Movie: Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

All the spoilers all the time.  You have been warned!

My Thoughts While Watching:

Takes place around 1942.

“Meeting” Tony Stark’s dad – wow, they are all arrogant.

Tommy Freaking Lee Freaking Jones!  I adore him.

Stark and Cap have prehistoric history. I chuckle as I type this. Throughout the movie I kept thinking Hugo Weaving was from Jurassic Park. I am confusing him with Sam Neill.  In searching iMDB to understand why I think that, the first thing that popped up was shirtless Jeff Goldblum and I now have a new screensaver… “Paint me like your French girls…”  Shit, I digress to EVERY other movie…  But, here, for your viewing pleasure, is shirtless Jeff:

Of course, if we have shirtless Jeff we have to have shirtless Chris

Is that a glow light?  Vita-ray…

Wait, he shot the old lady??

In an attempt to look up the lyrics of Noose on the Goose, I will confirm that it was not as pleasant a rabbit hole as shirtless Jeff Goldblum…

I LOVED the score in the tesseract factory!  The youtube playlist for the soundtrack (created by Alan Silvestri) is here:

I would swear that the Wilhelm Scream was used twice in this movie…

Private Lorraine… WAIT Margaery!!!!!

Red Skeleton’s casting is perfection.  However, to hear tell from Hugo Weaving, he was nonplussed by the role. Didn’t really care for “that type of movie” (yet we have the shitty Mortal Engines which appeals to the same demo…).  He did not wish to reprise his role.  Came off as “it is beneath me”.  Blamed the makeup process in one interview.  I guess pointy ears are his thing, but oh well.  He was great, just a little retro-douchey IMHO.

Oh, look! It is Captain Eyelashes!

Cheesy montage with CGI to knock out installations. Meh.

There is a theory that the name “Winter Soldier” is a play on an old poem, I thought I would look it up:  “These are the times that try men’s souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” — from The American Crisis by Thomas Paine, December 1776

Ok, this is the fifth movie in the MCU.  At this point of my binge watching, my overall rankings are as follows:

• Iron Man 1 (yeah, I hate Tony Stark but loved this entrance into the MCU)
• Captain America: Winter Soldier (funny, first time I watched it I hated it – completely dif take now)
• Thor 1 (meh)
• Iron Man 2 (Tony Stark … ugh)
• The Incredible Hulk

By the end of the binge, when I posted my handwritten rankings, I cannot begin to tell you the hate comments I received for my taste in movies… HA!

Did you watch them?  What is YOUR rankings by this point?  I would love to hear your comments.

I hope you enjoyed the read.

Ciao!

Some Interviews and Extra Video:

IMDB Synopsis: Steve Rogers, a rejected military soldier transforms into Captain America after taking a dose of a “Super-Soldier serum”. But being Captain America comes at a price as he attempts to take down a war monger and a terrorist organization.

Starring:

	Chris Evans	…	Captain America / Steve Rogers
	Hayley Atwell	…	Peggy Carter
	Sebastian Stan	…	James Buchanan ‘Bucky’ Barnes
	Tommy Lee Jones	…	Colonel Chester Phillips
	Hugo Weaving	…	Johann Schmidt / Red Skull
	Dominic Cooper	…	Howard Stark
	Richard Armitage	…	Heinz Kruger
	Stanley Tucci	…	Dr. Abraham Erskine
	Samuel L. Jackson	…	Nick Fury
	Toby Jones	…	Dr. Arnim Zola
	Neal McDonough	…	Timothy ‘Dum Dum’ Dugan
	Derek Luke	…	Gabe Jones
	Kenneth Choi	…	Jim Morita
	JJ Feild	…	James Montgomery Falsworth
	Bruno Ricci	…	Jacques Dernier
	Lex Shrapnel	…	Gilmore Hodge
	Michael Brandon	…	Senator Brandt
	Martin Sherman	…	Brandt’s Aide (as Martin T. Sherman)
	Natalie Dormer	…	Pvt. Lorraine

Director:  Joe Johnston

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My ranking scores –

0-19 Levels of: Ugh

20-39 Levels of: Meh (aka I cannot reach the remote)

40-59 Levels of: I don’t hate it?

60-85 Levels of: That was solid.

86-100 Levels of: I Loved It!

I rank this movie a 88.1!

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Trailer:

Additional Movie Info:

It received a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 90% Fresh.  It received a Rotten Tomato audience rating of 92% liking it.  Average Rating: 4.33/5 with a number of User Ratings: 281,272.

Movie Reviews:

• Roger Ebert
• NY Times

Specs:  Release date: 22 July 2011 (USA) / Runtime: 124 minutes / Budget: $140M

IMDB Trivia:

• Chris Evans declined the role three times before accepting the part. Not out of dislike for the role, but because he feared what the effects of the sudden increase of fame would be on his private life. Then Robert Downey, Jr. convinced him to take the part, and thus gain the freedom to sign on any other role he’d want afterwards. After that, he had a meeting with director Joe Johnston and the producers, who convinced him to take the role.
• Originally, cameo appearances were planned in the film for James “Logan” Howlett (Wolverine) and Erik Lehnsherr (Magneto), who were present during World War II (Logan was a soldier and Lehnsherr was in an internment camp). These cameos were scrapped due to rights issues.
• The comic book that appears in the film bears the cover of the first issue of the actual Captain America Comics, cover-dated March 1941. The cover in this movie is modified from the original version to remove its depiction of Bucky, due to the movie version of the character differing from his (considerably younger) comic counterpart.
• (At around eleven minutes) In the exhibition, there is a mannequin in a red jumpsuit under a glass dome. That is a reference to the android, the original Human Torch, the first superhero created by Timely Comics (October 1939), which eventually became Marvel Comics. He was also part of The Invaders, along with Namor and Captain America. Marvel Comics recycled the name and abilities with the Fantastic Four’s Johnny Storm (1961). Chris Evans portrayed Johnny Storm/Human Torch in Fantastic Four (2005) and Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007).
• (At around one hour and two minutes) During the escape from the H.Y.D.R.A. facility, Timothy “Dum Dum” Dugan (Neal McDonough) and Gabe Jones (Derek Luke) steal a tank. As they drive away, you hear Dugan exclaim “Wahoo!” In the comics, this is the battle cry of the Howling Commandos, of which both men are members.
• (At around one hour and fourteen minutes) The red dress that Peggy wears in the second act of the film was designed by Anna B. Sheppard for Mélanie Laurent in Inglourious Basterds (2009), but never wore in that film.
• The comic book version of Captain America’s shield is most commonly said to be a mixture of Vibranium and Adamantium. Vibranium = the shield’s ability to absorb vibrations; Adamantium = the shield’s (near) invincibility. However, because Adamantium is part of the X-Men/Wolverine mythos, which film rights are owned by Twentieth Century Fox, the Adamantium part had to be left out of this version.
• Despite being “The First Avenger”, Captain America was not the first avenger in the comics. In the comics, Ant-Man, The Wasp, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, and Thor were the first ones. Only after The Incredible Hulk left the team, Captain America joined The Avengers. Nor is Captain America the oldest, as Thor is several centuries older.
• Hugo Weaving has gone on record stating that he is indifferent to the film. He said that he was happy for the experience, but it was not the type of film that he normally preferred. He indicated to have very little interest in reprising his role as the Red Skull, also due to the difficulty of the make-up process involved.
• After Joss Whedon was hired to direct The Avengers (2012), he was given a copy of this movie’s script, and made a few re-writes to tie it more closely to the Marvel Cinematic Universe: “I just got to make some character connections. The structure of the thing was really tight and I loved it, but there were a couple of opportunities to find his voice a little bit, and some of the other characters, and make the connections, so that you understood exactly why he wanted to be who he wanted to be, and progressing through the script to flesh it out a little bit.”
• WILHELM SCREAM: (At around one hour and thirty minutes) Rogers is pursued by H.Y.D.R.A. soldiers on motorcycles, but releases a flamethrower defense. One screams as he swerves, loses control, and is thrown headlong.
• The aircraft used by Howard Stark to fly Captain America behind German lines is a Beechcraft Model 18, also known as “Twin Beech”. It was first built in 1937 and was a true multi-role small transport plane used widely by the U.S. Army Air Corps and numerous civilian companies for the transport of cargo, supply goods, and wounded personnel.
• At the “Modern Marvels” exhibition, Steve (Chris Evans) and Bucky (Sebastian Stan) pass by what appears to be a man in a red suit submerged in water. The sign above includes the name “Doctor Phineas Horton”. It is a reference to the original android Human Torch, who, along with Captain America and the Sub-Mariner, were the three major heroes in Atlas (later Marvel) Comics of the 1940s. Additionally, Chris Evans played the Human Torch in Fantastic Four (2005) and Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007).
• The final scene of the film where Captain America wakes up in the present questioning where he is and then attempt to break out of the S.H.I.E.L.D. facility only to learn he is in a much different world adapts story elements from the Ultimates #3 (May, 2002) where his Ultimate Marvel counterpart does the same thing after he woke up and in both versions Nick Fury was involved.