Captain America - The First Avenger (Spoilers)

[Langsta]

Then how would you have handled it? You haven't elaborated on what exactly was handled poorly about it yet.

I wouldn't have made it corny as ****! It was so cheesy that I almost said "Wow" in the middle of the theater, and every scene after that was so predictable.

 

[Bass]

I haven't seen the film, but the grenade scene looked absolutely brilliant in the trailer.

MY JUDGMENT IS FORTHCOMING. BEGIN THE ARMAGEDDON CLOCK. SET DATE: SOMETIME AFTER NEXT FRIDAY. MAYBE NEXT TUESDAY. NOT THE TUESDAY COMING, THE ONE AFTER THAT. MAYBE.

 

[DIrishB]

I kinda wished they'd elaborated on the Tesseract more, I found myself explaining the Cosmic Cube to the friends I went with.

I think the post credits Thor scene indicates it'll play a part in the Avengers.

I loved it. I didn't like his voice at first. It didn't match up with his sickly body. His voice sounded too healthy. Regardless, it still worked well and the progression from there was near flawless. Tucci was great and his comedic timing was impeccable, same as Jones. Tommy Lee Jones was probably my favorite actor in this film. His performance reminded me alot of US Marshalls, which I loved. The action was great. The Howling Commandos was a nice touch.


Favorite Line: "I ain't kissing ya."

Tucci and Jones were both great. Their inclusion in future sequels is what makes me hope the most for flashback scenes in those sequels.

 

[ourchair]

I've said it before I'll say it again: Chris Evans has always been an under-rated actor.

 

[E]

I saw this. It was very good. Chris Evans was great - I was worried about how he would work as Cap since everything else I've seen him in has him as a wise-cracking smart alack but thankfully he was able to shelve that for this. The effects done for him as a skinny guy were amazing - it didn't look the least bit fake. It was pretty amazing. Evans was great overall - no complaints. I thought all of the actors were great, actually.

What I didn't like is how we didn't get to see him in ice and didn't get to see the recovery process. All of that is incredibly interesting to me and maybe I'm the only one, but I think it would've added to the mystique and awe over finding a guy in ice that had been trapped for 70 years. Seeing only the shield was kind of a cop out, and completely omitting all of the recovery process was cheap. That was a huge mistake.

I'm really looking forward to the sequel because the "man out of time" element is what makes Captain America who he is and it is so much more interesting than anything they touched on in the movie.

I agree that the cosmic cube and terrasect could have been explained more and better. I'm assuming these are carried over from Thor? I haven't seen Thor.

 

[DIrishB]

What I didn't like is how we didn't get to see him in ice and didn't get to see the recovery process. All of that is incredibly interesting to me and maybe I'm the only one, but I think it would've added to the mystique and awe over finding a guy in ice that had been trapped for 70 years. Seeing only the shield was kind of a cop out, and completely omitting all of the recovery process was cheap. That was a huge mistake.

I agree it would have been nice to see more of them pulling him out of the ice, but maybe they'll show a flashback scene to that in Avengers. I think the reason they didn't show more of it is to help lead into the Cap waking up in bed scene where SHIELD is trying to convince him its still the 40's, a sort of SURPRISE! type deal.

I agree that the cosmic cube and terrasect could have been explained more and better. I'm assuming these are carried over from Thor? I haven't seen Thor.

The Cosmic Cube is the Tesseract, isn't it? I need to see Thor again, but the Cosmic Cube/Tesseract didn't play a part in the movie as I recall, though it did show up in the post-credits scene as a lead-in to Avengers. (Nick Fury shows it to Dr. Selvig and asks him to look into it, if I recall correctly).

So, yeah, I'm pretty sure the Tesseract will play a large role in Avengers, and will probably be the MacGuffin Loki uses to cause crap to happen.

 

[E]

I think the reason they didn't show more of it is to help lead into the Cap waking up in bed scene where SHIELD is trying to convince him its still the 40's, a sort of SURPRISE! type deal.

Which I thought was kind of pointless - it was too short to be meaningful.

 

[DIrishB]

Which I thought was kind of pointless - it was too short to be meaningful.

Yeah, felt sort of out of place...hmmm, much like the character, a man out of time...do you think that was an intentional parallel?

The scene was nothing more than a springboard for the Avengers, and in that sense it worked. It did feel out of place, but as I said I don't think that was accidental.

 

[PureMitch]

Amazing review here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRcqK3QWeL4

 

[Planet-man]

I enjoyed it as much as I did Thor, which is to say a lot. I don't think either are as great as either Iron Man(let alone the Spidey and X-Men movies), but that's not the point. I'm so glad they did the full WWII story and origin, it would've been ridiculous to skip over all of that. And they did that really well. "The Fuhrer digs for trinkets in the desert" - should DiB be adding Raiders to his Marvel timeline? Anyway, the cast did a great job. Rogers is as compelling a protag as they've ever had and I hope he manages to be the heart of - and biggest hero in - The Avengers(the teaser for which was electrifying).

The grenade scene was great, and I never saw it in the trailers or anything.

I really liked the evolution of the costume and was glad the USO show version wasn't spoiled in the trailers either(from what I saw, anyway). I wondered how they were gonna do the shield boomerang business, like if Stark was gonna mention gyros in it or something but really liked the way they did it, especially when one soldier tossed him the shield back in one seen and you see how it's light enough to basically move like an aerofoil when not being whipped by Cap.

Anyway, I liked it a lot and look forward to seeing it again. I'll admit the recovery was a bit too fast and rushed, but they'll probably expand that in Avengers. What I would've liked is the line from The Ultimates when Col. Fury introduces himself "Nice try, but the highest ranking black officer in the US Army is Gabe Jones and he's in my platoon!"(or whatever the line is). That would've been a great touch in the Times Square scene right before Fury explains that it's decades later. I also think they missed a bit of an opportunity by having him mostly fight sci-fi laser Nazis throughout the whole film instead of the regular but equally awful gas-mask flamethrower ****-eating kind.

John Krasinski as Cap would've been heavenly, but performance-wise I think Evans was as good as he would've been, and obviously fine physically.

Like Thor and a lot of recent movies though, I was disappointed by the lack of a prominent and innovative score. That can absolutely make a movie and it's especially puzzling because Alan Silvestri was the composer, just like on The Rocketeer, which had one of the best scores ever and was very close in feel to what I would've liked to hear here. Or something like the music from the Commandos computer games. That's always been my Captain America theme, since playing them as a kid.

 

[Captain Canuck]

I loved this movie. It was incredible. I enjoyed every minute of it.

I don't have much to add to the discussion that hasn't already been said, but I'll comment on a few things:

1) Bucky was definitely set up to come back as Winter Soldier - he was strapped to a table and apparently partially brainwashed in the first Hydra base, the scene where he's sniping Hyrda soldiers while Cap is doing the front lines fighting reminded me of Winter Soldier, and the way he "died" lends itself to him being found frozen by the Soviet government.

2) Red Skull is certainly not dead.

3) I loved Arnim Zola's face on that TV screen. Great Easter egg. There was also a camera at one point in the movie that looked exactly like his robot head.

4) I feel like the mystery element that Howard Stark left the atomic blueprint for Tony to find in Iron Man 2 was what the Cosmic Cube is made out of.

 

[E]

1) Bucky was definitely set up to come back as Winter Soldier - he was strapped to a table and apparently partially brainwashed in the first Hydra base, the scene where he's sniping Hyrda soldiers while Cap is doing the front lines fighting reminded me of Winter Soldier, and the way he "died" lends itself to him being found frozen by the Soviet government.

I hope so...

 

[DIrishB]

Which I thought was kind of pointless - it was too short to be meaningful.

Thats what she said.

1) Bucky was definitely set up to come back as Winter Soldier - he was strapped to a table and apparently partially brainwashed in the first Hydra base, the scene where he's sniping Hyrda soldiers while Cap is doing the front lines fighting reminded me of Winter Soldier, and the way he "died" lends itself to him being found frozen by the Soviet government.

This must happen.

2) Red Skull is certainly not dead.

Why? It looked like he was atomized by the Cube. I suppose they could bring him back, but whats the point?

3) I loved Arnim Zola's face on that TV screen. Great Easter egg. There was also a camera at one point in the movie that looked exactly like his robot head.

Agreed, that was awesome.

4) I feel like the mystery element that Howard Stark left the atomic blueprint for Tony to find in Iron Man 2 was what the Cosmic Cube is made out of.

Interesting, and very good point.

 

[Captain Canuck]

Why? It looked like he was atomized by the Cube. I suppose they could bring him back, but whats the point?

it looked more to me like he got sucked into the weird nebula between the worlds. The same nebula that Loki fell into at the end of Thor. Also, in the comics Red Skull used the power of the cosmic cube to transfer his conscience into another person before his body was killed. I just felt like his death left too many possibilities to be real. But I don't know what the point would be. Like I said, I want Winter Soldier as the villain in Cap 2.

Maybe they'll have the Red Skull and Hydra in an Avengers sequel? I don't know.

 

[Planet-man]

This basically goes without saying by now but it's funny: six(or whatever) months ago, I was pretty sure that Green Lantern would be the best(and possibily only good) of this year's superhero films, probably followed by Thor, which could've been anything, then Captain America as an awkward but hopefully decent action movie, all followed distantly by the disaster that X-Men: First Class looked like(pre-trailer).

Cue the present, and X-Men ended up being easily the best, then Thor and Captain America both really swell and making strong and totally different cases for second, then Green Lantern far behind as an embarassingly mediocre bomb(opinions are gonna vary of course, but I think that's the consensus).

2) Red Skull is certainly not dead.

Why? It looked like he was atomized by the Cube. I suppose they could bring him back, but whats the point?

 

[thee great one]

It looked like he was teleported like the rainbow bridge thing.

My favorite scenes was him going down talking to Agent Carter and Times Square.

"I had a date..." :<

 

[DIrishB]

I'm going to have to go see it again, not only because its awesome, but more specifically to double-check the Red Skull dies (or not?) scene.

 

[E]

I'm going to have to go see it again, not only because its awesome, but more specifically to double-check the Red Skull dies (or not?) scene.

Same here ; I totally missed the Zola foreshadowing scenes.

 

[DIrishB]

Someone mentioned this on another forum, but apparently, during the World's Fair scene with Steve and Bucky, they walk by either a poster or something featuring the original Human Torch, John Hammond. Nice nod to old school Cap continuity (they were both part of the Invaders), and a nice tongue-in-cheek nod to Evan's role as the second Human Torch in the FF movies. I missed it on my first viewing, but I'm going to try to see it again this weekend.

The awesomenicity of this movie abounds.

 

[Planet-man]

Someone mentioned this on another forum, but apparently, during the World's Fair scene with Steve and Bucky, they walk by either a poster or something featuring the original Human Torch, John Hammond. Nice nod to old school Cap continuity (they were both part of the Invaders), and a nice tongue-in-cheek nod to Evan's role as the second Human Torch in the FF movies. I missed it on my first viewing, but I'm going to try to see it again this weekend.

The awesomenicity of this movie abounds.

Yes! I noticed this on the first viewing(hopefully going again this week). It's a fully-costumed mannequin of him in a glass tube, like he appeared in public for the first time. Great nod.