Anyone who read comic books in the ‘70s vividly remembers the Charles Atlas ads. The scenario was always the same: a “90-pound weakling” gets sand kicked in his face by a brawny bully at the beach; the girl with him comforts her thoroughly emasculated date: “Don’t let it bother you… little man!” The wimp then is shown at home, loosening his tie, kicking his furniture around and vowing to grow some muscles via the Charles Atlas bodybuilding course.
We do things differently now. Steroids, for example. And in the movies, actors like Chris Evans have their perfectly normal bodies whittled down to toothpick size through CGI (playing 90-pound weakling Steve Rogers in the latest summer flick, Captain America: The First Avenger). Whereas someone like Christian Bale had to go on a starvation diet to play a toothpick in The Machinist, now it’s all done with special effects. To put on 15 pounds of muscle and transform into Captain America, though, Evans did it the old-fashioned way: he got a personal trainer. Like a Hollywood version of the old Charles Atlas ads, Captain America inspires ordinary men to pump it up.
Captain America is one of those superheroes whose powers are kind of “meh.” Sure, he’s about four times stronger than normal men (thanks to a voluntary serum injection meant to make him eligible to fight against Nazi Germany), and he’s capable of holding superhuman amounts of liquor (his cells metabolize alcohol — and other things — quicker than normal); plus he’s got the round American flag shield made of super-metal that doubles as a weapon, and… that’s about it.
Oh, yes: then there’s that red-white-and-blue leotard he wears, which must have seemed powerfully heroic in 1941 when the comic book premiered, but now has to be explained away in postmodern, ironic terms. So the makers of Captain America created a story line about how the experiment to create a “super army” to fight Hitler failed (after Captain America’s arch-nemesis, Nazi Johann Schmidt played by Hugo Weaving, sends someone to trash the laboratory); thus Rogers is reduced to wearing the Captain America costume to promote US War Bonds, surrounded by US flag-clad kick dancers. He fake-punches a Hitler impersonator at each performance (to the crowd’s delight) and tells himself he’s helping the war effort.
But his charade is mocked when he’s sent to the European front lines in his Captain America getup to entertain the troops along with the USO girls. “Nice boots, sweetheart,” the war-hardened G.I.s taunt him. Obviously, Steve has to get out of show business and into battle, so he sneaks off on a night mission — not wearing his tights, but sporting the US-flag shield — to free hundreds of US prisoners trapped behind enemy lines. He does so with the help of SSR Officer (and love interest) Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) and cocky scientist Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper) who, incidentally, is Tony Stark’s dad (a fact referred to in last year’s Iron-Man 2). He succeeds, freeing a rainbow coalition of American soldiers that includes a Japanese-American, an African-American, an Irish-American and other ethnic types. In reality, of course, the African-American would have been forced to fight — no less bravely — in a segregated squadron during WWII, and the Japanese-American would have been forced into a US detention camp (though the film does take place prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor). But for the purposes of political correctness, they’re all one big integrated fighting force.
This is a rather expensive summer flick (reportedly costing $140 million), so there’s a lot of snazzy set design meant to place us right in battle-torn Europe, circa 1941. There’s even a Nazi jet that closely resembles the Horten Brothers’ “flying wing” prototype that led the US to later develop its Stealth fighter. But that’s another story.
Rogers and head military cheese Colonel Chester Philips (Tommy Lee Jones, sly and amusing as usual) figure out what Schmidt is up to: he’s actually transformed (through the same serum Rogers has taken) into a hideous creature known as Red Skull, and he’s bent on setting up his own private army to unleash the power of the tesseract he’s recovered to demolish the major world powers.
If you’re a non-fan of The Avengers or Captain America or comic books in general, all of this will sound like standard-issue gobbledygook, which it is, but at least the movie is smart enough to bring everything up to date (Rogers crashes his Nazi jet in the Arctic wastes, but is recovered and cryogenically revived), thus preparing the legion of comic book geeks out in the audience for next summer’s Avengers offering.
Honestly, there’s something cute about seeing an audience of adults occupying their cinema seats long after the main credits have rolled, waiting oh-so-patiently ‘til the very last copyright symbol and Roman numeral has crossed the screen… just so they can catch a “sneak” teaser of next summer’s movie. Then watch while they cheer wildly, as though life suddenly now has meaning. It’s just so… them.
Anyway, ironically, the part of Captain America that works best is when Evans is still a 90-pound-weakling. There, his puny size and obvious desire to do some good for his country is almost touching. When he buffs up into Captain America, he’s still good-natured, and definitely a much more effective superhero. But the movie slips into predictable chases, explosions and fight scenes, most involving different ways to make a Frisbee-shaped shield ricochet off villains’ heads and boomerang back into Rogers’ hands. Sadly, there are not enough interesting ways to do this.
But it’s still a decent popcorn movie, and Captain America will definitely return, alongside Iron-Man and Ant-Man and Wasp and Thor, and maybe the Hulk. He will lead this motley crew assembled by eye-patched Nick Fury (big comics fan Samuel L. Jackson) in a series of plots that will no doubt lift from both the early ‘60s comics as well as the 21st century reboots, and will be written and directed by Joss Whedon, so we can at least expect it to be entertaining, and the comic geeks out there now will have enough superhero acorns to stuff in their cheeks to last through another cold Oscar season before summer rolls around again, in all its superheroic, franchisegasmic glory.