(Man, I’m actually burning through my movie picks this year. This is awesome – big thank you to my parents for babysitting.)
Tonight my wife and I settled in for the highly anticipated Captain America: The First Avenger – and on opening weekend, no less! The trailers for this movie have looked awesome. Did the movie do as well?
Yes and no. Visually, I really think they nailed it. The costumes, the set designs, the effects… all excellent. It was set in a romanticized 1940′s and featured enhanced humans, cartoonish disfiguration, futuristic weaponry, and a goody-two-shoes hero. By all rights this thing should fail miserably, but it works. I liked the main characters and acting (especially Stanley Tucci – he created the most human character in that movie). Red Skull was really done well, visually. The set pieces were cool. It was fun to watch.
Unfortunately, it was also predictable and spent significant time setting up the Avengers movie instead of simply telling a Captain America story. I’m not sure it works as well as a stand-alone film as it does a part of a larger story. A lot of the “surprises” in the film are given away in the trailer. There were two major montages, both of which should probably have been shorter, or in the case of the action montage, replaced completely by something better. It was cool to watch, but felt more like an assembly of action shots they wanted to fit into the movie but didn’t have time to get to otherwise.
There are really quite a few ways for me to nit-pick this thing to death, if I’m honest, but that would depress me, so I’m not going to do it. In the end, it was a fun movie and I’m glad I saw it. It looked great and I had a good time watching it. (Can you tell I’m really tired, and my energy for writing this has petered out? Sorry. Maybe I’ll revisit it later – but maybe not.)