Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea. —Henry Fielding

28 October 2011

America, Fuck Yeah

This film's subtitle The First Avenger doesn't make any sense without the Avengers movie which is coming out next summer, right? Otherwise what is he avenging? I don't get it.


In truth, I didn't understand most of this movie. It is just so dumb. I sort of loved Tommy Lee Jones and Dominic Cooper in it – and it was nice to see Derek Luke all grown up (remember Antwon Fisher?) and speaking French, no less. Captain America: the First Avenger is a film that totally rewrites history in more ways than are worth listing. I also really hated that the villain is this expressionless red skull dude and all of his minions were (literally) faceless automatons. Good and evil were just so easy in this movie. The right choice is always an obvious one in this Captain America universe.

Say what you will about Thor (I liked it) or Iron Man 2 (I was not much of a fan), their main characters are complicated and make difficult decisions. The extent of Captain America's decisions is only ever: Am I actually gonna do this thing that we all know is the right thing to do? Of course I am!

I find worlds like this kind of boring and I found Captain America pretty boring.

I will say one thing about it that I appreciated, which is that at least (unlike, say, the Transformers franchise or Iron Man 2), Captain America's fight sequences move us past the hand-to-hand combat tradition. You guys have crazy-magic guns that make people explode instantly and you're punching each other? Captain America does this a lot too, don't get me wrong, but there is also a lot of technological firepower on display here. Not enough to make this flick worth watching, but still.

P.S. Chris Evans has a gorgeous body in this film. And the camera is interested in it for a sum total of about thirty seconds. Foolishness.

2 comments:

  1. Ok - so I finally got a chance to check this movie out last night. I get what you are saying however it is interesting to note that Captain American was originally created (in the comics) with the intent of him being "simple" as far as his moral compass/ always doing the right thing. When Stan Lee created characters later on, such as Iron Man, Thor, and others he actually created with the intent of having a "flawed humanity" more complex superheros that actually had to work through issues.....yeah... so I grew up with two older brothers who had a trunk full of comics :)

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