Captain America - The First Avenger (Spoilers)

How would you rate Captain America: The First Avenger?

  • Total voters
    24
Zombipanda said:
But couldn't you say that about anything?

"For a movie only intended to keep hold of the license, Roger Corman's Fantastic Four deserves 5 stars."

"For a terrible flick made by Uwe Boll, Bloodrayne earned its five stars."

"For pure, unadulterated what-the-****-uppery, Gummo gets a solid five stars."
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This is a good topic that I'd be interested in hearing people's thoughts on. Maybe it should be split into a different thread. How do you determine a film's rating? It could go for anything really; music, comics, etc.
 
When i rate movies, I rate them based on how much I enjoyed the movie. Acting, story/plot, characterization/character development, humour, and action all play into that, as well as my expectations going in. But I don't critique all the aspects of a movie (story, acting, etc) and then rate it based on that, I rate it based purely on how much i enjoyed the movie, and then usually think about it more deeply afterwards to figure out exactly what worked or didn't work for me.
 
E said:
This is a good topic that I'd be interested in hearing people's thoughts on. Maybe it should be split into a different thread. How do you determine a film's rating? It could go for anything really; music, comics, etc.
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That's exactly the discussion I was hoping for.

I'll give my thoughts a little later.

DIrishB said:
Its what he does.
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You know me so well.
 
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Bass said:
I saw CAPTAIN AMERICA today.

It was alright. Very nice beginning, and very nice ending. The 21st century and pretty much anything to do with the Red Skull sucked. Hugo Weaving was wonderful, but the Red Skull was a crappy villain. Bucky's death was pointless in every way, and the story kinda never worked; Cap's "plan" at the end is rubbish, there's little jeopardy and the tone never really comes together, and there is an entire sequence missing between him becoming Cap and the USO show montage which is where Cap is put on a mission and he ****s it up. Evans is fine, Jones is hysterical, Atwell was gorgeous, but I think a lot of it's enjoyment went when Tucci died because he was excellent as Erskine. There was a lot of nice touches, like Skull's RAIDERS reference at the opening. Really, it's as good as IRON MAN, SPIDER-MAN, or THOR, but I prefer a He-Man toy advert to WWII Action Force, and as such, I enjoyed THOR more. But CAP was fine.

THE AVENGERS teaser was fun, if only because Loki was in it.

So yeah – beginning and ending worked very, very well. The middle was kinda bull****, which is nice, because usually the ending is bull****, but Cap's death just worked. As did all the 90lb Steve Rogers stuff. If they'd fixed Red Skull it would've probably been the best of the lot.
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I have agree with you. The villains were the weakest part of the film. Red Skull wasn't really creepy or sinister like he was in the comics, he was just a generic megalomaniac. Red Skull is perhaps the most evil person in the 616 Universe, Movie Skull isn't on the same level in terms sheer nastiness. 616 Red Skull is motivated by hate more then anything else and that is more of scary motive then just a generic desire for power.

Also Hydra sucked, these came off as rejects from a GI Joe cartoon. Their costumes were silly and their mannerisms made them completely non threatening (The Hydra slogan, their salute that looked like they were hang gilding) The movie would have better if Cap was just fighting Nazis, period. Plus where did Hydra get all that tech from, in the 40s they have all this sci fi stuff and there is no explanation for it.

An alright movie, but would have been better if Skull was just a Nazi and was more hateful in general.
 
The Overlord said:
If I missed something feel free to point it out, where in the film did they give a good explanation how Hydra developed tech that was way beyond 40s technology levels?
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They explained that Toby Jones' character had all kinds of futuristic designs that just needed a power source sufficient enough, and that the power given off by the cube would suffice.

What I don't understand is, if this movie is set in the 40s and the other movies are in the same continuity, why didn't they just retroactively base tons of technology off those HYDRA weapons that they'd stolen for years afterwards? Were they all lost? (Probably, actually).
 
Because they couldn't power them. They obviously don't know how to harness the Cube's power.
 
except that Howard Stark figured out what the cube was made out of and mapped out the element for his son to make 70 years later (which seems like an unbelievable age gap).
 
Yeah, but Tony Stark was able to crack it. Howard and the rest couldn't. That's why Fury gave him the info; he wanted him to crack the Cube because it clearly is at the heart of whatever Fury needs the Avengers for.
 
Bass said:
Because they couldn't power them. They obviously don't know how to harness the Cube's power.
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'Zactly.

Captain Canuck said:
except that Howard Stark figured out what the cube was made out of and mapped out the element for his son to make 70 years later (which seems like an unbelievable age gap).
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Not really.... it just means he was around 50 when he had Tony in the 1960s, which looks about right in the old footage of him.

Bass said:
Yeah, but Tony Stark was able to crack it. Howard and the rest couldn't. That's why Fury gave him the info; he wanted him to crack the Cube because it clearly is at the heart of whatever Fury needs the Avengers for.
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Or rather, Tony Stark had access to the 21st Century technology required to make more of it(as well as harness its power using the arc-reactor technology he perfected in the first film, which was probably based on Howard Stark's research on the harnessing the Cube's energy in the first place).
 
Planet-man said:
Not really.... it just means he was around 50 when he had Tony in the 1960s, which looks about right in the old footage of him.
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Howard Stark died in 1991, Tony becomes the CEO of Stark Industries a year later when he turns 21. That would mean he was born in 1971. If Howard was 30ish by the end of WWII (1945), then he would have been 56ish when Tony was born. And Tony would be 40 this year. I guess that makes sense.
 
bluebeast said:
Everything came from the Cube.
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That doesn't make sense, the jet engine plane came from the cube? The Skull was only using the cube to power weapons, that were already built. They had this insane tech before getting the cube.

Gothamite said:
They explained that Toby Jones' character had all kinds of futuristic designs that just needed a power source sufficient enough, and that the power given off by the cube would suffice.

What I don't understand is, if this movie is set in the 40s and the other movies are in the same continuity, why didn't they just retroactively base tons of technology off those HYDRA weapons that they'd stolen for years afterwards? Were they all lost? (Probably, actually).
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So one scientist was able to create tech that be outlandish now, in the 1940s? Yeah that's a little hard to buy.
 
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The Overlord said:
That doesn't make sense, the jet engine plane came from the cube? The Skull was only using the cube to power weapons, that were already built. They had this insane tech before getting the cube.

So one scientist was able to create tech that be outlandish now, in the 1940s? Yeah that's a little hard to buy.
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More or less harder to believe than a scrawny kid gaining almost God-like abilities through the power of science-steroids? Harder to believe than a Nazi Science Gestapo led by a man with no epidermis on his head?

I just assume Zola, the Skull, and the rest of Hydra were some pretty ahead of their time scientists (much like the Starks), just with a terrible motivation.
 
The Overlord said:
That doesn't make sense, the jet engine plane came from the cube? The Skull was only using the cube to power weapons, that were already built. They had this insane tech before getting the cube.
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Why is the rocketcopter being powered by whatever's powering the plasma laser blasters and mega-tanks such a problem?

So one scientist was able to create tech that be outlandish now, in the 1940s? Yeah that's a little hard to buy.
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As far as I know, virtually NONE of that technology, nor countless other pieces of sci-fi tech throughout fiction, would be outlandish if we had a small, lightweight source of unlimited clean energy to power it.

DIrishB said:
More or less harder to believe than a scrawny kid gaining almost God-like abilities through the power of science-steroids?
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I think the issue here is that if they had these kind of designs in the 40s, why didn't it reshape history to the point where the modern Marvel films look like they're happening in the World Of Tomorrow instead of a slightly-more-advanced-through-Stark-technology Now. Project Rebirth was lost, so our armies aren't crawling with super-soldiers, but America recovered the Cube in the 40s.

But it's not an issue.... all that technology was only trivial because of the wildly advanced power source, Zola/Skull's process for harnessing it was lost, and Howard Stark was only able to duplicate the material in theory and base the groundwork for Arc Reactors off of it, so history turned out pretty much the same.
 
DIrishB said:
More or less harder to believe than a scrawny kid gaining almost God-like abilities through the power of science-steroids? Harder to believe than a Nazi Science Gestapo led by a man with no epidermis on his head?

I just assume Zola, the Skull, and the rest of Hydra were some pretty ahead of their time scientists (much like the Starks), just with a terrible motivation.
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Well the problem is super solider serum has reason why it is lost, so there is an explanation on why it wasn't available in the present. But if the Hydra had this level of tech, why didn't the Americans and Soviets take it and study it? Why is the tech in modern times in Marvel movies not far more advanced if the US government would have access to this stuff for years. I didn't like the high tech stuff because it took me out of the period piece feel this movie was supposed to invoke, it felt too much like a GI Joe episode. I think the movie would have worked better without Hydra and super science being limited to just the super soldier formula and maybe some weapon that the Red Skull was making to deal the Allies a crippling blow during the war. Just having Cap fight Nazis armed with 1940s weapons would have felt more real and made feel more like a period piece.
 
Bass said:
You gotta give the story its premise. Otherwise you can't enjoy it.
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My suspension of disbelief doesn't work that way, I am willing to except almost anything in a story, unless it creates problems of inconsistency of internal logic and things that ruin the atmosphere of the piece. Again I didn't hate or even disliked the movie, I thought it was alright, but I like Thor and X-Men First Class better. I liked Cap's story arc, I liked some of the visuals and some of the action, but Red Skull not being as interesting as he was in the comics and the sci fi stuff kinda dragged down the film for me a bit. The premise is Captain America, the stuff with I liked, but the sci fi stuff just didn't work for me as a premise, I wanted something as a bit more of a vintage period piece. The sci fi stuff just kinda took me out of the film, it made Hydra just seem more outlandish and made harder for them fit in with the 1940s feel Joe Johnson was trying to create.
 
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