So, several months ago I watched Captain America. I somewhat enjoyed it as a mindless action movie. However, after the movie (and a couple of times during the movie) I really felt that something had gone horribly wrong. With the new Avengers movie coming out I was reminded of Captain America-- so I decided it's time for Old Man Blazinghand to write a blog post complaining about the quality of Captain America. Back in my day we had to walk uphill through the snow both ways to read blog reviews of half-year-old movies, so you should be grateful for this opportunity.
Captain America is one of my favorite hero ideas. He's kind of superhuman, but really he's more of a soldier enhanced to the limit of human capability. Imagine a Michael Phelps of soldiering, so to speak-- he's the best that's possible. Of course, Captain America was science-ified to be that way. He was no Superman, though. His whole deal is just being the ballerest human physically possible. There's also the fact that he spends most of his time fighting Nazis. In a way, Nazis are like the perfect villains-- people hate Nazis, and they had lots of power and plenty of goons for Captain America to fight. Overall, it's the recipe for a great superhero tale, and it's kind of surprising the movie screws it up so bad.
The first thing that really jumps out at me as bad is the way the movie starts, or should I say, the way the movie ends. Spoiler alerts, starting here by the way-- if you plan on watching the movie don't read any further. Basically, the movie has 3 sections. First is the development of Captain America as a hero-- his backstory getting selected to be a super human, and how he goes from being a mascot to a soldier. Second is Captain America's struggle with Hydra, along with his heroic foiling of their plans. The third and final section is Captain America's revival / resurrection in the modern era to be a hero. Where I think the movie really falls apart structurally is the fact that it begins with the third section. A scientist or something finds a crashed aircraft and finds Captain America in it. Then, we do sections one and two, then we cut back to Captain America waking up after his crash.
Part of the suspense of Captain America waking up is that we as an audience don't really know what's going on-- it APPEARS he's woken up in the 1940s, but it's actually a 2010s reconstruction of the 1940s so that he reawakens peacefully. There's this whole big reveal as Captain America realizes his environment is a fabrication and breaks out of it, running down the hall and out of the building, out into the New York streets. This would be a really awesome if we didn't already know that Captain America was woken back up in the modern era. We the audience could gradually figure it out as he does, and be as shocked as he is that it's 2011. But we're told in the first few minutes of the show what's going on, so this amazing reveal is utterly worthless.
Ditto, by the way, for the whole battle with Hydra. The entire movie long, we KNOW Captain America is going to win because the guy who finds him is speaking English. In fact, as we find out more about the plot (the plan to destroy every city, etc) it becomes even more clear that Captain America is going to win. As soon as he jumps into the plane, you already know the result of the climax-- Captain America beats the villain but the jet crashes in the ice somewhere. All the tension and suspense is gone. I really think the original screenplay couldn't have had that "we find Captain America in the ice" scene at the start because no screenwriter worth his salt would ever diffuse all the dramatic tension in the script at the start like that. Yes, the hero always wins and we knew that Captain America would beat Hydra from the start-- but the whole idea is that the battle is hard and the outcome isn't clear. That's taken from us. The movie could have been made so much better without that scene that I can't help but think that a director at some point said "well, this movie is too complicated! The audience will never understand the big reveal without this context" and nobody challenged him and now the movie is crap.
Another thing that bothers me a lot is the writing for the female lead role. To refresh your memory, there's a British soldier of some kind (some sort of special forces attaché) who serves as an advisor for the super soldiers and Captain America in particular. She's also Captain America's love interest in the movie and there's some minor drama and intrigue that comes about as a result of their romance. The actress they chose for this role was both skilled and pretty, but I feel bad for her for having to perform such egregiously bad lines.
The Major (I think she was a Major) was an utterly unbelievable character. This character is drawn out of a common and well-liked modern female lead archetype-- the woman fighting her way up through an entrenched all-male organization. She is not demure and passive like many women, but aggressive, intelligent, and ambitious. She is in fact more aggressive and ambitious because she is a woman, because she needs to be to get where she wants to go. She's not afraid to challenge the status quo, but is eternally single because she hasn't found a man who can respect her career. This is a great character for the modern era. I really like seeing this character in dramas and romantic comedies, because these characters sort of break away from the stereotypical female archetypes. Granted, the idea that you have to choose between "aggressive/loveless" and "demure/no ambition" as a female personality without someone who is both pleasant and ambitious is a problem-- there isn't enough diversity of ambitious female characters. But it's still good that this character exists.
The problem, though, is that this character couldn't reasonably exist in the 1940s. Believe it or not, the 1940s were a pretty sexist era. Women were still not expected to hold jobs (though this was changing, as the war effort sent men away and factories were staffed by female workers) and certainly not military careers. I Imagine what women there were in the military were not in combat roles, and succeeded largely via demonstrating competence and not challenging the system itself. This was a tough time for gender relations.
We also add to this the fact that the Major is clearly insane or incompetent. One scene that really, really pulled me out of the movie is the "shield scene". In this scene, Captain America is looking at a number of different shields in a laboratory. He wants to pick a suitable one for his various military adventures. The Major, due to some misunderstanding (I believe she witnessed him making out with some floozy) is angry with him. When he's examining a shield and questioning its strength, she draws her firearm and shoots him 6 times from a few feet away, demonstrating the effectiveness of the shield. There are a lot of problems with this. What if Captain America wasn't holding the shield properly? What if he picked that moment to drop it? Why did she have a firearm in a laboratory? Where did the deflected bullets go? She could have easily killed him with her shots, or herself or the scientist with the ricochets. The scene is supposed to show that she's dangerous when she's angry, and she loves him and feels possessive of him, but it's so utterly unrealistic and insane that it just pulls me out of the movie.
As a side note, I don't like Hydra. I mean, obviously I don't like Hydra, it's an organization that wants to destroy the world or whatever. But it's also 1) unnecessary and 2) lame. Like, for me, I think that Captain America vs Nazi soldiers is great! Fighting Nazism is a noble cause and a great backstory for a hero. Do we really need a sub-organization of the Nazi regime that is somehow worse than Nazis to provide a good opponent? What's wrong with Nazis (as a villain, I mean)? In fact, the very idea that Nazi ideology is somehow not bad enough to be a villain for Captain America is kinda... I dunno, it just strikes me as obtuse. The Nazis wanted to rule the world with an iron first and impose fascist regimes and ethnic cleansing. I kinda think that's already bad enough. It seems somewhat belittling to all those who suffered at the hands of Nazis that Captain America needs some better villain to fight.
I think I can speak for everyone when I say watching Captain America beat up SS officers, freeing prisoners from concentration camps, and punching out Hitler would make for an awesome movie. Did we really need the magical crystals powering the doomsday machines and the villainous superhuman? Okay, fine! I bet the Nazis would be super into that sort of thing. In fact, Hitler devoted a pretty impressive array of resourcing trying to make super-weapons, rocket planes, etc. It doesn't seem unusual to me that a man whose ideology is obsessed with racial purity and whose goals include ruling the world would research super-soldiers. Hell, maybe he did! We don't need Hydra. It's an unnecessary evil, if you would, and it makes the movie seem unrealistic and trite.
The final thing, and this is the worst thing for me, is the worst line in the entire movie. Even if you fixed everything else in Captain America-- even if you fixed the plot, revised the character of the female lead, and got rid of Hydra-- this would still ruin it. This line utterly crushes any historical reality that the movie may have held, thereby destroying suspension of disbelief, while at the same time insulting me and a great deal of informed movie viewers. It's probably one of the worst lines in any movie I've ever watched-- and I've watched a lot of movies.
I don't even remember the specific scene, except that it's early in the movie. The soldiers who will eventually make up Captain America's unit are all doing something. Escaping, fighting, chilling, sitting in a car, or something. Whatever the case is, they don't really know each other and they're all hanging out together. Well, first off, Captain America's team would never have existed. In addition to being sexist, those times were racist. The members of his team would never be allowed to serve as part of the same unit, or even drink together. But the real problem is that Japanese-American guy on the team (wow I'm gonna get some flack for a sentence like that).
I don't know how well-known this is, but during World War II, the US Government rounded up hella Japanese-Americans and threw them into military prison camps. These were American citizens, and they were denied of their constitutional rights and liberties. The Japanese-American "internment" (a sanitized word) will forever be a stain on our nation's honor-- and looking at how we've treated out citizens with the outbreak of the war on terror, it's fairly clear that we're willing to suspend our most sacred document and jail people based on the color of their skin during times of war.
That's for another time, though. The point is, this Japanese-American guy wouldn't have been allowed to serve in the army like that. Even worse, when someone gives him a raised eyebrow (in the movie, that is-- I was totally giving him a raised eyebrow) based on his name, he replies flippantly, "I'm from Fresno". This line is clearly meant to show that this dude is an American. Something, though, something stuck out in my mind. Oh, that's right, Fresno is one of the places we unjustly imprisoned Japanese-Americans. Now, as the war dragged on and men died, the US Government eventually recruited Japanese-Americans to serve in segregated units on the European front-- but the idea of one serving in a white unit, or in an elite unit, is preposterous.
Yes, the director and screenwriters clearly didn't care about historical accuracy. They didn't care they were writing about a racist and sexist time, they didn't care about the whole deal with Nazis and WW2. Maybe they didn't even care about the plot itself, or the suspense and tension that would be present if we didn't know the ending at the start. I'm trying not to nit-pick too hard here, but sometimes these little details add up and it's not possible to enjoy the movie any more. The weight of the historical inaccuracies, poor character writing, and bad plot crushes whatever happiness I would have had from an otherwise enjoyable action flick.
When I'm watching a cool action movie, I don't want to constantly be thinking "huh?" or "what?" or "this makes no sense"-- I don't want to be thinking at all.
Super heroes need to fight super nazis for it to be fair. I hav'nt seen a decent superhero movie come out of Hollywood in a long long time, and its been WAAAAAAAY longer then that since iv seen a half convincing love interest. Edit-- 5/5 good review ^^ your blogs are always topnotch, keep it up
Something about captain america using a gun just never sat right with me. Heroes always use their fists, fighting in melee, while villains are cowardly and fight from afar. He seems more like a gangster than a hero.
I JUST SAW THIS MOVIE TOO I COMPLAINED ABOUT FUCKING EVERYTHING YOU SAID, EVERYTHIGN
Thank God, you're here, I 100% agree with you and you said everything that's been pissing me off about this movie.
The problem, though, is that this character couldn't reasonably exist in the 1940s. Believe it or not, the 1940s were a pretty sexist era. Women were still not expected to hold jobs (though this was changing, as the war effort sent men away and factories were staffed by female workers) and certainly not military careers. I Imagine what women there were in the military were not in combat roles, and succeeded largely via demonstrating competence and not challenging the system itself. This was a tough time for gender relations.
yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes
We also add to this the fact that the Major is clearly insane or incompetent. One scene that really, really pulled me out of the movie is the "shield scene". In this scene, Captain America is looking at a number of different shields in a laboratory. He wants to pick a suitable one for his various military adventures. The Major, due to some misunderstanding (I believe she witnessed him making out with some floozy) is angry with him. When he's examining a shield and questioning its strength, she draws her firearm and shoots him 6 times from a few feet away, demonstrating the effectiveness of the shield. There are a lot of problems with this. What if Captain America wasn't holding the shield properly? What if he picked that moment to drop it? Why did she have a firearm in a laboratory? Where did the deflected bullets go? She could have easily killed him with her shots, or herself or the scientist with the ricochets. The scene is supposed to show that she's dangerous when she's angry, and she loves him and feels possessive of him, but it's so utterly unrealistic and insane that it just pulls me out of the movie.
yes, fucking yes. What a dumb idiot. They make this girl to some kind of over-ambitious woman who isn't afraid to assert herself, but she has one love-interest and goes fucking bezerk and completely loses her cool? It's so fucking dumb: 'HEYGUYS, LETS BUILD THIS REALLY POWERFUL WOMAN, STRONG IN MIND AND NOT INTIMIDATED OR INFACTUATED BY THE BOYS, SHE'S HARASSED BY THEM CONSTANTLY, BUT SHE STANDS ON HER OWN WITH WIT AND RESTRAINT"
then... let's have her fall for the buff guy because his mental strengths now reflect in his physical appearance and get her all hot and heavy COMPLETELY DEFEATING HOW WE BUILT HER AND WANT HER TO BE PERCEIVED BY THE AUDIENCE.
As a side note, I don't like Hydra. I mean, obviously I don't like Hydra, it's an organization that wants to destroy the world or whatever. But it's also 1) unnecessary and 2) lame. Like, for me, I think that Captain America vs Nazi soldiers is great! Fighting Nazism is a noble cause and a great backstory for a hero. Do we really need a sub-organization of the Nazi regime that is somehow worse than Nazis to provide a good opponent? What's wrong with Nazis (as a villain, I mean)? In fact, the very idea that Nazi ideology is somehow not bad enough to be a villain for Captain America is kinda... I dunno, it just strikes be as obtuse. The Nazis wanted to rule the world with an iron first and impose fascist regimes and ethnic cleansing. I kinda think that's already bad enough. It seems somewhat belittling to all those who suffered at the hands of Nazis that Captain America needs some better villain to fight.
SO RETARDED, lets make a sub-organization that wants to bomb Berlin... THIS A BAD THING?
Watched Captain America on Friday at home, watched The Avengers in IMAX 3D (AWWW YEAH) on Saturday. Was awesome. Did not care about story or shit making sense, just wanted a full blast of awesome.
Well actually, for majority of Captain America, I was botstomping on LoL, so I guess I didn't observe the details. Oh well...
Luckily I never went and saw this movie. I've had a big fall-out with superhero movies in the past-couple years, for many of the reasons you mentioned in this review. Poorly written characters and unbelievable scenes seem to be the two big reasons I've lost my interest in the genre.
Have you seen x-men first class? You mentioned in your review being frustrated by Major shooting at Cpt America while he his holding his shield, and there are a couple scenes like it in x-men first class that are very similar to it.
Here, we see this character fail at being able to levitate himself from a bedroom window. Next scene, they're pushing him off a thousand foot-ledge and crossing their fingers.
At 30 seconds in this one, you see Havok completely miss his target and incinerate everything around it. Then at 45 seconds, in order to motivate Havok, proff-x stands right next to the target. Of course, Havok somehow is able to focus and not blow proff-x face off.
It seems kind of silly pointing out logic flaws in a superhero movie, but these are just absolutely retarded, unnecessary risks. And they really made it hard for me to buy-in to the movie
On May 08 2012 06:15 itkovian wrote: Luckily I never went and saw this movie. I've had a big fall-out with superhero movies in the past-couple years, for many of the reasons you mentioned in this review. Poorly written characters and unbelievable scenes seem to be the two big reasons I've lost my interest in the genre.
Have you seen x-men first class? You mentioned in your review being frustrated by Major shooting at Cpt America while he his holding his shield, and there are a couple scenes like it in x-men first class that are very similar to it.
Here, we see this character fail at being able to levitate himself from a bedroom window. Next scene, they're pushing him off a thousand foot-ledge and crossing their fingers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPHIutGLyGs&feature=relmfu
At 30 seconds in this one, you see Havok completely miss his target and incinerate everything around it. Then at 45 seconds, in order to motivate Havok, proff-x stands right next to the target. Of course, Havok somehow is able to focus and not blow proff-x face off. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv6N9dehvN0
It seems kind of silly pointing out logic flaws in a superhero movie, but these are just absolutely retarded, unnecessary risks. And they really made it hard for me to buy-in to the movie
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
I hated that movie as well. It's true, when watching a superhero movie, there should be A LOT of leniency about the characters, era, etc. this is due to it not being the focus, lack of time or just for the sake of the speed or pace of the movie.
But a lot of things are just flat-out ridiculous and ruins the setting.
On May 08 2012 06:15 itkovian wrote: Luckily I never went and saw this movie. I've had a big fall-out with superhero movies in the past-couple years, for many of the reasons you mentioned in this review. Poorly written characters and unbelievable scenes seem to be the two big reasons I've lost my interest in the genre.
Have you seen x-men first class? You mentioned in your review being frustrated by Major shooting at Cpt America while he his holding his shield, and there are a couple scenes like it in x-men first class that are very similar to it.
Here, we see this character fail at being able to levitate himself from a bedroom window. Next scene, they're pushing him off a thousand foot-ledge and crossing their fingers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPHIutGLyGs&feature=relmfu
At 30 seconds in this one, you see Havok completely miss his target and incinerate everything around it. Then at 45 seconds, in order to motivate Havok, proff-x stands right next to the target. Of course, Havok somehow is able to focus and not blow proff-x face off. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv6N9dehvN0
It seems kind of silly pointing out logic flaws in a superhero movie, but these are just absolutely retarded, unnecessary risks. And they really made it hard for me to buy-in to the movie
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
I hated that movie as well. It's true, when watching a superhero movie, there should be A LOT of leniency about the characters, era, etc. this is due to it not being the focus, lack of time or just for the sake of the speed or pace of the movie.
But a lot of things are just flat-out ridiculous and ruins the setting.
Yeah, I agree. A superhero movie, by nature, is going to have to stretch the truth to some degree, and of course theres going to be plot-holes here and there. But part of the way a superhero movie becomes good is by making you buy into it. They need to make you forget about the minor logic holes. But when the movie has too many errors, and too many ridiculous moments, it becomes too hard to be sucked in and suddenly everything is viewed through a very cynical eye.
Whenever I watch these types of films, I just go for the CGI eye candy and the superficial thrill.
For elegant and complex themes, stories, and characters, I reach for a classic novel. For a cheap thrill, I watch Captain America and Transformers.
The key is to keep your expectations low so you'll never be disappointed. Of course this is not something you apply to all things in your life. But...this has helped me to enjoy the modern film. I'll take happy surprise over perpetual disapppointment. A lesson learned by following the works of George Lucas.
The sole reason i watch super-hero movies is because there's always a way too good looking woman in one of the main roles and it gets better when it's an evil role and even better with CGI = megan fox in transformers ?
But the script for these movies is great at start, good opening, tension...then it gets ridiculously cheesy just to find yourself in the end google'ing the girl's real name and search for her naked pictures instead of actually thinking to the ending wich was either predicted from the very begining or the only thing that made it interesting were the girl's boobs,hence you search for those pictures afterwards in a rush. Forrest Gump was a good super-hero movie. Great plot, i liked how they ridiculized the very idea that a super hero gets everything right and somehow combined that with a real tragic story of a guy and even better, there's war and there's a love story that get's really intense towards the end.
How much glue did the writers have to sniff to make them make those kinds of mistakes????? It's borderline common sense that those are horrible, horrible mistakes that you should probably never do ever. I mean, seriously, we're just a bunch of video game nerds, but we know that what they did in that movie was terrible. Those retards write movies as a JOB, and they don't how how retarded their mistakes were. Seriously, it is borderline common sense that those are terrible ideas, and they did them anyways.
On May 08 2012 08:18 terranu1 wrote: The sole reason i watch super-hero movies is because there's always a way too good looking woman in one of the main roles and it gets better when it's an evil role and even better with CGI = megan fox in transformers ?
But the script for these movies is great at start, good opening, tension...then it gets ridiculously cheesy just to find yourself in the end google'ing the girl's real name and search for her naked pictures instead of actually thinking to the ending wich was either predicted from the very begining or the only thing that made it interesting were the girl's boobs,hence you search for those pictures afterwards in a rush. Forrest Gump was a good super-hero movie. Great plot, i liked how they ridiculized the very idea that a super hero gets everything right and somehow combined that with a real tragic story of a guy and even better, there's war and there's a love story that get's really intense towards the end.
Forrest Gump: best damn movie ever. Rarely have I seen a movie that could make me laugh that hard, let alone cry in the very next scene as well.
On May 08 2012 06:15 itkovian wrote: Luckily I never went and saw this movie. I've had a big fall-out with superhero movies in the past-couple years, for many of the reasons you mentioned in this review. Poorly written characters and unbelievable scenes seem to be the two big reasons I've lost my interest in the genre.
Have you seen x-men first class? You mentioned in your review being frustrated by Major shooting at Cpt America while he his holding his shield, and there are a couple scenes like it in x-men first class that are very similar to it.
Here, we see this character fail at being able to levitate himself from a bedroom window. Next scene, they're pushing him off a thousand foot-ledge and crossing their fingers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPHIutGLyGs&feature=relmfu
At 30 seconds in this one, you see Havok completely miss his target and incinerate everything around it. Then at 45 seconds, in order to motivate Havok, proff-x stands right next to the target. Of course, Havok somehow is able to focus and not blow proff-x face off. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv6N9dehvN0
It seems kind of silly pointing out logic flaws in a superhero movie, but these are just absolutely retarded, unnecessary risks. And they really made it hard for me to buy-in to the movie
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
I hated that movie as well. It's true, when watching a superhero movie, there should be A LOT of leniency about the characters, era, etc. this is due to it not being the focus, lack of time or just for the sake of the speed or pace of the movie.
But a lot of things are just flat-out ridiculous and ruins the setting.
Oh man I haven't seen First Class and suddenly I don't think I want to any more. That's really disappointing. I mean, I'm okay with movie writers cutting some corners-- that has to happen. But sometimes it's just ridiculous.
That's for another time, though. The point is, this Japanese-American guy wouldn't have been allowed to serve in the army like that. Even worse, when someone gives him a raised eyebrow (in the movie, that is-- I was totally giving him a raised eyebrow) based on his name, he replies flippantly, "I'm from Fresno". This line is clearly meant to show that this dude is an American. Something, though, something stuck out in my mind. Oh, that's right, Fresno is one of the places we unjustly imprisoned Japanese-Americans. Now, as the war dragged on and men died, the US Government eventually recruited Japanese-Americans to serve in segregated units on the European front-- but the idea of one serving in a white unit, or in an elite unit, is preposterous.
Captain America let me down.
LOL this is a nice way to abridge that history. I'm glad you pointed out the irony here. The all Japanese American 442nd Infantry Regiment was the most decorated unit in US history. Where's their hollywood movie?
On May 08 2012 14:32 Wrongspeedy wrote: Complaining that you knew the Superhero was going to win the entire time.... -_-'
Clearly you didn't read my blog post. I'm complaining not that I knew, but that I was explicitly told and shown that the superhero was going to win. We all know the hero wins in the end, but to be explicitly told he's going to win, and shown how he's going to win, in the first minutes of the movie, is crappy.
EDIT: Imagine if the Matrix began with you watching Neo defeat the Agents THEN you watch everything leading up to that. Obviously you KNOW during the whole movie that Neo will prevail, but that doesn't mean that you should be shown it at the start... this is pretty basic storytelling stuff.
The worst thing about the worst line is it's also actually something like "I'm from Fresno dillhole" or "I'm from Fresno broseph" or something retarded like that...5'd.
EPT
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