The Red Skull has a LASER LUGER, people!
Jul. 22nd, 2011 08:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficCaptain America review; non-spoilery version: Fake cut.
Captain America review; spoilery version:
"WAHOO!" THE FLYING CAR THAT SHIELD USES IN THE 60s! ("I did say it wouldn't be ready for a few years.") BUCKY IS A SNIPER! RED SKULL AS DR. FRANKENSTEIN AND ARMIN ZOLA AS IGOR! PROTO-SHIELD SUPPLIED BY PROTO-STARK! FLYING WINGS! THE HUMAN TORCH! I HAVE MANY AND VARIED FEELINGS!
And--and--they kept Cap as this pure character instead of giving him some lame Green Lantern "self-doubt" "character arc". And despite the entire thing being a gloriously pulpy call-back to the adventure serials, Peggy Carter is awesome and is never a damsel in distress (because everyone knows Bucky is distressed damsel enough for Cap)! And it's like some wonderful Doc Savage team with the debonair gadget guy and the UST-y femme fatale and the cosmopolitan men on a mission who, please God, will get revisited in a sequel when they need to explain where Baron Blood or Von Strucker came from! And HYDRA! They actually did "Hail Hydra! Cut off a head and two more take its place!", only this time Tommy Lee Jones shoots a super-Nazi and goes "Let's go find two more heads." And you can feel the hand of Whedon at work here, giving everyone wit and pathos, but it never overwhelms the narrative with a bunch of grime and edginess, Dollhouse.
I saw it in a theater so packed I couldn't even get free tickets, but it was worth it to sit in the front row and see the audience in the palm of the storytellers' hand. There was applause at the end and at the post-credits teaser. Easily the movie of the summer. Sorry, Potter.
ETA: Also, this movie struck the perfect balance between Steve not wanting to kill anyone and "FUCK YOU, NAZIS!" There's a great moment where Cap is running through a pitched battle after an escaping Red Skull and he still takes time, without breaking stride, to punch out some passing HYDRA assholes because FUCK YOU, NAZIS! I think they actually kill more Natzees here than in Inglorious Bastards, and the Basterds were doing one thing and one thing only: killing Natzees.
Take note, Wonder Woman writers. There is an acceptable balance to be struck between being a soldier/warrior and 'eh' pacifism.
Captain America review; spoilery version:
"WAHOO!" THE FLYING CAR THAT SHIELD USES IN THE 60s! ("I did say it wouldn't be ready for a few years.") BUCKY IS A SNIPER! RED SKULL AS DR. FRANKENSTEIN AND ARMIN ZOLA AS IGOR! PROTO-SHIELD SUPPLIED BY PROTO-STARK! FLYING WINGS! THE HUMAN TORCH! I HAVE MANY AND VARIED FEELINGS!
And--and--they kept Cap as this pure character instead of giving him some lame Green Lantern "self-doubt" "character arc". And despite the entire thing being a gloriously pulpy call-back to the adventure serials, Peggy Carter is awesome and is never a damsel in distress (because everyone knows Bucky is distressed damsel enough for Cap)! And it's like some wonderful Doc Savage team with the debonair gadget guy and the UST-y femme fatale and the cosmopolitan men on a mission who, please God, will get revisited in a sequel when they need to explain where Baron Blood or Von Strucker came from! And HYDRA! They actually did "Hail Hydra! Cut off a head and two more take its place!", only this time Tommy Lee Jones shoots a super-Nazi and goes "Let's go find two more heads." And you can feel the hand of Whedon at work here, giving everyone wit and pathos, but it never overwhelms the narrative with a bunch of grime and edginess, Dollhouse.
I saw it in a theater so packed I couldn't even get free tickets, but it was worth it to sit in the front row and see the audience in the palm of the storytellers' hand. There was applause at the end and at the post-credits teaser. Easily the movie of the summer. Sorry, Potter.
ETA: Also, this movie struck the perfect balance between Steve not wanting to kill anyone and "FUCK YOU, NAZIS!" There's a great moment where Cap is running through a pitched battle after an escaping Red Skull and he still takes time, without breaking stride, to punch out some passing HYDRA assholes because FUCK YOU, NAZIS! I think they actually kill more Natzees here than in Inglorious Bastards, and the Basterds were doing one thing and one thing only: killing Natzees.
Take note, Wonder Woman writers. There is an acceptable balance to be struck between being a soldier/warrior and 'eh' pacifism.
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Date: 2011-07-23 03:05 pm (UTC)One of the things I liked the most was the USO bit, which when I first heard about it sounded like it could go very awry, but was actually one of the best scenes in the movie. Plus, it's pretty rare these days for a non-musical drama to feature an original song actually in the movie instead of just playing over the credits. I think they could actually get the Oscar for that, between Alan Menken's name (incidentally, I thought it was more fun than any of the songs he did for Tangled) and how light the competition in that category normally is.
Dominic Cooper's Howard was fun. Cooper was clearly riffing on Robert Downey Jr. to good effect (though it's hard to connect this version to the older Howard we saw in Iron Man 2). Hayley Atwell was great as Peggy, and I think this was one of the rest romantic subplots in recent superhero movies (the fact that it's played as mostly a missed opportunity for both of them adds to that). Evans turned out to be pretty perfect for the part.
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Date: 2011-07-24 01:36 am (UTC)