Captain America - The First Avenger (apparently)

I'm struggling to fathom why I didn't believe all the evidence that told me not to watch this film. The only reason I even rented it was because of the up-coming 'The Avengers' movie, which will feature a huge crossing over between several recent Marvel films - one of which is this. I didn't bother to see 'Thor', and 'Iron Man 2' wasn't much cop - so quite why I felt the need to watch this I cannot remember. Since I already telegraphed the general sentiment of this review it seems a bit redundant now, but let's dive into it anyway - I'm just killing time before I go into London to watch football.

Imagine if you will a re-hashing of a classic science fiction trope, that of the Nazi who is obsessed with the occult. It's not enough in one of these films that you're a Nazi, to be really evil you have to be a Nazi who's trying to bring about the apocalypse by tapping into some kind of ancient power / ring / ark of the covenant delete as appropriate. This time it's Hugo Weaving using genetic engineering to make himself immortal and create an army of worse-than-Nazis soldiers to rule the world with.

At the same time Uncle Sam is running a similar program to make an army of cardboard cut-out, clean-shaven all American heroes who can be airlifted into Germany to kick Hitler's butt. Sadly for them, the designer of the program is killed by a spy and only one solider is produced. This is very good for the film though as it re-enforces individualism and shows that the American genetic engineering project is - though the same as the Nazis one - a good thing. Hollywood never passes up an opportunity to subtly re-enforce pro-US stereotypes. This solider is Captain America, and he spends most of the film charging around a series of underground bases battling with all sorts of hooded Nazi goons saving the day from I'm not really sure what and blah blah you know where this is heading.

Even as brainless films go, this is fairly tortuous. Tommy Lee Jones has a role as the hard-nosed colonel who's orders Captain America must disobey to get the job done. At most one dimension there. Hayley Atwell plays an utterly unnecessary character who is introduced as the super soldier project's British liaison. She fails to liaise with the British at any point and exists purely to fall for Captain America and punch a one of the recruits in the face. You see how this means it's a pro feminist film? You don't? Me neither. More like she exists to convince the target audience of brain-dead, male teenagers that watching a film about loads of strapping young athletic soldiers isn't going to turn them gay. Cinema's first ever zero-dimension character.

I'm assuming that the reason this was such a bad film is that in the rush to bring this out before 'The Avengers' they hashed a script together in record time. Even the special effects look ragged. Don't watch Captain America.