Trailer:
“His name is Steve Rogers, but to the rest of the world he is just codename Captain America!”
Oh Marvel, how little effort you put into your films before the late 90’s. At this point Marvel was only helping to strengthen DC position as the overwhelmingly main cornerstone of comic book filmmaking before the new millennium. With such “classics” as Howard the Duck and Punisher under their belt, Marvel decided to put out at least one more stinker.
Captain America was one of Marvel’s early hit characters, and helped bring the company to the level of recognition that DC enjoyed. Perhaps perpetuated by the feeling of patriotism at the time of his release, Captain America became a 40’s and 50’s pulp culture icon and a symbol of the American way. The film itself remains true to the model but in the more modern cynical times, it’s half hashed nature only creates a hammy, laughable atmosphere.
The film opens prior to WWII where we see a young red skull ripped from his family and taken away by scientists. Apparently their goal is to use his “superior intellect” for their super soldier program. I’m not sure why intelligence was such a big factor here. Really they were just trying to create a powerful soldier, but we'll just go with it because the film tells us to.
The creator of the formula, a woman by the name of Dr. Vasselli disapproves of the use of a child and refuses to take part in the procedure, resulting in the Red Skull’s test going awry and contributing to the boys mutation and insanity. After that Dr. Vasselli defects to the United Stated to help in their “Project Rebirth”.
After all that we get to Steve Rogers, who in this film is not depicted as a small sickly man, but rather just some buff dude with a limp. Though this can be contributed more to technological limitations. He does not seek out the military, rather they seek out him. I thought this took away a lot from Rogers character and you never really get any extreme sense of patriotism from him.
He becomes the first test candidate for project rebirth and the process gives him “the strength of 100 men”, oddly enough you never see this abnormal strength anywhere. In fact Captain America never does anything that a normal man couldn’t, besides throwing his overly glorified Frisbee.
Dr. Vasselli is directly killed after the procedure. Apparently everything she did was out of memory and that’s why it can never be replicated and why Captain America will be the only one to see combat. How do they spend this one precious man? They send him into enemy territory without any help or backup. This result in him meeting face to face with the Red Skull and ending tied up on a rocket that will destroy the white house. Fortunately the Captain somehow manages to steer the rocket into Alaska, ending up frozen.
The film is very quick to get out of the 40’s. Reawaken years later Captain America is begged by the US army to help take down the Red Skull, who has taken the president of the United States captive. The sinister villain intends to plant a mind control device in his brain. Yes we have gotten to that cliche plot point now. From there we get to watch all of Captain America’s boring exploits unfold.
The acting in the film is simply atrocious. No money was spent on actors so I’m not sure what happened to their budget. It certainly didn’t go into the cheap set designs and effects. I think we might secretly having a “The Producers” scam going on here. I think the Hulk and Thor television series had better production value. This mediocre look and wooden action is what brought the film down more than anything else.
Captain America also could not be more boring of a character than how they portrayed him here. Steve Rogers is just a flawless Gary Stu golden boy even before he gets superpowers. He has no character, and even worse no wit, with such slick phrases as “holy macarole” and “Gee Wiz”. Was he a stand in for Robin at some point? He is only made sillier by the ridiculous costume, which may be the classic Captain America look, but is about the quality of what you’d find in a Halloween selection. Their explanation for it was Vasselli made it and loved the red white and blue....but she defected only a few years ago and wasn't America.
His arch nemeses, the Red Skull, at least looked far better. He appeared menacing even if the actor played the roll overly hammy with an unconvincing accent. Although it seems even the makeup artists were feeling lazy as they ditched the “red” aspect of the skull early on, using a cop out explanation that he got plastic surgery. The character of the Red Skull himself is simply distilled down to a generic mobster who runs a large crime syndicate. Once again they turn an interesting character into a boring stereotype.
The only real redeeming quality of the film was in a short segment near the middle where Steve Rogers arrives in the modern day and must deal with how the world has changed and everyone he knew is either dead or old. The best part is when he is running across the beach and sees women walking around in bikinis. But at this point all my sympathy for him was gone…I kid of coarse….but at the same time I don’t.
So in the end there is a reason that Captain America did not get the large theatrical release it anticipated. Cliché, horribly acted, and feeling almost like a propaganda film at times, Marvel hits an all time low here. And that is saying a lot.
FINAL RATING: 1/10- (10%)
Previous Day 21: Robocop 2-
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