“Captain America” can’t shield itself from me: A review
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Michael Bullard, Artist
January 19, 2012
Filed under Opinions, Top Stories
By Michael Bullard
Yes, I’m aware “Captain America: The First Avenger” came out some months ago. I’m also aware that it got a 78% approval rating from people who watched the movie on Rotten Tomatoes, a user-based review-site. This is fairly rare for Rotten Tomatoes, since most people there are even more critical than I. Even such famous critics as the legendary Robert Moore of the Orlando sentinel gave it two thumbs up!
Now you should be aware that all those people are wrong. In fact, I don’t even know who Robert Moore is, he sounds old and overweight.
Who in their right mind could POSSIBLY think that this was a good movie? I would have rather gone to see that horrendous Twilight movie (yeah, that’s narrowing it down) than see Captain America.
I’ll start with the actor himself, because he was just a headache. You see, when I watched the movie in REAL-D 3D (A legitimately wasted $12.50 that could have gone to cure cancer or feed orphan puppies) I thought that the director of the movie, Joe Johnston, decided to go with the “300” approach of digitally adding fake muscles to the actor. BUT NO, it was actually the EXACT opposite. The scenes in where Captain America was skinny were actually digitally modified, so he was really ripped the whole time. This is depressing because Chris Evans (The actor portraying Captain America) was SO ripped that I thought it HAD to be fake. He’s more buff than Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was in the Mr. Universe pageant. His acting was alright, I can’t argue with that, but let me ask a perfectly legitimate question: Why did they choose HIM to play Captain America. Seriously, why? Chris Evans already played The Human Torch in the Fantastic Four movies, was Johnston just too lazy to hold a casting call, so he played Super Hero Lottery and took a random actor from another Marvel movie for the lead role of his movie? Aren’t most, if not all, of the Marvel super heroes in the same universe? What happens if The Human Torch meets Captain America in a movie one day?
I went on too much about Chris Evans, he’s a good guy, but he’s not the problem. The main problem, the biggest gripe I have with this movie is also the most ironic: the character development and the overall storyline. I love character development, I love feeling sorry for the main character, and I love when there is an air of likability around them. I also love a storyline that welds together solidly, and doesn’t feel like a bunch of random clips strung together on tooth floss. This story had both, and they did it very well. But that’s the thing, this is a MARVEL movie, you know, MARVEL the people who have based their entire existence around action and super heroes. Sure they were bought out by Disney, but that’s no excuse, look at “Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl”, it’s a perfect example of something Disney did right. So why did “Captain America: The First Avenger” have such little action and SO much story? If you ever saw the commercials for Captain America, you’d be delighted to see the commercials filled with NOTHING but action, but hey, every one of those action scenes in the commercials? Yeah, that’s every single action scene in the movie. No joke. It seems like Iron Man 2 followed this same formula: have an awesome storyline and yet next to no action; and this seriously ruins it for me. I read the Marvel comics as a kid, and when I saw the Spider-man movie, my expectations for future Marvel films grew immensely. So when I see Captain America is nothing but storyline, it makes me question what direction Marvel is heading towards. It’s going from Action/Adventure to a Coming-of-Age Drama.
So, in conclusion you’d be better off watching the first Captain America movie from 1990 instead of The First Avenger. At least its predecessor was unintentionally funny in how awful it was. Captain America: The First Avenger earns 2/5 shields, in my opinion.
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