“Captain America: The First Avenger” Movie Trailer Review

“Captain America: The First Avenger”

Movie Trailer Review

By our guest blogger, Joe Oliveto

Captain America has never been as popular as Spider-Man or the X-Men, but he’s still an iconic Marvel superhero, and up until now, one of the few who hasn’t had the big screen treatment. These movies tend to be hit or miss; for every pitch-perfect “Iron Man,” there’s a fumbling attempt to get a character like The Hulk right. From the looks of the trailer, we really can’t say for sure just how “Captain America” will turn out.

Stylistically, they are strongly emphasizing the WWII era, at least in the first half of the trailer. Visually, the film looks like all those nostalgic pop culture images of that time period come to life. However, the second half of the trailer places a lot more emphasis on the action, and while it’s interesting to see a comic book movie embrace some old-fashioned gunplay—usually these films focus more on hand-to-hand combat styles—certain scenes appear to focus too much on the slow-motion action style that some audiences have grown tired of.

Now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The action in films like “Spider-Man” or “The Dark Knight” was never particularly groundbreaking, but the movies succeeded because they possessed strong emotional cores to keep us engaged. At the moment, it’s unclear whether or not “Captain America” has that going for it. On the one hand, the fact that the protagonist starts out as a weakling will definitely appeal to a key comic book demographic—a lot of young fans admire these characters because they wish they could be them—but on the other hand, we’re not getting a sense of a major story arc here. “Iron Man” was engaging because Tony Stark’s worldview shifted for the better. “Spider-Man” worked because Peter Parker was a young man who had to deal with the burden of his power.

Right now, we can’t say for sure that “Captain America” will have that kind of emotional power. We’re crossing our fingers, because it looks like a potentially fun movie, but from the trailer, it’s hard to tell whether it will be another “X-Men 2” or another “Daredevil.”