It’s been a long, strange trip, reviewing all these Captain America films. So, with a heavy heart, I laid my seven bucks down and sat through the sixth one I’ve seen this year: Captain America: The First Avenger. How was it? Ask the hideous talking head below what he thought.
I agree the movie really had too much to do. I don’t think you necessarily had to humanize the Red Skull because Hugo Weaving is playing a embodiment of evil every bit as much as Lex Luthor to Clark Kent in the Donner films. I do think he didn’t get to do much, though, essentially having almost all of his evil and motivations destroyed via montage. I also agree this could have been a trilogy on its own. It was definitely up there with my favorite Marvel movies but…okay…versus, “Great.”
Yeah – “okay” is a good way to put it. Though I still stand by my various charges. Ever since Matrix: Revolutions, the Misuse of Hugo Weaving’s been one of the few unforgivable crimes in my cinematic lawbook, and that’s not gonna change any time soon. To my mind, Donner’s Lex Luthor is one of the worst cinematic supervillains in history, and the attempt to pattern characters off of him has led to the creation of enough idiotic villains to fill five James Bond franchises. Not that we needed a repeat of 1990’s Captain America, which was more the Red Skull’s film than Cap’s…because it patterned itself off Burton’s first Batman film, which was really Joker: The Motion Picture. What these films (all of them, across the sub-genre) need to do is get beyond patterning – strike out, go bold, or – if they insist on using patterns – at least try to do something even a little bit cosmetically different with them.
Of course, if you’re brave/stupid enough to do that, you’ll inevitably garner cat-calls and dressing-downs for your “pretensions.” Because anti-intellectualism is as American as Steve Rogers, and almost as unkillable.