Captain America

I’m going to state this right out front. Despite my earlier assessment of Thor, I prefer it to Captain America.

Not because Thor is a better movie–both are splashy, but mediocre origin stories–but rather because Thor has Tom Hiddleston’s Loki. Hiddleston’s Loki vacillates between fan-girl-cute boy and smirking, smexy, power-hungry menace. He’s a villain worth rooting for.

Captain America has Red Skull, played by the usually magnificent, even when buried in a mask (V for Vendetta), Hugo Weaving. In V for Vendetta, Weaving projects all manner of emotion through an unmoving white mask. In Captain America, he can’t seem to get a twitch out of flexible red latex.

Chris Evans plays Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, the all-American hero. Handsome in a generic blond way, he’s physically suited for the role. (Why, pray tell, is “All American” synonymous with white and anglo? Maybe it’s a function of living in New Mexico, but my All American is several shades darker, and is often bilingual.) Evans does a decent bit of acting. He even manages to generate a smidgen of chemistry with the obligatory love interest, Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter. (As opposed to the fizzle that was between Ryan Reynolds and whatshername in Green Lantern.)

Steve Rogers begins the story as a 98-pound weakling who is desperate to join the army and kill Nazis, but is rejected because the army doesn’t need asthmatic toothpicks. To console himself, he gets his ass kicked regularly by local bullies, because playing the part of human pinata is somehow heroic.  Riiight.

On yet another attempt to sign-up, he is spotted by Dr. Erskine (Stanley Tucci). Erskine thinks Steve is the perfect candidate for his super soldier serum because Steve knows what it’s like to be bullied and won’t go all Thor on the world’s ass. Steve is enlisted and sent to boot camp so he can stumble through obstacle courses while Colonel Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones) shakes his craggy face in disbelief. In one scene, Erskine chucks a grenade at Steve and his fellow recruits. The other recruits–wisely–run away. Steve leaps on the grenade and cuddles it. The grenade is a dummy, but it somehow provides the proof that Steve is ready to be a super soldier.

Steve is given the super serum; he gets abs and man titties. Unfortunately, Dr. Erskine is shot dead by a Nazi infiltrator. Steve then proves that his shiny, Ken-doll physique is more than ornamental, by chasing down the villain, leaping small cars in a single bound and whatnot.

Now here’s where the movie lost me. Steve has just demonstrated that the serum worked; he’s a super-fast killing machine. Colonel Phillip’s reaction to this? He sends him to a lab in New Mexico.  This is where my writerly brain kicks in and screams, “Shitty characterization.”

See there’s something called character consistency. You can’t have a character portrayed one way and then have him do something counter to that characterization. Yes, characters can change; they can even “seem” to be doing something unexpected. Except it really can’t be unexpected. And if your character says, “I hate potatoes,” in scene one, he better have a damn good reason for sucking down Micky Dee’s fries in scene two.

Colonel Phillips is a soldier. He wants to kill Nazis and win the war. No way, Jose, is he turning down a weapon like Steve. To have him do so makes him look like a blithering idiot.

Anyway, Steve is rescued from life as a lab rat by the government, who decide to turn him into a muscle-bound chorus girl for war bonds–and Captain America is born. He ends up overseas, where he defies orders, goes behind enemy lines and saves a bunch of soldiers. Colonel Phillips finally decides, “Hey, this guy might be helpful to the war effort.” Lots of big, admittedly fun action-y scenes happen.

An unfortunate side effect of plying the writing trade is that it’s made me picky about things like characterization. I love action movies, but I love ‘em even more when they have fabulous characterization. Captain America doesn’t.

Steve Rogers has no character arc. Character arc is writerese for what a character learns over the course of a story, the way he/she is changed as a person. Steve starts the story as noble, self-sacrificing guy and he ends it as such. He gets a little weepy when his BFF dies, but otherwise, never suffers from the traditional “dark moment.” (Even Thor has a few minor dark moments where he gives up and settles down to life of plaid shirts in New Mexico.)  Without a significant character arc, Captain America is essentially the story of how Steve got his man boobies.

This is made worse by the Deus ex Machina-style ending. Deus ex Machina is what happens when you set the hero and villain up for a fight and … a boulder falls in the villain, squashing him instantly. And thus, Red Skull meets his maker.

Meh.

I am, of course, looking forward to seeing Thor and Captain America throw down in the Avengers. And Loki as the ultimate “big bad.”

But It’s a Dry Heat