feels a little under cooked which stops it from being great and ends up just being good.

Avengers Week concludes tomorrow with THE AVENGERS!