Matt’s Review: ‘Captain America: The First Avenger’ Suffers From Uncreative Cliché Storytelling

GRADE: C

The easiest way to describe Captain America: The First Avenger is a cut and paste screenplay trying to hold up a Summer blockbuster. Take a formulaic story about a hero, insert the Captain America tale, and that was this film. It wasn’t a complete disappointment, because it had a lot of scenes that work individually — nice character building moments, some nice action, and funny dialogue. But pieced together as a whole, Captain American: The First Avenger was not a cohesive success.

The film is set in WWII — my favorite era — and stars Chris Evans as a scrawny bullied man named Steve Rodgers. He has a slew of health problems preventing him from living out his dream of enlisting in the Army; but that doesn’t stop him from trying to enlist multiple times. He then is discovered by a scientist looking for a man with a good heart to participate in a secretive medical process set to create a super soldier. Rodgers is bent on ridding the world of bullies making him the perfect candidate to become a chiseled warrior — he knows what it’s like to be bullied, so he would never become one. Soon after his transformation, he isn’t used for warfare, but as a figurehead to sell war bonds to support the overseas efforts. Hardly the hero this super solider was supposed to be. After this moment in the film, the creativity goes M.I.A.

Captain America shows his true hero abilities by saving hundreds of POWs held captive by Red Skull’s forces. He is then pitted against this evil man who is so bad, he tells Hitler and the Nazis to shove it. Script the typical good vs. evil showdown… but with no surprises along the way. I will take a second to say that Hugo Weaving did well as the menacing adversary for Captain America. Weaving really hammered home the evil traits. Unfortunately, the character was not as well written as his performance.

This was obviously a big budget film with little spared on visuals, actors, settings, or any other piece of production. However, I don’t think Marvel or Paramount Pictures put a lot of their budget into getting a script that really worked. It felt like the script was written by several different parties, and all were on different pages to what the endgame for the screenplay was. The second half of the film doesn’t really build to anything but a showdown with Red Skull. I was unclear on what Red Skull’s motivations were for destroying the major cities on Earth. It was also unclear how he was going to do this — some advanced bombs or something. Eventually the film just brought the two together and staged a reasonably boring fight for the upper hand that didn’t pay off. When the villain and the hero are facing off, it’s a bad thing if the viewer is bored. I was bored.

Captain American: The First Avenger started off good introducing the scrawny version of Evans and developing his character. But then the film worked into the second half and the character disappeared behind the shield and suit as he fought in one CGI ladled action scene after another. The second half was essentially set up to show off Captain America’s talents and have his team carry out missions. But it wasn’t even fulfilling to watch because these missions were carried out with a poorly pieced together montage. Sure showing his heroics are important, but when the character Rodgers is sacrificed in the process, it feels forced. On the note of action sequences, the display in this film was CGI heavy and lacked any sort of realism. Why not put the green screen away for just a few scenes, and make some gritty WWII action?

The editing in this film was also some of the worst I remember in some time. When poor editing stands out, you know it was bad. Captain American: The First Avenger had more than a couple bad transitions between scenes and even had a few jump cuts along the way. One moment Captain America was swinging on a rope, the very next cut was him running on the ground. Talk about jarring.

One big thing that intrigued me about this project was the setting being WWII. Personally, I have never sat through a film set in this period that felt less like the 1940′s. It didn’t even feel like a war was going on. Sure they told us all the time, but nothing was really shown that resembled actual warfare. The action scenes didn’t portray a war, they portrayed Hollywood fabricated crap. On top of that, Captain America’s elite team of soldiers was racially diverse. This is WWII. No way a team is made up of a French guy, an Irish guy, an African American guy, and an Asian guy. Black people fought in this conflict, but in segregated units. With me being a WWII buff, this turned me off. It felt more like a unit constructed to be politically correct and friendly to all races than one that portrayed even a hint of reality.

On the note of a story set 70 years ago, it was extremely interesting to see weapons from the evil Red Skull’s men that looked like they were from the future. There were ray blasters, bigger ray blasters on tanks, and other pieces of technology that don’t exist in the present Marvel universe. These weapons could work in the past if the future — the Iron Man and Thor movies — were littered with more advanced technology, or even just this WWII technology. But they aren’t. So the past is more technologically advanced than 70 years in the future. I would have been able to enjoy actual WWII weapons shooting at Captain America instead of the filmmakers cooking up stylized weaponry for an advanced enemy. This aspect of the movie was just dumb.

Lastly, I would like to say that I loved Chris Evans in this role. He really brought a lot to this character. I also thought Hayley Atwell did well in her role as the female lead — but her character was terribly written. For some reason, she was everywhere in the movie at just the right time. If Captain American needed saving, or a ride to catch a plane, she was always there. It felt so ridiculous to see this beautiful woman running through battles unscathed, always a part of the fray, with her bright red lipstick beaming. The two main characters were mashed together as a couple simply for the fact they were the lead actor and actress. Their was no palpable chemistry between the couple. By the end, the two were in love with no defining reasons shown why they would be. With this film being cliché, of course she had to walk in at the moment another woman is throwing herself at him, and of course she had to kiss him before he jumps off a speeding car to save the day. Gag me.

Overall, Captain America: The First Avenger had a lot of potential to be a success. The first half gave the impression it would be. But then the wheels fell off and the film just played out with no sense of tension, drama, or payoff in the end. Barrett commented on how the production of this film was rushed to get it out this Summer before next year’s The Avengers — that sums up the lack of refinement. The most surprising thing is that a top tier critic like Ebert gave this film 3 stars, and the movie has a 71% approval on Rotten Tomatoes. But, I can’t say the news knocked me off my feet as I disliked an alarming Rotten Tomatoes success, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II (96% approval!). I don’t understand how critics, the usual no fun police, are not hating on this film for not trying to be creative from a storytelling standpoint.

What Should You Do? If you love Captain America (Kevin Wieken), you will probably get more out of this than I did. So see it. As for everyone else, it could be worth your time and money, but don’t be surprised if you walk out feeling this is a crappier version of better action movies you’ve seen a hundred times before.

Follow Matthew on Twitter: @matthewdeery