Film Review: Captain America: The First Avenger

Director: Joe Johnston

The Marvel Avengers series was still in start-up mode for most of its characters in their individual set of films, with the backstory of Captain America being displayed during World War Two. Jon Favreau who was heavily involved in the Iron Man films also helped with the writing and directing here despite not being officially credited. Early in the film we see impressive special effects to shrink down Chris Evans down from his actual size to the size of a small teenager before he is Captain America.

Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) and Steve Rogers (Chris Evans)

Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is a small sickly man who wishes to join the army and help fight in World War Two but is denied. He is finally allowed to join at the request of Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci) who admires his bravery and heroism more than his current physical prowess. Erskine harnesses the power of the tesseract to improve Rogers' physical form to its optimum levels making him a super soldier which will help him battle the evil Red Skull (Hugo Weaving) who wants to steal the tesseract for his own evil plans.

Captain America: The First Avenger suffers from the same sort of problems that many other franchises had in their first film, setting the backstory takes up a lot of time and its always very tough to make the story engrossing to watch whilst creating a character you care about. Films such as Thor and Spiderman (new franchise with Andrew Garfield) were both pretty average debut films but now have more freedom in what they can do in the second film.

Captain America

Naturally with Captain America you are constrained to his initial story being about him fighting the Nazi's who are obviously an easy target. The plot shifted from a delightful pulp retro feel to being overly nostalgic for 1940s America but it certainly provided a different dynamic to most super heroes just battling their way through generic cityscapes. Whilst Chris Evans actually puts in a strong lead performance as the tiny but brave young soldier who suddenly becomes the hero.

2/4 Underwhelming opening does finally produce a decent platform for film #2