Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
8/2/11
“How about that extra scene that plays
after the end credits with Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury? The message
he delivers to Stark is mind-blowing on so many levels, particularly given
what I said in the opening sentence has always been my favorite Marvel
comic. But perhaps most interesting of all is the notion that Marvel
Studios is really planning to interlock their movies in the same way that
the Marvel Universe itself interlocks. Downey, Jr. has a cameo in
The Incredible Hulk as Stark, and the idea that the Avengers movie on the
drawing board (Zak Penn has been hired to write it) would combine previously
established movie heroes as opposed to just B-team Avengers like Hawkeye
and the Wasp is really too much to hope for. Would such a thing ever
be feasible?”
-from my review of Iron
Man
And here we stand, dusting
myself off after the brief brain-blasting teaser trailer that closes Captain
America: The First Avenger realizing that not only is The
Avengers possible, but it is shooting RIGHT NOW with the man who is
perhaps my #1 Geek God creative icon (Joss friggin’ Whedon) writing and
directing. And more importantly, if the Avengers movies have been
the ultimate creative fusion of the models of the self-contained motion
picture blockbuster and the serialized TV series, we now stand at the finale
of that first prequel season, and that not a single word will be spoken
by any of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes until they do it in the Mothership.
But Captain America completes something else besides the ramp-up:
it accomplishes a successful clean sweep of Avengers origin stories as
it joins Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk (who has been, sadly, recast, so
we’ll kinda have to meet him all over again) and Thor as first-rate entertainments
whose heroes I can’t wait to see Assemble along with Hawkeye (briefly glimpsed
in Thor) and Black Widow (too often seen but not
well enough developed in Iron Man 2) as a team.
But now to its own merits: The First Avenger is the second-best
movie to date in the Avengers saga, telling a rock-solid sci-fi tale of
a 90-pound weakling whose heroic heart makes him the perfect candidate
to be transformed into a Super Soldier who battles an Uber-Nazi supervillain
during WWII. Director Joe Johnston reprises some of the gee-wiz retro
heroics of his underrated The Rocketeer, but with a better cast
(Billy Campbell and Jennifer Connelly would later become first-rate actors,
but weren’t there yet) and the iconic heft of one of the all-time great
comic book characters. With its underdog hero, utterly ruthless villain
(Hugo Weaving remains an International treasure of Geekdom) and timeless
setting, Captain America should play better with a mainstream audience
than most of the post-Iron Man Avengers flicks,
but it also left me desperate for more. And more, my friends, is
coming.
1942: Johann Schmidt
(Hugo Weaving), who leads a secret Nazi science organization called HYDRA,
comes into possession of “the jewel of Odin’s treasure room”, a power source
capable of powering the superweapons designed by Dr. Arnim Zola (Toby Jones).
In the United States, Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is rejected again and
again for military service because he’s too small and too sickly, while
his friend “Bucky” Barnes (Sebastian Stan) ships out to help fight the
Nazis. Steve gets help from an unexpected source: Dr. Abraham
Erskine (Stanley Tucci) sees him as the perfect test subject for a new
program designed to create Super Soldiers. Erskine developed the
formula for the Nazis and tested it on Schmidt: it amplifies a person’s
traits, so after making its first subject a superpowered megalomaniac,
the Doctor wants to make sure the second has the heart of a hero and he
sees it in Rogers. The same can’t be said of Colonel Chester Philips
(Tommy Lee Jones), but once the serum has been used, Steve does indeed
become super-buff and amazingly strong and agile. A HYDRA attack
kills Erskine and destroys the serum: Steve is the only Super Soldier,
which for Philips’ purposes is just as bad as having none. So, he’s
ordered instead on a fundraising tour as Captain America, staging a song
and dance show he takes to the front lines for a considerably less impressed
audience. When Philips’ right-hand Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) informs
him that Bucky is among a large group of soldiers captured by HYDRA and
no rescue mission is planned, Steve goes it alone and incurs the wrath
of Schmidt, who unmasks himself as the misshapen Red Skull. Steve
and his hand-picked platoon of Allied heroes must begin a race against
time to take the battle to HYDRA before Schmidt unleashes the full destructive
power of a little thing we’ll call The Cosmic Cube.
Captain America has
always been my favorite Avenger, in large part because of the way he epitomizes
the selfless heroism we associate with WWII even in a more cynical modern
era. While all that lies in his future in The First Avenger,
the movie wisely moves to position him as a man who held the moral and
courageous high ground even in his own time. It’s a smart idea to
have the Super Soldier serum amplify not just the physical but also mental
characteristics of its subjects, because it gives us a real compelling
reason why the military would select someone like Steve Rogers to test
it on, and also a good hook to position the Red Skull as his opposite,
given a superpowered selfishness to go with his super strength. Johnston’s
always been most comfortable as a filmmaker painting with those bold black
and white strokes (watching The Wolfman gain
and lose momentum depending upon how much ambiguity is being injected into
its relentlessly reshot equation is kinda fascinating), and The First
Avenger is the best and most focused movie he’s ever made in large
part because there’s not an ethically compromised word in Christopher Markus
& Stephen McFeely’s script (which received an uncredited polish from
Whedon, all the better to segue into The Avengers). Captain
America is the most courageous hero of our most courageous era, and that
makes him the perfect man to someday lead Earth’s Mightiest Heroes and
the perfect character to lead a WWII superhero movie.
Evans, who’s been a welcome
presence ever since I first saw him in the wildly underrated Cellular,
has his Moment as Rogers, transformed by amazing special effects into a
90-pound weakling whose spirit he carries forward into the muscle-bound
superman he becomes. I think the real triumph of the performance
is the way he infuses The Star-Spangled Man with a Plan with the innocence
of that kid who doesn’t know when to stay down when he’s punched and has
never had any luck with the ladies. And he has solid chemistry with
Atwell, who does a great job showing us how she’s attracted both to his
scientifically-enhanced appearance AND the heart inside it. Jones
couldn’t be more perfectly cast as the cynical Colonel who’s slow to be
won over by some science project, and Tucci makes a big impression in a
couple scenes as the scientist whose faith Steve never fails to live up
to. And Cap’s team in the field is wonderfully populated with people
designed to make a quick, vivid impression. Stan is a lot of fun
as the guy who starts out as Steve’s Big, Handsome friend and then recedes
into his shadow without a hint of bitterness, while Neal McDonough wears
a crazy comic book costume complete with bowler and giant moustache like
he actually picked it out for himself.
But the heroic supporting
player who’ll be of most interest to fans of the Avengers saga is Howard
Stark, who’ll one day be the father of Tony, whose invention of the Iron
Man armor got this whole franchise started. An older version of Howard
appeared via old film footage in Iron Man 2,
then played by John Slattery, but here we see him in his dashing Howard
Hughes prime in the person of Dominic Cooper. It’s a weird thought
that Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony would have been proud of the man his father
was before they ever met, but Cooper is all-in on making him every bit
his son’s WWII-era counterpart, a dapper goofball genius with an eye for
the ladies and a hero’s heart beneath his bluster.
And then there’s the Red
Skull. Weaving, who broke out a dozen years ago as The Matrix’s
diabolically bureaucratic Agent Smith, is quickly amassing a resume as
one of the all-time great genre character actors. He’s the perfect
man for this makeup-heavy role, having already shown in V
for Vendetta that he can give a tremendous performance in an immobile,
face-covering mask. His Skull hits the role from every angle you’d
want, seeming to believe in his heart that even Hitler himself is a bush
leaguer compared to his own megalomaniacal dreams. His arrogant need
to lord superiority over Rogers, the only man who can lay claim to similar
power, gives way to a seething, Phantom of the Opera rage that burns through
his eyes throughout the later parts of the movie. The casual abandon
with which he dispatches any and all who oppose him is also brilliantly
played: never try to defend losing your command to the Red Skull
by telling him you fought to the last man! And I have to make special
note of a priceless scene early on where he tests Zola’s weapons on three
of Hitler’s lieutenants: watch how Weaving is always making calculations,
struggling to get the bugs out of his superweapons and generally living
in the moment throughout what would otherwise be a boilerplate “look how
indestructible I am!” sequence. It’s a really great performance in
a movie filled with quality work.
It’s also, typical of the
Marvel movie brand, filled with great craft, but the question all Captain
America fans will want answered is, simply, how is the shield? Answer:
awesome. I really liked the fact that the filmmakers took into account
that while the shield is indestructible, the red white and blue logo is
just painted on, so as Cap fights his way into HYDRA territory, it keeps
getting more and more beat up. The sound of its Vibranium alloy is
perfectly achieved by the foley crew: after hearing it, you couldn’t
imagine the world’s rarest metal sounding any other way when struck or
wizzing through the air. And, like the tossing of Thor’s hammer back
at the summer’s opening bell, the ricocheting way Cap uses his shield to
take out his enemies comes perfectly to life. It’s enough to make
a geek like myself have a fit of joy.
So, to summarize… I love
the Avengers. I love Captain America. Captain America:
the First Avenger did a pretty good job of feeding both of those manias,
and should play pretty well even with the non-maniacal. Now, if you’ll
excuse me, I’ve got to go circle May 4, 2012 a couple dozen more times
on my calendar. There’s a little movie called The Avengers
opening that day. |
