If you take a World War II movie, amplify the action with modern visual effects and CGI, then give your hero a couple doses of steroids and human growth hormones, you wind up with Captain America: The First Avenger. The hero's name is Steve Rogers and he's played by Chris Evans who (through the miracle of computer wizardry) has his head crafted onto the body of a 98-pound weakling at the beginning of the film. It's 1942 and scrawny Steve is dying to join the Army and go overseas to fight Hitler, like his pal Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan). But the Army keeps turning him down - until an insightful scientist, Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci), spots him for the potential hero he is.
Erskine picks Steve to be his first subject in a top-secret experiment to transform ordinary men into super-soldiers (Yes, kind of like the new GI-Joe). It's a serum he's been developing since before he fled Hitler -- and the Americans think it may be their best bet to defeat the Nazi's own super-secret weapon, which is being developed by a vicious German bad guy named Schmidt. Schmidt is also known as the Red Skull because he has, well, a red skull. It's the byproduct of forcing Erskine to inject him with the then-imperfect super-soldier serum.
Erskine's experiment is a success and Steve is turned into a Superman Nazi fighter: tall, buff and well, buff again), but because a Nazi spy stole the last of the serum just after Steve was injected, the Army is reluctant to send him to fight; they'd rather study him to duplicate him. As a result, he's conscripted to sell war bonds in a musical show, dressed in tights as "Captain America" - until he decides to take matters into his own hands.
Full of exciting action and earnest emotion, “Captain America: The First Avenger” is perhaps the most superhero-ey of this summer’s superhero movies. On the face of it, “Captain America” seems like the corniest, most dated of the Marvel superheroes to try and bring to the big screen. One way to get us past that is to frame the story in the Captain’s re-discovery by a new generation, in the present day. The other is by spending money on good actors. One in particular, hint hint.
