Category Archives: Reviews
Stop the Rise of the Planet of the Apes, I Want to Get Off
Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the new prequel/reboot to the classic 60s/70s franchise, is the most superfluous movie I’ve seen this summer. There are no surprises, nothing shocking and no reason to care about the movie after the closing credits. But it’s fun while it lasts. The tale of Caesar, the first super-intelligent chimp, is an enjoyable tale as he goes from baby to revolutionary. And the CGI is fantastic. At no point do the entirely computer-generated apes look cartoony or fake.
You really root for the apes as they wage apocalyptic war against all of humanity.
He knows what you did
Quite honestly, this is the apes’ movie. There is a human story, starring James Franco, John Lithgow and hottie Freida Pinto, but that’s just so much filler that it doesn’t matter. Franco’s a scientist who’s developed a cure for Alzheimer’s, and this is the wonder drug that makes chimps smart. Caesar is the son of one of the test chimps, so he’s born with the drug in his genes. Franco raises Caesar in secret alongside his Alzheimer’s-inflicted father, who is cured by the drug.
Eventually Caesar goes through his grumpy teenage years, and one bad incident gets him taken away from Franco and locked up in a primate reserve. The pricks working at the reserve treat Caesar like shit, which prompts him to start rallying the rest of the apes to the cause of freedom. There’s also an orangutan who knows the same chimp sign language, and he and Caesar chat about stuff, like the circus and how apes are actually kind of stupid. So Caesar breaks out, steals some of Franco’s upgraded Cure 2.0 and uses it to make the reserve apes super smart as well. And Caesar becomes even smarter. So smart that he challenges the prick humans to a fight…and that’s just the beginning.
Soon he has a whole army of super smart apes and they tear San Francisco a new one.
Viva la revolution!
The Alzheimer’s cure stuff with James Franco is just a means to an end. He has a girlfriend and a boss, as well as some extraneous co-workers, but they’re only ever half-developed and uninteresting. Only Franco serves any real purpose, and that’s only as an emotional foil for Caesar. Once Caesar becomes leader of the ape resistance movement, the film keeps teasing us with the only emotional moment it has left: Franco confronting his out-of-control ‘son’. That pay-off is fun, but so open-ended as to be anti-climactic. I won’t spoil it, but suffice to say this movie doesn’t end so much as just dramatically stop.
The humans, they do nothing!
But forget all of that. The reason to see this movie is the reason they made this movie: awesome ape-tastic action. Andy Serkis, the guy who did motion-capture for both Gollum and King Kong, is back as Caesar and he does a fantastic job! As I said before, the CGI is brilliant. You can really see the intelligence in Caesar’s eyes. He can’t talk, so all of his plotting and planning is conveyed through the body language of his eyes. It’s at times adorable, and at other times it’s chilling. But you never hate or dislike Caesar. He’s the hero of this movie, and every chilling glance from his calculating eyes is exciting. The pricks at the primate reserve really are bastards, and the clever ways that Caesar plots against them are fun to watch.
When he finally does get his revenge on the pricks, it’s the most exciting moment in the film.
Then it builds to even more excitement as the super smart apes get out and go on a rampage through the streets of San Francisco. They free the other test chimps at Franco’s lab, as well as the chimps at the zoo. They build their army and basically cause a lot of mayhem. The cops and other agencies are too slow to react, so the apes get their victories. It all builds to an impressive battle on the Golden Gate Bridge. One has to ask how the apes would defeat humans that have machine guns and SWAT gear; well the apes do it with style!
But not with this much style
I never saw the original Planet of the Apes movies, so I have no idea if this film ‘fits’ with the franchise ‘continuity’. It definitely ignores Tim Burton’s 2001 reboot (which I did see). But you don’t need to know anything about those films to enjoy this one. I’d like to think that a lot of the basics about the original Planet of the Apes are well known to society, and knowing some of those details let you appreciate the various Easter Eggs thrown into this film. Though when they get around to saying the famous, ‘Get your paws off me, you dirty ape’ line, it’s a little cheesy. But the full scene with all the context is utterly fantastic.
So little bits like that add to the fun of the film.
And that’s the only real reason to see Rise of the Planet of the Apes: to have fun. It’s an enjoyable ride, and thankfully not in3D. Just don’t go in expecting any sort of masterpiece. The only thing you should expect is awesome ape action!
Ellen Page is the World’s Greatest Kid Sidekick
I just finished watching the movie Super starring Rainn Wilson and Ellen Page, and it was so mind-shockingly amazing that I just have to tell the world! As far as I can tell, this movie flew under the world’s radar with a weak April 3 opening on only 11 theaters (according to IMDB.com). It’s one of those independent films clearly riffing off of Kick-Ass, about a normal guy who dresses up as his own superhero to fight crime (among other agendas). But forget Kick-Ass, forget Defendor; Super is the new benchmark in awesomeness!
All thanks to Ellen Page as the ballsiest, most badass kid sidekick ever!
Though Rainn Wilson definitely gets some credit as the hero, Crimson Bolt. But once Boltie arrives on screen, the movie is taken to a whole new level.
She loves her costume; she made it herself
I don’t want to spoil too much of this movie because there are a lot of surprises and shocking moments that need to be seen to be believed. And I hope some of you rush right out and rent or stream this movie immediately after reading my review. You should, it’s that damn good. Like those other movies, Super treats the idea of a normal guy dressing up in a tight costume to fight crime seriously. This may be a dark comedy, if even a comedy, but the idea itself isn’t mocked or laughed at. This isn’t campy, it’s crazy. There are real questions of insanity and people off their nut in this film. Those ideas aren’t explored too deeply by the film itself, but you know that you’re not watching the boy scout Superman here. You’re watching crazy people do crazy things in the name of good.
The story is about Frank D’Arbo, played by Rainn Wilson, of The Office. He’s happily married, but his former-addict wife has started getting back into drugs and hanging out with the wrong people. Frank finds himself unable to stop it until it’s too late, and his wife Sarah, played by Liv Tyler, runs off into the arms of Jacques, played by Kevin Bacon. That guy has enjoyed a summer of playing comic book super-villains, it seems. Anyway, Frank storms after Jacques like a man in love, and we learn that Sarah may be a little too coked out to really know what she’s doing or where she even is. But Jacques has the goons and the power, so Frank can’t get near his wife.
So obviously he becomes a superhero.
The Crimson Bolt!
The idea comes to him through several different sources: visions from God, a religious TV show about a campy, Christian-themed superhero and the comic book knowledge of local comic store employee Libby (Ellen Page). Frank makes his own costume and takes it out for a test run, hiding behind dumpsters until he sees a drug deal going down. He then just straight up tackles the dealer and tries to wrestle with him, but the dealer gets up, fights back with a trash can lid and Frank runs off. He goes to Libby for help and information about superheroes without powers who use weapons. She fills him on on Batman, Green Arrow and more, and so Frank decides to start smacking people in the head with a big monkey wrench.
Wrench!
One hilarious montage later, and Crimson Bolt is all over the news for beating up drug dealers, child molesters, purse snatchers and more. The cops don’t like him, of course, but the public has started to like him. Frank tries to go after Jacques and his goons, but they have guns. They recognize him and chase him off. He needs help, so he turns to Libby, who just so happens to have figured out that the guy who came into her store asking about superheroes and weapons is the guy who is out in the street hitting people with a wrench! Libby has made her own costume and wants to help him. Frank is reluctant at first, but he eventually comes around.
And then the movie is kicked into a dark, hilariously brutal insane-o-fest the likes of which rarely grace the mainstream cinemas. If you thought the ending to Kick-Ass was awesome, then you will absolutely love the ending to Super, as Crimson Bolt and Boltie gear up to take on Jacques and his goons. It’s amazingly gory and completely hardcore, but done in that OK Tarantino sort of way. Like how Inglourious Basterds was gory and hardcore, but not grotesquely so.
Ellen Page is amazing in this film. She was fun in Juno and cool in X-Men 3, but here she takes her adorable, petite personality and turns it up to 11. And it all comes out when she becomes Boltie.
Rainn Wilson has that effect on women
It’s part of that psychological drama I mentioned earlier. At the start of the movie, Libby is a friendly, nerdy sort of girl who really likes working in the comic book store. Once her eyes are opened to the ballsiness of the Crimson Bolt, let alone becomes Boltie, her world and her mind change. It’s like how Peter Parker becomes a jabbering, funny sort of quipster when he becomes Spider-Man. Libby becomes a psycho when she’s Boltie, and it’s brilliantly played by Page. She’s the best part of the movie. Her performance has to be seen to be truly enjoyed.
Rainn Wilson is also pretty darn fantastic. He’s best known, of course, as Dwight Schrute in The Office. And he’s great as Dwight. I’d always been a little worried that actors from The Office would never not be from The Office to me. Like seeing John Krasinski in a movie role. Wouldn’t it just be Jim on screen? Well Rainn Wilson definitely sheds the overpowering persona of Dwight, becoming this new character. It definitely doesn’t feel like it’s just Dwight dressed up as the Crimson Bolt. He’s loserishly charming, and I easily found myself rooting for the Crimson Bolt. Even when it seems like he’s just a crazy guy, he’s still sympathetic enough to be worthy of support.
So the two leads hit this one out of the park. Everyone else is pretty much just window dressing. Kevin Bacon stays supremely grounded as a drug-dealing kingpin, making sure the story stays as real as possible. This isn’t a superhero movie. It’s a crime movie, but one of the characters dresses up like a superhero.
Thankfully the costumes look great. They’re obviously cheaply made spandex, but the filmmakers wisely add enough seams, zippers, pads, bells and whistles to the Crimson Bolt that he doesn’t look like a loser in spandex. And Boltie’s more clean-cut costume just looks great, because spandex works on the ladies. They don’t look any more out of place than they’re supposed to. Hollywood has definitely learned an important lesson about superhero costumes over the years.
Go see Super. Right now! Seriously. The bar has been raised.
Review: Punisher #1
A new Punisher series hit the stands this week by fantastic crime-writer Greg Rucka, and it’s an awesome comic that’s light on actual Punisher, but great on atmosphere and future potential. The art is realistic and moody, the story is rich with wickedness and the Punisher comes off as the boogeyman – which is exactly the Punisher I want.
Punisher #1
Though nothing will ever compare to the glorious 11-volume Punisher masterpiece by Garth Ennis.
Still, let’s get to the new issue. We open with a military wedding (or the reception afterwards), with a happy couple and a beautiful bride. Then some violent men with guns interrupt the party, and those men have brought death and destruction with them. The wedding erupts in gunfire, shattered glass and chaos, and soon a lot of people are dead, including the groom. The bride is just hanging on, but only by a thread. The police arrive soon after to investigate.
And it’s here that we’re introduced to probably the true protagonists of this tale: NYPD detectives Walter Bolt and Oscar Clemons. The former is the young, white rookie detective, while the latter is the aged, wise black detective who just happens to look a lot like Morgan Freeman. This is an interesting tactic for the comic, to not focus on the Punisher. Frank Castle is by no means a shy guy. Plenty of comics in the past have had the Punisher at the forefront with internal monologue and everything. Perhaps we’ll still get that as the series continues, but for now we start with Bolt and Clemons. There is no internal monologue, just dialogue.
Clemons and Bolt
The two detectives do some cursory work at the crime scene and trade a little dialogue, establishing that Clemons may be getting too old for this sort of carnage, and that Bolt may still be more than a little wet behind the ears. We learn more than enough to get a handle of the two, so they will make suitable entry characters into the world of the Punisher. Because unlike other bright and colorful superheroes, Frank Castle, the Punisher, lives in the dark, grimy streets of New York City. He’s only a man (with a lot of guns), and he deals with bodies, cops, hard-boiled detectives and violent criminals. And that’s how the Punisher should be. I don’t want the Punisher fighting Doctor Doom or super-villains. He’s first and foremost a street-level vigilante, and that’s how I enjoy him.
A little background in case you’re not familiar with the Punisher. Frank Castle was a soldier in Vietnam who saw first hand the horrors of war, while receiving more than a little military and special ops training. When he returned stateside to his wife and two kids, he was looking forward to an idyllic family life – but that was not to be. While out on a picnic one day, his family was gunned down in a shootout between two rival mobs. Castle and his family had nothing to do with the mobsters, they were just collateral damage in the shootout. But Frank survived. From then on, he has used all of his military training and connections to wage a one-man-war on crime. He’s not out for revenge against those specific mobsters, he’s out to punish any and all criminals who break the law.
He’s the ghost story that mobsters tell their children.
Like this...He's almost spectral, but still human
Moving on, Det. Clemons is ready to interview some of the survivors, but Bolt gets a suspicious text message about a drop spot. We cut to a subway terminal, where a nervous Bolt is sitting on a bench next to an envelope. We catch a glimpse of a suspiciously shadowed man in a black trenchcoat passing through the crowd, and then we get a brief glimpse of an underground bunker armed to the teeth. That envelope contained crime scene photos of the wedding. Looks like Bolt is passing information on to the Punisher.
The next scene is at a bar, where violent men who invaded the wedding are kicking back with a celebratory drink. They’re having fun in the crowded bar. Then the lights go out. Then people start dying. The men pull out their own guns, but they dare not shoot because they’ll only hit each other. They group up, but it doesn’t help. More blood. More bodies. Like a wraith, the Punisher moves through the crowd taking them out one-by-one until only the leader is left. And that’s when we get our first real look at the Punisher in this comic.
Bad. Ass.
Punisher goes to shoot the leader in the head, but he’s out of bullets. So the Punisher lets him live and walks off. Ideally he has something else in mind for this guy.
And that’s it. That’s where the story ends. It’s tragically short. We do get a back-up feature told in the style of a police interrogation/interview. It’s a flashback to how Bolt met the Punisher back when he was a vice cop making drug busts. He and his undercover partner were at the scene of a drug deal, in some sort of courtyard. There were also kids around. Something at the bust goes belly up and it becomes obvious that the bullets are about to fly. Bolt, still young, is scared out of his mind. His partner is in the middle of it, as are the kids. What’s he going to do?
Bolt doesn’t have to decide. A gloved hand grabs his mouth while the other hand pulls the fire alarm to get the kids out. Then the bullets do start flying, and the Punisher steps out. He pushes Bolt back and draws his weapon, returning fire. The Punisher obliterates these drug dealers, killing them with military-like precision. Bolt’s partner dies, but all the bad guys are dead and the kids are safe. Back at the station, Bolt gets all the credit. It’s hard to tell if he’s willingly taking it, or if everyone just believes it did it all himself because the Punisher didn’t stick around to talk to the cops. Whatever happened, Bolt makes detective and is now in the pocket of the Punisher.
It’s a nice little back story setting up Bolt and the Punisher. Plus it’s much more of an action scene than the massacre in the bar. So we actually get to see the Punisher shooting and doing a damn good job of it. The Punisher is absolutely badass in this entire comic, and that’s important. A lot of superheroes seem to require a softer side, like Spider-Man. Part of the appeal of Spidey is that he’s a regular guy with foibles and problems that he has to balance alongside his superhero life. Not Frank Castle. The Punisher is at his absolute best when he doesn’t have any reservations, doesn’t have any doubt in himself or his mission. He his cold and hard and determined 100% of the way.
When Punisher isn’t the nitty, gritty hard-boiled vigilante, it can get kind of silly.
His classic costume is ludicrous. Even without the white booties.
So consider me sold on this new series. It’s got the perfect amounts of street-level violence and epic Punisher badassery, with a couple of cool detective characters to serve as foils. Greg Rucka is a fantastic author. I know him best from the DC series Gotham Central, which was about the Gotham City Police Department trying to do their jobs in a city where the criminals are homicidal clowns and Batman is expected to solve everything. That series is brilliant, and is a fine indicator that Rucka can handle the same level of characters in the Punisher. The art is by Marco Checchetto, who I’ve never heard of before. But it’s nicely realistic while also haunting. It should be a nice fit.
And one of these days I’ll tell you about the Garth Ennis run on the Punisher. It’s one of the most brilliant and amazing comic book sagas ever written, and I have all 11 volumes on my bookshelf. Here’s a taste of the Punisher’s dialogue and his badassness.
Click to enlarge
Requiem for a Comic Book; the End of Secret Six
A comic book died today.
Possibly the greatest comic book published by DC Comics in the past many years, and it has been cancelled with issue #36. Universally beloved, a critical darling and absolutely perfect page after page after page. There was no greater cast, no greater stories coming out of DC than those from the Secret Six.
Who?
These sons of bitches right here.
God speed, you sons of bitches
Catman, Deadshot, Scandal, Ragdoll, Bane, Jeannette, King Shark, Parademon, Cheshire, Black Alice and Harley Quinn for an issue or two. Yes, that’s a lot more than six, but they changed a few characters here and there. And again, you’re probably asking, ‘Who the Hell are these characters?’ It’s a reasonable question.
Read on, and I will tell you about these warrior poets, these losers among gods.
The concept of the Secret Six is very simple. Writer Gail Simone (who has written nearly every single issue this team has appeared in) created a super-villain team starring some of the lamest, most obscure characters in the DC Universe. She also made up a few, just for kicks. The first team was Catman, Deadshot, Scandal, Ragdoll, Cheshire and Parademon, and they debuted in the mini-series Villains United. That 6-issue story is the single greatest team story I have ever read. There is more heart, character and inter-team camaraderie between these six obscure nobodies than in the entire history of the Justice League, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four or anybody else. We’re talking Firefly levels of character dynamic.
And that is what makes the core of the Secret Six: heart.
The story begins with an Event Comic called Infinite Crisis, and Villains United was one of four separate mini-series that told a prologue to the main Event. Villains United focused on the massive super-villain army that Lex Luthor was building. He already had his power players, like Black Adam, Deathstroke and Talia al Ghul, and he was going about recruiting all the minor villains too. The bigger the army, the better.
Something like this...
The Secret Six are the people who turned Lex Luthor down. They all had their various reasons for doing so, with a strong focus on Catman in the beginning. Up until then, Catman had been a joke villain. Just look at his name. He’d become a punching bag for all the heroes out there. Well in Villains United we learn that Catman put the world behind him and retired to Africa, where he became a lean, mean fighting machine living among the lions on the African Savannah. And he just didn’t want to give that up for Lex Luthor.
Meanwhile, a mysterious figure named Mockingbird recruits these Six to help him disrupt Lex Luthor’s plans. He has leverage on all six of them to get them to work for him, so they do so grudgingly. Catman is the lion-like power fighter with the noble spirit and vicious dark side; Scandal is the daughter of the immortal Vandal Savage and is trying hard to make a name for herself; Ragdoll is the insane and comically loopy son of the original Ragdoll; Deadshot is the expert marksman with a nonchalant and aloof manner; Parademon is a refugee from the extradimensional nightmare planet Apokolips and Cheshire is one of the world’s deadliest assassins with her own secret agenda. The book was a long shot, and I can’t imagine anyone expected it to really work.
But the magic pen of Ms. Simone made it happen.
Famous for her work on Birds of Prey, especially with Barbara Gordon, Gail Simone is probably the most famous female writer in the comic book industry. She’s got a fantastic wit and a sense of character, and she brought it all to bear with the Secret Six. Villains United was an instant hit, though I didn’t read it until after it came out as a trade paperback. I’d heard great things on the Interwebs, so I gave it a look. I haven’t turned away since.
Going their way
Villains United made way for a second mini-series, and eventually an ongoing series launched in September 2008 to much applause. I’m serious when I say that Secret Six is universally beloved. I imagine every comic fan out there will agree that this comic, this cast of characters, is and always has been pure gold. The new series lost none of the heart but upped the adventures. Now they could have more and more stories, with new team members coming and going. Bane joined the team, breathing new life into the villain that was famous in the mid-90s for breaking Batman’s back but never did anything else. Jeanette, a new character, joined the team to add some feminine whiles and more characters came and went. The core was always Catman, Deadshot, Scandal and Ragdoll. They became a pseudo family, characters so obscure that they had no one else but came to cling to one another.
Like the various times they just went out clubbing with each other. Or when the Deadshot, Scandal and Ragdoll broke off from Bane and Jeanette to tag after Catman after he broke into a psychotic rage to track down the men who had kidnapped his infant son. And they were also at each others’ throats more often than not, but rarely was it vicious. It was just business. They were used to pointing knives at each other, they didn’t take it personally. The Secret Six existed in a world of gray mortality. Some were outright villains, some were heroic in nature and they were always sort of wondering where they fit in the great spectrum from superhero to super-villain.
The most recent stories had them going to Hell to both make peace with themselves and to recover some lost teammates.
Merchandising!
But all good things must come to an end. As I’ve written about before, DC is relaunching their entire comic book line in September. For some reason, they decided not to just bring Secret Six over into the relaunch. Hence it has been cancelled with today’s issue, #36. I don’t know what’s going to happen to most of the characters. Since Bane is going to be in The Dark Knight Returns, chances are he’s going to be getting a big push over the next year. Some of them, specifically Deadshot and King Shark, will be appearing in the new Suicide Squad book. I’ll be picking it up because it seems like it might be the spiritual successor of Secret Six.
We shall see.
Fortunately, Gail Simone will still be writing for DC, so hopefully someday she’ll be able to bring everyone back.
So how does the final issue stack up? It’s alright overall, with a couple of great moments. It’s the second half a 2-part story to finish off the series. The team recently returned from Hell, where Bane learned that his soul would go to Hell for his various crimes. However, Bane had always thought himself a noble and honorable person. He lived by a solid moral code.
Batman's back was not as solid
But now that he knows he is going to Hell no matter what he does, Bane has decided that he must truly break Batman to make his life mean anything. He has since learned about emotions and teamwork while with the Six, and he’s decided that breaking Batman’s back was just a physical set-back. To truly break the Batman, one must take out his heart, meaning his sidekicks and allies. So he recruits the Six to help him kill Red Robin, Batgirl, Commissioner Gordon and others. They go along with it because they support Bane.
The issue is littered with flashbacks, giving each character one last moment to shine. Catman and Deadshot have a chance to reflect on the friendship they just can’t acknowledge. Ragdoll just comes out and tells them to suck it up and admit they like hanging out together. Scandal gets one last romantic moment to be with the women she loves, and Jeanette gets to witness that brief happy ending. King Shark gets to eat a guy. Then they all come together for Bane’s plan, ready to support one another one last time.
However, they are double-crossed by the Penguin, who has called in enough favors that the Justice League, Teen Titans and dozens of other superheroes have converged on the Secret Six’s warehouse hideout. There’s a homeless family living in the abandoned warehouse, so the Six have not only a bargaining chip, but one last moral quandary for them to overcome. Is it OK to just kill those hostages in cold blood? Are they heroic and moral enough to let them go?
What about surrender? Batman, Superman and every other hero worth a damn has gathered against them. Why not just give up and go to prison? They’re bad guys, right? Why fight?
That's why. Honestly, this one panel is just so beautiful. It comes from the same scene in Villains United as that giant army of super-villains I posted up above. Catman, this former joke, reaches deep down within himself in this one breath of a moment and comes out fighting. Poetry, people.
So the Secret Six go out in a blaze of glory! They juice up on Bane’s Venom serum (which Bane has made a point to not use in the entirety of the run. It’s a drug, after all). They fight and hold their own against the superheroes, for a little bit at least. The Huntess gets to narrate the final fight, as all the heroes sort of recognize that this isn’t some ordinary super-villain brawl. The heroes recognize the depth, humanity and family that they’re fighting, but they don’t stop fighting. The Six are quickly defeated to be shipped off to whatever future awaits.
A final epilogue reveals that this was Bane’s plan all along. He needed to free himself from this family unit so that he could become hardcore again – but he couldn’t do it himself. He couldn’t just leave them. So he set up this plan to kill Batman’s allies, got everyone involved and he knew that the Penguin would betray them to the superheroes. He knew they would have to make a final stand.
They fought like warrior poets. They fought like Scotsmen. And they won their honor, if not their comic book.
Captain America, Fuck Yeah!
I’ve very happy to have used that Post Title, instead of something sad and silly like ‘Captain America, Fuck No!’ Because the Captain America movie kicks a lot of ass and lives up to all my hopes and expectations. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a perfect movie. Yes, Cap himself was fantastic, his supporting cast was great, Red Skull was badass… it was the movie itself that didn’t live up to the potential.
That is to say, it didn’t live up to the potential of the fan-made trailer that spliced Captain America with the song ‘America, Fuck Yeah’ from Team America: World Police.
That gets my blood pumping!
Oh the glory that could have been. While watching the scenes where Cap is kicking Nazi butt, I kept wanting the movie to play a more action-packed sort of song! I wanted to be jumping out of my seat and punching the air I was so pumped up by the Cap action! Alas, that moment never happened…probably to the benefit of those sitting around me.
Captain America: The First Avenger was a pretty awesome movie. It was an origin story, but thankfully Cap’s origin has a lot more story to go with it than most. The journey from skinny little nobody to war hero is a cool tale, and they don’t make it hokey or lame at all. In fact, the first half is the best part of the movie. Stanley Tucci is amazing as Professor Erskine, and the few scenes he gets with Steve are well-played and very touching. They really develop a bond during the first half of the movie, you really get a sense of the importance of Erskine’s project, and why he wants Steve for the job. The first half of the movie is the better half.
And thankfully in the second half, the moviemakers didn’t skimp on the war. I knew going into this film, back when it was first announced, that they essentially had to make Saving Private Ryan with a superhero at the center, and they did. It wasn’t as gritty and realistic as Saving Private Ryan, but it was a real war movie with realistic soldiers and the hardships of war. Granted, it was a little stylized, but not campy or overplayed. Everything stayed grounded, which was an absolute must for this movie.
The Captain is ready to kick ass
The movie nailed Cap perfectly. The skinny guy sections are a little weird, but they’re not impossible to get over to enjoy the movie. Like I said, the beginning is the best part. You really buy into the poor guy’s desire to be a soldier, to do his part. You feel for him. When he signs up with Erskine and proves his worth in boot camp, it’s a great feeling. You even sort of get behind him during the silly USO show section. It works for the movie, but poor Steve. When he becomes Captain America, he stays that loveable, friendly, nice guy. He’s courageous and strong-willed, but he’s not a jerk or arrogant. He does what’s right, and that’s a good thing.
Thank God he never spends any time wallowing in self-pity like the Green Lantern. Cap never questions himself or his power, he gets right in Nazi face and kicks some ass. He’s a hero from beginning to end.
Cap also has a great supporting cast. Top notch all around. Bucky is a blast. Recent issues of the Captain America comic gave Bucky a much needed upgrade. They retconned his tale from being just a colorful boy sidekick to actually being a military operative. Bucky was given skills as a scout and as a killer. That’s the Bucky that appears in this movie. He’ s Cap’s childhood pal turned soldier, and they bump into each other again in the war. Bucky is tough and cool, just like a soldier. He’s not at all the acrobatic kid sidekick. This movie shows the world exactly how to make a sidekick work in a comic book movie.
Being a sidekick knocks you for a loop
The Howling Commandos appear, but they’re little more than recognizable soldiers in the background. But that’s all they need to be. Too many characters would flood the movie. So they do just enough so that you root for them, but not enough to be a bother – perfect. As I said before, Erskine is fantastic. Tommy Lee Jones as the Army guy is phenomenal. He’s gruff and he’s funny, getting all the best one-liners. I’m glad he stays for the whole movie. Peggy Carter is a suitable love interest. She’s fun and firm, and not at all the damsel in distress. The romance is easy to feel. It’s rather sad how it ends, but I wasn’t brought to tears by it like the movie probably wanted.
As the villain, the Red Skull is a lot of fun. He’s not over the top and he’s suitably creepy. I kind of preferred him when he had the human face. The Red Skull makeup looked both realistic and fake at the same time. Hugo Weaving gave the character some wit. He wasn’t cracking jokes, but he had a certain style to him that I liked. He served his villainous duties well. Arnim Zola was fun too! A nice sort of cameo. He played a good henchman. I was a little disappointed, though, in the lack of Nazis. Cap and his group only went after Hydra. Sure they were a branch of the Nazis, but they were Hydra. Which means that Capt’s entire WWII career had him fighting Hydra, not the Nazis. That kind of sucks.
We don't need no stinkin' Furher!
So this brings me to what didn’t work in the movie – the editing. This is a weird claim to make, but hopefully I can explain how I feel. The movie is fine, it’s better than fine. It’s a good movie. The characters are great, the story is great, the action and set pieces are great – but the movie never seems to live up to the potential that it sets for itself. It never punches through that last barrier to being a truly spectacular and awesome movie. As we neared the end, it felt like the movie had barely even begun. The climax didn’t feel like a climax, it didn’t feel epic enough. It was everything I wanted in a Captain America movie, yet I kept thinking that I wanted more.
And for this I blame the editing. Scenes weren’t allowed to stretch or get comfortable. They cut too quickly to the next scene, the next moment, even the next line. There was a line from Erskine in the trailer, “Stay who you are: not just a soldier, but a good man.” For some reason, both the trailer and the movie cut between the words ‘good’ and ‘man’. It’s a great line, and it’s read brilliantly by Tucci, but the movie drops the ball by editing the line! Let the line flow!
Then when they introduce Cap’s new costume, it’s done in a poorly made montage. Rather than a cool reveal, he just sort of starts walking around in it as part of a montage set to terrible montage music. You need good, strong, catchy music for a montage. This one just felt awkward as Cap and his pals destroyed some Hydra bases. Parts of it looked cool, but it lacked a full, exciting feeling. The whole movie kind of did.
Oh, and I didn’t like the ending. Waking up in the present day, running into Time Square and meeting Nick Fury was far, far too rushed. They didn’t even explain that he was frozen in the ice all that time. That whole scene should have been given a lot more time to grow. It should have been fleshed out a lot more.
Captain America: The First Avenger was good, but it wasn’t fist-pumping, edge of my seat good. I kind of wanted to fist-pump.
Henchman-4-Hire 