Hey, Avengers is gonna be pretty cool.
 

I just got back from seeing a sneak preview of Captain America: The First Avenger with my dad on base. First things first, it's a good movie. Not as good as Thor but much better than Iron Man 2 and The Incredible Hulk.

I ain't gonna give real spoilers cause most of you have got a week left to wait for it but I just have a few things I'd like to say:

- There aren't really any Nazis in this movies. No swastikas at all.
- When you see it, wait till the credits end. What I'm about to say is kind of a major spoiler but nothing you probably wouldn't expect: They showed a trailer for The Avengers after the credits. Everyone was in it. No bullshit, it was a real, bonafide trailer. And it was awesome.

So feel free to talk about Captain America, The Avengers, or any of Marvel's other films.

I liked Iron Man 2 more than Thor. So what should I expect out of Captain America? Worth it on the cheap night? We have a cheap night at theaters, here.

So Lumenskir should like this.
 

I'd say go full price if you have to because you won't regret it but it's if you don't want to pay full price then don't. This movie does have one thing in common with Iron Man 2: it moves like a motherfucker. It's not very long, I can't imagine it being over 2 hours long, and it has a really strong three act structure.

My only concern is that the films and the heroes maybe work as individual films with some nods to being in the same universe, but this has really been building since Iron Man 1 I think. That was 2008. The hype for this crossover has literally been building for 4 years. I'm a little worried that it might be a decent movie with some interesting cast and characters and a fairly competent plot, but still rather viewed poorly because the epic hype crushed it.

If this works out too, how does Iron Man 3 and Thor 2 work? Are they going to break off from the Avengers to randomly deal with a threat themselves? Won't they have to keep contriving reasons for them to go off by themselves and then re-assemble? I mean, that sort of works with Thor since no one else can really deal with godly realm stuff, but really if someone is threatening the future of earth, why would Captain America be like 'nah, it's cool, Iron Man can deal with it.' If they lessen the extremity of the threat, won't the villain seem unambitious?

I dunno. I think Captain America and The Avengers will be good films, but trying to bring a comic book continuity to a mainstream audience seems like it'll be difficult to sustain over a long franchise.

Make it purely business based. Iron Man fights to keep his company from, I dunno, merging with Disney and making Mickey Missiles because he hates mice. In the end, after a long battle of lawyers and counter-suits and slander and lobbying, he finally fights Robo-Disney the Ice Master soaring over the Matterhorn, a fight which breaks out far too quickly to assemble the Avengers.

Done. Mail me my check.

There is only one way to combat over-hype. You, personally, must sit there and brood about how shitty the object of over-hype will be. Next year, after you've lowered your expectations to something like the quality of watching grass grow, you are ready to see the object of over-hype. It will probably be fantastic.

Now, I'm probably the last person to go for comics knowledge on the internets, but weren't the original Avengers a 5-man team?

So, we're kinda missing someone in their own movie, then.

...unless the missing person in question is Spider-Man, then you can disregard this since Sony has their hooks in Spidey's movie rights.

How do you make a captain america movie with no nazis?

Smarty, you might have this movie mixed with "The First Avenger" movie.

?? I'm talking about Captain America movie which is also the "first avenger" movie.

Well, technically they're also missing Ant Man and Wasp, but they're bringing in Black Widow and Hawkeye to kind of replace them. Apparantly after the first Avengers movie they want to maybe do proper films for all the other characters they've missed, as well as sequels for the others, and I think they want to do a full blown Nick Fury and Black Panther movie too.

Yeah, Avengers 2 is gona get really packed. I suppose we should be thankful they don't have the rights to Spiderman and the X Men back yet as well, otherwise everything would be thrown together into a single universe and then things would be really crazy, much like the actual comics.

Simple, Smarty.

You make them secret Nazis who don't use the swastika and have different goals from the real Nazis.

Captain America fights Al-Qaeda?

No, you can't have fictional characters fight non-fictional people. That would be silly.

Most likely these non-Nazis were supposed to be Hydra.

At least, in the Disney Avengers show, that's how they seem to play things.

I think the no Nazi thing comes into play because Germany has a ban, of sorts, against tv & movies who use them. So in order to sell stuff to Germany, we've got fictional Nazi-like characters.

At least, that's my limited understanding of the situation.

The ban doesn't apply to "works of art" which includes movies though it does apply to their promotional material. It's why they could show Inglourious Basterds but had to change its poster for example.

And the fictional fighting non-fictional thing- plenty of fictional dudes have thought the nazis. and it pretty much central to Captain America that he was created to fight nazis and his main villain Red Skull is Hitler's deputy.

I don't understand, he clearly seemed to be fighting Nazis in the trailers. Okay, okay, it's a secret organization called Hydra that does occult and scientific experiments in tandem with the Nazis and they're like best buddies. So? If you help out the Nazis you are pretty much a Nazi, too. I don't see why this small difference is a big deal.

Like, does Belloq in Raiders of the Lost Ark just piss everybody off to no end because he's only working with the Nazis instead of being an actual member of the Gestapo or whatever?

Let me explain: Hydra starts off as a Nazi science division but within like five minutes the Red Skull practically tells them all to go fuck themselves and tries to wage his own war.

And this movie was such an Indian Jones movie.

That sounds pretty ridic to best honest.

My bet is he is waiting for Captain Russia to kill all the Nazis thn going to storm in and claim the credit.

Now that I think about it, we can totally not have that many Marvel movies.

Seriously, the continuity... ow. That is hurting my brain, right there.

While this may seem problematic, it also means we might get to see Dr. Strange and Iron Fist in their own movies.

Marvel is building their brand up like crazy. If The Avengers pays off then this will give them free reign to make whatever movies they want. DC can't do that because they've screwed up their last few non-Batman movies.

DC will have to manage to come up with more than two successful comic book movie IPs before they can try for Justice League (presuming that Man of Steel is successful, of course...) They could do a Batman/Superman movie any time, though.

Iron Man 3 would probably have Tony fighting something Thor can't fight, like...a wizard.

An alien wizard! With technology disguised as magic installed in some kind of apperatus, like wands or rings. And he will use this technology and intellect in an elongated gambit for the world. Because Thor has never been good with mastermind villains, hence why Loki is his arch.

The Mandarin could probably give him a run for his money, after all.

They alluded to the Mandarin in the first movie so I figured they had to bring him up one day.

I read this interview they did with the guy they've lined up to do Iron Man 3 and he said he wanted to make it like a Tom Clancy thriller which could work very well. There'd be no reason to involve the other Avengers in a conspiracy but I could see SHIELD being a part of it. Plus, post-Avengers productions might realize they have to scale back so we don't keep asking, "Why don't you just call Thor?" and this could lead to more personalized stories.

But that's all here-say so we got no clue what we're gonna be in for.

Only when he's Tony Stark
 

Wouldn't it be ridiculously easy to make it so that the Avengers kind of hate each other? I mean Tony's a dick, Thor is never available, and what do you say to a man out of time?

Especially when said man out of time knew the dick's father (just a guess).

Possible. The Avengers were united in their pursuits, but often separated by their ignorance. Particularly The Hulk and Iron Man. One cannot count using only his appendages the amount of times Iron Man thought the Hulk was hulking out and just started shooting him to try to stop him.

Civil War plotline for Avengers 2?

I would call that a terrible idea but I could see it being a logical continuation. The trouble is that they'd have to shoe-in an instigator and it would probably come from on of the character's separate movies. Like Thor having a battle that levels an entire city or something like that. And they really haven't established enough heroes yet in order to make it work.

Oh, if they actually went with the actual plotline it would be terrible, I figured just the basic theme behind it would be cool, and could grow out of the whole congressional hearings from Iron Man 2.

But yeah I'm presuming in the years between Avengers and Avengers 2 we get like ten new Marvel superhero movie franchises introduced. They're already sticking Spider-Man into the movie-verse (by making Peter Parker's deceased parents turn out to be agents of SHIELD) so it's possible to get enough movies in there to make the basic idea feasible, even if it's just like "Iron Man, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Nick Fury and SHIELD versus all the other heroes" or what have you.

Hmm, while I still find the pre-Cap mocap body in the trailers inherently ridiculous, this review and the fact that I just discovered that Joe "Rocketeer" Johnston directed it is swaying me.

Lack of Nazis is disappointing however, especially since the best scene in the Rocketeer relied on the Nazis being so inherently evil mobsters and G-Men would band together to take them out. Can't Nazis just be de facto the most bad guys, without all of this offshoot nonsense?

My guess is that they're either trying to make it more kid-friendly or they're planning on keeping Hydra as villains for the Avengers.

And don't doubt that effect they did on Chris Evans. I spent the entire time looking for a flaw in that effect and not once did I see one. Steve spends a bit more time than I was expecting as pre-super soldier so they really had to sell him as the weakling.

Oh, do any of you remember how the Marvel U has it's own Marvel comics that publishes superhero stories with "minor" alterations? There's a quick nod to that too as well as Steve's career as an artist that I really appreciated.

There were a couple of instances where his head seemed to be mis-sized to his smaller body, but other than that it was a pretty good effect.

I was personally surprised by the fact they showed the blood spread when the one guy fell into the propeller.

I wonder if Red Skull is going to be the Avengers villain?

Arg. I'm so mad I didn't catch this yet. Apparently I have mono so I can't really leave the house to see it or do much of anything else since I keep getting fevers.

edit: I actually meant this to go in the Captain America thread. Whoopsie

I got a kick out of the propeller thing, although there was probably way less blood than one would expect, it was still pretty hilarious!

Red Skull certainly seemed to just teleport away similar to what Thor and his crew did in the Thor movie, so I'd expect his return eventually, though it might just be in Captain America 2.

The after trailer seemed to focus on Loki, so we know he's in on it. It would have to be something more powerful, though.

So for everyone still on the fence about seeing it, I can now confirm that this movie does indeed move like a motherfucker in the best way possible...well, at least once he actually becomes Captain America. My ideal pre-Cap sequence would have just been Steve diving on the fake grenade at USO show or something and then immediately strapped into the serum booth (maybe some Red Skull shenanigans interspersed) and on to the main movie, which was great.

Seriously, once he got buff the movie just didn't slow down. Liked the Brooklyn chase, the montage of shows was jingoistically adorable, the breakout battle was great, and the montage of them dismantling Hydra was gold. I also really loved that the supporting B-Squad was each given just one line of dialog to distinguish themselves and then let loose, because my big problem with Thor was that those three Asgardians who weren't Thor or Loki got a disproportionate amount of screentime to how interesting they actually were.

Only real complaint, aside from the pre-Cap, is that the modern day stuff felt so obviously tacked on. I wanted to just sit them down, give them a pat on the back, and point out that the subtitle was The First Avenger, so we didn't really need the tie-in sledgehammer.

People are on the fence about seeing this?! I was on the fence about Thor 'cause I didn't know a lot about the dude, but this is freaking Captain America. You know that at the very least he's going to kick some ass in the defense of freedom, probably with explosions.

FTFY

Things I just realized:

-Barring comics-logic shenanigans, the 70 year time jump means no more Hayley Atwell...or Tommy Lee Jones or Sebastian Stan or anyone else...but mostly it means no more Hayley Atwell :<(((((

-So, Captain America never really fondue-d anyone, did he? Does he get to be leader of the Avengers because they feel bad for him that he's still a virgin?

She has a niece or granddaughter in the comics that looks exactly like her if I remember correctly. And Bucky should be back in the second movie.

Yes, never doubt comics logic shenanigans.

As for Captain America, he never has any sex, he's married to Lady Liberty.

EDIT: BTW why isn't there already a fellow-superheroine love interest for Captain America named Lady Liberty?!

ANOTHER EDIT: Shit, too bad, DC Comics came up with her first.

Hmm, I wonder if comics-logic shenanigans will fly in comic book movies? I mean, we've seen that people are more than willing to accept different actors/actresses playing the same part (on both side of the DC/Marvel divide), so I guess it's sort of the same thing?

Also, I get why they needed to get Cap to the present, but I don't really see his adventures being as great as period-specific stories. I mean, he's basically just a stronger than average guy with an invincible boomeranging shield. Any of the other Marvel movie villains we've seen so far could kill him easily from a distance without breaking a sweat.

That is a serious understatement of how much better then an average person Cap is.


He is better then exceptional humans, better then superb humans in peak condition at the height of their game. He consistantly beats up super-villians and goes toe-to-toe with heavy hitters. He is good for it.

Hey man, I'm just going from the movies. I mean, he's great (and entertaining) when fighting mecha mooks who shoot lasers one at a time for him to deflect, but either of the faux-Iron Man suits could bombard him from the atmosphere, Loki could magic him from just as far away, and whatever it was the Hulk fought could presumably just rend him limb from limb?

And for some reason I always thought he was the oldest because he lived all the way through the years just not aging or whatever, but we've basically got an Avatar situation where he's basically a 22 year old with some close combat experience against one type of enemy, not a wizened mastermind.

But mostly I just wanted him to fight Cold War Russians.

Well the shield's ability to basically deflect anything and everything explains his ability to battle lightning bolts and survive nuclear blasts, probably. Plus he is pretty super-fast and super-strong, too.

Plus in an Avengers movie he'd probably be the leader, and the leader of a group is always sort of well-rounded and bland in a way. He has to wrangle an arrogant hothead in Thor, an arrogant smarmy drunk in Tony, and a mild-mannered scientist who flips the fuck out and turns into a big green guy in Bruce.

Dude, Cap would fuck up the Hulk and any of the Hulk's villains. Remember that bit in Incredible Hulk where Blonsky was dodging everything the Hulk through at him? Yeah, that was a defective super soldier serum. What makes Cap a threat is how agile he is and how much smarter he is than everyone else in regards to tactics.

This is probably going to be what we get in the sequel but not in the way a lot of people would expect. If they're smart we'll be getting the Winter Soldier and it will be awesome.

Well just from what occurred in the movie I'd say it's undoubted we'll get that. *CAPTAIN AMERICA COMIC SPOILER* The Winter Soldier: Like the Red Hood but not terrible.

i just going out here to say that even though i knew what Cap would be alive by the end of the movie, it still felt brilliant the way his last fighting scene was handled. I think they struck the core nature of "Super Hero" right there. Captain American was a better boy scout than superman... all movies combined.

As for Avengers, i'm really, really, looking forward to see how Stark, Thor and Steve will interact in this movie, if they keep the same sense of humor they have so far, the comedy portions of this movie should be fantastic.

Also, i loved how the managed to keep Captain surrounded by Multi Cultural characters during the whole movie. A nice touch actually.

PS: Hugo Weavin is one of the best actors to play bad guys... goddamn!

I thought that was defective gamma stuff...and while that guy could dodge, he couldn't make a dent in the Hulk even with a grenade launcher.

And I could buy the tactics argument if Cap had more than four years of actual combat experience, and whose main tactic was wreaking Wilhelm screams throughout the enemy's camp point blank.
This is mostly the reason why I felt the pre-Cap sequence didn't need to be as long as it was. With snarky characters like Stark most of the fun of the movie is seeing them snark about, but repeated instances of clean cut morality don't really contribute anything new. I would have been perfectly fine if they had found a way to cut it down to just the fake grenade bit and the pre-serum drinking talk.
Thankfully, no Canadians.

This hurts me. This really hurts me.

Captain America doesn't need to have super powers. He kills you in your sleep then runs away going "Preemptive strike! Terrorist!"

Smarty, he's Steve Rogers not George fucking Bush.

No he's Captain America!

Dude! have you ever read a Captain America comic book? He isn't some patriotic nimrod despite his name. During the nixon administration he quit in protest. He does it again later on and During the civil war he becomes a criminal to protect others rights to a secret identity. He is, according to some writers, what America should be like not how it is.

Jesus, I could make fun of Captain Britannia or Union Jack for being stuck up and prickish But I know it to be untrue.

That reminds me, Union Jack was one of the racecar drivers during the Monaco sequence n Iron Man 2, yet he didn't do jack shit to try and help Tony! What an asshole! Maybe he was just like "YES NOW I CAN GET FIRST PLACE"

Maybe he'll show up in Avengers and apologize.

Quick survey guys...

The Avengers is a success...

Spiderman Reboot is a success and it fits in the current Marvel Mega-verse...

Civil War movie 2015?

As I said earlier, they'll have to get some more successful franchises made into movies before attemping a Civil War plotline.

At the rate they are going, that is only a matter of time then

Smarty doesn't let facts get in the way.

I thought Sony or whoever was still doing the Spidey movies.

And in that regard, isn't Smarty the living embodiment of the American Spirit™ and thus the most American of us all?







The answer is no because he's a kiwi.

They are. Bells and everyone else is probably just hoping that Marvel somehow gets the movie rights back (despite the fact that Sony is specifically making this movie so they can keep the rights).

And even if they do, why Civil War? Of all stories do we really want that one to hit the screen?

Barring the rights stuff, you'd basically be asking the Marvel studio to immediately begin working on the sequel, which would mean you probably wouldn't be able to fit in a Thor 2, Iron Man 3, Ruffalo Hulk 1, etc. and so on in between. Plus, I know that Edgar Wright is already working on an Ant Man script (whoever the fuck that is) so they obviously want to expand their franchises out. MAYBE you get an Avengers 2 in 2020.

Although, thinking about it, what's everybody's over/under on Marvel saturation? DC has already shown that superhero names in and of themselves aren't guaranteed blockbuster moneymakers anymore, and while Marvel has been more consistent it could only take a few Hulk-esque recasts/reboots to stretch their audience to the breaking point.

It's hardly about what we want... But c'mon, you think Marvel will let loose of this horse on it's peak? They are on a serious roll here. More so even to the fact that DC has, pretty much, a loosing Streak.

After Avengers, what are they going to do?

I like to think that with Blackwidow and Hawkeye playing a very competent B Cast so far, maybe a Shield-Related movie would be next. But they are not just going to drop this Connected unniverse... Iron Man 3 and Thor 2 are in the works. Captain America was a great movie i'm sure there will be a second one. There is a new Ghost Rider movie in the works...

From recent Marvel events, they only one i think can actually work well on screen is Civil War, and even that is hard to pull (see X Man Last Stand)

I knew Cap was going to get frozen. I knew it.

Still, the line at the end "I had a date..." seriously, I almost lost my cool in front of my friends.

We shall need a Cable movie. Then a Deadpool movie. Then a Deadpool and Cable movie.

Avengers 2, then Avengers 3, then Avengers: With a Vengeance, then Avengers: Tokyo Drift

Fortunately they've got some actually competent writers on the Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes cartoon busily turning out actually good stories for the movies to stripmine.

See, I was completely in the bag for the movie throughout the entirety of the plane conversation, and I thought the look of Hayley Atwell's face when Cap finally cut out, followed by the cut to the kid in the street with the garbage pan shield would have been perfect. But to then drag it out just so we understand that he's in the present, even though we've already seen the frozen shield...

I mean, I get that it had to happen, but that would have been a great post-credits stinger so as not to ruin the flow of what we've been watching. As is, we get a really touching farewell, followed by a jarring "HEY GUYS THIS IS WHY HE HIS CALLED THE FIRST AVENGER (IT IS BECAUSE HE WILL BE IN A MOVIE CALLED THE AVENGERS)!" green screen fest that was very sour and obviously tacked on.

blurbs
 

Ant Man can change size, grow bigger or smaller, etc.

He is basically the Marvel version of the Atom with a dumber name.

And yet if you call yourself Doctor Destruction I guarantee you going to have 3 superheroes punching your teeth out before you go to bed every night. Funny how that works isn't it.
Or how about Captain German Reich- he was founded int he 30s, standing for freedom for war profiteering and strong public works. Once the Nazis started doing their shit he quit in protest but has come back now. Everyone would totally call him a villain.

Ha, "facts" made up by the fascist, terror-loving comic book industry.

Doctor Destruction: Clearly a Freudian slip. You just know he's going to destruct something as soon as possible. Is it really bad to send Espionage Dude to keep an eye on him just in case he pulls something?

Captain German Reich: Just because you're the Trotsky to Hitler's Stalin doesn't make you an okay dude.

Well, the guy is pretty heavy into BDSM. So take that as you will.

Ok, finally got to check out Captain America. Really enjoyed the acting and felt like the spirit of the story was very thoughtful even though the pacing was hella weird - I'm not a huge fan of montages so having one really long, really irritating one encompassing a wholly unnecessary plot point and another one 5 minutes later glossing over what could have been more awesome as an actual scene were the least enjoyable parts of the movie for me. Interestingly, the parts I liked the most was everything from the beginning to just after he receives the serum, and found those scenes far more moving than the film's climax.

But, overall, Marvel is knocking these out of the park. This was just as good as Thor in terms of being a ridiculous action-packed comic book superhero movie, and a little smarter in terms of it's dramatic elements. Avenger's looks awesome if only becuase it's basically going to be an ensemble film a'la Ocean's 11, but with super powers.

The USO montage is to explain why he is wearing a costume.

I agree with the Hydra factory takedowns montage being a bit of a cop out, but then again they could have just excised the fact that there are multiple ones and that montage entirely. So be thankful you at least got a cool montage at all since it is actually unnecessary to the plot.

I guess it felt like a bit of a plot hole becuase I didn't see how it made sense to waste his obvious potential or that he would be willing to endure being a 'chorus girl' after how hard he had worked to get into the army in the first place.

It's not wasting potential though. They wanted an army of super soldiers but they got one guy. If you send him in to battle he might die so they kept him around as mascot to boost morale. And the only reason he endured it is because he was willing to do whatever it took to help the war effort be it on the battlefield or on the homefront.

First off they weren't wasting his potential as far as they were concerned. He had two superiors worth note, an elected official who believed him better served as a chorus girl, and a superior officer who believed him better served trying to make more like him. The official was thinking personally, the officer pragmatically. The former about his future, the latter about the idea that one man cannot win a war. Having seen too many men die trying to have any faith.

As for why he decided to fall to form and become a chorus girl, he is a loyal member of our military service. It was what he wanted, never to be a leader, but to do what he was told for his country. It was why standing on his own two feet was such a turning point. Becoming a leader. Becoming a real hero. And preparing him to scream, "ASSEMBLE!"