Captain America: The First Avenger

As always: THERE WILL BE SPOILERS!

I was pretty pleased with Joe Johnston's take on the first Avenger for the most part. I'm a big fan of his under-rated - though cult classic - comic book caper Rocketeer, it's still a favourite gee-whiz adventure flick with some truly exhilirating flying sequences, a decent square-jawed hero, Jennifer Connelly exuding style and charm, a delightfully slimy villainous turn from Timothy Dalton and a host of great supporting characters. That was the film that gave me confidence in Johnston's ability to tackle this 40s set yarn, and his ability to play cheesey patriotism without getting too sickly would be key in making Captain America work for an international audience.

For the most part he succeeds, Chris Evans is great as Steve Rogers, there's a fine supporting cast around him - most notably Stanley Tucci's affecting turn - and the film looks really nice. An early set-piece immediately after Rogers gains his enhanced strength is fun, and the montage in which Captain America is born as an advertising tool to sell war bonds is enjoyably tacky and is a great way to build up Rogers frustration that he is unable to 'stop the bullies' of Nazi Germany.

However, the key problem with the film lies in its book-ending, but there seemed to be a simple way to address this issue that would have enhanced the emotional resonance of the film as a whole.



The film's prologue and epilogue are set in modern times, initially with agents discovering a crashed ship in the Arctic and wiping ice away from Captain America's distinctive shield. Immediately as an audience we know how the film ends, that Steve Rogers will wind up frozen in this wasteland to be thawed out and drafted into the Avengers.

In some ways this makes the introduction of a lot of the characters in the ensuing 'flashback' emotionally redundant, because unless they're all frozen in time they hold no relevance to Steve's life and the flutters of fliration between him and Hayley Atwell's Peggy Carter will ammount to nothing. We do meet Tucci's good hearted Dr. Erskine and, in the film's finest emotional scenes, he delivers the key moral and is ultimately assassinated, dying in Rogers arms and - much like Peter Parker in Spiderman - inspiring the first real test of Rogers' strength. The film using its action as a release off of the back of an emotional punch that finds the audience willing Rogers to catch the Nazi assassin all the more, it's popcorn at its best.

If only the same could be said for the rest of the villain's plot, a wobbly MacGuffin to tie in with Thor isn't given the same prominence as, say, the ark of the covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark, indeed, it winds up just powering a bunch of laser guns that aren't too threatening really. Meanwhile, in a spirited montage, Rogers travels across Europe happily laying waste to all of Red Skull's weapons factories, but despite this carnage it doesn't really seem to effect production of his super plane where the film's final act takes place.



Perhaps if the set-pieces were centred more around discovering the location of the mysterious factory the film would have more tension, a ticking clock, to uncover where Red Skull was based and what he was building. Instead, for the most part, after glancing at a map Rogers knows exactly where he's based and doesn't hesitate to trash every single lab. By the time we finally get, rather unceremoniously, to that final 'secret' factory, Red Skull and his army are all ready to leave and lay waste to the coast of America.

So, how could this final act be improved? From a narrative perspective I understand the desire to use these montages of Captain America's success instead of a series of dedicated set-pieces in pursuit of Red Skull. The initial factory face-off has some nice moments, including a vertigo inducing walk across a rickety beam and a decent first encounter between Hugo Weaving's villain and our hero, delivering a rather cliched 'We're not so different, you and I' kind of speech.

Later, when scrapping on a train, Rogers loses his best buddy 'Bucky' Barnes (Sebastian Stan), though the moment lacks the same heart-rending effect as Tucci's demise, despite Stan's fine performance, but we needed to see more of the two men's camaraderie both pre and post super serum to really feel for the loss of this friend. But, it is this loss that should have been the film's turning point for Rogers as a character, and indeed should have continued to resonate throughout the choices in the narrative.

Ultimately Rogers will be frozen and wake up 70 years later, all the characters we meet here will be dead from old age at least, so why not use that opportunity to - rather mercilessly - have them killed on screen, in front of Rogers to confront him with the horrors of war in a way he couldn't have imagined, a display of reckless hate from Red Skull that would (a) assert him as a truly odious villain and (b) lend a visual reflection of the kind of fatalities that his grand plan would incur; indiscriminate genocide.

It would also give further fuel to Rogers' sacrifice as he takes control of Red Skull's plane and decides to crash it into an icy tomb, for all he knew he would die, and that choice unfortunately doesn't resonate as strongly as, say, George Kirk's does barely five minutes into J. J. Abram's Star Trek movie. If anything the audience may be forgiven for thinking that Rogers will once again rise from the wreckage and make his date with Peggy.



But there shouldn't have even been a date with Peggy on the table as he plowed that plane into the ground, she should have been killed at the hands of the Red Skull prior to the film's final battle, much like the shocking and devastating death of Elizabeth in Barry Levinson's over-looked and wonderful Young Sherlock Holmes. Indeed, that film creates a huge emotional resonance via three key actions:

1. The death of Professor Waxflatter who was Holmes' mentor as a young man.

2. When asked what he wants to be when he grows up, Holmes replies solemnly staring out of the window towards Elizabeth that "I never want to be alone."

3. Elizabeth is shot stepping in the way of a bullet meant for Holmes.

It gives the final battle between Holmes and his nemesis so much more wallop and goes a long way to establishing the emotionally unstable and cold detective of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novels brilliantly - even if it does take many liberties with the chronology of those books!



If Rogers had lost everything in the 40s there would be no reason for him to live other than to put an end to the 'bullying' and he would do this in a powerful gesture by giving his own life to protect the innocent, it would have been a spine-tingling moment and probably punctuated with a sentimental (though probably tear-jerking) shot of Rogers looking towards the picture of his lost love that he kept stowed in his compass. Boy, I'm welling up just imagining it.

This would make Rogers' confusion and anger over his actually surviving the crash even more shocking for him, but his desire to do whatever it takes to avenge those who are wronged and prevent another villain like Red Skull from rising even more palpable.

Unfortunately what we're left with is a decent blockbuster that feels more like an extended preamble to The Avengers than a complete film all of its own.