Superheroes have had a long history of being adapted for live-action movies and TV shows. That history shows a clear evolution path from the crudeness of the old theater serials to the sophistication of The Dark Knight or Iron Man. It more or less follows the evolution of the respect for comic books as an art form by the mainstream media.
No character may turn out more symbolic of that evolution than Captain America.
Even the biggest superheroes have had embarrassments in that field, such as Batman & Robin or Superman IV. For whatever reasons, in spite of his longevity, of being one of the most beloved and recognizable superheroes, our poor Cap has had nothing but a seemingly endless parade – no pun intended – of indignities. Joe Johnston has a lot of fan and audience expectations to satisfy with his upcoming movie, but topping his predecessors is about as easy as Lindsay Lohan. I took a trip down memory lane - that was more like taking a bullet for the team -, so here´s my take at past live-action versions of Cap and how they evolved:
THE 1944 REPUBLIC PICTURES SERIAL – Where do we even start on this one? First of all, Cap´s secret identity´s not even Steve Rogers, but Grant Gardner – they wanted a Clark Kent kinda ring to it, I suppose. Here he´s a crimefighting vigilante who daytimes as a district attorney – hey, kinda anticipated Daredevil! You´re mad about Cap having a gun in the new movie? Not only he has a gun and kills, but the shield is nowhere to be seen. As shoestring as the budgets were for those things, though, that was probably a good thing cuz chances are they´d have used those old-timey garbage can caps.
Although we were still in WWII, Cap doesn´t fight spies or any kind of war enemies, just some museum curador who developed a mind-controlling McGuffin.
All around, the serial was a lot like the others from this period, with the cliffhangers, the crudely choreographed fights, the costume store suits, the wooden acting, the special effects that would embarrass Plan 9, etc. It comes to show how little regard Hollywood studios had for that kinda material at the time, as opposed to desperately clinging to it to survive against the Earth-shattering poignance of Fat Jedi Kid Meets Dramatic Prairie Dog.
THE 1979 TV MOVIE – I was actually quite psyched about this one when I first saw it, but hey, I was 8 or 9 at most, so cut me some slack – and it actually got me into reading Captain America comics, so there you go.
It also takes a lot of liberties with the comic books, although in this case they´re – slightly – more understandable. They couldn´t afford making it a period piece – that was tried with wonder Woman, but abandoned pretty early. So, here Steve Rogers is a former marine, and son of the guy who developed Project Rebirth. You don´t see him go from wimp to buff either, but well, at the time they didn´t have the technology that scrawny-ed Chris Evans, and TV movies usually have VERY tight production schedules.
The annoying thing is Rogers not only has no interest in collaborating with his father´s research, he comes off more like a surfer/biker dude than a former marine, or hero, or whatever. Comic book accuracy aside, the most shameful aspect of this must be the casting of Reb Brown as Steve Rogers/Captain America, an actor so bland-looking I´d have second thoughts about casting him as corpse # 3 on CSI. That´s not to mention a Mike Tyson-level disproportion between the guy´s height and physique and his voice.
It´d be necessary to develop a software just to find all the logic problems in this piece. It starts right at the beginning with one of the most unnecessarily elaborate plans to fake a car accident ever – what had happened to classics like cut the breaks or bump the guy off the road? All that for a wimpy crash that barely made a scratch on the hero. They really didn´t have to try so hard, cuz not long after that Rogers walks into a ridiculously obvious trap. The bad guy´s an oil company owner who realizes the smartest way for him to get even richer is to detonate a neutrons bomb. Buy a fast food chain, dude, in a few more decades the whole country will take oil out of their tanks and fill their bodies with grease instead.
You don´t like the straps on Cap´s movie costume? How about a costume where the stripes look like Cap made a vest out of a barbershop quartet singer shirt? Or a shield that looks made of glass? Or biker goggles for a mask? Granted, he wears it in only two scenes, then gets a more accurate costume at the very end. And hey, he drew his own costume before Spider-Man did!
It wasn´t all bad, though. The tone was never self-parodic, the story can even engage during the parts that make even a lick of sense, and some of the stunts were actually pretty good for a 1979 TV film – wasn´t it great when it was a lot harder to fake a stunt? The theme was pretty catchy. As a kid, I loved the idea of the superhero on a souped up motorcycle jumping into action out of his van. And comics accuracy be damned for once, I still do.
THE 1990 MOVIE – The much-maligned 1990 movie is actually the most accurate to the comics that´been released so far. And for some miracle it doesn´t make it a much better movie. I only saw the straight-to-video version, but there´s no director´s cut in the world that can turn this into a masterpiece, or even a good movie.
It gets the comic book origin facts mostly right. It starts at WWII, Steve is a weak – although tall – guy who volunteers on a secret experiment that turns him into the pinnacle of human physicality, he ends up on a rocket, gets frozen and wakes up in modern – back then – times.
Even so, it makes some appaling choices. Why the hell does it focus on Italian fascists instead of German Nazis, including Red Skull? Italy offered an absolutely irresistible tax incentive for the crew to shoot there, and portray them as ruthless evil war-mongers and conspirators? Even with the economy, the Skull mask looks like they melted a huge mannequin´s head. Then, decades later, we learn that he went through a lot of plastic surgeries that made him look almost kinda normal – one can assume all those surgeons thought the demonic eyebrow looked “charming”.
Plot nonsense was pretty high on this one too, one good example at a pivotal scene. Cap is about to be skyrocketed, he grabs the Skull´s hand, which by itself is a stretch, and then RS has a knife and cuts HIS OWN HAND off? The fascists who kidnapped him as a kid for his “superior intelligence” must have become the laughing stock of the Axis, right before it crumbled.
The threat of the piece is, a group that´s basically the Stonecutters from The Simpsons, minus the cool song, wants to enslave the president with a chip cuz he insists on putting the environment above the economy, like, you know, US presidents tend to do.
If that´s possible, the movie feels like it has even less action than the 1979 one, although at least Cap gets a couple fight scenes – the first one, and only one for a loong time, has Cap completely humiliated and looking like he can´t throw a punch right. As silly as the 1979 one was, it had a few less moments where my mind started wandering. The girls were annoying in both, but at least the 1979 cared to do a swimsuit scene.
On the plus side, Matt Salinger was, at that point, the best Cap of the bunch, given that his competition was, you know, the Christian Bale and Robert Downey Jr. of the fourties and seventies, respectively. But seriously, for one thing he had by far the best Cap voice, arguably better than the Evans one. Even sounds kinda like the current Avengers EMH Cap´s voice actor, Brian Bloom. One can wonder what a fine Cap he could have been with better material.
However, small as it was, there was still some evolution in the treatment of the source material from one to the other, which leads us to the promising present. Come july 22, you can b**** all you like about straps, or baggy suit, or whatever it is that becomes pages and pages of colorful philosophical discussions on the internet. But one thing is for sure, if Captain America: The First Avenger turns out to be good or even great. No other superhero has been more relentlessly and unjustly embarrassed by live-action versions, and no one deserves vindication more.