Our look back at the movies from the Marvel Cinematic Universe has reached Captain America's debut outing. Matthew Kresal revisits The First Avenger.
On the surface, perhaps no member of The Avengers would seem more difficult to bring to a modern audience than Steve Rogers aka Captain America. Seen as perhaps something of an artifact of a time gone by, here was a character whose jump to the big screen had long been stuck in development hell. Despite a somewhat ironic title (the irony being that this would be the last of the origin films released before The Avengers), 2011 saw Cap make the leap successfully in Captain America: The First Avenger, bringing with him an interesting new angle in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
On the surface, perhaps no member of The Avengers would seem more difficult to bring to a modern audience than Steve Rogers aka Captain America. Seen as perhaps something of an artifact of a time gone by, here was a character whose jump to the big screen had long been stuck in development hell. Despite a somewhat ironic title (the irony being that this would be the last of the origin films released before The Avengers), 2011 saw Cap make the leap successfully in Captain America: The First Avenger, bringing with him an interesting new angle in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
A large part of the
success of the film might well be down to the choice of leading man.
Chris Evans was an initially controversial choice to play the role,
due in large part to his already having played another notable Marvel
hero in the two Fantastic Four films some years previously. Yet like
Daniel Craig's James Bond, once given the chance to see him in action
the criticisms were largely silenced. Evans managed to successfully
play not just the almost superhuman commando we've come to know and
love but also the man Steve Rogers was before that: a puny, young guy
from Brooklyn who seemed to embody the old saying about nice guys
finishing last. Evans keeps that good guy aspect of the character in
sight throughout the film from his interactions with his fellow
characters to his reactions to events. Evans managed to take a
potentially cliched superhero from another time and make him into a
genuinely likeable character.
For that matter, the
film all around has a strong cast. Hugo Weaving makes a fine nemesis
in the form of Hydra leader Johann Schmidt, bringing a suitably
sinister air to the character right from his very first scene in the
film to the dramatic moment about midway through when he reveals the
Red Skull persona (itself a triumph of prosthetic makeup). Sebastian
Stan's Bucky Barnes is notable as well both for his chemistry with
Evans' Rogers, which makes their friendship believable even when their
roles are reversed, and also for firmly establishing an idea of the
character in the mind of the audience (something even more important
in light of where the character would eventually be developed in the
future). Filling in more traditional roles with memorable
performances are Toby Jones as Hydra scientest Arnim Zola, Tommy Lee
Jones as the initially skeptical commander of the Strategic
Scientific Reserve and Stanley Tucci as ex-pat German scientist Dr.
Abraham Erskine who recruits Rogers.
Though the film's
setting during the Second World War means that female characters are
fairly few, the character from the film besides Rogers that perhaps
stands out the most is Haley Atwell's Peggy Carter. While she does,
as she did in the comics, become something of a love interest for
Rogers, thankfully there's far more to the character than that.
Atwell in interviews described the character as “She can do
everything Captain America can do, but backwards and in high heels,”
and the action sequences in which Carter appears certainly rather
prove that point. As a result, it's something that makes her getting her own TV series not surprising in the very least.
The film's production
values are strong, especially given its Second World War setting.
Through its combination of script, production design and costuming,
the film successfully blends the technology and weapons of that
conflict with aspects of the previously established Marvel universe
(both comic and cinematic, the latter perhaps being more as a result
of Joss Whedon's uncredited work on the script). In fact some of the
seemingly more outlandish designs form the film such as the rocket
like craft Schmidt uses at one point or the large flying wing plane
where the film's climactic confrontation takes place are in fact
based on real life plans drawn up by the Germans during the war (the
Triebflügeljäger fighter plane and the Horten H.XVIII
respectively). Director Joe Johnston, whose previous films include
period set works such as the cult film The Rocketeer and October Sky,
was a perfect choice to direct the film which combines period setting
and characters with action sequences (indeed The Rocketeer arguably
bares some similarities to the film itself). The icing on the cake
might well be the score from Alan Silvestri which manages to be exciting
and yet timeless at the same time. The results make the film as
strong as it is.
Despite the film really
being done to establish the Captain's origin story, The First Avenger is
book-ended by two very important scenes in the present day. The first
of which reveal the discovery of a mysterious object between Arctic
ice (revealed late in the film to the Hydra flying wing) that sets up
the journey the viewer is about to go on while the latter presents us
with a sequence where Rogers finds himself in the present day which,
as well as giving us the seemingly pre-requisite appearance by Samuel
L Jackson's Nick Fury, also firmly establishes that other iconic
aspect of the character: that he is a man out of time. With that
complete, the stage is set for The Avengers...
Matthew Kresal lives in North Alabama where he's a nerd, doesn't have a southern accent and isn't a Republican. He's a host of both the Big Finish centric Stories From The Vortex podcast and the 20mb Doctor Who Podcast. You can read more of his writing at his blog and at The Terrible Zodin fanzine, amongst other places.
Matthew Kresal lives in North Alabama where he's a nerd, doesn't have a southern accent and isn't a Republican. He's a host of both the Big Finish centric Stories From The Vortex podcast and the 20mb Doctor Who Podcast. You can read more of his writing at his blog and at The Terrible Zodin fanzine, amongst other places.
