Captain America

[GeorgeC]

I liked the 2011 Captain America film a lot!

By far the best treatment of the character in live-action and one of the best adaptations I've seen of a hero to film. The score by Silvestri was also a treat with a rousing heroic theme and cues that feel appropriate for the World War II era.

It really is a better film than many critics are giving it credit for being... Yes, it's a basic good versus evil plot but it's still a good ride and shows why the moral character of Steve Rogers is so integral to Captain America. There's the basic theme of the film -- the use of ability to benefit fellow man; Steve Rogers' character prevented him from abusing the power granted to him unlike his self-absorbed counterpart, the Red Skull.

Evans was much better than I expected and the action in the film doesn't let up. Bucky and the Howling Commandoes were incorporated into the story in ways that were fresh but still faithful to the original intent. There is a subplot of a romance between Cap and an English intelligence officer but it's clipped in favor of moving the story along. Also briefly touched on is the character of Howard Stark, Iron Man's father. Stark is one of the intriguing eccentric characters in the background and deserves perhaps more screen time in a future Cap, Iron Man, or Avengers film. Tommy Lee Jones reprises his typical gruff onscreen persona as the commanding officer of Rogers' platoon.

The film in general is NOT literally faithful to the source material but does capture the spirit of the best comics produced in the 1940s, 1960s, and 1980's era of Captain America. It weaves its own original version of the basic Cap saga whilst managing to stick to the important milestones of the character's early career and eventual arrival in the modern era. The World War II sequences are so nice and we see such a small sliver that I hope some flashbacks are done in another Captain America film.

The Cap movie does a phenomenal job tying into the movie continuity set in motion by the previous Hulk, Iron Man, and Thor films. Besides this, there is an unexpected cameo of the original android Human Torch (replica of him in his stasis tube!) at the 1943 New York World's Expo! Perhaps the Torch and the Sub-Mariner could figure into another film... The Invaders wouldn't be a bad element in a future film.

To sum up, this is a basic tale of good versus evil. If you're expecting a morally ambiguous film, look elsewhere. For those that want a film experience that will life their spirits -- or for those who just want to witness one of the best examples of a pure hero in fiction --, this film is for you!

[Randall]

Sounds like this film is for me!

[GeorgeC]

Warning...

The following link is to a site that has Spoiler Pics from the Captain America movie...

Don't look at these pics unless you want to...

They reveal one of the big unexpected cameos in the film!

I was really caught by surprise in the film when this character turned up.
Hint: He's on the cover of the VERY FIRST "Marvel" comic published!

http://comicbookmovie.com/fansites/rors ... s/?a=42838

I am so hoping more gets done with Marvel's Golden Age era.

In all honesty, Marvel's golden age isn't as lush and character-filled as DC's is BUT the big Marvel characters (Cap, The Torch, and Sub-Mariner) from this era (late 1930s, 1940s) are well-suited for adventures set during World War II.

There's one particular superhero battle I wouldn't mind seeing captured in film...

The original Human Torch (the android) and Namor (the Sub-Mariner) had some brutal battles during the early 1940s. In one epic battle, Namor flooded Manhattan! One battle ended in a stalemate with the Torch trapped in a huge battle and Namor realizing he couldn't let the Torch out for obvious reasons! The battles always ended in stalemates -- water versus fire you know(!) -- but the mayhem that resulted was something that had to be witnessed to be fully appreciated! DC characters in general got along a lot better during the Golden Age of Comics.

[Randall]

Well, this is great to see: an awful Marvel adaptation is finally seeing the light of day on DVD. This November, Shout! is putting out a DVD for the Cap 1970s TV movies Captain America and Captain America II: Death Too Soon (with Reb Brown). As someone who simply has to have all these things, I'll be grateful that I can toss out my off-air VHS recordings. They're getting pretty hard to watch at this point.

http://www.amazon.com/Captain-America-I ... 867&sr=1-3

[Ben]

Eeek!

Never heard of these two! I'd obviously heard (and seen) the late 1980s "movie", but not these - they sound terrible (as in good awful)!

If only, though, Sony or Disney would put out those Nicholas Hammond Spider-Man shows. Even the three TV movies would be a gift at this point.

[EricJ]

Eeek!
Never heard of these two! I'd obviously heard (and seen) the late 1980s "movie", but not these - they sound terrible (as in good awful)!

Nnno, just bad-awful--As in, made by the people who did those Nicholas Hammond Spiderman shows, in the tame, SFX-free wake of Bill Bixby's Hulk.
To wit:

(...Hey, it was the late 70's, we liked motorcycles. )

[GeorgeC]

Eeek!

Never heard of these two! I'd obviously heard (and seen) the late 1980s "movie", but not these - they sound terrible (as in good awful)!

If only, though, Sony or Disney would put out those Nicholas Hammond Spider-Man shows. Even the three TV movies would be a gift at this point.

There's a reason the 1970s Cap films aren't seen that much...

They're fairly awful!

SyFy recently aired these telefilms and the 1991 Captain America film to capitalize on the 2011 Captain America movie. They're all fairly bad and low budget. Reb Brown just wasn't a very good actor and the shield he used was this transparent very plastic affair. (To be honest, the shield in the 1991 film also looked very plastic, too.... But at least it wasn't transparent.)

[To be honest, after I saw the 2011 Cap movie, I saw a lot of script similarities between that film and the 1991 movie. Methinks more than a few things were "borrowed" from the previous movie. The parallels that exist between Cap and the Skull and their origins in both films is too much of a coincidence.)

As for the Hammond TV episodes and movies, I haven't seen those on TV for at least 20-odd years. A long while back, one of the local TV stations in my area re-aired a few of these films years after they debuted on CBS. I can also remember seeing the Hong Kong episode of Spider-Man (with Hammond) in Colombia when my family was visiting relatives on vacation. (This was way back in 1978 or 1979.) That's what happens with a lot of TV movies -- they get theatrical edits or get shown as-is in foreign theater markets!

As it stands, I don't think the Hammond Spidey series ever had more than a few episodes released on VHS and LD. I do remember seeing an LD that featured the clone episode of the Hammond series. I'm very surprised the series hasn't been released in its entirety. It was fairly popular in its time. The main reason it was cancelled was because of the expense of filming the stunts and doing the FX.

Latest I've read about Hammond himself is that he now lives and works in Australia. He's in his mid- to late-50's now. Besides Spider-Man, he was most famous for playing one of the Von Trapp sons in "The Sound of Music" and the jock who dropped Marcia Brady as his date for a school dance after her nose was injured by an errant football thrown by her brothers!

Nobody -- and I repeat, NOBODY -- controls what people remember them for!

[Randall]

The Spidey show wasn't too bad, really, other than having the wrong tone and personalities, and limited effects. If you can forgive it for those things, there were really some decent episodes. I just watched one a couple of weeks ago, actually. Rhino put much of the show out on VHS in the 1990s. I've got a good chunk of the run on 7 of their tapes (I think I have them all), including the movie-length ones (the other tapes have 2 eps each). The clones episode is really pretty cool.

The Cap movies, though, are pretty lame, but I still like watching them just to "marvel" at their misfires.

[Ben]

Hey, I do remember seeing that Captain America. Wow...flashback. Yeah, pretty darned awful (love that trailer narration...stiff as a plank!).

I loved the Hammond Spidey show and would love a DVD of the series or the three theatrical edits of the two-part episodes. Yeah, it was cheesy and the effects were awful, but at the right time at the right age it was appointment to view TV!

I actually remember the pilot was pretty good; it was later on when the limitations of the VFX budget was all too easily spotted, but Hammond was keen and good in his role, and for what it was (a pretty ambitious superhero show made on a TV budget in the 70s), it did its job well for the target audience!

[Dan]

In the weeks leading up to the film's release, Conan O'Brien would poke fun at both the film and at Entertainment Tonight by showing "clips" of ET's preview of the film where it would instead show clips from those cheesy movies. And since these clips would end with the host saying "Boy, it looks good!", that phrase turned into an internet meme.

[Randall]

Here's a review of the 1990 version:

http://animatedviews.com/2011/captain-america-1990/

[GeorgeC]

About the 1990 Captain America film...

1) Yes, it was made during the era when Marvel had next-to-no control over the film adaptations of its characters. The rights got licensed to small-time operators and the few films that actually got made were generally awful. The 1990 Cap film is hardly the worst of the bunch. The first Punisher and FF films were far worse -- and that doesn't even include the 1970s Spider-Man TV movies or two 1970s Cap movies.

2) The lead actor in the title role was hardly a new actor. He was Matt Salinger, the son of J.D. Salinger, the famous author. Next to the 1990 Cap film, he's probably best known as one of the Alpha-Beta frat boys from the original Revenge of the Nerds movie.

3) The 2011 Captain America film has some common subplot points that I believe originated with the 1990 film. The screenwriters for the 2011 Cap movie most likely saw the earlier film and ran with some of its ideas. The commonalities are just too coincidental and DO NOT originate from the original comics!

The key identical plot points are A) both Cap and the Skull received super soldier serums; B) Reinstein/the Italian doctor tested a protoype serum on the Skull that disfigured him -- it's not a mask, Virginia! C) Reinstein/Italian doctor escaped to the States and injected a worthy test subject with a refined serum intended for mass production.

I've got reprints of the first 10 original Captain America comics and I've read most of the 1960s Marvel Comics after the character was revived. The idea of competing super soldiers (American versus Nazi superman) is relatively new... (That Cap was created as a counter-agent to the Skull has been in play in the comics since at least the early 1980s. The competing super-soliders??? Newer idea.) The plot point of getting variations of the same super serum is something that was made up for the 1990 film. It's been picked up and played with in alternate reality comics since then.

It's happening more and more often that script writers are borrowing from past TV and film adaptations rather than referencing the original comics. (The same could be said for most remakes; next to no one doing revamps is actually reading the source material the original films and TV series were adapted from IF they were in fact not originated for TV.)

[EricJ]

Also, the obvious question (Il Teschio Rosso?? ) can be explained by the fact that Menachem Golan and Yoram Globus were Israeli producers, and, like post-Schindler Spielberg, felt it would be offensive to portray comic-book Nazis.
Another considerable job-qualification setback to doing a Captain America movie.

[Randall]

2) The lead actor in the title role was hardly a new actor. He was Matt Salinger, the son of J.D. Salinger, the famous author. Next to the 1990 Cap film, he's probably best known as one of the Alpha-Beta frat boys from the original Revenge of the Nerds movie.

Point taken. I have rephrased what I said about Salinger (at the end of the review) to clarify my point. Captain America was his first lead role as far as I know (Nerds being more of an ensemble piece).

[Ben]

Also, the obvious question (Il Teschio Rosso?? ) can be explained by the fact that Menachem Golan and Yoram Globus were Israeli producers, and, like post-Schindler Spielberg, felt it would be offensive to portray comic-book Nazis.
Another considerable job-qualification setback to doing a Captain America movie.

Wow...they must have really been in the loop!

Captain America: 1990
Schindler's List: 1993