Ryan McNeil
There doesn’t seem to be one right way to adapt a comic book into a movie. Some films want to ground themselves in the reality we know and become “gritty”. Some want to wink to the camera, knowing full well the property that they represent. Others want to go the completely fantastical route, and make it crystal clear that the story we are watching is not one of this world.
So what to make of this latest offering…an adaptation that blends the facts and the fictions?
It’s 1942, and Uncle Sam needs all the willing and able men he can to fight Hitler and his forces of evil.
In Brooklyn, young Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is plenty willing, but very far from able. He’s a pipsqueak who’s likely 90lbs soaking wet (while holding a brick). Despite multiple tries at being enlisted, he is continually declared “4F” and denied enlistment. While at the 1942 Stark Expo, Rogers is spotted trying to enlist (again) by a scientist named Erskine (Stanley Tucci). Erskine sees something in Rogers no one else has yet, and recruits him into a platoon that will be tested to find a suitable candidate for Erskine’s project.
The platoon, commanded by Col. Chester Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones) are all three times Rogers’ size. When it becomes clear though, that Steve is faraway the smartest and bravest soldier, he is officially selected to become America’s first Super Soldier. If the process works, then Erskine and Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper) will turn frail little Rogers into a perfect human specimen.
A perfect specimen is dearly needed too, since a splinter group of Nazis are posing a real threat. The division calls itself Hydra – named for the mythical creature that would be decapitated and respond by growing two heads where once there was one. The platoon is led by Johann Schmidt, aka “Red Skull” (Hugo Weaving). Along with the fact that he seems more focused than Hitler, Red Skull is greatly feared by The Army since they suspect he has tapped into an unnatural power source. Should he manage to turn it on The Allies, the whole war could be over in a hurry.
A little history: The character Captain America was created in 1940. This of course was one year into World War II, and the character was a deliberate tug at people’s patriotism. One year later, when America joined the fray after Pearl Harbor, Cap became an even bigger symbol of stepping up for the cause. His stories had him doing battle with Japanese and Nazi soldiers, and even burst on to the scene of printed comics by socking one to Der Führer.
Origin stories feel a dime a dozen these days, but the way this one blends fact and fiction gives it oxygen. The film easily could have stuck to the evolution of Steve Rogers: Super Soldier. The movie could have introduced us to the pipsqueak, pumped him full of Vita-Ray and tossed him into the fight as “The Ultimate Weapon”. That’s what so many other comic-based films have done, and that’s why so many have failed to elevate themselves. Instead, when Cap is dry-docked into morale boosting, the whole film becomes self-aware and in so doing, takes a step above the rest.
Morale during wartime is a strange animal. Sometimes the support for a mission is high, sometimes it’s low. Sometimes it begins high then drops low. This movie wants us to remember the way the call used to go forth…in days before we changed our Facebook profile pictures to support ribbons. It’s easy to forget now, but it’s arguable that during the time this film is set in, icons like Rosie the Riveter and Rosenthal’s Iwo Jima Photo rallied enough support to keep morale up – and keep the money coming in.
That’s not to say this film gets everything right. The counterweight to all that time spent showing Cap as a morale booster, is that when time comes for him to properly join the fray, we’re only given a montage of the Super Soldier crippling Hydra’s positions. This is a bit unfortunate, since the raids that we do see proper are pretty exciting (likewise Cap’s first unofficial engagement on the streets of Brooklyn). It’s an unfortunate sacrifice, but at the same time I can’t think of any way around it.
A big piece of what makes this film work so well is its overall aesthetic (and I’m not just talking about Evans’ physique…though high praise to his trainer). I was unsure of what we’d see when Joe Johnston was announced as the director of this film, but in hindsight I should have known better. Marvel Studios wanted to tell us a story about The Greatest Generation and have it drip with sepia toned nostalgia. Who better to do that than the guy who brought THE ROCKETEER to life?
Johnston’s vision for the story might be off-putting to some, but in these superhero trolly-tracks in which we find ourselves, having a director have such a distinctive tone and setting for a movie should be heralded as a welcome change. If you’re going to build upon all of the aforementioned rah-rah – and infuse it with Saturday Matinee sensibilities – then making it look like it could share a double bill with Indiana Jones is an inspired move.
CAPTAIN AMERICA might not be the film everybody wanted…but in a lot of ways, it was the film we all needed right now. As a character, Cap is an icon to rally behind. We’re living in days where so many things seems to want to pull us apart – remembering what happens when we pull together might be worth a moment or two of our time and attention. Beyond that, the film ends off the summer of the superhero with a very distinctive decree:
The superhero genre isn’t dead or played out yet. What will matter going forward, is making these movies with a great deal of vision, tapping into what makes the character truly unique, and using that brush to paint the screen.