Captain America: The First Avenger definitely has improved with each successive viewing. I remember when Chris Evans was announced. I thought it was horrible casting. I was only going off the Fantastic Four films and Not Another Teen Movie. I couldn’t take him seriously. I was never happier to be more wrong. I think he truly shines in successive films but he was dependable here and allayed my fears at the time. I was just hoping for a better story.

It’s funny. I said I always had a fondness for Captain America because there was something so comforting about a hero fighting for American values. Then I get the film where he does exactly that and it seems, a little boring. His character certainly benefits from being the man out of time in later films and learning how American values have shifted while he was asleep. But here, it’s not quite engaging. Yes, he’s a hero and he wants to fight for his country and that’s admirable. But there’s no messiness to the character. He’s TOO pure. Stark and Thor had narcissistic issues. Banner was a man on the run which gave him a whiff of desperation. Rogers is just . . . there. It’s hard to explain but it’s one of the issues I had on the first viewing. I just didn’t find him engaging.

The look of the film certainly has a stylish flair. From the Batman TAS-like roadster the Red Skull drives towards the screen to the over blown action montage of the campaign to take down HYDRA bases, this film certainly looks different than the other films in the MCU (both past and present). It works both for and against. While it does evoke another time period, the aforementioned montage borders on silly with too much CGI in what should be more realistic battle sequences. The same came be said for HYDRA’s level of technological achievement. It’s a little too fantastical. Does the modern MCU even have these types of vehicles and weapons? Yes, the Tesseract was powering them, but even the design and construction seem too far-fetched and out of place for what could have been a gritty war film.

Ah, the plot. As others have mentioned, the film starts off strong. We’re introduced to our characters and Evans is bolstered by a strong supporting cast. Shout out to Dominic Cooper who manages to make Howard Stark similar to Tony without being a carbon copy. I wish we had spent more time in this era with these characters. Once Cap heads off to war, the film is half over and the plot just lurches from one action scene to the next. We learn almost nothing about the Howling Commandos (including most of their names). We lose Bucky after he and Steve spend about 7 minutes on screen together. We barely touch on the Peggy/Cap romance however that indelible chemistry, tearful goodbye and bittersweet ending elevates them to one of the best couples in the MCU. I know Cap had to get to the future for Avengers but he could have benefitted from two films set in this era. Perhaps then the ending would not feel so rushed and the villain so inconsequential.

Red Skull. I seriously hope they take another pass at this. He’s given almost nothing to do but a darker version of Cap could be interesting if done well. I suppose this was already funneled into the Winter Soldier. For one of the main Marvel villains, he’s barely given any screen time and poses almost no real threat. Perhaps with different writers or a director with an eye towards characterization, we could get more out of this character. Maybe he’ll show up working for Thanos. Who knows where the Tesseract sent him?

There are some good bits of dialogue in this film. Just some quick shout outs. “If it isn’t the star spangled man with the plan. What is your plan today?” always makes me laugh. “I had a date” is quite possibly the best last line in the MCU and ends on a rare serious note. The only real competition is possibly “I am Iron Man” since it set the tone for how the MCU would handle secret identities (or lack thereof). The sorrow behind Cap’s line gives it an emotional weight unlikely to be beaten. And Raiders shout out! “And the führer digs for trinkets in the desert”.

Okay, I think I rambled for enough. I’m going to give Captain America a 6/10. A solid story that tends to lose itself in the second half, a great supporting cast and some good action set-pieces make this a worthwhile watch. I never would have thought based on this film alone, that Cap would go on to have the best sub-series of the MCU, or that Evans would probably become my favorite player over Downey, but here we are. Time to assemble for the end of Phase One!

Current rankings:
1) Iron Man
2) The Incredible Hulk
3) Captain America: The First Avenger
4) Thor
5) Iron Man 2

I'm glad you brought this up, because I was going to bring it up, but ended up forgetting about it. Throughout the movie, one can't help but ask themselves, ".....what exactly was Shield doing with their time sitting on the tesseract, leading up to the events of Avengers?" Fury says they had to make weapons, and otherwise arm themselves against a possible outside threat of untold magnitude. So....what did you come up with? Hydra made like a whole sci-fi armory, in the 40s.....in a few months or so. Yet your backup, non Avengers plan ends up being....nuke NYC? Really? Y'all couldn't send in a bunch of Shield agents with some of them super fancy disintegration laser guns to back them up or something? Or some crazy, tesseract powered fighter jets to go HAM on those filthy buggers? Nah? Weak sauce boys.

"Space Nazis". This war time film turned into Nazi's with sci-fi weapons. I didn't like that. I didn't delve much into it in my 'review' but I never got why they couldn't just have the 'threat' of the Tesseract as more of a thing than what it actually produced.

I didn’t delve too much into it in my review (it was long enough) but there were definitely some logicistial problems with the plot. One of my biggest is how quickly Colonel Phillips is dismissive of Captain America. He says he was expecting an army and “all I got was you” and then doesn’t even want to use the super soldier in his possession. He was supposed to be shipped off to a lab and I suppose that’s because the serum locked in his blood is so valuable, they can’t risk him on the battlefield, but it’s not fleshed out very well in the dialogue. Even when Cap is over in Europe to support the troops, Phillips treats him with utter disdain as if he’s a joke. Did he not run down and single handedly capture that assassin? Then when Cap saves the soldiers, he basically goes “Ok. Maybe you’re useful”.

The other sticking point is why Steve had to crash the plane. If the bombs being dropped were in mini-planes and all the pilots were dead, couldn’t he have just flown past NY and back to the base? Why did he have to crash the plane in such a hurry? That’s a good scene with the tearful goodbye but the foundation of it seems a little sketchy.

The Avengers

Rewatched The Avengers last night.  Just want to say that the first time I saw it I was pretty disappointed by it, unlike most people I've talked to.  I have since rewatched it several times and now I like it a lot more, but still see it as far from perfect.  Below are my thoughts and as always there are lots of spoilers, so don't read if you haven't seen the film.

Pluses:

They created a movie universe.  When I think about Marvel comics, the thing that stands out to me the most is how all the characters exist together in the same universe.  This feature is much more important to Marvel than it is to DC.  And the comic book that exemplifies the shared universe the most is The Avengers, because so many of their characters have their own individual books.  They managed to bring that same feeling of a shared universe to the big screen for the very first time.  We got to see these characters in action in their own movies, and now we get to see them all fighting together.  It definitely gives the movie an epic feeling.

The action in this movie is awesome.  I love the opening scene were Loki comes in and kicks all of their asses, and then the base implodes.  I love the awesome end battle of The Avengers vs. the Chitauri.  The fight on the helicarrier was also very awesome.  This movie keeps me engaged the whole time.  I can't wait to see what they will do next.  I have seen big budget movies where the effects suffer, because they spent so much on big name actors.  This movie has the big names, and it also has action better than any of the MCU movies that came before it.

Loki is an awesome villain.  He is much more vicious here than he was in Thor.  I think it is because he views the humans as ants so he doesn't really care who he kills.  Loki is the type of villain that you love to hate, so he is an awesome villain for this movie.

Samuel L. Jackson is awesome as Nick Fury, and I love that he gets more of a central role in this movie.  So far Fury has been subtly behind the scenes.  In this movie he is as important as any one of the Avengers.  In fact, it seems like the story is told from his point of view.

That shawarma scene is my favorite post credits scene of the whole MCU.


Minuses:

In general I have one complaint, but it's a huge one: the characters.  I love these characters, but the movie makes no effort to connect me to them in any way, shape or form.  There needs to be more character development, and there needs to be more reasons for me to care about these characters.  In particular, this movie's main job in this area was to connect me to Coulson, and the movie failed miserably.  I understand intellectually why the Avengers care that he died, but I personally want to care that he died.  I want to feel what they are supposed to be feeling.  They needed to put more in the movie about Coulson.  Did he have a family, or maybe he and NIck Fury are long time friends?  Something!  Make me feel that his death was meaningful.  Instead I don't really care.

The MCU so far has totally hosed Hawkeye.  He gets a couple of minutes in Thor, and at the beginning of this movie he gets mind controlled.  The fact that Loki mind controls an Avenger would have been a bigger deal if we had actually gotten to know this character first.  Instead, Selvig's mind control seems like a bigger deal, because we actually saw a lot more of that character in the Thor movie.

There is zero connection between this Hulk and the Edward Norton Hulk.  How am I supposed to know that Mark Ruffalo is playing the same Banner that Edward Norton played?  This Banner feels just as much of a reboot as the change from Eric Bana to Norton.  In fact they even go out their way to make this seem totally different from Norton's Banner.  "What is your secret?  Yoga?"  "Nope."  Oh yeah, Ed Norton did yoga!  So you can't, because you're totally different characters!  Right?  I don't fault Mark Ruffalo in any way for this stuff.  I like how he portrays Banner, but the writers and director really don't want you to associate the two portrayals.  This is a big deal since THE WHOLE POINT of The Avengers is to bring together characters that got their own movies.  The Avengers feels like three main characters and three side characters, when it could have easily felt like four main characters if they had just tried to connect this Hulk more to the Ed Norton Hulk movie.

Cap's suit was a lot better in The First Avenger.  It looked like battle gear, while this suit is kind of cheesy.



In conclusion, The Avengers is both a very fun movie and a groundbreaking movie, but you really have to see the previous MCU films to feel connected to the characters and even then you might not feel too connected to them.


7/10

Woo! Avengers is here :)

End of phase one already. The time flew by.

Thanks for the review liquid laser. I enjoyed seeing your points. I haven’t been posting in this thread but I have been almost keeping up with the rewatch. Going to watch Thor tonight.

Captain America: the first avenger 8.8/10 --->9/10, I really like this movie, caps arc is really great and the movie has a sort of charm to it, all the perfomances are great and I actually like that new york ending, though it might not be as good as its sequels, its a great movie personally

Avengers- 8.3/10-->8/10- was the first MCU movie I saw in theatres, really fantastic film , but on rewatching, the first half is sort of a drag, though that pay off at the end is great, the first 20 minutes or so are really boring, and Thor as a character is also really bland in this one.

Thanks. 

You should post your scores.  The more input the better.

Liquid_Laser is right! You should totally join!