And vintage Kirby in a nutshell, too. Of course, that’s pretty much synonymous, I guess.
There was like 5 minutes of laser guns, and anyway, HYDRA’s ‘laser weapons’ were displaying what the tesseract/Cosmic Cube was capable of, showing why Red Skull would be so determined to find and then hang onto the damn thing.
I greatly enjoyed it. It was no Ironman but I liked it.
My complaints:
His group of “the best men” he put together: why were they the best? Why those men above the rest? And it’s 1940s America, honest question: where there black military men in white units? But if there were, I doubt everyone would have been so fine with them being there. Nowadays it’s not a problem, but 70 years ago?
I enjoyed the reference to Indiana Jones.
I loved Howard Stark. I think he was my favorite character.
Ooooh, I missed it. Spoiler it for me?
It was just one line and I may be reading too much into it When he first gets that blue cube he says, “Hitler wastes his time digging for trinkets in the desert.” And I took that as a shot against looking for the Ark of the Covenant. Like I said, that may just be in my head.
That part seemed extraneous to me. Also, wouldn’t a Japanese guy from California have been spending World War II in a concentration camp on the west coast of the States?
I know many Japanese American’s fought for the U.S., although I thought they were mostly on the Pacific front. But yeah, once again, I doubt once he said, “I’m from Fresno” everyone would have been peachy keen with it. For many people back then it didn’t matter where you were from but what you looked like.
The anachronistic diversity of CA’s gang did take me out of the story a bit but not enough to be a problem. And yes, I saw that line as a reference to Indiana Jones as well.
Hell, no. The whole point of cons is to get together with a whole bunch of folks who geek out over the same things you geek out over, and geek out over them together. And at the end of the day, when the scheduled events are all winding down but the adrenalin is still driving you, and you’re all looking for other things to geek out together over rather than go back to your hotel room and sleep like a normal human being would, the cry will go up: “Hey, there’s an 11 PM showing of Cap around the corner!” And for every person who says, “Nah, I saw the midnight opening this morning,” there will be a dozen who cry, “To the theater!”
What bothered me about the ending…
Why did he have to crash the plane?
Knowing from the start of the movie that the plane ends up crashed on the ice with the Captain inside, I was expecting that the big glowing reactor-looking thing that the cube was enclosed inside would be what was powering the plane, and after the machine was smashed and the cube vaporized the villain and left the plane the plane would have no power. It would then crash-land uncontrollably on the ice with our hero inside. Except, that wasn’t what happened. The plane was able to keep flying just fine even without the cube.
Ok, so maybe the autopilot was locked, and the plane can’t be diverted from New York, so his only option would be to sabotage the plane and force it to crash? Nope, Captain America was able to manipulate the controls and steer the plane just fine. He could have steered it out over the ocean. left it flying in circles while everyone figured out how to safely shut it down.
Afraid that the plane would launch more missiles? All the missiles required pilots, and there didn’t seem to be any more on the plane. And we’d already seen that it was very easy for those missiles to be disabled. Cap could have strolled back to the missile bays and dumped them all in the ocean.
So I don’t get what the urgency was for him to immediately grab the controls and crash the plane into the ice. Sure, necessary to set up the scene at the beginning of the movie, but that could have been written in a more convincing way.
I caught that to mean the same thing as well, and I grinned.
BTW, re: Chris Evans: How did they ‘make him skinny’? I had just assumed it was two different people, it was that well done. 
Wiki’d my own answer: it’s pretty neat!
The most highly decorated regiment in U.S. military history is the 442nd Infrantry Regiment which was comprised of Japanese-American soldiers and served in Europe (mostly in Italy).
Japanese units (there were a couple others) were specifically deployed to the European theater due to the concerns about using them in the Pacific.
As for the integrated nature of the unit and why they were the best of the best, my assumption was that the unit sent after Schmidt was a pre-selected cream of the crop group and chosen without regard to race or nationality.
If Lee Marvin would select Jim Brown for his unit, surely an upright guy like Tommy Lee Jones and/or Chris Evans would be similarly color blind.
My interpretation of the mixed group of soldiers was that several units went up against Hydra. When Cap rescued the prisoners, the prisoners had come from the various units so the final make up was mixed.
Cap chose his team from the rescued prisoners, not from one particular unit.
That may be a fanwank, but it was really the impression I had while watching the movie.
I saw it tonight and I was very, very impressed. I take back every doubt I had about Evans as Cap. He nailed the role. The visuals were just incredible, the humor was well done and the action sequences were awesome.
The only complaint I had was the end with Fury seemed too rushed and tacked-on, but that’s a minor quibble. It was IMHO among the top 3-4 of the Marvel movies, with Iron Man and X-Men 2 and possibly Spider-Man 2 being on the same level.
BTW, it was pretty obvious to me that, at the end, the Red Skull was transported via the Rainbow Bridge to Asgard.
Daughter was on her last minute of her pay by minute cell phone. “You know the Svengoolie version?”
This was not a recommendation.
AndrewL, there’s a brief moment where Cap sees the various missiles highlighted on the plane’s dashboard or whatever it is. That, to me, seemed to indicate that the missiles were armed and might explode. Steve would never land that plane anywhere that it might kill people.
I thoroughly enjoyed it. I’ve been saying for ages that a period-piece Captain America movie would be great, and I was not disappointed. Wikipedia informs me that this film was by the same director that made The Rocketeer, and I can definitely see the similarities.
I liked how the early Captain America comics, and the 1940s film serials, are treated as actually having existed in the film universe.
I imagine the lack of swastikas, near-total absence of Nazis, etc., was designed to make the film easier to edit for international release in countries (like most of Europe) where it’s still illegal to show Nazi imagery onscreen.
I would have to agree 100% with RikWriter’s spoiler-ized comment - the special effects are too similar for it to be anything but the intentional conclusion the director expects us to come to.
Did Stan Lee have a cameo in this one? I was looking but I didn’t see him.
He was an officer at one of Cap’s shows. He said he expected him to be taller.