Captain America

Captain America, I suppose, has to be admired on some basic level, as all film with a certain degree of competence deserve to be admired, in which one can appreciate the acting, the direction, the visual aesthetic and the action. It’s a complete package with the bow on top. Nothing less and not much more either.

I guess one can primarily admire it for it’s having a real human character at the centre of it. Most comic book movies these days are animated video games with human faces that pop up amidst the computer generated effects. Captain America has a lot of that kind of stuff too but it also has a little comedy and a little heart as well. It has, above all, a hero who provides a human centre for the story; one who you could get behind. Not enough to put it in line with Iron Man or The Dark Knight to be sure, but enough to safely say, without much irony, that it’s better than, say, the Transformers movies. Faint praise is still praise, no?

For those who don’t know, Captain America is about Steve Rogers (Chris Evens) a small awkward kid who wants nothing more than to serve in the army and fight for his country in the war. He enlists under several different names but with a list of ailments a mile long is denied at all of them. The kid has guts and heart though and isn’t afraid to take a back alley beating or two from the local bully when need be.

Trying to enlist one final time at the World Fair where Howard “father of Tony” Stark (Dominic Cooper) unveils his first hover car, Rogers is discovered by Dr. Erskine (Stanely Tucci), a German scientist who fled to America away from Johann Schmidt aka Red Skull (Hugo Weaving), a ruthless Nazi who believes he can harness the power from some glowing cube in order to rise above Hitler and win the war.

Erskine, wanting to use this unexplained power for good, selects Rogers as a test subject much to the cynicism of Colonal Chester Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones doing Tommy Lee Jones) and the admiration of potential love interest Peggy Carter (Haley Atwell). Regardless, once injected with this mysterious power, Rogers exits the experiment a muscle bound hunk with amazing physical power.

He is first put to use as an American hero selling war bounds but once he learns that his friend has been captured behind enemy lines and presumed dead, Captain America single handily goes behind enemy lines, infiltrates Red Skull's operation, saves the men and sends Red Skull into a rage.
All of this is all fine and dandy and made with style and humour. Director Joe Johnson does a good job of creating the look and feel of an old newspaper serial of the time and he takes special care of ensuring that there is a human story amidst all the special effects and the action.

However, if there is any problem with this concept it is that, while stacked up against other Marvel comic book films that have defined the genre such as Spider-Man or Iron Man, Captain America simply doesn’t have much personality. Evans in the lead role doesn’t have the charisma or charm to pull off Rogers' sweet naivety even after he becomes Captain America, and Weaving, a great character actor in his own right, isn’t given the kind of depth that goes into making a great villain, especially one as iconic as Red Skull.

And that’s Captain America: a film that is, in these summers of excess, better than most, but not nearly enough to achieve anything close to memorable. Comic book movies used to be based on relatable characters with human traits put into a narrative that doesn’t cross real life, but runs in such a way parallel to it that it’s pointed yet simple messages can jump across the divide and connect with us. Captain America sets up all the elements to get the first thing right but doesn’t come close enough to approaching the second. Too bad.

Greatest Movies That Made Going to the Movies Suck #25- Spider-Man

Darren Appears Courtesy of The MOvie Blog

Let me pitch you a scene. It's early 2002. There's a whole rank of huge blockbusters looming. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers; Star Wars: Episode II; Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets; Austin Powers in Goldmember; Men in Black II; Ice Age. And then there's a strange one. Spider-Man, from that guy who made The Evil Dead. Really? Sure, Richard Donner's Superman was great, but that was decades ago. Joel Schumacher had killed the Batman franchise only a few years back. That Bryan Singer fella had proved he wasn't a one-hit wonder with X-Men, but it wasn't exactly box office gold (only the eighth biggest film of 2000). Comic book movies were a strange proposition - transitioning the characters to the big screen just didn't work naturally. Somethings aren't meant to be adapted.

Somehow, Spider-Man worked. Really worked. Sam Raimi somehow found himself the director of the most successful box office property of 2002. It trumped all the movies I listed above - even beating Lord of the Rings by $64m domestically. I think everyone was a bit surprised. I know I was, certainly.

Of course, some things come with box office success naturally. Sequels, for example. Spider-Man offered two huge sequels. One was a classic of the genre, the other an example of the bloated self-importance that came with success. Even as you read this a reboot is in the works. It's somewhat fitting that Spider-Man, heralding (as it did) the golden age of superhero films, should be the first of this particular age of movies to be rebooted - (500) Days of Summer director Marc Webb is handling a reboot due in 2012, a decade after the original arrived.

But most successful movies inspire more than just sequels. They shape the movie industry itself. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all. Queue knock-offs. Don't get me wrong, I'm not decrying the whole era of superhero movies that Spider-Man gave us. I enjoyed a fair amount of these movies. Batman Begins and The Dark Knight are great movies, regardless of genre. I'm intrigued by the notion of the emerging shared "Marvel universe" heralded by Iron Man.

However, the problem is that rather than inspiring a genre, it seems to have led to its dominance. Did we really need a Ghost Rider film? Or two Punisher films in so many years? Watchmen offers perhaps the best example of the danger of this "film every possible comic book" mentality - Alan Moore's masterpiece is simply nigh impossible to adapt to film. Why couldn't we leave it as simply a literary classic?

Arguably the bigger problem is that rather than promoting adaptations from an emerging medium (as graphic story telling - if you'll allow me some pretension - is still in the process of evolving and growing) is that it codified exactly what to expect from these adaptations. Rather than proving that adaptations from the medium could encompass films like A History of Violence, Ghost World and The Road to Perdition, the word "comic book movie" became synonymous with "superhero movie". One might suggest that it's a problem with comic books in general, the dominance of superheroes within that medium, but Hollywood seems intent to convince audience members that the only films that come from the graphic medium are those featuring acrobats in tights. Where are our high-profile adaptations of Y: The Last Man or Asterios Polyp, sold to audiences as "based on the acclaimed graphic novels"? You can be sure that if Hollywood does get around to adapting them, they'll downplay the origins, and cinema-goers will go on believing that comic books are those ones featuring superheroes.

But all this comes from the emergence of the superhero movie in general, and could arguably be traced back to X-Men or even Superman. What precisely did Spider-Man do that was so bad? I think I can answer that question by identifying a single film: Daredevil. Daredevil is a fascinating comic book character - one who has arguably had the most consistent ten-year-run in modern comics under Brian Michael Bendis and Ed Brubaker - and one that is relatively unique. He's a character whose central premise is one of guilt and failure - he is anchored in angst, driven by the simple fact that he keeps getting knocked down by the world and has to keep rebuilding himself (he's had more than a couple mental breakdowns, all entirely deserved - to be honest). However, the movie isn't at all interested in this fascinating angle of the character. Instead, it looks like Fox pointed to Spider-Man, said "We want something like that" and locked a writer in the room. The result is a mess of a movie, which is ruined by stuntwork, camera work and storytelling clearly inspired by Raimi's take on Spider-Man.

That's the real damage of a huge movie like Spider-Man. It provided an outline of what a superhero movie should look like. As a result, movies like The Fantastic Four and Daredevil and others couldn't help but feel like cheap knock-offs of everyone's favourite webslinger, rather than adaptations of properties beloved for their own reasons. In fairness, it looks like The Dark Knight may be doing the same thing, with studios now demanding "darker and edgier" takes on heroes like The Green Hornet or Captain Marvel, rather than seeking each character's own voice.

Still, I'm not sure I'd take it back. We got two good movies out of Spider-Man and an above-average string of summer blockbusters. It's just hard not to rewatch Sam Raimi's original works without thinking back on it.