Labels

Monday, July 25, 2011

The Fretless Bass Reviews: Captain America: The First Avenger


Let's start this review by saying this is my 50th post on my blog! (party horn noise) This is exciting, but there's really no way to make the review more exciting except mentioning that in the beginning.

Captain America is the last Marvel installment before the Avengers movie in 2012 (appocageddon can wait until after that and the Dark Knight Rises.) Needless to say, it had to be darn good to build up psych. It pulled it off fabulously.

The story is set in the final years of World War Two, Democracy was on the way up, Hitler had a fire under his ass, and more Americans were enlisting than ever; except Steve Rogers, who's five feet tall, and has breathing issues. A German-American doctor gives him a chance to enlist and makes him the first test subject of the super soldier serum, which grants him peak physical and mental ability.

As far as story goes, it's above par for the super hero course. After his injection of the serum, you would think they would send Cap right to Adolph Hitler's front door to roundhouse kick his face with the power of democracy. Instead, they make him a show-boy that sells war bonds, until he disobeys orders so that he might free P.O.W's. The best thing I have to say for this movie is that it pulls off a full blown musical number in the war bond selling scene. That's right, a superhero movie had a musical number.

The real gem in the movie is all the easter eggs they throw in to appease the fans like me and my dad. It would be too difficult to name them all, but if you read Cap's wiki before watching, it would make watching more entertaining.

The other interesting thing they did was how they handled Buckey. In the comics, he was Cap's pre-teen sidekick, but that wouldn't fly in the gritty realism of spandex/leather clad World War Two, so they made him Rogers' best friend who was, until the experiment, always tougher and stronger than Steve. Throughout the movie, an envious dynamic develops between the characters, which I'm sure will come back to haunt Cap when Buckey returns as Winter Soldier (LOOK IT UP!).

I would like to take this time to talk about how the movie is in 3D. You will recall from previous posts that I think 3D is unnecessary to make movies good, and Captain America proves it. This movie would have been unaffected by being in 2D, I stopped noticing the 3D after a while, and it added nothing to the experience. Maybe 3D draws in a specific crowd, but if I were marketing movies, that's the crowd I would want to keep as far away from my movies as possible, mostly because of the smell and noise because that crowd is made up of ten year old children, and Avatar fans.

At the end of the day, (literally, I'm writing this at 9:40) Captain America is worth seeing, and worth buying on DVD, and that's just about the highest praise you can give a movie.

2 comments:

  1. I like 3D. It makes the movie more fun to watch. I don't think you should be so critical of it, many people enjoy it, and it's come a long way since the red and blue visors.

    ReplyDelete