Rewatch Review: Captain America The First Avenger

In anticipation of Captain America: Civil War I decided to go back and rewatch some old Marvel Cinematic Universe movies to see how they hold up. Leading off this parade through the MCU is Joe Johntson's 2011 Captain America: The First Avenger.

Captain America: The First Avenger is the one MCU movie that I didn't get to see in the theater. In fact I didn't watch it until after I saw Joss Whedon's The Avengers in 2012. My college friends and I were so jazzed up about Marvel after watching The Avengers that we started talking about all the solo movies that came before it. What we quickly discovered though was that none of us had seen Captain America: The First Avenger. So without much hesitation I loaded the movie up my TV and we were off. 

Now I'm gonna tell you the truth. The first time I watched this movie I didn't like it. In fact all of my friends and I spent the majority of this film shitting on it. Now in retrospect that is probably because all of us had just seen The Avengers and we looking forward to this film being akin to that. 

In the 4 years that have passed since my first viewing I have seen (and loved) this movie's  sequel Captain America: The Winter Soldier and enjoyed another great Cap outing in Avengers: Age of Ultron. I have also read some Captain America comics and grown more fond of the character every time I've see him. In fact he is my favorite character on Marvel Studios roster now and I'm riding the #TeamCap train right into my Civil War screening tomorrow. So I think the combination of tempered expectations and more fondness of the character lead me to enjoying this movie a lot more in my second viewing. The first time I watched it I would have given it a D. Here is what I thought about it this time.

My Thoughts

• The movie is very much a character piece. It is fully focused on showing it's audience how Steve Rogers is a great guy and hero at heart. Overall it's a great intro to the character.
• Most of the action beats are solid though out, but full use of Caps fighting abilities (like kicking fuckers off boats and using his shield to take down a helicopter) are better showcased in The Winter Solider. This movie seems to be really focused on telling us that Cap can run fast and jump high. Now if this was a movie about how a shrimpy dude used a super soldier program to cheat his way into the Olympics then I would be fine with it. The problem is that this is a superhero flick and not The Ringer.

Watch Cap run and jump through the streets

• A criticism for the MCU as a whole has been that there are no good villains besides Loki. Red Skull continues that trend by being the very one note evil German guy. In his defense though his makeup looks amazing.
• Thorin Oakensheild, Margery Tyrell, and Damien Darhk are in this? That's cool. Also did anyone notice both of the announcers from the Hunger Games are competing German scientists? Coincidence I think not!

Hyrdra?

• Most of this movie is great set up. Setting up Cap for the Avengers. Setting up Zola for his return in The Winter Soldier. Setting up Hydra and their utter awesomeness (I do not like Nazis I just like saying Hail Hydra!). Through all this set up is one crucial mistake. That is the mishandling of Bucky's death. He falls off a train and is never talked about again.They Han Soloed him. It was like in The Force Awakens how Leia hugged Rey and not Chewie. There is never a moment of Steve morning or saying anything about his best friend for the rest of the movie. Because Bucky's death was so unmemorable, The Winter Soldier has to drill what happened into the viewers head over and over for it's big twist to work.
• The movie is poorly paced. So much exposition in the beginning then the end feels like a clip show of action moments. Don't get me wrong I liked a lot of the action and a lot of the exposition, it just felt like they were clustered together at the beginning and at the end.
• I totally forgot about Cap's budding movie career. The old movie within a movie. 

Final Grade: Overall Captain America: The First Avenger is more enjoyable than I remember. It has great character moments and does a good job introducing the Captain we all know and love.

I'm giving my rewatch of CA:TFA a B-

What do you think of Captain America: The first Avenger? Was there to much running and not enough punching? Sound of in the comments and make sure to follow me @cstrand73 on Twitter for all my takes on superhero stuff.

Cannot wait for tomorrow