It should be no surprise to anyone that I like comic books. I've also spent a good chunk of real estate on this here blog detailing my thoughts on films based on comic books (usually picking over things like the costume and changes to the story), but one film in specific has been absent (and one person actually asked me why). And that movie is: Captain America: The First Avenger. Since the film has been out for a couple of weeks and most people who are going to see it have seen it, I'm not going to write a review (I liked it. A lot), but rather go through a partial history of the development and my reaction to said...developments.
So let's start at the beginning, shall we? (or pretty close for our purposes...)
An interesting thing happened with Captain America: The First Avenger. As more details about the movie trickled in, the less enthusiastic I was for the final product. And no, it wasn't just, "Oh, this director sucks" or "Chris Evans isn't right for Cap." Ok, maybe I said that about the last one, but once leaked set footage appeared I was quickly silenced by just how much Evans looked like the character.
But I had the opposite comment about Joe Johnston, the director of Captain America: The First Avenger. About the only work I recalled of Johnston's was The Rocketeer, an enjoyable WWII-era superhero-esque fantasy film from the 90's. So he already had a pedigree for this type of work (this type of work being Nazis and superheroes).
It wasn't until comments from Johnston about production and the film that I really started getting worried. This was one of his first comments about Cap:
"It's not going to be a Captain America that you expect. It's something different. It is influenced by the comic book, but it goes off in a completely different direction."
Hearing that the director thinks it's a good idea to go off completely on his own is not something you want to hear about a comic book movie (or any film that's based on a literary work, really). It shows a lack of understanding and respect for the history of the character. It's like the director (or writer or producer) is saying, "this character has existed and endured for 70 years, but now I'm going to make him good!"
It was also a hint that maybe the studio was giving the directors more freedom in how they handled the characters (something that I point to as one of the reasons why Spider-Man 2 and 3 were disappointments). With movies like Spider-Man and Iron Man, I could picture someone in a black suit and sunglasses kicking over a chair, pulling a switchblade up to Raimi's and Favreau's necks and saying, "You won't screw this up if you know what's good for you..." and disappeared into the night. When the time to make Cap rolled around, Marvel Studios had a string of major and minor hits on their hands (Iron Man and Iron Man 2 being the major, Incredible Hulk being the minor), so maybe they felt the director could have more freedom in how he made the movie. Or maybe the guy from Swingers just "got" Iron Man a lot more than Joe Johnston seemed to "get" Captain America.
The concept art for the costume didn't help much, either. While the finished product looked a lot more like cloth than the initial picture, the concept looked like futuristic body armor. I won't go any further into it than that (already spent at least one entry doing that, anyway).
And then something happened. The aforementioned footage of a buff Chris Evans as Steve Rogers surfaced, leaving whether he could be the physically imposing super-soldier in little doubt. This was the still-in-excellent physical condition, but much thinner kid who had, only a couple of years ago, been the Human Torch in the Fox-licensed Fantastic Four movie. That, of course, was the second biggest hurdle (or perhaps even larger than if he could pull off the role unaided by CGI) with Evans. He, in my mind and in many others, was still remembered for his role as Johnny Storm (many articles about him even said Chris Evans, best known for his role as the Human Torch).
It's like (though maybe not to this extreme) if Christian Bale were to play Superman, or if Ryan Reynolds would be the Flash. Yes, Fantastic Four is licensed to Fox Studios (same as X-Men and DareDevil, though Spider-Man is licensed to Sony, which is why Kingpin probably won't show up in a Spidey flick) and Captain America is a Marvel Studios film, but many don't see a distinction. Seriously. People continue to ask and wish for a Spider-Man/Avengers/X-Men crossover film. So, it wasn't that far of a stretch for people to look at Chris as Steve Rogers and ask, "what the crap is that guy from FF doing in WWII?" Part of what helped IS the amount of muscle Chris Evans put on to play the role. The other, and we had to wait for the finished product to really determine this, was could he act differently than the sarcastic jerk from the FF movies.
The trailers began filtering in and I just about wrote the film off as the first real failure for Marvel. One that could spell disaster for Joss Whedon's The Avengers (though Whedon just couldn't have that. I'll get to that in a bit). A lot of the earlier trailers were mostly one liners and generic looking action shots (maybe that's all that the studio had finished, I don't know) and I thought to myself (and anyone who would listen, really) "If these are the best parts of the film, this is what is supposed to sell me on this movie, then this is going to suck)
So. The big question is now,after I've rambled on for paragraphs about my personal history with the development of Captain America (no, I didn't work on the film, I'm saying my reaction to the film's development) is did Chris Evans deliver?
The answer, as anyone who saw the film, was yes. Yes, he can. He has that that root-for-me-because-I'm-the-underdog charm that makes the character so likable. Yes, he also has the badass part down pat. But it's his, "I just want to do something good" attitude that really won me over.
Without knowing how much of the script Joss Whedon changed (he was brought in to rewrite the script to make it fit into his plan for The Avengers as well as to punch up a couple of scenes to add more character development), I can't say the film would've been worse without his involvement.
So, I guess what I'm getting at is: congratulations Joe Johnston and Chris Evans, you won me over. Now bring on the Avengers!
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