At the Movies with Captain America

6 Comments

1. Riveting review. Great! I would really like to see this.

   – “like we care; they’re all run by Red Skulls anyway”

   Been sharpening your diplomacy skills again, I see.

2. The countries showing the movie using only the subtitle are Russia, South Korea and the Ukraine.

   Aldous, knowing your tastes I think you’d really go for this one.

3. By Easter Egg you mean the appearance of the android Human Torch, right? I figured that was a shout-out for Chris Evans’s old job.

   And here’s one I missed the first time around: the English member of the Howling Commandos isn’t Pinkerton, which is who I figured it was…incidentally, Stan Lee recently revealed Pinkerton was a gay. Gee, I’d never have guessed it of Pinky.

   Rather, the English member in the movie was called Lord Farnsworth…the original Union Jack!

   I love the shared-universe stuff – I was tickled pink by the mention of the Erskine formula in the Ed Norton Incredible Hulk. One of the problems I’ve always had, as a superhero comics reader with media adaptations is, they never get it quite right…because they set the movies in our world instead of a superhero world. I can’t even imagine a place where, say, Spider-Man is the only superhero in the entire world, and the only villains are the ones in parts 1-3. For that reason it feels off.

   This is even more distractingly obvious in budget-strapped media adaptations like the George Reeves Superman and Linda Carter Wonder Woman where there are no true supervillains whatsoever and we have to watch the absurd spectacle of the almighty Superman fight Hardy Boys villains like counterfeiters.

   In fact I was so used to a shared comic book world thanks to the Marvel movies that when Green Lantern, for rights-related reasons outside of their control didn’t have any of that, it was incredibly distracting and a throwback to the early-2000s bad-old-days of superhero movies. There was even one line in that movie where Angela Bassett said “here is the first evidence and contact of alien life.” And I was like…so I guess in this world there’s no Superman, huh?

   This is the movie where they put it all together. And not just cute little cameos by the android Human Torch, but they actually weave the elements together in a big way into the plot. The Cosmic Cube was an invention of the superscientific Asgardians, Tony Stark’s Dad doesn’t just make a cameo…he’s a character in the movie. There is a scene in Captain America that implies the new element power source from Iron Man 2 is the same as the Cosmic Cube.

   Being an arrogant guy who is often just as smart as they think you are is much harder than humility and sincerity, which just requires you to show up and be a grownup…which is why a lot of people were skeptical of Chris Evans, best known for stuff like Cellular where he plays the himbo-dude on Spring Break. Chris Evans has graduated and become an adult actor like Anne Hathaway has, and good for him. He did just fine and I liked what he did, but by no means is it a role as difficult as Iron Man which requires a “Mad Genius” like Downey Jr.

   Anybody could have played Luke Skywalker, but it took Harrison Ford to be Han Solo.

   DC people often say Captain America is the most like a DC hero. That is because they don’t understand the character at all. He’s an extremely nuanced and well developed character.

   Captain America is dead certain, never waivering and ultra-confident…BUT ONLY WHEN EVERYONE IS LOOKING.

   When he’s by himself and no one is watching he berates himself for his failures, has crises of conscience, questions the judgment calls he’s so certain of in public, and he has a dysfunctional private life and relationships. For this reason, Cap is often called “boring” by people that only read him in Avengers, which by necessity doesn’t bring us into Cap’s personal thoughts as often.

   Captain America is a guy who is a real person of flesh and blood who finds himself considered by others to be a “living legend of World War II.” What do you say to something like that? Those are intimidating expectations for sure. It also reminds me of real-life war heroes who were uncomfortable with being called heroes – simply because in the situation they found themselves, they merely acted sanely.

4. Another cool “Easter egg” comes when we get our first glimpse of Armin Zola, with his face grotesquely magnified on a TV screen. Also I loved all the nods to Indiana Jones.

   I agree RDJr is terrific in just about anything, and let’s face it, if he can make Iron Man cool where 50 years of comics have failed then he must be some kind of genius. And I’ll also concede that just because a character is written as “cocky genius” doesn’t guarantee an actor can pull it off convincingly, let alone endearingly. My point, I suppose, is that the “cocky, arrogant wise guy” is the tried-and-true path to winning over the crowd, and just in the comparatively short time since we met Han Solo, it’s gone from the exception (or “secondary hero”) to the rule. No one wants to labor at making a “straight arrow” hero work any more, since there’s so much more adoration to be earned as the wiseguy. There’s no more Gary Coopers, but we’re well-stocked with Bruce Willises.

   Incidentally, notice Han Solo is everyone’s go-to example of the type. Ryan Reynolds said he was going for a Solo vibe in GL, and in the ultimate proof that it’s the new gold standard, even current Captain Kirk Chris Pine has said he was aiming for Han Solo as opposed to TOS Kirk. Again, I’m not saying it doesn’t still take skill to do the schtick as spectacularly as Downey, but it can hardly be argued that it’s a “bold choice” for a hero at this point. The fact is, Captain America is not an irreverent wiseguy, so Evans was given a harder role when it comes to winning over modern audiences with their modern expectations. And to the credit of the filmmakers, they didn’t take the easy way out by simply re-writing Cap in the irreverent wiseguy mode, which I gather is the route they took with Green Lantern, though I guess you could argue the die was cast as soon as they picked “Van Wilder” to be straight-arrow Hal Jordan.

   You and Marvel may be slowly winning me over on the “shared universe” thing. I have to admit it was cool to have the suggestion that Howard Stark’s “energy source I could never perfect” was based on an Asgardian relic (the proper resting place for which we saw in Thor). Also that the sound effect for the Hydra weapons was the same as Tony’s repulsors, and the “levitating” car prefigured the jet boots. Even the look of Howard Stark was an “Easter egg” for me, since he looked just like vintage Tony Stark as drawn by Don Heck. Also having Steve and Howard be friends sets us up for some interesting dynamics between Steve and Tony, who has some Daddy issues. It was also cool that the “Indiana Jones” MacGuffin here is Asgardian in nature; in 1943, it’s still just “kooky mysticism,” though we in the audience know it’s all legit and in a couple decades the Thunder God will be in our midst.

   Finally, I’d say Cap has one foot in DC (or at least National) and the other in Marvel. As the “living icon” plagued by self-doubt, he’s a lot like Superman; confident on the outside because that’s what’s expected of him, and mopey in private because he was raised to keep that stuff to himself. Also I’ll always think of Cap as a Golden Age character first, with the self-doubt and angst grafted on later as the price for being resurrected in the Marvel Age. But as insecurities go, I’m much more comfortable with “I failed my partner” than half the junk Peter Parker whines about. For me, “do I really deserve the loyalty of my troops” is not only an acceptable concern for a military-based hero, it’s an “insecurity” without which a “born leader” risks straying into Custer or Patton territory.

   That said, it takes a good writer to make it work. One scene that always bothered me came in a late Tales of Suspense issue, when Steve checks in with the Avengers via video-call and once he hangs up, Hawkeye says, “He was smiling, but I can tell he’s in one of his depressions again.” It never sat right for me to have Cap’s fellow heroes sitting around commenting on what an emotional wreck he was. Somehow you need to find a way to make the guilt and insecurity work without turning the guy into a pity case.

5. I always figured the hover-vehicle there was an early version of the SHIELD flying car, just like Tommy Lee Jones’s scientific anti-HYDRA directorate was basically and early SHIELD.

   Incidentally, I strongly suspect the woman Captain America saw at the end was Sharon Carter. She looked the part and when she left said “Code 13.” Not exactly a slam-dunk, but as Eddie Michigan pointed out, IMDB says she was Sharon!

   I suspect we’ll see the classic, bizarre Arnim Zola either in Avengers or in the next movie. Incidentally, it’s worth noting the Red Skull didn’t die. The guy’s coming back for sure.

   See, there’s another thing about superhero comics the movies never duplicated until recently, which always felt “off.” No bad guys in superhero comics ever die – or at least when they die, it’s in a vague, corpseless circumstance where he can easily come back.

   My point, I suppose, is that the “cocky, arrogant wise guy” is the tried-and-true path to winning over the crowd, and just in the comparatively short time since we met Han Solo, it’s gone from the exception (or “secondary hero”) to the rule.

   Interesting observation although I think it doesn’t go far enough.

   I was just listening to a radio podcast that was supposed to be a “parody” of 1950s science fiction, with a “Defender of Space” type hero…and I honestly don’t know what they’re making fun of, exactly. It’s a parody of something that never existed, like the famous belief that “the butler did it” is a common thing in mystery novels, when I can’t think of a single example in a real mystery of the butler doing it.

   I can’t think of a single “straight” example of the chin-endowed “Captain Proton, Defender of Space” type hero – even in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, most science fiction heroes were of what would later be the Marvel mold: cigar-chomping, wisecracking badasses who solved problems with dubious engineering concepts and wiseass their way through fights…in addition to the kid genius, or the scientist who is the hero because he figures out the true nature of the problem. Come the 1960s we had the smooth-talking, rebellious and rule breaking heroes like the diplomat Retief and the intergalactic criminal, the Stainless Steel Rat.

   And grizzled, cynical, weatherbeaten heroes have been the main characters in Westerns and detective stories since the 1940s, which have been filled with self-destructive PIs and bounty hunters.

   To look back to an era when earnest, beefy heroes were the norm you’d have to go back to the Victorian Era…but it had its fair share of arrogant, cynical and eccentric characters even then.

   Maybe the Middle Ages? I’m not a medieval lit buff so I couldn’t tell you.

   In short, I can’t think of a time when the earnest, pure of heart hero was EVER the norm at any point, anywhere.

   That said, it takes a good writer to make it work. One scene that always bothered me came in a late Tales of Suspense issue, when Steve checks in with the Avengers via video-call and once he hangs up, Hawkeye says, “He was smiling, but I can tell he’s in one of his depressions again.”

   I think I know the one you mean. If we’re talking about the same scene, I believe the implication of that was the acknowledgement that Hawkeye and Captain America had a special friendship and relationship where Hawkeye could see right through him.

6. “Cynical and weatherbeaten” I’d put in a different class from “cocky wise-ass.”

   For instance, no one would argue that John Wayne’s many weatherbeaten characters were earnestly virtuous in a Dudley Do-Right sense, but neither were they brash, flashy wisenheimers. You got the feeling his characters started out with high-minded ideals before life beat them about the head and neck, and while they might be disillusioned, they’re no less devoted to doing the right thing.

   In contrast, now we have characters like Seth Rogen’s Green Hornet, a doper frat boy who falls backward into crime-fighting or (though I haven’t seen it) Ryan’s Green Lantern, a flashy babe-hound “screw-up” where the comic version was one of those guys whose demeanor screams “military” even when he’s dressed for a luau.

   Yes, the Middle Ages would be a good place to look for virtuous hero-types, like Percival and Galahad. Ivanhoe was a straight arrow type. Jumping ahead, guys like Owen Wister’s “Virginian” and the heroes of Zane Grey’s “Ohio River Valley” trilogy (and the many Westerns that followed their lead) are “pure of heart”; even though their woodcraft and battle experience make them smarter than the “dudes” who stumble naively into trouble in the West, they’re not in-your-face “I know more than you ever will” jerks. Likewise Dick Tracy, always one step ahead of every crook and most of his fellow cops is super-smart but not a wise-ass. And he’s practically the poster boy for “square-jawed.”

   C.S. Forrester’s Hornblower was hardly without his human flaws, but he was a straight-up hero (and very popular) and not at all cocky or brash. Shatner’s Kirk I guess is somewhere in the middle; he’s notorious for violating orders when it suits him, but in his day-to-day doings he’s very much into military discipline, and not at all the class clown type.

   Fleming’s James Bond can be “immoral” in his private life and amoral in his work, but he’s another “straight” hero who does it all for Queen and country and, though jaded, is not flippant or self-absorbed.

   If you want to talk about characters who are so virtuous and honor-bound you want to strangle them, look no further than your boys Tarzan and John Carter, who put themselves into all kinds of life-threatening situations in the name of chivalry, even though one was raised in a jungle and the other lives in a culture that celebrates cruelty. There you go: in ERB’s world, “pure of heart” heroes are the norm.

   On the other hand, you’re right that Han Solo wasn’t the genesis of the type, even if he is the most cited. Recently I read Sabbatini’s “Captain Blood” and I have to admit even I was dreading what I fully expected to be an old-school tale of a dreadfully earnest paragon of virtue, but I was delighted to find Blood a sharp-tongued, sharp-minded rogue that could have been written to life last week instead of in 1922. In this sense, it was kismet that they found newbie Errol Flynn to play him in the movie, and indeed Flynn would go on playing variations on the character for the rest of his career.

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