No way this could fail then you'd think? Sadly no. The film was a total bomb and was panned by critics (it still holds the lowest rating, 8%, of any Marvel film on the Rotten Tomatoes website) - if you want to know why it took Marvel 18 years to do an in-house film again then I suspect this may be a big part of the reason why. Hold your noses folks, we're going in...
The film starts in pre-World War II Italy where a group of Mussolini's soldiers kidnap a piano-playing child prodigy and murder his family so that they can use him as part of a project to create a new supersoldier. At the launch of the project, one of the scientists, Dr Maria Vasselli, panics when she sees what they're planning to do to the kid and does a runner, defecting to the west.
Seven years later, with the war in full swing, we find out that the Americans, aided by Vasselli, have now perfected their own version of the formula and are planning to use it to create a whole legion of super soldiers. The first volunteer is a young polio sufferer from California called Steve Rogers (played by Matt Salinger, the son of "Catcher In The Rye" author JD Salinger) and we see him saying goodbye to his family and girlfriend Bernice before setting off to become the government's guinea pig.
The experiment is a success but a spy infiltrates the lab where it's taking place and shoots Dr Vasselli, killing her. Rogers manages to take the agent out by throwing him into a bank of electrical equipment but is shot twice himself. However, with his supersoldier abilities, Rogers recovers within 24 hours and is ready for his first mission. Apparently a Nazi unit led by the Red Skull (the Italians' supersoldier from the start of the film, now played by Scott Paulin) are planning to fire a missile at the White House from Germany (hold on, a ballistic missile capable of travelling thousands of miles in 1943?! Didn't realise Red Skull had invented time travel as well!) and Cap is to be parachuted in to stop them.. It's also revealed that due to the fact that Vasselli didn't keep any notes on her experiments that Rogers is destined to be the only supersoldier from the experiment. Bugger.
Rogers manages to infiltrate the base and has a fight with the Red Skull but as ol' Skullman has been trained to be a lethal killing machine for the last seven years as opposed to the last few days, he ends up getting his arse handed to him and is tied to the missile as it prepares to launch. However, he grabs Red Skull's hand just as the button's about to be pushed leading to Skull having to chop off his own hand to get free from being fired up into the sky with him.
The missile is fired at Washington but Rogers manages to kick it a few times which somehow makes it change its course and miss the White House although the whole incident is witnessed by a youngster called Thomas Kimball who just happens to be wandering around outside the President's house at 4 in the morning and takes a photo of it. The missile ends up somehow firing itself all the way to Alaska (!) where it crashes into the snow without exploding leaving Rogers buried in the ice. Hey kids, if you love stupidly big plot holes this is clearly the movie for you...
Fifty years later in 1993, Rogers is discovered by an Arctic exploration team and returns to life. We discover in the meantime that Kimball has recently become the president of the United States (though he still dresses in that suit jacket and jeans combo normally beloved by fortysomething teachers trying to look "trendy") with his childhood friend Sam Kolawetz (played by Ned Beatty from "Deliverance") becoming chief investigative journalist a the New York Daily News. His first policy has been to implement a new ultra-green environment policy involving massively cutting back on fossil fuel and plastic production. This upsets his chief general who flies to Italy and meets with the Red Skull who, in the intervening years, has had plastic surgery to make him look semi-normal and become a captain of industry.
We also find out that Skull was behind the murders of JFK, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King and also now had a daughter, Valentina, who is his chief assassin. However, he decides against murdering Kimball as he doesn't want to create another martyr for the liberal cause and decides instead to kidnap the president when he comes to Italy for an international conference and then brainwash him.
News of Rogers defrosting has reached both the president and Kolawetz and after a chat, the latter decides to drive north in an attempt to find him. However, Red Skull has also learnt of the news and sends Valentina to eliminate Cap before he can get back to America. By the time they find him, Rogers has walked across the border into Canada. Valentina and two of her assassins promptly show up to intercept him on dirt bikes - however, Cap manages to knock Red Skull Jr out with his shield just as Kolawetz handily pulls up to offer him a lift southwards.
However, Cap still thinks it's 1943 and his seeing that Kolawetz has a tape recorder made in Japan and a car made in Germany makes him think that he's been kidnapped by a spy who's trying to convince him that it's the 1990s. Rogers tricks Kolawetz into getting out of the car by saying that he's about to be car sick then nicks it and drives off south. We then get a montage of Cap first driving until his petrol runs out and then stowing away in the back of a truck to some godawful sub-Springsteen '80s power ballad.
Rogers eventually finds his way back to Redondo and Bernice's house but when he ends up meeting the 70-year-old version of his one-time girlfriend he realises that Kolawetz was indeed telling the truth. Bernice subsequently married and had a daughter Sharon (both played by the same actress) but never moved house because she always thought Steve would come back. Sharon takes Steve to her house to watch some history videos and bring him up to speed with everything that's happened in the world but while they're gone, Valentina and the Red Skull's thugs turn up and murder Bernice causing her husband Jack to have a heart attack. Kolawetz (having somehow found his way out of the Canadian mountains) turns up to warn them but only gets offed himself for his efforts.
While at the hospital with Jack, Rogers hears on the news that the President has been kidnapped while in Italy and puts two and two together to deduce that the same people who are after him were responsible. He and Bernice revisit the diner which was built above the original lab where Cap was given his superpowers. Said diner is now a retro-diner and Rogers breaks in to the long-deserted lab by breaking through a wall in the ladies' loo! They find Professor Vasselli's diary and plan to use it to find out more about the Red Skull but are interrupted by Valentina and her thugs. Cue a punch-up with the worst lighting effects ever which makes it nearly impossible to see what's going on.
Cap and Sharon trace Red Skull back to Italy and the town he was originally abducted from as a youngster. The next half hour or so sees them doing some recon there and getting into a few fights with the Skull's followers and can probably be safely skipped over as very little of interest happens. They finally trace Skull to a castle about 50 miles from the town and set off but after dropping Steve off outside, Sharon is kidnapped by Skull's henchmen and taken to his prison.
Cap finally suits up and heads into the prison to rescue Kimball and Sharon. The trio manage to fight off Red Skull's thugs with Cap and Sharon pursuing Skull and Valentina to the castle roof where it turns out he's built an atomic bomb in a grand piano which has the power to wipe out most of southern Europe (!). However, Steve plays him a recording of his kidnapping by the fascists (which they'd found at his old house earlier), and this provides enough of a distraction for Cap to knock Skull off the clifftop with his shield before he can detonate the device, take out Valentina on the rebound, inadvertently break the fourth wall (suffice to say he's no Ryan Reynolds in "Deadpool") and leave. We then find out that the environmental agreement was passed at the UN and everyone lived happily ever after.
There's really no nice way of putting this I'm afraid - this film is just absolute garbage. While it at least has a better attempt at a plot than the two 1970s Captain America films and stays truer to the original comics than they did, that's literally about the only thing it gets right. The script is rubbish, the acting is wooden beyond belief (Matt Salinger actually achieves the near-impossible by making Reb Brown look like a half-decent actor and Paulin's hammy over-acting isn't much better), the action scenes are poorly done and the whole thing just drags and drags and drags, especially the second half. It's really no wonder that the whole idea of a Captain America film was put back in the deep freeze for nearly two decades after this. Luckily the next time it was thawed out in 2008, the MCU project was well underway and Cap would turn out to be one of its surprise successes in terms of film quality. Unfortunately though, those films are still several months away from being covered in this blog but hey, it'll be worth it when we get there. Honest.
FINAL RATING: 🎯🎯 (2/10)
CURRENT MARVEL FILM TABLE
1. The Incredible Hulk Returns (1988) (6/10)
2. Conan The Barbarian (1982) (6/10)
3. Conan The Destroyer (1984) (6/10)
4. The Trial Of The Incredible Hulk (1989) (6/10)
5. The Punisher (1989) (5/10)
6. Doctor Strange (1978) (5/10)
7. Red Sonja (1985) (4/10)
8. Captain America 2: Death Too Soon (4/10) (1979)
9. Spiderman (1977) (4/10)
10. Spiderman: The Dragon's Challenge (3/10) (1979)
11. Howard The Duck (1986) (2/10)
12. Captain America (1990) (2/10)
13. Captain America (1979) (2/10)
14. Spiderman Strikes Back (1978) (2/10)
NEXT WEEK: The Hulk goes out with a whimper rather than a bang...
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