# Captain America, the first Avenger **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 21, 2011, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-the-first-avenger/589811 "2011-07-21T03:54:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2011, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-the-first-avenger/589811/1 "2011-07-21T03:54:45Z")
What exactly is he supposed to be avenging? ---
**Author:** ![Bartman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/779978/32.png) [@Bartman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bartman)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2011, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-the-first-avenger/589811/2 "2011-07-21T04:10:52Z")
> [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](#): > > What exactly is he supposed to be avenging? Nothing. Here according to Avengers #1 is how the name was chosen. Hulk: So, whether you like it or not, **I’m** joinin’ the… the… **Hey!** What are you **callin’** yourselves?\* from off panel: That’s right! We need a **Name!** Wasp: It should be something colorful and dramatic, like… **The Avengers** , or… Ant-man: “Or” **nothing!** That’s **it! The Avengers!!** Iron Man: We’ll fight together or separate if need be! Hulk: I pity the guy who tries to beat us! Thor: We’ll \*\*never \*\*be beaten! for we are… **The Avengers!** So basically they are called the Avengers because Jan and Hank liked the sound of the word and everyone else went along with it. Which I understand is how Stan Lee chose the name in real life. They aren’t avenging anything. And any explanation was made up after the fact. - The Hulk didn’t have his usual speech impediment back then. \*\* All bolding from the original ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2011, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-the-first-avenger/589811/3 "2011-07-21T04:28:56Z")
You’ll note that, despite the title of the Captain America movie, Cap wasn’t one of the original members of the Avengers (at least, not in the comic books). The Hulk didn’t stay on the team for long (he left in issue #2), and the rest of the team found Cap (frozen in an iceberg, where he’d been since around the end of WWII) in issue #4. I imagine that the movie continuity around the founding of the Avengers will be considerably different. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2011, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-the-first-avenger/589811/4 "2011-07-21T05:05:59Z")
Saw the movie tonight; not bad. If you like Marvel comics turned into movies like “Thor” and “Iron Man,” you’ll probably like it. ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2011, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-the-first-avenger/589811/5 "2011-07-21T22:54:58Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > You’ll note that, despite the title of the Captain America movie, Cap wasn’t one of the original members of the Avengers (at least, not in the comic books). The Hulk didn’t stay on the team for long (he left in issue #2), and the rest of the team found Cap (frozen in an iceberg, where he’d been since around the end of WWII) in issue #4. > > I imagine that the movie continuity around the founding of the Avengers will be considerably different. Yeah, if anything Thor should be the first Avenger, both by age, and by being a founder. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2011, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-the-first-avenger/589811/6 "2011-07-21T23:03:25Z")
> [@TBG](#): > > Yeah, if anything Thor should be the first Avenger, both by age, and by being a founder. Yeah, but do you want an illegal alien as your figurehead? Reviews are coming in. Not spectacular, not as good as Thor etc., but about on the level or better than the Incredible Hulk (the better one), and better than Spider-Man 3 and Hulk (Eric Bana). …And better than Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD… ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2011, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-the-first-avenger/589811/7 "2011-07-21T23:10:07Z")
> [@Bartman](#): > > Ant-man: “Or” **nothing!** That’s **it! The Avengers!!** > Iron Man: We’ll fight together or separate if need be! > Hulk: I pity the guy who tries to beat us! > Thor: We’ll \*\*never \*\*be beaten! for we are… **The Avengers!** Actually, this is both hilarious and pretty cool. ---
**Author:** ![WotNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e19b73/32.png) [@WotNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WotNot)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 9:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-the-first-avenger/589811/8 "2011-07-22T09:07:10Z")
> [@spark240](#): > > Actually, this is both hilarious and pretty cool. Early sixties Marvel in a nutshell. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Intergalactic\_Gladiator](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/intergalactic_gladiator/32/112_2.png) [@Intergalactic\_Gladiator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Intergalactic_Gladiator)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-the-first-avenger/589811/9 "2011-07-22T15:05:37Z")
I saw it last night as well (I had a little bit of a nerdgasm going on last night – I saw Green Lantern at one theater, then I went to see the 12:00 show of Captain America at another). Good movie, better than Green Lantern by far. It’s not a spectacular movie, in my oppinion, but like Thor it does everything very well. My thoughts below: [spoiler]Tommy Lee Jones gets some great lines, Hugo Weaving (who now appears to be your go-to guy for movie villainy) is a great Red Skull and I felt that he was truly an evil dude. Stanley Tucci is great as Dr Ekstine and has a couple of really good scenes as does Dominic Cooper as Howard Stark. Chris Evans does a very good Steve Rogers – both as a skinny guy and as the beefed up Captain America, though some of the scenes where he’s skinny are rather disconcerting. There’s a great line from a kid who is taken hostage by a Nazi. Neal McDonough shows up as Dum Dum Dugan, which I thought was pretty fantastic to see though I had a tough time recognizing the rest of the Howling Commandos and the movie doesn’t really stop to introduce them all. I think the Red Skull’s super tech is overblown a little bit, but there were some great WWII battle scenes using laser guns. There is even a Wilhelm scream thrown in for good measure and Cap gets to sock Hitler in the jaw. Finally, the stinger of the end starts out kind of lame with Captain America talking to Nick Fury about starting up the Avengers. It gets better when they actually show clips of the new Avengers movie.[/spoiler] ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-the-first-avenger/589811/10 "2011-07-22T17:32:21Z")
You got a stinger? We stayed to the bitter end of the sneak preview and got nothing. People were booing and there were calls of “Refund! Refund!” (which was funny because they gave the tickets away). 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Intergalactic\_Gladiator](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/intergalactic_gladiator/32/112_2.png) [@Intergalactic\_Gladiator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Intergalactic_Gladiator)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-the-first-avenger/589811/11 "2011-07-22T19:24:33Z")
> [@Cat\_Whisperer](#): > > You got a stinger? We stayed to the bitter end of the sneak preview and got nothing. People were booing and there were calls of “Refund! Refund!” (which was funny because they gave the tickets away). 😃 Yep. It was a lot of quick cuts though so it was hard to make out what was going on. ---
**Author:** ![Taomist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/53a042/32.png) [@Taomist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Taomist)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-the-first-avenger/589811/12 "2011-07-22T22:00:16Z")
I enjoyed it quite a bit, and am giggly inside at how much steampunk is creeping into the movies lately. Also, I believe any auditions for Captain Carrot can now be closed; we have found a winner in Chris Evans, I think. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-the-first-avenger/589811/13 "2011-07-22T22:55:21Z")
> [@Taomist](#): > > I enjoyed it quite a bit, and am giggly inside at how much steampunk is creeping into the movies lately. > > Also, I believe any auditions for Captain Carrot can now be closed; we have found a winner in Chris Evans, I think. I always pictured Brendan Fraser with his hair dyed red. ---
**Author:** ![Spiny\_Norman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de0a6/32.png) [@Spiny\_Norman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiny_Norman)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-the-first-avenger/589811/14 "2011-07-22T23:07:45Z")
I’ve never gotten into the Marvel universe (the comics I grew up with were the French/Belgian school), so I watched this movie mostly like I watched Thor: Spending a good part of my time in wide-eyed wonder at the spectacle, but being roundly entertained nonetheless. (Come to think of it, my cultural luggage for understanding Thor is a pretty good knowledge of Norse mythology - whereas for Captain America, I had to willfully ditch a good bit of memorized WWII trivia.) Very enjoyable popcorn movie - great set design, in particular the villain’s lair(s), great WWII London atmosphere, and cool gadgets. Oh, and I want the villain’s car. ---
**Author:** ![Spiny\_Norman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de0a6/32.png) [@Spiny\_Norman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiny_Norman)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-the-first-avenger/589811/15 "2011-07-22T23:09:50Z")
> [@Taomist](#): > > I enjoyed it quite a bit, and am giggly inside at how much steampunk is creeping into the movies lately. We need a different term, don’t we? This was more aluminum-and-rivets-punk, to my mind. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-the-first-avenger/589811/16 "2011-07-22T23:10:23Z")
> [@Spiny\_Norman](#): > > (Come to think of it, my cultural luggage for understanding Thor is a pretty good knowledge of Norse mythology - Wouldn’t that just get in the way? ---
**Author:** ![Lasciel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e79b87/32.png) [@Lasciel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lasciel)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-the-first-avenger/589811/17 "2011-07-22T23:11:19Z")
> [@Spiny\_Norman](#): > > We need a different term, don’t we? This was more aluminum-and-rivets-punk, to my mind. Sub-genres to the rescue. Dieselpunk. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-the-first-avenger/589811/18 "2011-07-22T23:24:30Z")
> [@Lasciel](#): > > Sub-genres to the rescue. > > Dieselpunk. [Indeed.](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DieselPunk) > [@](#): > > Vastness is key. This was the age of the zeppelin, the ocean liner, the flying-boat airliner, and the skyscraper. It also saw the first multinational corporations, large-scale social engineering, and mass political movements. World War I was still fresh in memory as the Great War, the most colossal conflict in the history of mankind. Man is dwarfed by his creations and things are subsumed into abstractions. > > Period technology encompasses everything found in Steam Punk, but internal combustion and electric power in combination with new materials (better alloys, plastics, etc) makes machinery lighter, stronger, and more versatile. The airliner is the prime example of this, but cars, trucks, tractors, and diesel-powered electrical generators are even more important in reshaping the world. Armored vehicles and useable submarines are less common but still important innovations. Wireless radio leads to the rise of broadcasting as an information medium. Anachronistic super-advanced technology, often of the Awesome, But Impractical variety, such as Giant Flyer, Spider Tank, Disintegrator Ray might occur. Such technology might be secret super weapons of a villain, or Homemade Inventions by the hero or his friends. > > Although the dieselpunk aesthetic can overlap with Raygun Gothic, and though dieselpunk is known for featuring Tesla technology and Wunderwaffen-style super-weapons, dieselpunk typically does not include transistor-based technology, other electronics or atomic power. In fact, another Punk Punk genre, Atompunk, was coined to describe fiction in this mode. Atompunk (such as the Fallout series and the comic book Fear Agent) takes inspiration from 1950s-era aesthetics and fashions such as Googie architecture and Jetsons-style technology, which typically lie outside the bounds of dieselpunk. The analogue sci-fi of Metropolis and Things To Come are closer to the dieselpunk tradition as it stands. > > Dieselpunk often focuses upon air travel and combat, including such ideas as literal “flying fortresses”, air pirates, dirigibles, early UFOs, hotshot flyboy pilots, etc. Fascination for military hardware, weaponry and uniforms of the early 20th century is also often in evidence and a great amount of dieselpunk media is concerned with war, especially the Second World War and and fictional variations upon it. Owing to its pulp roots, dieselpunk is often very adventure-based, full of exotic locales such as Mysterious Antarctica, Shamgri La, Hollow Earth etc. Some Geographic Flexibility is to be expected. Add 10 years and you’ve got [Atompunk!](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk_derivatives#Atompunk) (Which Cap entirely **missed,** unfortunately.) ---
**Author:** ![Taomist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/53a042/32.png) [@Taomist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Taomist)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-the-first-avenger/589811/19 "2011-07-23T00:33:15Z")
Dieselpunk works for me! I still call most rave music ‘techno’. The breakdowns are just beyond me. Trying to remember the other trailers, but half of them seemed to have some kind of 1800’s tech feel about them, which pleases me. ---
**Author:** ![bienville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@bienville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bienville)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-the-first-avenger/589811/20 "2011-07-23T01:31:51Z")
**Shared Universe Film Connection questions/speculation** I rewatched the other four pre-Avengers connected films over the previous week before going to see _Cap_. I thought I’d see more connection between this movie and _The Incredible Hulk_, since the WWII supersoldier program is mentioned in _The Incredible Hulk_. Surprisingly, of those two films, neither gave me much insight into the other. What surprised me was how connected the _Cap_ movie is to _Thor_. [spoiler]Red Skull finds Odin’s Tesseract in Norway and uses it as the power source for his weaponry. This is the same item that Nick Fury shows to Erik Selvig in the post-credits scene of _Thor_? As Red Skull’s weapon control center is destroyed during the fight, releasing the Tesseract, the energy release creates a rip in space through which Red Skull is pulled (alive? dead?) through this rip in space we see a celestial backdrop that looks similar to the night sky of Asgaard (as presented in the _Thor_ movie). At end of the movie, while searching for Cap, Howard Stark finds the Tesseract. Is this the “new element” that he discovered but was unable to replicate- which he predicted would be the future’s greatest power source? The element that he mapped out on the grounds of the Stark Expo? The element that he instructed Tony to “rediscover” which became Tony’s new power source in _Iron Man 2_???[/spoiler] All questions above posed by someone who does not know the comics. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-the-first-avenger/589811.md?page=2)