So, in preparation for Civil War I am going to re-watch the whole of the Marvel cinematic universe (well, except for Age of Ultron and Ant-Man as I don't have those). Some of them I haven't seen since watching them at the cinema so it'll be good to go back and review them with the benefit of hindsight. I'll be watching them in MCU chronological order.
First up was
Captain America: The First Avenger, which I watched last night. Here are some thoughts (spoiler alert if you haven't seen any of the MCU so far) .
• This is Marvel's most underrated movie. It doesn't get the hype of some of the later entries, but it's got a great tone, some great performances with decent characters and a good story. Joe Johnston did a good job as director.
• When the SHIELD agents show up at the start to find Cap in the ice, I'm surprised one of them wasn't Coulson. That would have been a good tie in to the other phase one movies. Perhaps Clark Gregg wasn't available.
• I didn't notice Jenna Coleman (Clara Oswald from Doctor Who) was one of the dates Cap and Bucky take to the fair first time around. After watching last night, it turns out the other date was Sophie Colquhoun, who plays Cynthia in one of my favourite sitcoms, Plebs.
• Another thing I missed at the cinema in the fair scene was Phineas Horton's Synthetic Man on display – the original Jim Hammond Human Torch. That was a nice touch.
• Bucky is in this film a lot more than I remember when I watched it the first time. I could barely remember him being in it. Perhaps I was just more attuned to noticing him now.
• What a waste of Natalie Dormer (
) in an absolutely nothing role. I suppose it doesn't preclude her taking a bigger role as a different character in the future. (Note to self: Cast Natalie Dormer when Marvel gives me green light and $200 million dollars to make Captain Britain movie (possibly as Meggan?), get to know her, then marry her
)
• I've got to talk about Bucky's death. What were they thinking, making it so clear? You see him slip off the train, falling hundreds of metres into the gorge and icy river. And in Winter Soldier we find out he was fine, and Hydra just went and picked him up (despite the Hydra operatives on the train who might have known he fell off presumably being arrested at the same time as Arnim Zola was). This is going to sound stupid – given I'm happy to believe a scrawny weakling can be injected with some serum and zapped in a little chamber and become a super soldier – but I find it hard to get to grips with. Having thought about it a bit more (probably too much), I get that Cap has to believe he was dead or he would never have stopped trying to rescue him (if it had been presented that Hydra had captured him instead, for example). Perhaps they just didn't need the shot of him falling into the ravine and could have left it a bit more ambiguous. Of course, I am presuming Marvel knew they were going to bring Bucky back at some point (they must have, I mean, everyone knows he became the Winter Soldier in the comics. But maybe they hadn't decided to do the Winter Soldier storyline. Although Sebastian Stan was contracted for multiple films already.
• Another bit of the story I was less keen on was Cap flying the small plane back into the plane. Leaving aside the fact he hangs on, etc before hand, suddenly he is a trained pilot (with no seat), fully capable of avoiding gunfire and piloting back into the other ship. Not convinced by that, even though I am able to accept a man was given a red face by a super serum that went wrong.
• Also what happened to that bomb-plane that got dropped by accident? Presumably just blew up part of France, but don't mind that.
• It's not exactly clear what Hydra's goals actually are. So they split from the Nazis, and the Red Skull wants to bomb a load of major cities, but why? I don't think they really explained this that well.
• Ironically, in comparison with Bucky's death, they left the Red Skull's deliberately ambiguous. He just got zapped up by the cosmic cube somewhere in the galaxy, leaving it open for him to return (once he gets back to Earth). Hugo Weaving has not ruled out returning completely, even though he's not enthusiastic. But even if he doesn't want to, just recast him. If they can do it for other major and minor characters, why not if they want to bring him back (blame the difference on travelling through the cosmic cube). I mean, that role is mostly prosthetics anyway!
• That plane was fast wasn't it. It only took about 15 minutes to get more than halfway across the Atlantic. I guess the tesseract is a powerful fuel!
• Hayley Atwell gives an great performance in this. I can now see why Marvel wanted to give her more to do.
• I read that Amanda Righetti (who plays the SHIELD agent when Cap wakes up) was initially cast in Avengers Assemble. And there was some suggestion (although can't find any proof) that she was playing Sharon Carter (before Emily van Camp was cast for Winter Soldier). They clearly changed their mind. But Van Camp is going to have to blow me away in Civil War, now I know I could have been watching Righetti instead
(Note to self: If Natalie Dormer turns down Captain Britain, possibly cast Righetti and marry her instead.)
Tomorrow:
Iron Man