Captain America : The First Avenger (2011)

Sunday, July 31, 2011

With the screening of Captain America : The First Avenger, the list of superheroes is now complete and fans worldwide are now anticipating the release of the long awaited superhero guild movie - THE AVENGERS - which is schedule to be out in mid 2012...

One by one, comic book superheroes are now being appreciated more - not only by comic book fans but also movie nerds and even "normal" people... This is because of the current trend of transforming them into real life action movies... So, does Captain America stand as tall as The Dark Knight and other overwhelming superhero movies? This is my opinion...

THE STORY

Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), a skinny and little man desired to be recruited as a soldier for World War II... However, because of his weak physical appearance and bad health condition, he never made the cut... That was until he had been given a chance to be in a military scientific project of breeding an army of super soldiers by Dr Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci) because of his noble and kind nature... The result of the experiment was tremendous granting Rogers with superhuman strength and healing ability... Though at first, Rogers was prohibited to join the war, he proved himself worthy when he saved quite a number of soldiers being held captive by Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving) of Hydra... Schmidt, who was also a super soldier created by Dr Abraham, dreamed of destroying the world including his superior, Hitler, with the mysterious power cube he obtained in Norway... Knowing his plan, Rogers vowed to stop him and end the war with his own bare hands...

THE AWESOME STUFF

The Little Steve Rogers

In case you don't know, the producers never used a body double to play the skinny Steve Rogers... It was Chris Evans all along... They used massive amount of computer generated image (CGI) to shrink Evans' body and head which required a lot of work and details... It's like when u used Photoshop to shrink your fat belly to make yourself look skinnier in pictures (which is rather pathetic)... Though, editing a picture is easy... Editing a movie is not... Kudos to the CGI team for making it so flawless...

However, the brilliance is not only on the impressive CGI effects, but it also lies on Evans' acting... Seriously, I was more engaged to see the skinny Rogers from Brooklyn rather than buffed up Captain America... Because of his attributes, I found myself rooting for him in terms of getting recognition as a soldier and also winning his love interest, Agent Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell)... I think most would agree that the first one hour of the movie is the best...

The Classic Feel

Though the movie is about the development of science and modern weapons, the movie managed to make me feel like I'm watching a classic movie... The costumes, the setting, the lines... it was like watching an old war movie... or maybe it's just me...

THE NOT SO AWESOME STUFF

The Development of Other Characters

This movie is all about Captain America... and I mean it literally... I feel that the producers focused too much on Rogers that they forgot to elaborate other characters... Hugo Weaving who played Johann Schmidt a.k.a The Red Skull is a brilliant actor and he introduced his character in a fairly good manner... However, the producers gave him so little to work with resulting him being quite forgettable... The same goes to characters Peggy and Colonel Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones)... Despite being the love interest, Peggy got a small role in developing Captain America into a strong willed hero... Even without Peggy's help, Captain America would manage to become the great hero that he was... Colonel Phillips, though also falls in the same case, is more memorable compared to those mentioned earlier because he got all the best lines in this movie...

The Pace

The first one hour of the movie was perfect... However, the second hour seemed so rushed... From the moment Captain America went into war until the end, the pace was too fast... I guess that's why most complained that the climatic action sequence was not that engaging... which I agreed... Most of the action scenes were turned into montages and that destroyed the element of suspense and excitement... I wished that they would make the movie longer so that at least one battle scene is elaborated... I would love to see Captain America showed off his motorcycle more...

ALL IN ALL

This movie relied too much on Rogers or Evans... However, it's not a bad thing since Evans managed to deliver quite a performance especially when he was playing skinny Rogers... Similar to other origin movies, Captain America : The First Avenger gave focus on the development of the main character and casted aside other elements such as brilliant action sequence and other characters' development... As a result, like I said before, the first one hour of the movie was rather brilliant while the rest of it seemed so rushed...

3 out of 5 stars...

Anyway, for those who were too lazy to wait for the extra clip after the end credit, u missed watching the trailer to the upcoming THE AVENGERS movie... I was too lazy to watch it too but I managed to catch it at Youtube where an audience managed to record it with his camera... I wanted to show it to u guys but the video has been taken down due to copyright issues... Try to search for it at Youtube... I'm sure many would have illegally recorded it...

Anyway, here's the list of cast that u would see in the The Avengers