I would expect me to put out more on this later, but Kristen and I are starting to watch through the Marvel Cinematic Universe again, and we’re doing so in chronological order, as it is in the films. So Captain America: First Avenger takes place during World War II and is the spot to start, oddly enough, followed by one of the most recent films Captain Marvel, which we’ll probably watch this weekend.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a lot of these films, and Captain America: First Avenger has been quite a while as well. So how did it stack up against what I had remembered and where it was in my MCU Movie Rankings that I did after Endgame came out. Obviously, I need to rewatch everything again to see if anything else is going to shift around, but the quick summary is that I enjoyed watching Captain America: First Avenger again. I don’t think it’s without it’s flaws and compared to the origins of Iron Man and Thor, I think that it’s weaker. There will be spoilers, but this movie has been out for a long time.

I think that this movie starts off strong. I like the story of Steve Rogers and how he becomes Captain America. The whole time he’s applying for army, you feel for him, and you get a good idea of how loyal he is and how strong his convictions are. And then getting stuck encouraging people to buy bonds feels like something that would legitimately happen. I think the only part of the story to that point that feels a bit odd is the Hydra Agent blowing up everything, mainly I feel like that part of the opening of the movie was a bit rushed. Beyond that though, up through rescuing Bucky and the others is great. Unfortunately the movie starts to fall apart for me there.

What really makes it feel off is the montage sequence. If you don’t remember, it’s a sequence where Captain America and the Howling Commandos, that’s what the group run by Dum Dum Dugan is called, are just running around and punching Hydra Agents again and again. For a montage sequence to work well, you need to feel like the character is progressing towards a goal or learning something, and in this case, the montage doesn’t really provide that. You’re supposed to be getting the idea that they are cornering the Red Skull, but it doesn’t feel that way. It’s just punching some anonymous bad guys and cheering because Captain America is a hero who is beating up the bad guys. This could be a bit of nod to the fact that he punched an anonymous Hitler over and over again with the War Bond shows he was putting on, but it didn’t feel that way, it just felt like rah rah hero fighting without any purpose to it.

That’s where it starts to come apart for me, and then it continues with the actual getting to the Red Skull. Again too much punching of anonymous bad guys. Then getting captured and then getting rescued. I think the issue I have is less about that, but instead because you don’t feel like by the end of the montage that the Red Skull is much of a threat at all. I mean, we all knew that Captain America was going to win anyways, but they had done a decent job building Red Skull early in the movie, but at the end, you feel almost like he’s just another anonymous bad guy for Captain America to beat up.

Now, all of this seems like a lot of a knock on the movie. And I do think it makes it one of the weaker movies, but it’s easy to pick out what you don’t like in the film. I do want to go back and talk some things that I really want to point out how good they are. Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter works so well, and you feel like she has feelings for Steve Rogers, more so after he’s Captain America and not tiny and scrawny, but she clearly respected him and liked his attitude better than any of the other large guys who they were training, and she liked the fact that his personality didn’t change. Stanley Tucci and Tommy Lee Jones were also good in their roles. I wish we could have had more time with Tucci on the screen, but when he was on the screen he was great. It makes sense why his character died and it was needed. Finally, Howard Stark, played by Dominic Cooper is really enjoyable. You feel like the confidence that he exudes and his cockiness and you can see why Tony Stark would end up the way he did based off of Howard’s portrayal.

And I realize that I forgot one, Toby Jones as Dr. Arnim Zola, I don’t think I had realized how well he played his character. I wonder if they were planning that he’d infiltrate S.H.I.E.L.D. from the beginning or not, but if they did, he played that out well on screen and you can see some of his quirks that I hadn’t paid that much attention to before. In particular, I like how you can see into his mind with how he has no qualms about building weapons for people to kill people with, but he doesn’t want to see them used. His character feels like he’s, in some ways, as much in control as Red Skull is, which in some ways plays out in a future movie, but I’ll save that for that review. Toby Jones just does a great job of playing that brilliant and almost scared character.

Finally, I think that the CGI and special effects hold up well in this film. I was a little bit surprised considering how much they’ve advanced or seemed to advance in the past few years. But Captain America still looks good, and putting Chris Evans head on the scrawny body works. It didn’t feel uncanny and it didn’t look like it was poor CGI. I had thought that it might not hold up with the Red Skull or something like that, but I feel like, and this was obviously when Marvel was still ramping up, it did a good job for what had to have been a pretty small budget.

So, like I said, I don’t know that this movie is going to move up. As much as I remembered how well I liked the first half of the film, the second half falls apart some for me. And I think, like we’ll see with Thor soon, Chris Evans has to grow into the role of Captain America. I also wish, with the future films, they had done a call back to something that Dr. Erskine (Stanley Tucci’s character) had said, about how the super soldier serum doesn’t just make you bigger and stronger, but it makes you more of who you were before. And I think that’s something that they could have leaned into a whole lot more, especially with Captain America: Civil War. I also think that if we were to get this film now, the film would be stronger, because they know what they are doing better, but also because they wouldn’t be as worried about leaning into a 1940’s aesthetic and tropes, which I feel like they did once in a while, but generally felt a bit out of place when they did.

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