What a great poster!
Can my Mom watch it: Absolutely! I think she’d enjoy it.
Star Rating: 5 stars
Would I watch it again? Yes
Buy or Rent: Buy, I’ll want the special features
OK, so, let’s talk Captain America. Given the timing of the creation of my blog it makes sense to start here. We were talking with our niece the other day, she saw it opening day. After the requisite request for no spoilers, we asked her what she thought. “It was the best movie I’ve ever seen!” High praise, but she is a teenager, maybe she needs to see more movies? Apparently, one of her friends even cried, I asked if that’s because she liked Chris Evans (to which my wife responded, “Who?”… Personally, I think it’s good she doesn’t know him by name.), but it seems that there was a touching scene. Our niece said that what made it good was that there was more than just action, there was a plot! Having seen the movie, I would tend to agree.
In one of the other reviews I read, I think it was on io9, they said that Captain America’s real power was to “make things simple”. I think this sums things up nicely. Steve Rogers, man out of time, super soldier and general all around good guy, is at heart a simple man who sees the world in almost black and white. There’s the right way to do things and there’s the wrong way, he’s always going to try to do the right thing whenever possible.
Our hero’s finds himself in a very different future than the time he left. Something’s are better, others not so much. Morality is more confused and he’s faced with questioning the people he trusts most. Then… well, not to give anything away, very bad things happen and the hero’s save the day. There are just too many twists and turns that I don’t want to give away. I’m sure everyone’s seeing it, so you already know what happens.
But, the cool thing is that there really was a plot. It wasn’t an origin stories, not even a bad guy origin story. The plot unfolds. There is mystery and intrigue. Characters act like they are real people with their own personalities. People make decisions that make sense, for the most part, I mean it is a comic book movie. I loved the banter, the running jokes were perfect and didn’t feel tacked on. Everything just happened like it should have.
OK, I’m going to bring up the one plot hole that kind of took me out of the story for just a moment. It’s kind of a spoiler, but I’ll try not to let things too much information out. At one point our heroes have to deal with a large important computer. I work in IT, if those computers were that important, there’s no way you would put them in the location shown. Also, if you have as many agents at they seem to have, wouldn’t you put at least one guard in that room? No, not one? Most important computer in the place, but can’t afford to guard it? Oh well, I guess we’ll just have to hope no one just walks in and completely changes the program… Anyway, most people wouldn’t notice because that’s how movies handle computers, they are always very, very cool and in very visually exciting places…
It was very nice to see stories and characters that I’ve read for several years in comic book form on the big screen and so very well handled. Falcon, The Winter Soldier, and of course the regulars. I’ll add my voice to the chorus of people who don’t understand what DC’s problem is. OK, we all know it’s Warner Brothers causing the problem, but really? Countless stories to draw from, all plotted out and you can even use the comic books as storyboards to some extent, and they don’t know how to do anything but Batman and Superman in movie form. What gives? I mean Arrow’s great and all, but they really could have the same mega franchise that Marvel’s enjoying right now if they would just let it happen. Anyway… I digress…
I’ll be very interested to see how their experiment with the cross over to the TV show “Marvel’s Agents of Shield” pans out. Before the credits even started rolling (as we waited for the inevitable Easter egg scenes) my wife asked what would happen on the TV show. I pointed out that they knew this was coming and planned for it. We’re both looking forward to watching this week’s episode. So in that aspect, it is certainly going to draw a few more viewers this week I’m sure.
Can we talk about the end credit scene while we’re on the subject? I know it’s popular to do with all the Marvel movies. They are usually fun little Easter eggs that if you are patient they can be funny and/or lead to the next movie. The one mid-credits was obviously leading to “Avengers 2: Age of Ultron” and was well done with several good surprises. But, the one at the very end felt tacked on. Like they realized that they didn’t have anything for the end of the credits, so they just pulled a scene from what would have made a nice ending scene in the proper movie and shoved it all the way to the end. I mean it would have made a nice parallel to an earlier scene with another character had it been part of the movie proper… Maybe it’s just me.
OK, enough complaining. It was a great movie, a very worthy addition to the Marvel movie universe. It does a lot to change the game and set things up for the next few movies (Ok, it may not get addressed at all in “Guardians of the Galaxy”, but you know what I mean). I, as always, look forward to the next Marvel movie event.
Nerdly Reviews 
I really liked the movie, good review. I did feel the same about the last scene after the credits but also wondering what are they going to do next with this guy? I don’t know the stories like you do so I’m totally left wondering.
Oh, they have plans for him… I’m not sure exactly what direction they will take, but I liked his character (well, after his resurrection anyway, this is one case where the author really knew what they were doing when they brought a long dead character back to life). I’m looking forward to the next movie to find out how they handle him going forward in the cinematic universe.