365 Days. 365 Films.

Marvel churns out another revival of a classic comic book series with Captain America: The First Avenger. The film follows Steve Rogers’ (Evans) transformation into Captain America and his first confrontation with his arch nemesis, Red Skull (Weaving). I cannot say how true this film is to the comic books since I never read them as a child, but the film encompasses the best and worst aspects of Marvel movies. Firstly it’s action packed and contains all the characters you may know from the comic books, played by the best possible actors that could have played the roles. However, the worst aspects of Marvel are also demonstrated in this movie, being an over exaggerated, hyped-up disappointment that had all the best bits of the film in the trailer.

The performances in the film are great, the general direction is average, but what takes it down a notch for me is the disgusting use of CGI and green screen technology. The style of the film mimics Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, only it’s not consistent. A lot of the time they will ‘green screen’ the set but then at other points they won’t which is confusing and because of it’s inconsistency it looks less stylised and more… shit… Scenes where characters are driving cars, flying planes or trains etc look like a low budget 1950s movie because of the poor use of green screen, and the CGI in the film is disappointing to today’s standards.
Generally though, as I say, the film is good even when the technical aspects let it down, although my boyfriend did point out that this could have been because it was filmed for 3D, but that is no excuse because it will still look awful on DVD for those of us who don’t own a 3D television.

One final complaint about the film is another inconsistency – and probably the difference between three and four stars had they got it right (and would have overruled the technical let-downs too) is the avoidance of clichés. The first half hour or so reads perfectly like a superhero, Marvel movie that you would expect, although the film openly references common clichés and then avoids them. If not only to bring comedy to the film (which this did) it was a great referential technique which almost broke the forth wall, however after the first half an hour they seemed to get bored with this clever little trick and started using every cliché in the book. Another massive let down…