The Road to Civil War - Captain America: The First Avenger

With Captain America: Civil War a week away (for the UK; two, if you’re Stateside), I’ve gone back to rewatch some of the MCU movies leading up to it. The most directly-related, I figure, are Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers (or Avengers Assemble), Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Avengers: Age of Ultron. It’s been a while since I’ve seen most of these, so it’s interesting to revisit them with a new perspective: both the passage of time, and the knowledge of just how successful Marvel’s grand cinematic experiment actually turned out to be.

When Captain America: The First Avenger was initially released, I liked it, but less than I wanted to. It had most of the ingredients - the performances are pretty universally great, especially Chris Evans’ earnest, noble Steve Rogers, and the script has all the wit and character that are Marvel’s hallmarks - but I remember leaving the cinema with a sense of airlessness, a lack of gravity to the whole thing, like there was never any real feeling of threat.

Part of that I put down to director Joe Johnson, whose 1991 movie The Rocketeer - which also revolves around an average-guy-turned-hero fighting nazis in the 1940s - left me with a similar lack of more visceral excitement. Maybe before, I just wasn’t paying attention, though - The First Avenger is better than I remembered.

A lot better.
Maybe it’s knowing what happens to Bucky after he falls off that train; maybe it’s the extra investment from two seasons of Agent Carter; maybe it’s something else entirely. But this time, the thing clicked with me in a way it didn’t before. It helps that the script is solid, efficiently setting up its own stakes within the larger war, showing you who Rogers is, as a person - and most importantly, it has you rooting for Steve off the bat, long before he gets bombarded with Vita-Rays.

Even once he becomes Captain America, and that heart is bolstered with physical presence, then it’s hard to doubt for even a frame that this is a man people would follow. But they don’t take the easy route, and just have him instantly assume command - no, the Allies’ greatest asset gets sidelined as a freakish experiment, and turned into a touring show to sell war bonds. Steve Rogers is underestimated again, and has to earn respect from the people who would overlook him.

And he does.

Which is what makes Captain America a good movie - the fact that Captain America is a good man. He’s brave, but not foolhardy. He’s strong, but not a bully. He’s smart, but not self-important. His instinct - always - is to help, to put himself in harm’s way for others - not so he can be seen as a hero, but because he already is one.

There are a handful of issues with the movie; that CGI, for one, and the idea that the Red Skull sacrifices a fairly major facility just because Rogers shows up (I get that he’s strong and all, but the idea that he could stand up to the power of the tesseract?). Still, despite those niggles, I’m finding that they bother me less than they could, and certainly less than they did the first time around.

Next: The Avengers