Captain America: The First Avenger Review

• 26th Jul 2011

I really couldn’t wait to see Captain America. I love (love) Iron Man and was gutted to have missed out on Thor (blu-ray here I come!), so the prospect of the next instalment from the Avengers franchise couldn’t come along soon enough. Set against the backdrop of World War II (one of my favourite time periods in history) the premise promised Nazi-bashing aplenty from the star himself, Chris Evans, as the ‘Star-Spangled Man with a plan.’

Imagine then my disappointment when what I was exposed to was a third rate superhero flick with all the personality of a potato and all the originality of Mills and Boon’s latest middle-aged romp. The incredibly flimsy plot allowed for practically no character development from either Captain America/Steve Rogers or evil  Hydra scientist Redskull/Johan Schmidt (by the way, I can’t get over the fact that the creators think so little of a modern, multicultural audience that they felt the need to name the bad guy the German equivalent of ‘John Smith’. We get it – he’s a Kraut), and this is most blaring in the case of Rogers.

After spending his life as a dweeby nerd, Steve Rogers is finally granted his wish of being as big and brawny as his BFF ‘Bucky’. I don’t know about you, but if I became a super-human fighting machine at the flick of a switch, I’d have some kind of psychological reaction other than ‘kill, crush, destroy’, this sentiment pretty much summing up Rogers’ attitude post-buffing up.

At least when he was a little guy, Rogers had a sense of valour and self respect. As a macho man he is a real life Ken with all the sense of duty and morality of Schmidt himself – a telling quotation hears Captain America proclaiming he “won’t stop until every member of Hydra is dead or captured”. Gruesome stuff. His newfound super-strength has done little to help Rogers’ brain. Certainly the set up marks him out as someone too brave (stupid) to run away from a beating, but waltzing into a secret Hydra laboratory brandishing a shield garishly emblazoned with the stars and stripes – and not getting spotted! – is too much. Now, I don’t work for an underground science cult attempting to obliterate one of the world’s major super powers, but even if a stranger brandishing an American flag strolled into my office, I’d bloody well notice!

‘Preposterous’ is the word which should be springing to mind right about now, and things only take a turn for the worse with the film’s hot totty love interest, Peggy. She starts out as a shining beacon of character-fuelled hope, punching macho bullies in the face and the like but soon descends into a chauvinists dream. It would be nice if just for once a beautiful woman could like a man for his personality in a Hollywood film but of course, Peggy and Rogers are firmly in the ‘just friends’ zone until he starts flexing his pecs. Then she can’t take her eyes off him, and any professionalism she may once have had dribbles away leaving her a bleary eyed, wet-behind-the-ears piece of eye candy, serving no purpose other than to bolster Captain America to new heights of arrogance and predictability.

Speaking of predictability, the climax of Captain America could have been written by a seven year old in ‘Literacy’ class. Without spoiling anything, it involves an airborne showdown between Captain America and Redskull and the inevitable line from Redskull, ‘What have you done?!’ (trust me, tomato head, we were all thinking the same thing). It’s confused and unfocused and seems to think that as long as the outcome is alright, the audience will forget about the haphazard nature of the chase. The inference that Captain America’s defeat of Hydra won the war is plain absurd, not to mention horribly disrespectful to the actual path of the war.

A great many people will have been looking forward to Captain America for some time, myself included. After watching this Hollywood drivel, I have no doubt in my mind that in the event of world war, Captain America is the last person I’d want sticking up for my country. Watch it for a sense of completion – after all, he is the First Avenger – but as a film in its own right, Captain America doesn’t stand alone except as a master class in how to appease Hollywood producers.

Dani Singer