Captain America

I tried to like this one, I really did. I've mostly enjoyed the marvel movies up til now. My favorite was Iron Man, but Thor was pretty good, too. I had high hopes going in. Reviews were good, it looked cool from the trailers. The first hour or so of the movie wasn't bad. It's your typical "superhero origin" story that we've seen countless times already-but they did it in a fresh way. They made it look like a military propaganda film from the 40s. What could go wrong?
The answer is the second half. The film fell apart for me here. It took major leaps forward with the character that it didn't earn. I almost suspect that chunks of the script were cut so it wouldn't seem slow, and that's probably where everything was explained. Little things, like who characters were, what their abilities were, why they were doing what they're doing. You know, things a film is supposed to tell you, even if they do it subtly.
I admit, I don't know much about this comic book. I think people who are familiar with Cap and his exploits will get more out of this film than I did, but for the most part, I spent the last hour of this movie saying "What?" to myself, over and over. It's really astounding. In all fairness, I didn't know much about Thor either before seeing that, but I never felt confused during that flick. A lot of the problems with the second half for me were because of the villain, Red Skull. They barely explained why he looked the way he did. He was given almost no motivation for being the villain. It's lazy writing at its worst. Also, I felt that the film looked too clean for a WW2 movie. The effects in the second half all looked fake (I will praise the movie for the first half, they did a great job of making Chris Evans look like a scrawny 12 year old). Overall, I felt like nothing was at stake, and I think that's the movie's greatest flaw. It made me not care. As a lead in to The Avengers next year, that's a dangerous place to put a fan who has seen six Avenger prequel films already (counting the originals, reboots, and sequels).
I've heard people complain that these movies are two hour teasers for The Avengers, but I haven't felt that until now. Because there was a teaser for The Avengers after the credits. A shaky, 30 second, cut-so-fast-you-think-you're-having-a-seizure kind of trailer. But I think Iron Man was in it. I could write pages upon pages about the "stupid logic" this movie operates on, but I'll just say it didn't work for me. This film has me worried whether or not The Avengers will be worth it, but I'm in too deep to not see it. Hopefully, Captain America is just an unfortunate bump in the road. Don't take my word for it. Lots of people seemed to like it, so, maybe you will. And hey, more power to you if you do. I just couldn't get on the train.