After enjoying Avengers more than I thought I would, I’ve
been swept up in the recent superhero movie craze and finally got round to
giving Captain America a shot. I thought it was interesting in places but
disappointing in others, enjoyable overall but not worth a re-watch too soon.
I liked the character Dr Abraham Erskine. A great German scientist, he fled Nazi
Germany and used his talent to help the Americans – as many Germans did at the
time. It’s good that Hollywood has made an effort to overtly represent
the greatly under-represented Nazi-era German people who wholly disagreed with
Hitler’s philosophy. Hollywood itself is dotted with Germany-based
talent who fled the constraints of the Nazi state for the free world: Fritz
Lang, Peter Lorre, F.W. Murnau, Billy Wilder, Marlene Dietrich and Paul Henreid
to name but a few.
Having visited Berlin
recently, taking in the history, one of the most profound realisations I
experienced was the sheer amount of guilt and responsibility which still weighs
down on the ordinary people of Germany
to this day due to the shameful and violent past inflicted on their national
identity by a select group of twisted people who held power. I think the Emmy-winning documentary Inheritance
best portrays this phenomenon. It tells
the story of Monika Hertwig, by all accounts an ordinary German woman, who struggles to come to terms with the legacy
of evil left by her father, Amon Goeth, one of the most infamously ruthless
Nazi commandants (notably portrayed by Ralph Fiennes in Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List).
In Captain America the villain, Red Skull, isn’t particularly threatening,
despite being played by the legendary Hugo Weaving (The Matrix, V for Vendetta, Lord of the Rings) and apparently
surpassing the evil of modern history’s most despicable villains, the
Nazis. In spite of this and the fact
he’s harnessed the infinite power of Marvel’s favourite MacGuffin, the
Tesseract, he’s consistently put down by the Allied forces. He never presents any real challenge – more
an ominous air of ‘you better be frightened, this guy’s worse than
Hitler’. This works for the enduring
America-as-hero-terror-as-villain myth which Hollywood (and indeed US politicians) love to
propagate, but it just seems that the war is too easily won here.
Howard Stark could’ve been a much more pivotal character in
this film, and should’ve been in my opinion.
I mean, come on, it’s Iron Man’s dad we’re talking about here. The man
left a hell of a legacy and this should’ve been milked to the fullest. I think the writers missed a trick here.
The scene near the end of Captain America where the plane is going
down is clearly derivative of the incredible opening sequence of the classic A Matter of Life and Death (1946). So much so, it’s almost as if the character Peggy Carter was manufactured to fit this bill. In A
Matter of Life and Death, a British bomber pilot contemplates mortality
before jumping out of his flaming aircraft without a parachute. He speaks to an American ground-control
officer and there is an inexplicable but undeniable attraction between the two
as if they’ve just fallen in love. In Captain America, the nationalities are
switched, but the situation is almost exactly the same. Captain America
is plummeting towards earth in an aircraft to stop it crashing into New York City, while
speaking to Peggy Carter, a British military officer who’s almost an exact match
to Kim Hunter’s June in A Matter of Life
and Death. The fact that Peggy is
British and working for the most secretive project in the US military is never explained –
the only explanation is that her character is superficial and merely exists to
satisfy a crude attempt to pay homage to that famous scene and/or shamelessly
replicate its emotive genius.
Going on the theme of national
identities, the relationship between Peggy Carter and Captain America could be seen as analogous of Britain and America’s historic alliance
throughout the modern era and the present day.
As an extenstion of this analogy, the group of POW’s rescued from Red
Skull’s lair who become Captain America’s personal henchmen could be regarded
as American alliances (if my memory serves me correctly, I believe this group
consists of a Frenchman, Englishman, American and an American of Japanese
descent).
A mixed bag of surprisingly
impotent villains, interesting representations of the German national identity,
derivative filmmaking and missed opportunities make Captain America ultimately not as effective as its big blockbuster
brother, Avengers, but still fairly
enjoyable.
