They're modern-day mythology - our counterpart to the Greeks' having Achilles, Hercules and the residents of Mount Olympus. I was watching Captain America Thursday night for maybe the fifth time, and thought I should write a post about the character.
It was 1943, World War II had been raging for our guys for over a year, and in some parts of Europe, it was the fourth year of the war. A morale boost was needed to keep up support for the war(why don't we have that nowadays?), and so several people at Timely Comics(later Marvel), most importantly writer Joe Simon and artist Jack Kirby, created a super-patriotic superhero, very pro-American and anti-Nazi. That character, of course, was Captain America. Interestingly enough, the fourth Captain America story, which features Cap using his shield as a weapon for the first time, was one of the first jobs a young writer named Stan Lee ever did for the company.
Audiences loved the character, and he became one of the early star superheroes. After the war, punching Hitler didn't make as compelling a story anymore, and so people gradually lost interest as Communism made a less-than-appealing opponent. Actually, they pretty much lost interest in superheroes altogether, as comics shifted from telling tales about superhumans to depicting Westerns and love stories. (Ick.)
Stan Lee pretty much hated this shift in focusing, but he needed a job, so he kept working, eventually rising to chief writer (and even farther on, editor) of Marvel Comics. He really wanted to quit, he was so fed up. His wife said, "Well, you don't like the job you're doing; but you're also so creative; there needs to be an outlet for that somehow. Why don't you write one story just the way want to write it, not for any editors or anybody, and see what happens? The worst they can do is fire you, and you already want to quit." So he took her advice, and that story led to a radically shift in the comics industry, as well as culture in general. It was about this team of superheroes known as the Fantastic Four, which later led to the Avengers and X-Men, as well as Spider-Man and a lot of other lesser-known characters.
Early on in the Avengers series, someone decided to bring Captain America back to life, and he was reincarnated to become in some ways the leader of the Avengers, audiences loved it. About fifty years after this rebirth, that led to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, featuring the stories of Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor, and Captain America, just to name a few.
Out in a polar icecap in the Atlantic somewhere, people find this huge....behemoth of something or other. S.H.I.E.L.D. agents from Washington come to check it out, and they find something encased in the ice - a man in a blue suit, with a shiny round shield. The action then cuts back from this mise-en-scene(French cinematic term meaning "middle of the action"), flashing back almost seventy years to 1943, where a Nazi high-in-command officer in charge of HYDRA, the special-research division, named Johann Schmidt takes a mysterious, and extremely powerful, cube rumored to be a tesseract from the gods.
Besides the great story, this movie has so many great one-liners, beginning with the opening lines: "Are you the guys from Washington?" "You get many other visitors out here?" Schmidt mentions the search for the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and there's loads of other scattered quips.
We're then introduced to Steve Rogers, a quick-witted scrawny, skinny asthmatic highly gifted with courage(to the point of stupidity), humility, and sarcasm; he has a very strong moral compass. Due to numerous health issues, he's failed the draft physical five times, and his best friend Bucky just enlisted. Due to leave the next day, they attend an expo of high-tech future gadgets, run by Howard Stark, Tony's father. Steve tries futilely one more time to sign up; a man named Abraham Erskine overhears Steve and Bucky arguing over this, is intrigued by the five tries. He offers Steve the chance to join the army for real, sending him to Camp Lehigh for training. "Do you want to kill Nazis?" "Is this a test?" "Yes." "I don't want to kill anyone. I don't like bullies, no matter where they're from."
Throughout the training, he catches the eyes of grouchy Colonel Chester Phillips and beautiful British MI6 agent Peggy Carter, through a mix of dogged determination, ingenuity, and self-sacrificial actions if needed. Rogers is eventually selected to test Erskine's super-serum formula, previously used on Schmidt. That prototype failed; as it wasn't ready. It amplifies every character trait, so good becomes great, and evil becomes worse. "Whatever happens tomorrow, you must promise me one thing. That you will stay what you are. Not a perfect soldier, but a good man." But's Steve is still curious. "Why me?" "Because a strong man who has known power all his life may lose respect for that power, but a weak man knows the value of strength. And compassion."
Peggy escort/guides Steve to the place where the procedure will take place the next morning. They have a conversation, she says, "You really have no idea how to talk to a woman, do you?" "Not really. I think this is the longest conversation I've had with one. Women aren't exactly lining up to dance with a guy they might step on." "You must have danced." "Well....askin' a woman to dance always seemed so terrifying. And then the past few years....it just didn't seem to matter that much. Figured I'd wait." "For what?" "...The right partner."
The experiment works, but a HYDRA spy acting as the Secretary of State shoots Erskine and captures one of the Vita-Ray tubes. Erskine dies, thus taking his knowledge of the Super-Soldier project to the grave with him. (Later attempts to resurrect it resulted in Bruce Banner's becoming the Hulk following the gamma explosion.) Steve chases the guy, getting beat up, before finally catching him, and the spy commits suicide. "That wasn't so bad." Erskine looks at him. "That was penicillin." Or just before the injection of the Vita-Rays, "Steven? Are you all right?" "I guess it's too late to go to the bathroom, huh?" "How do you feel?" Peggy asks after the experiment. "Taller."
Steve becomes a propaganda tool, serving as "Captain America" to promote sales of war bonds and pro-war newsreels. He'd rather be on the front lines, but still, he tries to do the best job selling patriotism and pride and everything that he can. That doesn't always mean he succeeds, however.
After getting heckled mercilessly for his performance in front of a group of battle-scarred GIs, he's frustratedly drawing a picture of himself as a dancing monkey. That's when Peggy tells him that his audience was all that was left of a company decimated by Nazis, with most killed and the rest taken prisoner. Hearing that it's Bucky's unit, Steve immediately goes on an emergency rescue mission with Peggy and Howard's help. He basically single-handedly rescues the prisoners; a big shootout ensues, Schmidt and his henchman scientist Dr. Zola blow up the factory. One of the prisoners says just after rescue, "Wait...you know what you're doing?" "Yeah. I've knocked out Hitler over 200 times."
Or when he finds Bucky: "Steve?"
"Come on, I thought you were dead."
"I thought you were smaller."
"I joined the Army!"
"Is it permanent?"
"So far." The fact that this dialogue is occurring as they're escaping amid explosions adds to its greatness. As Bucky and Steve are escaping, and just before Schmidt jettisons the inferno, he reveals himself to be the Red Skull, taunting Cap. "What makes you so special?" "Nothing. I'm just a kid from Brooklyn." That sums up his Everyman-ness, the fact that he'd take on a bully for disrespecting the flag in a movie, who has a job to do, and who will do his best to get it done.
Several days later, Steve leads the prisoners back to base camp, much to the cheers of everyone else. Col. Phillips begins to think maybe Dr. Erskine was right, Peggy is quietly satisfied, and the world's press goes crazy. So does a secretary, who tries to seduce Steve. Peggy, not understanding, walks in on her smooching Steve, he's trying to escape. Howard shows several new weapons for him to try, he picks up a shiny round prototype made of vibranium. "What'd you think?" She picks up a pistol and empties it straight into his head, protected by the shield, then says sweetly, "Yes, I think it works." Howard and Steve stare astounded at each other.
Finally out on the lines and now armed with his signature accessory, Cap and his special team begin hunting down and eliminating HYDRA bases. And they're very successful at it, too. In a raid on a high-speed train in the Alps, they capture Zola, but Bucky plummets off a cliff.
Zola gives the Allies the location of the secret base, during which this exchange happens:
Col. Phillips: "Sit down, I brought you some dinner."
"What is that?"
"Steak."
"What's in it?"
"Cow." Col. Phillips has a ton of great lines, he kind of reminds me a bit of my math teacher Mr. Shamblin.
So they raid the base, Schmidt makes for his massive and extremely lethal bomber plane, Rogers, Phillips and Carter chasing him in Schmidt's car down this runway. Steve's getting ready to jump. "Wait!" Peggy yells, then kisses him, hard. "Go get him." Steve looks surprised, asking "What just happened?" with a puzzled frown at the Colonel. "I'm not kissing you."
He then leaps onto the plane, there's a big fight, Schmidt is vaporized by Odin or somebody through the tesseract, and the plane's autopilot is taking it towards New York(Where else?), with bombs aimed for nearly every other major city in the world, including Chicago and Berlin. No way to control it in any way; moving too fast, far too much momentum, and half the engines gone.
"There's not gonna be a safe landing, but I can try to force it down."
Peggy, pleading from the other end of the radio: "I'll - I'll get Howard on the line. He'll know what to do." "There's not enough time. This thing's moving too fast and it's heading for New York. I gotta put her in the water."
"Please don't do this. W-we have time. We can work it out."
"Right now I'm in the middle of nowhere. If I wait any longer, a lot of people are gonna die. (Pause) Peggy, this is my choice." (She nods, he aims plane towards Earth) "Peggy..."
"I'm here."
"I'm gonna need a rain check on that dance." (Col. Phillips walks off, leaving them alone)
"All right. A week next Saturday at the Stork Club."
"You've got it."
"Eight o'clock on the dot. Don't you dare be late. Understood?"
"You know, I still don't know how to dance."
(With tears in her eyes) "I'll show you how. Just be there."
(Plane is about to crash) "We'll have the band play something slow...I'd hate to step on your..."
(Static, Col. Phillips bows his head)
"Steve? Steve...? (She starts sobbing)
I know that's a lot of dialogue to include, but it works so well.
After being asleep in a coma or suspended animation or something for nearly seventy years, Steve wakes up, panics and bolts into modern-day New York, near Times Square. S.H.I.E.L.D Director Nick Fury comes up to him, explains briefly what's going on. "You gonna be okay?" Fury finishes. "Yeah... Yeah. It's just...I had a date." And then the movie ends. Perfect ending; a cliffhanger, but so emotionally packed, leaving so much to ponder and think over later.
Of course, he was back in The Avengers, and Captain America: Winter Soldier comes out next May. But that's where this story ends.
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