I'm not Mr. Comicbook, to be honest until very recently I didn't even know how to read a comic book, what do the bubbles mean, what do rectangles mean, ones the character talking aloud, the other is a thought, but which is which? I have however really enjoyed some comic book movies, the first 2 X-Men, the first 2 Spider-Man, but more than any of the comic book based movies I've really enjoyed the recent Marvel movies, Iron Man 1 and 2, Thor, and most recently Captain America, I like the way all of these movies take place in the same universe, each movie telling its own story, all leading up to the glorious Nerd-Gasim of "The Avengers" coming out next summer, the new Batman may be the movie everyone is waiting to see next summer, but for me its all about "The Avengers"
Going into Captain America I knew very little about him, but this movie does an excellent job of telling the Captain America origin story. The long and short of it is Steve Rogers is a Brooklyn born everyman with a heart bigger than he is, after several attempts at trying to sign up for combat duty and getting rejected because of his small size, he is given a chance by the German Dr. Erskine and given a serum which turns him into a Super Solider. Rogers first assignment however is an Uncle Sam type character named Captain America, an Extreme Patriot, who sings and dances about fighting Nazi's, eventually Captain America sees battle, and despite being heavily outnumbered rescues a group of US Soldiers, Captain America is then deemed ready for the Front Lines and begins to help (but mostly dominate) the fight against Nazi Germany, mainly the sinister Red Skull.
The movie is really good, it excelled highly in explaining the Captain America story as well as tying itself to this current "Avengers" series. One area I felt the movie let me down was with the villain Red Skull, maybe I missed something, or I should have known more about him going in to the movie, but there was no clear explanation of who Red Skull was, just that he dabbled in the occult, and we are left to connect the dots that this is were his power and ability come from. Overall this is an excellent movie, most of the characters are well defined, and I absolutely love the way the movie captured the 1940's America feel, it was a sharply directed and very good looking movie.
There was a plethora of outstanding performances, Tommy Lee Jones was great as a Military Colonel, I liked what Chris Evans did as Captain America and the same can be said of Hayley Atwell who played Peggy Carter, Captain America's love interest, who herself in many ways is a female Captain America. Stanley Tucci was great as Dr. Erskine, and Sam Jackson was back as Nick Fury, playing the part with his usual gusto. Two performances that stood out were Hugo Weaving as Red Skull, he took a character that as I said earlier was under developed, and still made him very menacing, and the best performance of the entire movie for me was Dominic Cooper, playing Howard Stark, it was a great performance because he used a lot of the same mannerisms and quirks Robert Downey Jr. brought to Tony Stark (Howard's Son) but played these mannerisms in a different way, it wasn't like he was just doing an impression of Robert Downey Jr. You can tell just based off of his performance that he is Tony Stark's father, it was really incredible.
Obviously as in the other Marvel movies, you have to stay until after the credits. This time instead of a cut scene we get the first trailer for the "Avengers" movie, and if you ever wanted to hear an entire room full of comic book fans climax at the same time the trailer for this movie made that happen. Summer 2012 can't come fast enough!
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