With one line in Captain America: The First Avenger, Steve Rogers proves why he’s a hero
Film Features The Marvel Moment
On paper, Captain America is a troublesome character. The George W. Bush era helped make it hard to see the United States as anything but a global bully, enforcing its will on others and shunning those who resisted. Just a few years later, Marvel Studios was trying to make a big-budget blockbuster about a superhero who is not only draped in the stars and stripes but literally called Captain America. Cap made sense as a propaganda tool in the ’40s, and Marvel had found a nice spot for him in the comics, but the company needed to do something special to avoid turning the movie into some jingoistic bullshit. As it turned out, that something special was puny Steve Rogers, getting his butt kicked in an alley before he ever joined up to fight in World War II.
Captain America: The First Avenger simply doesn’t work without establishing who Steve Rogers is before the super-soldier serum turns him into a buff sentinel of liberty. Using some occasionally iffy CG to make actual buff man Chris Evans look like a pipsqueak, the movie spends a good chunk of its early runtime hammering in the idea of why this skinny kid deserves an upgrade. The most effective scene, and the one that future movies repeatedly call back to, is Steve telling off a rude guy in a theater during a newsreel about the war and then getting dragged outside for a fistfight. The man is easily twice the size of little Steve and keeps knocking him down without breaking a sweat, but Steve keeps getting up, fighting not just for himself but for the ideals that this jerk disrespected when he complained about having to sit through war footage. Then the dummy sets little Steve up for a chance to drop what is essentially his MCU catchphrase by dismissing his seemingly weak opponent as someone who doesn’t “know when to give up.” Steve’s response: “I can do this all day.”
Evans’ Steve Rogers has become the heart of the MCU, and that moment—when it still seems impossible that this little guy could ever be putting on a superhero costume to save the world—proves it. With those six words, the movie establishes that Steve Rogers would be putting his life on the line to help people and to stand up for what he believes in even if he never became super strong and fast. Plus, after he does become strong and fast, he still holds on to this “never back down” attitude, dropping the exact same line in big fights with the Red Skull (later on in The First Avenger) and with Iron Man (in Captain America: Civil War). Later on in the movie, when Stanley Tucci’s Dr. Erskine is ready to choose Steve for the experiment that will turn him into Captain America, he tells Rogers that the most important thing is not him becoming the perfect soldier. It’s him staying true to who he is, “a good man.”
The other MCU heroes who had already been introduced have their own motivations for why they want to help people, whether it’s Tony Stark’s guilt over selling weapons for his whole life or Thor’s genuine love of adventure and smashing villains with his hammer. But Captain America just wants to be a good man because it’s the right thing to do. “I can do this all day” is simply who he is, super-soldier serum or not.
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It’s a great line, but Captain America doesn’t have to prove anything. He was never what America is, He was always the promise of what America could be, if we fight for it!
Going back and rewatching the first Captain America movie after everything that came since really elevated it in my eyes. Not that I was ever down on it, but they just do such a great job establishing his character and his motives that it’s able to buoy him going forwards. Just as Captain America steadily grew to be my favorite character of the MCU, his throughline of his own three movies and the Avengers has lifted all of them, and it’s all because of the patience and good work done in his introduction.
I thought Cap was kind of underpowered in The Avengers, or at least not back up to full capacity after having been frozen 70 years, but for me he had the scene that gets the best laugh: The one where the two cops are like, “What the hell’s going on?” Cap shows up and starts barking orders. The older cop says “Why the hell should I take orders from you?!” Just then a group of aliens attack, which Cap quickly decimated, and the belligerent cop, without missing a beat, immediately starts carrying out Cap’s orders. The timing is perfect and makes me laugh every time.My other favorite Cap moment from The Avengers was when they were grouping up getting ready to fight, and Cap is giving out orders, automatically taking on the leadership role. You would think Thor would be the leader—he’s the oldest, he’s a prince, and he’s had the most battle experience. But he’s not really a military leader, a strategist. He’s used to just marching in with his badass friends and kicking ass. Cap, having been the leader of a non-enhanced squadron, thinks strategically about how best to utilize the team members’ strengths and weaknesses. And “And Hulk…smash” is a great line.
That’s a great callout; I always love that scene. Like they specifically show that Cap may not seem much compared to a thunder god, a metal man, or a hulk, but he’s an incredible, rallying leader. They get so many character beats exactly right in the first Avengers and it’s so fun watching them bounce off each other.
It reminded me of that scene in Daredevil: Born Again with narration to the effect of “With a voice that could command a god….and does”. Cap’s natural leadership is what makes him such an effective hero despite being way underpowered compared to some of the other Avengers.
One of my favorite Marvel moments of all time. I think Born Again is just about flawless.
1986 was a pretty darn good year for comics. Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns may have had the slick design sense and arch humour but Born Again had so much heart that i’m glad even a minuscule portion of the storyline made it to the small screen.
I agree with all that you and Tobias have said here, and there is also a great character moment for Tony Stark in that scene. When it is clear a leader is needed to lay out the plan, he says “Call it Captain”. At the start of the film (and the other Iron Man films), he was a self-involved lone wolf who would just do his own thing and not concede leadership to anyone else. That line shows his growth over the course of the film, and his readiness to be part of the team.Some of that is undone by Ultron of course, but still……..Both Cap and Iron Man have had great arcs over the course of the MCU films. The conclusion(?) of those arcs is one of the big reasons to look forward to Endgame.
And after two stand-alone movies of his own, The Avengers marked the point at which Tony Stark/Iron Man truly became a hero.
I like how when Cap is giving orders and says “Thor, you’ve got the lightning, light the bastards up,” Thor shows the slightest bit of annoyance at being told what to do, but nods and assents, as if to say, “Fine, you can be the leader, little man.”
“I’m going to do that because it’s going to be fun, not because you told me to.”
“I was gonna do that anyway. Yeah. Bite the bastards up, that was exactly what I was thinking.”
Lines like this and “let’s nail this SOB” Makes me wonder why Joss made him such a language prude in the opening scene of Age of Ultron.
Well, let’s face it, there were a lot of things in Age of Ultron that weren’t quite right.
I loved that in a movie with a flying tank, physical gods, and an unstoppable rage monster, The Avengers takes time to show that leadership (Cap) and interrogation (Black Widow) can be equally important superpowers.
This scene was perfectly done, agreed. One of my favorite things about The Avengers was showing them worrying about crowd control, and Cap’s decisiveness here was on point.
I appreciated that the younger of the two cops is the tragically underworked Enver Gjokaj, whom we’d later enjoy in Agent Carter.
He was so inspired by that moment that he travelled back in time so that he could help Peggy Carter carry on Cap’s good work.
I like to think the cop is Sousa’s descendant. While Agent Carter was clearly setting him up to be the husband present-day Peggy alludes to, and they obviously never had kids (or any that outlived Peggy, anyway; that’s why her niece delivered her eulogy,) relationships can be complicated.
And the Irish mobster chief in Daredevil is descended from Thor’s granddad in The Dark World…In actuality this trope was played straight with Spidey’s school principal being descended from his identical looking granddad in the Howling Commandos.
I love the scene from Ultron, where Thor challenges everyone to try to pick up his hammer. When Cap grabs it, Mjolnir wiggle, and I take it to mean Cap COULD pick it up, but he doesn’t. That’s Captain America. He could be a god, but he’d just as soon leave that to someone else.
A friend of mine who knows a lot of comics lore told me that Cap actually did pick up Mjolnir. He wasn’t powerful enough to wield it as a weapon, but Mjolnir apparently considered him worthy to pick it up long enough to hand it to Thor.
The look on Thor’s face after that wiggle is probably the funniest moment in the entire MCU.
It is possibly my favorite moment from the series.
I love the Texts From Superheroes comic that goes with the idea that Steve could’ve picked up the hammer, but stopped immediately and just mimed trying when it moved because he knew it’d hurt Thor’s feelings if he actually did it. https://textsfromsuperheroes.com/image/180702457158
God, the looks that pass through Thor’s face in that moment are so perfect. The brief “oh crap” panic, the almost immediate relief when Cap lets go, the pivot to laughing it off. Chris Hemsworth really is fantastic.
“What’s it look like, Cap?”“Uh, it appears to run on some kind of electricity.”“Well, you’re not wrong….”Also:“You might want to sit this one out, Cap. This guy is basically a god.”“There’s only one God I know of, m’am, and He doesn’t dress like that.”
“Call it, Cap.”
What I love so much about that scene is that six people taking on a literal army shouldn’t work, but Cap knows instantly how to maximize everyone’s skills to close the portal and save civilians. They don’t walk away without casualties or property damage, but it was undeniably a win.
I love that when the battle is over and Cap says “We won,” he’s so beat he can barely get the words out. It feels like a hard-won victory.
Best of all is Cap’s incredulousness at winning due to the colossal odds against them. If those chitauri didn’t have a central kill switch…
I still remember before The Avengers came out, wishing like crazy they were gonna use Cap the way he should be used for the team: as a leader, as inspiration, as an experienced soldier who knows, better than any of them, what battle is like.I was not, obviously, disappointed. “Hulk – smash!” is one of my favorite lines/moments in a movie filled with favorite lines and moments. At the time I thought I was right to be concerned, since RDJr was such a strong presence, since Iron Man bankrolls the team, etc etc. But the MCU people got, as they did from the beginning, who Captain America is and what value he is to the team.
Yeah, I love the “Call it, Captain” sequence; it gives establishing objectives to everyone on the squad so that we, the viewer, aren’t just watching random CG fights for the sake of it, but we know precisely what and why the heroes are doing what they are doing, not just to stop the threat, but *contain* it and rescue anyone in harm’s way (somewhere, Zack Snyder is baffled: “Rescue? I do not know the meaning of this word. Is it French?”)
Which makes his strategic and tactical failures in Infinity War even more baffling.
I thought Cap was kind of underpowered in The Avengers, or at least not back up to full capacity after having been frozen 70 years I blame the costume, but he looked like milk toast in Avengers compared to his own movie and everything that came afterward. Like he was in desperate need of a sandwich. Glad he got something to eat by the end of the day.
The costume sucked. And it especially sucked because they had already used a costume that looked great. It stands out like a sore thumb because everyone else looks top-notch, but Cap’s costume doesn’t look much better than the cheapo ‘90s movie version, kinda rubbery.
Back when my comics blog was active (before I got sick), I started a series on the many live-action costumes of Captain America. “The Avengers” got its own installment. If you, or anyone else, are interested, it’s here, along with the other parts that go back to 1944:
https://unlimitedvisions.wordpress.com/2014/09/16/suit-up-4/
That was great, thanks. Your piece pointed out a lot of little details I never noticed.
That second fave Avengers moment of yours …“Barton, I want you on that roof, eyes on everything — call out patterns and strays! Stark, you’ve got the perimeter — anything gets out more than three blocks, you turn it back or turn it to ash! Thor, you’ve gotta bottleneck that portal — slow ‘em down! You’ve got the lightning — light the bastards up! [Natasha,] you and me, we stay here on the ground, keep the fighting here! And Hulk? — SMASH!”How’s that?
God, yeah. I liked it a lot when I first watched it. It was thrilling, but it felt…well, not “modern.” It was pulpy, which I go is what they were going for, and, overall, I thought it was good and fine. Rewatching it after The Winter Soldier, and I got it. I saw how every Cap story since reverberated out from this one, and it’s become easily one of my top MCU flicks.
Tucci plays his small role incredibly well in this movie, imo, and deserves more plaudits for that.
I believe you just summed up Stanley Tucci’s entire career with that comment.
He “brings it” every single time.
I still really like the exchange “You’re German?”“people forget the first country the Nazis invaded was their own”
I love his delivery of that line, almost as much as his reaction to Steve saying they’ll drink the schnapps tomorrow. “I don’t have an operation tomorrow, I’ll drink it now!”
And then later, during the procedure, he apologizes for having drunk too much of the schnapps.
STEVE: Don’t suppose you left any of that Schnapp’s for me?
ERSKINE (sheepishly): Not as much as I should have.
And of course, the tragedy later that Steve’s metabolism has sped up so much he can’t get drunk, meaning he can’t drown his sorrows when he loses Bucky.
Sure, it’s some dangerously revisionist bullshit, but a good reading by Tucci
Sure, it’s some dangerously revisionist bullshit, but a good reading by Tucci
Which really makes the ignorance Candance Owens spewed more idiotic: terror at home only being contained at home is still terror.
Tucci is my second favorite performance in this movie, after Tommy Lee Jones playing Officer Tommy Lee Jones.
I thought that was US Marshall Sam Gerard’s grandfather? Did I miss something in the Tommy Lee Jonesiverse?
Ha! The TLJCU. 😀
Mad props for the Bug-Eyed Earl avatar. God I miss Red Meat.
Tommy Lee Jones gives perhaps my favorite performance in an MCU film in First Avenger. He’s just…he’s just pitch perfect. Every line reading, every facial expression… That double-take he does when saying “because we have the best men.”: fucking stellar. I would have given my left nut to see him on an episode or two of Agent Carter.
Yeah, he’s absolutely great in this. Even his playing his Nth iteration of “TLJ as hard bitten authority figure.”
“I can spell!”
“I ain’t kissin’ you!”
Some days I think Tommy Lee Jones legitimately has stopped acting and just thinks he’s an old tired cop now.
That’s Col. Tommy Lee Jones, Slick.
Colonel is an Officer rank, no?
Address a colonel as Officer sometime.
“ if you have something to say now would be a perfect time to keep it to yourself.”
I preferred him as US Marshall Tommy Lee Jones.
This movie has aged the best of ALL the first gen. MCU. Due largely in part because Cap’s movies all built great things out of the foundation. But also because between Atwell, Jones, and Tucci (and Tobey Jones) it is bursting at the seams with great supporting acting. Every goddamn time Tucci points his finger at Steve and asks him to ‘stay. a good. man.’ it gets REALLY DUSTY in this place.
Yeah, I wish people would stop always chopping onions in my house at that point in the film. Maybe do that later, guys?
And also because it’s the only one that’s always been in the past….
It’s not showy, it doesn’t pull too much focus. Tucci realised exactly what was needed for Erskine and delivered exactly that. His chemistry (of the mentor/mentee type) with Evans is just phenomenal.
Watch Big Night. Tucci’s been bringing it for decades. I would love to see a sequel to Big Night.
The Red Skull being an underwhelming villain is the only thing that slightly holds this film back. It has maybe the best first half of any MCU entry, with terrific character work with Steve, as well as a few choice supporting characters— I think the converse with Erskine may be my favourite MCU scene.
Yeah, for me everything in the first act is great, but it’s never the same after Steve goes to the battlefield.
I see a lot of comments about how lacking MCU villains are, but I think it’s overstated- Red Skull is an example why.Red Skull here is fine. He’s perhaps not that nuanced, but he hits his one note (menacing bad ass) very well. Hugo Weaving has the right voice and knows how to play this kind of villain. I love the scene where he first tests out his tesseract weapon, becomes slightly quizzical with how it vaporized his first target and checks it, then gives a slight nod and grin when he shoots the next guy and it works better for him. That nod and grin is everything.
The Red Skull was GREAT…he just wasn’t given enough to do.
The Red Skull is adequate, no more or less.The thing about him is that he’s not an interesting, layered character like Magneto or Doctor Doom, so he’s only really effective to the extent that he’s allowed to be really twisted and evil, but the Rocketeer-esque tone they’re going for here works precludes that.
Yeah, the whole “Nazis but worse” thing doesn’t leave a hell of a lot of room for layers.
Yeah, he was never one of Marvel’s most layered villains, but he doesn’t have to be to work, especially not for the type of film they were going for here. I disagree that he needs to be presented any more twisted or evil than he already is to be effective, especially not in a family friend-ish superhero movie like this. He just needs to be a bad guy on the level of an Indiana Jones film or something, which he achieves.
Yeah, he was designed to be the comic-book face of Nazism. Not much room for nuance. Where he becomes interesting is his relationship with Captain America; much like the Joker with Batman, his obsession with destroying his nemesis can be used to terrific dramatic effect.
I thought Hugo was perfect as the Red Skull. I really liked his onscreen portrayal, and especially love the first Cap movie in general. It perfectly encapsulated what made Cap, Cap. And gave us his WWII exploits so we had an idea of what he’d been through, and what he was capable of before we were all dumped in the present world.
That scene was my first thought, too. There’s something about his body language that just makes the character work. I was thinking of how you see him casually counting the number of soon-to-be-dust Nazi officers while they yell at him.
Hah! I noticed that too.
(BLAM!) “Hmm, that wasn’t supposed to happen…”
(BLAM!) “Theeere we go.”
For me the main problem with the Red Skull is his motivation, which seems to be just “Blow up cities”. It doesn’t have enough meat to it. I need to know what he ultimately wants to accomplish, what’s important enough to him to do all the extreme stuff he does. He’s like 75% of a good villain (a lot of which is due to Weaving’s work) and I wish they’d gotten him the rest of the way.
I think they should have leaned into the WW II stuff harder. A super hero fighting Nazis(of the non alien/mutant variety) is fun as hell. I don’t know why they felt they had to add the harder Sci-Fi stuff. Sure I guess the tesseract needed it’s place but the whole movie feels like you might as well be watching Avatar or something and it just happened to have old cars and wardobe.
also i always wished the movie didn’t end with him getting frozen, just thawed. Then we could have had more Cap solo movies in WW II time(more time with Peggy Carter and co. which would allow me to root for a reunion as hard as you guys seem to be) and eventually they fill us in on what happened then ended with him being frozen, and it probably would have had more resonance than the moment in the movie, which kind of feels forced and tacked on to what the actual character’s story is.
Basically I’m mad Captain America didn’t punch Hitler in the face.
I wouldn’t have wanted more solo movies in the 1940s, much as I like the setting. Steve’s main story since 1964 has been that he’s a man out of time, and that’s something that can only be meaningfully explored in his own films.
The only reason we know Captain America (and not a slew of other hyper-patriotic WWII comic heroes) is *because* he’s a man out of his own time.
I love how Agents of SHIELD has been doing everything it can to emphasize that HYDRA are Nazis, at the same time both the comics and films were struggling to de-emphasize it as if they were worried about the Nazi Anti-Defamation League or something.
Cap punched Hitler in the face everyday of the week and twice on Sundays.
I like this film because it is the only MCU movie with a genuinely bittersweet ending.“I had a date…”
I actually like Hugo Weaving’s Red Skull. He’s playing an over-the-top Nazi villain straight out of an old pulp comic or movie serial, and he nails it. It’s not anything big or profound, but it’s fun as heck. And the accent he goes with is great.
How much fucking Marvel content is the AV Club going to publish??? It’s fucking absurd! The whole site is nothing but Marvel now!
As good as this moment is, because of the recurring line, I would actually go with Steve throwing himself on the grenade. This scene shows his tenacity and willingness to fight the good fight – the grenade scene shows just how truly selfless he is. Plus you get the reactions from everyone around, including Tucci and Jones. EDIT TO ADD: It’s probably also the moment Peggy falls in love with him.Also, if Endagme does in fact involve time travel, and we don’t get a Steve / Peggy reunion I will be irritated.If Endgame has time travel and we do get a Steve / Peggy reunion I will be a blubbering mess.
The grenade scene is one of the best scenes in the MCU. It worked doubly because of the build up and with Jones and Tucci.
It’s also what got him the gig as Cap. That’s essentially what he was there for, sure, but the looks on Tucci’s face when it happens seals it.
“He’s still skinny.” Even phoning it in, TLJ kills it.
“I’m not kissing ya!”
“Cut off one head, two more will—” *BLAM*“Let’s go find two more.”TLJ is a boss.
No, Tommy Lee Jones is *effortless*. Dude may seem incredibly jaded and bored, but he’s never phoning it in.
You and I are going to have a conversation later that you won’t enjoy.
“He’s still skinny.”
I would add in that the best touch of the grenade scene is that, if you look closely, Peggy was also trying to dive on the grenade. Steve just got there first. Peggy had just knocked a dude in the dirt for being a sexist dick, yet she was his drill instructor, which meant he was her responsibility, and they all were under her protection. And she unhesitantly attempted to carry out that duty.It goes to show why Peggy and Steve are such an iconic couple: because they’re the only equals for the other’s courage and integrity, even and in spite of being misfits in a world not built for them.
Agreed. I always noticed her reaction in that scene, but never truly thought about what it meant.
“He’s still skinny.”
The grenade scene is one of the best scenes in the MCU. It is. Check out the look on Steve Rogers’ face when he jumps on the grenade. He’s fucking scared to death – he’s not being noble, or self-sacrificing, or a hero because he thinks all those things are glorious and worthy of praise. He thinks (knows) he’s going to die, but other people who weren’t lucky or fast enough are not going to. He doesn’t have time to be proud of that. He even hugs the grenade to himself when it should be obvious it won’t go off – that little gesture of “get away!” (I think to Peggy?) is heart wrenching.I just realized that if I don’t remember for sure that he’s talking to Peggy, then I need to see the movie again. Okay, I will.
Well to be fair, many scenes in The First Avenger were the best scenes in the MCU because of how goddamn great that movie was.
The grenade scene was a bit cheesy IMO. While noble, it was unnecessarily foolish, as he was standing away from it, and it would have made more sense to back up. Good character beat, just not great decision making.
He wasn’t thinking about whether he’d be able to back up – other guys in his squad might not have been able to get away in time, and he prioritized their lives over his own.Because he’s Captain Goddamn America.
Fragmentation grenades work by propelling metal in all directions, unless you find cover quickly or move a good ways away, you are in danger. Steve elected to use his body to in order to stop or slow the expanse of the metal fragments, drastically increasing the likelihood that others survive, especially those that couldn’t reach cover. The scene’s purpose is to show that Steve was willing to sacrifice himself to just give others a better chance of surviving. So based on one’s perspective, “perfect decision making” if altruistic, “not great decision making” if selfish or self preserving. So you say cheesy, that’s fine, I say perfect given the character construction.
It’s almost as if people don’t always make the best, most rational or logical decisions in moments of sudden unexpected crisis…When you have a split second to make a decision, you tend to go with your first instinct, unless you’ve been trained to do otherwise.
I’m not saying it was “bad,” just cheesy and a hair unnecessary. It didn’t slow the story down or anything. It was really just used to give the Colonel a final push into agreeing to use Rogers. The above-highlighted ass-beating (and subsequent recounting of other previous ass-beatings) did a better job of highlighting his warrior’s heart. Anyways, Team Cap.
You missed the point. He is sacrificing himself to save the people around him.
I have a ‘my dog didn’t die, he just went to live on a farm upstate’ vision in my head of how Steve’s arc in the MCU will end, and if it actually comes to be, I will join you in said blubbering.
(Tony finds a shield on a gravestone as Sharon drives away. He lifts the shield and the stone says “Steven and Peggy Rogers”
Goes back in time, meets with Peggy, kickstarts SHIELD from the SSR years earlier, readies earth even more then it was before
Definitely along those lines, yes, but I wonder what that would do to the timeline we’ve been following all along.
Does he dye his hair and wear an eyepatch as a disguise?
My dream is that he went to this farm via helicopter (I actually approved of that turn of events because it was much less predicted.).Bonus points if its the Thanoscopter.
Can’t believe the Russos wouldn’t find a way to close the circle with Steve and Peggy in some way. Especially since they avoided doing it in ‘Winter Soldier’ or ‘Civil War’. But not KNOWING it’s going to happen is… delicious. And it’s probably the one thing Kang REALLY doesn’t want to get spoiled on.
The fact that one of the Endgame trailers prominently featured a voiceover from Hayley Atwell in Winter Soldier would seem to telegraph a Peggy Carter appearance. And yes, I will cry my damn eyes out when that happens.
It would be lovely, and yes, I will cry. But I kind of hope it doesn’t happen for three reasons:1) It’s exactly how everyone expects it to end, and I’d like to be surprised.2) Peggy had a whole LIFE after Steve “died”. She married another man and had children with him, and, presumably, was quite content with her family. Doing a reset on her history is nice for STEVE, but somewhere in Limbo her former husband and children are all going, “Hey, whose that insanely jacked dude banging my wife/my mom?!”3) I’m still clinging desperately to the belief that Captain America will be alive and well after Endgame, and Marvel and Chris Evans are just gaslighting us.
I don’t think we’re ever told if Peggy and Daniel had kids, but yes, I think it’s wrongheaded to rewrite the long life that Peggy had just to give Steve a happy ending (and that would also completely disrupt the timeline anyway).
I need Steve to live and ride off into the sunset with Sharon Carter.
Or I will cry. Hard. And I agree about not undoing Peggy’s life.
It also undoes all of the good Cap does in the future.
I don’t think there will be any getting back together for Peggy and Steve but I do want another scene with Agent Carter. She’s still one of my all time favorite characters from the MCU and I miss her.
Well, maybe somehow through Time Travel, Cap gets just that dance and then disappears. Peggy still gets her life but she and he get more closure.
You ever watch 11-22-63?
It has a time-travelling couple that has a warm resolution. And it’s great.
BUT what if her husband is future Steve sent back to the past after or during what ever happens in end game with a new identity ?
I wish I was on mushrooms when I read this post.
Especially after the one reunion scene they did get with each other in Winter Soldier. What a nightmare.
That trailer also included a clip of Steve as a pallbearer at the funeral of Peggy, the love of his life, which particularly messed me up and makes me think the new movie will feature a reunion for them in some way
The first Infinity War trailer had a Nick Fury voiceover for almost as long as he was in the actual film.
Part of does not want to rewrite Peggy’s history. The other part kind of wants Steve to meet Peggy on the Bridge at the end of season one just before she pours the vial of his blood out and says her final good bye. And he says something to the effect of “is it to late for that dance.” Screen goes to black.
My wish is that if they do see each other at the end, her first words to him are: “Ready for that dance?”
oh cmon, their Flirt Code Words are “You’re late.”
Jesus, I’m crying now just at the thought that this MIGHT happen!
Came here to say this!
What if the line is “I can’t believe you hooked up with my granddaughter/niece (or whatever)!!”?
I wouldn’t be that surprised if he says something like “I’m ready for that dance” right before he dies (if he does in Endgame).
The “I had a date” line is the one that always gets me choked up. The magnitude of it, to me at least, trumps several sad scenes in films including those featuring the death of a loved one. Truly hope this comes full circle and his departure from the MCU ends with said date.
My favorite moment is the “capture the flag” moment, which speaks to Steve’s innate ability as an unconventional thinker, but the grenade moment does speak towards him as a self-sacrificing hero.
Yaas, the work smarter, not harder that precedes that sidesteps a brawn-before-brains problem
My favorite part of the grenade scene is actually Infinity War highlighting how much Steve is a hypocrite in the best way possible. “We don’t trade a life for a life,” by which he actually means “Only my life is for trade for others.”
Those are two very different situations. One is an active bomb ready to go off, the other is a chance to fight and win.
I’ve realized that Steve doesn’t see his life as being as valuable as others. Which makes sense if you think about his history. He spent most of his pre-Captain America life being told his life was not even worthy of being given for his country. When asked by Bucky why he wants to fight he says that there are men laying down their lives and he has no right to do any less. He’s been trying to do it ever since then.
I wouldn’t call him a hypocrite, but he is in a way arrogant. The only life he considers worth sacrificing is his own, simply because he puts everyone else’s lives above his. Take this as you will, you can call this noble, arrogant, selfish, foolish, brave and any other number of adjectives, but it does describe him perfectly. For all the faults and worths involved, he is always the guy that would stand in the line of fire even if no one wants him to.
I agree. The grenade scene told you everything you needed to know about Steve and his willingness to die for others.
Love that scene, it does cement the fact the Rogers was the best man for the job in his willingness to self-sacrifice for his brothers in arms. And it proves it to Tommy Lee Jones’ army guy too as an actual backfire to what he was expecting..
Peggy: “I’ve been waiting for you.”Steve: “I slept with your niece.”
Peggy: “That’s okay, I saw her. I’d hit that too. Now you ready for that dance or do you want to skip right to the bj?”Quote from Definitely Not the Avengers: Endgame XXX
I believe that quote is actually from Appendegers: Rear End Game.
I was hoping you’d go three-way there.
You’re slipping.
*skip right to the fondueFtfy
When? So far, I have the scoreboard at “I kinda half-heartedly made out with your niece, then went off with my true life partners, Bucky and Sam.”
But HAS he????
I didn’t think of this until now, but how old is Sharon supposed to be? ‘Agent Carter’ establishes that Peggy had a brother, but also that he’d died in WWII, so even if he’d had children, they’d be at least 70 by the time ‘Winter Soldier’ happens.
I always referred to my great aunts and uncles as just “Uncle Waldo” or “Uncle Ed” maybe it’s the same deal.
When Marvel brought Captain America back from the iceberg in the mid-60s, a guy who died in World War II could totally have a daughter in her twenties. In the MCU, Peggy is Sharon’s great-aunt.
I made out with your niece*
You never know. He had some downtime between Civil War and Infinity War.
Yep, I came here to post about this scene, too. Besides the “I don’t like bullies” scene—which was also classic Cap and followed through beautifully through his MCU character arc—when Steve jumped on the grenade while the other men ran was when I knew this film absolutely got what people like about Captain America. He’s not a glory hog or killer. He’s the guy who shields people. I’m going to miss Chris Evans when he’s gone. He played the role beautifully. I had no idea when he was first announced as Cap that he would end up being the defining actor of this cinematic universe for me. I hope that…whatever ends up happening to Cap from here-on-out, it’s worthy of the character. (Selfishly, I hope it’s a happy end.)
Agreed. I always liked Chris Evans (he’s freaking hilarious in Not Another Teen Movie and yes I’m giving that movie some love right now because it’s by far the best of that crappy genre we were saddled with), but I also didn’t know what to expect from him in these movies. He always seemed too cocky and almost smug to be able to pull it off. Man, was I wrong. I’ll be able to deal with anyone else dying in Endgame, but if (when?) Cap bites it, there will be full on tears.
“He always seemed too cocky and almost smug to be able to pull it off.”Sure. When he playing Johnny Storm. Those F4 movies sucked hard, but whenever I was watching them, Evans stood out as the only person on set who seemed to understand his character in any way.
and yes I’m giving that movie some love right now because it’s by far the best of that crappy genre Walk Hard, Naked Gun, Airplane, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein,….
Spoofs exist outside of the Seltzer/Friedberg horror show, too.
He always seemed too cocky and almost smug to be able to pull it off.This was my exact worry too! Even in the trailers with that “I’m just a kid from Brooklyn” joke I was like, oh great, they made him a smug wise cracker. I’m so glad I was so wrong.
That’s something that isn’t mentioned enough: whatever problems TFA has as a film, it is nevertheless the single best romance I’ve seen in the last decade. You can see instantly that Peggy is a bit uncomfortable with her beauty, not in itself, but because it instantly dehumanizes her in the eyes of every male peer around her. She may want to be liked and loved by someone, but far more pressing on her mind is her need to be respected.And then she meets Steve, who is not merely her only peer in courage and thoughtfulness, but also tries, in charmingly fumbling manner, to say “Look, I’m not blind, but I’m trying to say that I respect your position.” I defy you to find a better meet-cute scene in film in the last decade. The only comparison, in all seriousness, was Steve’s meet-cute with Sam Wilson at the beginning of Winter Soldier:
My theory is no one can get within 10 feet of Chris Evan’s Steve without wanting to get in his pants.
I’d take that bet.
You bastards are gonna make me watch The First Avenger again huh!
Came here to say the same thing. It also comes on the heels of that excellent scene where he uses brains instead of brawn to grab the flag. His super strength is meaningless without the accompanying smarts and heart. My eyes still get a little misty every time I watch the grenade scene.“Is this a test?”
My dad had a good friend who he thought the world of. During WWII, this friend actually did step on a live grenade to save the guys around him. He lost his leg but it didn’t kill him. After he did his part to save the world from Nazi fascism, he married, had a family and lived a long full life — the greatest generation.
Absolutely. Also, the flagpole scene proves that he already has a remarkable IQ previous to his genetic makeover.
If they finally get their dance I will be wrecked.
So very much this. First Avenger spends most of its time answering the question, “Why this guy?” Unlike other heroes who were born with gifts or who got them by accident, Steve had to be chosen to be a superhero. So the question repeats in practically every scene of the movie, “Why him?” Other scenes, like the one pointed out in the article, show that little Steve is decent, tough, and has a lot of heart. What makes the grenade scene stand out is that the screenplay actually has Jones and Tucci’s characters argue the movie’s central question. And Jones’s character has a great point—if you’re aiming to make super-soldiers, why waste that technology on a 90 lb weakling? Why not use it on someone in prime physical condition? Why him and not one of the gigantic Alabama farm boys Jones has selected to be candidates? And then Steve shows us—because even though the other candidates are bigger and stronger, when there’s a threat, Steve Rogers is the guy that steps up to protect them. He’s already a hero. He just needs someone to make him super.
My working theory is that Endgame will have Tony use the stones and sacrifice himself to save the universe, but I would prefer if Cap makes the final sacrifice at the end and through Soul Stone fuckery, he finds himself in at the Stork Club with Peggy.
She says “Though you were gonna be late.”
He just smiles.
Role Credits
Something a lot of people miss is that Peggy also goes for the grenade. Steve is just closer.
They’re a perfect match.
What if instead of Steve Rogers “dying” at the end of Endgame, they instead opt to leave him at his proper time period and he could pick up where he left off. What if Steve is able to live his life with Peggy and finally get that dance. What if the next version of Cap. America is their son? (lot of what ifs I know)
I just typed the same thing. You are correct – that absolutely was the moment. It’s not about being tough and having a scrappy catchphrase. He was willing to lay down his life for strangers on instinct. That’s what the movie meant by “Not a perfect soldier, but a good man.”
Kisses Peggy, comments that the last person he kissed was her niece. Really get the conversation going.
For me the best Peggy/ Steve scene is the flagpole one, and the one in the car. After he outhinks all the other guys, Peggy smirks at him is a way that STILL makes me blush after almost 8 years. What makes Steve attractive is his heart, brains, and conciense over and over thought the franchise.
“He’s still skinny.”
The grenade scene not only shows how selfless he is but it also establishes his tendency to gravitate towards, and even default to, self-sacrifice. It’s a tendency that only becomes clearer with his every appearance. It’s one of the things that makes his character so tragic, but also so heroic. I’ve come to realize that deep down Steve believes his life just isn’t worth as much as other people’s and so his impulse is always to sacrifice himself to save others, because he sees it as a fair trade. You can also see this in Infinity War where he says they don’t trade lives, and Vision calls him out by pointing out that he has been willing to trade his own many times. Combine that with the fact that he has never been truly happy (except maybe for fleeting moments), and doesn’t even know what makes him happy (one of the more underappreciated character moments in The Winter Soldier), and it almost seems like Steve isn’t still alive because he really wants to be, but because he thinks it is still his duty to serve. You can see why he views heroism as being the one “to lay down on the wire and let the other guy climb over you.” As much as Whedon says he doesn’t really get characters like Steve, he was able to sum him up pretty perfectly in that exchange. It’s part of what defines him. I’d say his deepest desire is to be able to sacrifice himself to save the people he cares about, and what he has tried to do many many times before.
For reasons I don’t fully understand… this scene always makes me tear up. 😭
THIS. Kang gets a little misty EVERY DAMN TIME he re-watches that scene. It’s everything that a Randian macho lunkhead like Zack Snyder would never think to express about truly heroic character. And T. Lee Jones’ ‘He’s still skinny’ is the perfect one-liner button to release the tension of how much you love Steve in that moment.
Personally, I’m hoping the Cap/Peggy scene is in the afterlife. Him waking up in a dancehall like in AoU and her walking up and saying, “Ready for our dance?”Cap turns around, smiles and says, “I can do this all day” and it fades while they finally get their dance
Came here to say this. The movie bully scene shows Steve’s ready to fight, but so do the enlistment scenes, and so does the “I don’t like bullies, no matter where they’re from” line. Plus, plenty of people were ready to fight, and that’s why they joined the army. But the grenade scene is the moment where we see Steve is ready to sacrifice. He’s so close to his dream of finally joining the war effort, but he’ll give it all up and die on a training ground if it’ll save lives.I also love it for the way the other characters react. There are a bunch of different attitudes to Steve at this point: Erskine believes in him; Peggy is intrigued by him, but skeptical; Tommy Lee Jones (who cares what the character’s called, it’s clearly just Tommy Lee Jones) may be impressed by his moxie but is being a ruthless pragmatist; and the other guys just dismiss him out of hand. But he jumps on the grenade and suddenly everyone sees the same thing: a guy who’ll do what it takes.
Gotta agree on the grenade scene.Oops, wrong grenade scene.
Yes, grenade moment is best visual representation of Captain character but I still prefer the line about that he is simple guy from Brooklyn.
It just hit me. Peggy married a man that Steve saved. In the TV series, she was getting close with Daniel Sousa, and it kind of implied that maybe he was the man she married. It also says (or implies, it’s been a while) that he had never met Cap. Maybe, due to time travel, Steve gets a chance to dance with Peggy, and saves Daniel’s life, thus adding a bit of timey-wimey shenanigans to the whole thing.
Yep. Incredibly powerful moment. I instantly welled up and had to pause the movie at this moment. He has genuine love for the people around him, pretty much just because they are people. He has the presence of mind to recognize a mortal threat to those people and that he can do something to neutralize that threat. The fact that he must sacrifice himself in order to do so causes not even a moment of hesitation. It is this last part that drives me crazy. I do not have that in me. I wish I did.
I look forward to Endgame, when he says: “I can do this all nday (where n ≤ 14,000,605)” because, you know, timey-wimey timeline stuff.
“I could do this all eternity“
“I could arrange that.”-Dr. Strange
“Steve Rogers, I’ve come to bargain”
If it adapts in some way the ending from The Thanos Imperative, maybe!
An ending of Cap perpetually fighting back Thanos to keep him from escaping seems perfectly fitting, honestly. It isn’t the happy ending I want for him, but I think it’s an ending that would do credit to the character.
It’s probably too much of a downer and weird ending for the mass appeal movie they are trying to build.
Probably. But knowing that Captain America is always fighting to preserve the universe is kind of nice
“I can do this all yesterday.”
With one line in Captain America: The First Avenger, Steve Rogers proves why he’s a hero“Do you fondue?”
“It’s just cheese and bread.”
I’m glad Howard put him right on that.“Okay, the cheese is almost melt- Oh God, why are you naked?”
I’ve mentioned this during the Age of Heroes article series on First Avenger, but prior to this movie, the non-comic book reader’s view interpretation of Captain America was as a jingoistic asshole you’d see in the Ultimate Universe.First Avenger did a lot to remove those jingnostic interpretations by showing him as a tenacious, sensitive do-gooder even before he got the serum.
I always though Ult. Cap was interesting by making Steve truly a man out of time. Though I certainly wouldn’t want that to be THE CAP.
Though the problem with Ultimate Cap’s view of the French as cowardly makes no sense. For him, it was only a few months ago that he was fighting alongside the French Resistance.
Millar’s Cap seems more like a walking symbol than a human being, which is why I like Brubaker’s take so much more.
I always though Ult. Cap was interesting by making Steve truly a man out of time Cap was a man out of time in comics before – notably in Englehart’s run starting in 1972. Before and after that, a lot of writers/artists featured Steve just… wandering around looking at new stuff that wasn’t around in WW2 and all the old stuff “the kids” now revered (pretty sure it was a Steranko issue that had Steve gazing at a Humphrey Bogart poster in a shop specializing in “nostalgia”).But the MCU brings it home with nearly every line they give Chris Evans. Unfailingly old world in his manners (calmly introducing himself -“I am … Steve Rogers” to Groot, a fucking alien tree that suddenly shows up next to him in a battle), chivalrous without it being creepy (he never thinks Natasha can’t do a thing -sure, he’ll give her a boost up to the Chitauri sky motorcycle if she wants), boyishly eager to show what he does know about the present day (“I understood that reference!”), and willing to put in time to learn more (that list in Winter Soldier). All in all, Cap is the character the MCU got most right. (I don’t actually have a quibble with any of them – how has that company been so phenomenally spot on with casting???)
I think Chris Evans gets some credit for this as well. He’s hit the character (as written for the MCU) pitch perfect in each movie so far. I think MCU did a great job making him “cool?” for folks like me who don’t follow the comics much, Cap was always seen as kind of a dork. Winter Soldier in particular changed that for me.
As for best representation of a character, MCU Cap is a strong contender. I really like Tom Holland’s Spiderman. Hulk and Thor are also great, thanks to Ruffalo and Hemsworth. I feel like a fanboy but I think the cast and the writing have just been great for the MCU across the board.
I love that “Thai food” is on his list, as it should be. That stuff will blow his mind.I also like that he’s pro-internet, but I can imagine there were some early missteps. “Lonely women in my area would like to meet me? What a nice way to get people to connect with each other. Let’s just click this … oh.”
I did enjoy a lot that in Ultimates that many of his views were what you would typically find of an old 30’s white guy. He was not a racist, but definitely used words that might be considered offensive today. Also he was a a “good christian boy” like everyone else in his time was, and was baffled that everyone dismissed religion so casually.
To be fair, an American soldier taken directly from 1945 would have been much more likely to be pro-France than anti-. On the other hand, the majority of the writing for the Ultimates version of Cap did the “man out of time” aspect well, but the jingoistic asshole version was very much Mark Millar.
Reading Ultimates and Ultimate Avengers I kept wonder why the hell does Cap hate the french so damn much? It was only in the past few years did I learn who Mark Millar really is.
Ed Brubaker actually did a really great rebuttal on Ultimate Cap’s nonsensical hatred of France.
Though as a historian I’d note that Brubaker’s idealized France where everybody was in la resistance isn’t any more accurate.
Aside from Vietnam and WWII, the French have been badass when it came to fighting wars. I think we dunk on France because in our hearts, we recognize we’d have no country (USA), if not for them.
I love France too, but c’mon, lets stop pretending they don’t suffer a lot of military humiliations. Franco-Prussian War ring a bell?
If only those who traditionally dunk on France had even a cursory understanding of American history. They don’t.
They participated in more wars than any other country in history. So, there’s that.
be the most feared military force in history for hundreds of years, nothing. Capitulate to the nazis ONCE, “lol french tanks have 6 reverse gears!”
I do believe they have a better war record than we do in terms of win/loss.
well, yes, thats what “most feared military force in history for hundreds of years” means. Possibly thousands if you go back to BC and the Frankish tribes
In addition to the key assist in our own revolution.
I doubt whether anyone will ever top Brubaker as my favorite Cap writer.
Of course, that’s just as much of a revisionist history.
The thing is that while these writers did have great takes on the character, the response to Ultimates and thinking Cap was a jinogistic asshole was just looking at his history as a character. He always stood for the ideals of America but never blindly followed the country or its leaders. He quit working for the US government every few years in the 70s and 80s because they would piss him off.
Also apparently Tony Stark was really blue and his whole body was a brain because they let Orson Scott Card write a bonkers prequel origin for him.It was the Oughts, man! Marvel was trying anything they could to connect with the fickle youth market. What knows that sweet male tween-to-teen demographic like the guy who wrote “Ender’s Game”, a book about a military program to conscript children to fight space wars? He was doing Hunger Games before it was cool!
Actually, comic writers providing “rebuttals” to each other is generally terrible shit that underscores how much of a failed, irrelevant industry comic books have become in the wake of superhero movies.
The thing about Ultimate Cap is that he’s not really meant to be about World War II, he’s Mark Millar’s parody of Bush-era foreign policy. There’s a reason Ultimates 2 ends with a villain group that is basically the “Axis of Evil” (plus France) and the moral Cap learns is no more preemptive strikes.
I mean, if you take the political sentiments of the time (particularly if you assume he was frozen early in the war) it makes a lot of sense. US sentiment was heavily against France because of the antics it had pulled abetting the invasion of Ethiopia out of fear of Italy, a country the rest of the world viewed as a joke. They used their rotating leadership to undermine the function and thus legitimacy of both the League of Nations and Red Cross and enforced an international embargo on Ethiopia that the US eventually decided to ignore over growing frustration with the whole Crisis. Meanwhile, Nazi Germany had been pumping weapons into Ethiopia the whole time just to be a troll. Ethiopia at Bay, a first person account from someone inside the Ethiopian government at the time, is a fun read both because of the subject matter and the saltiness of the author (he spends a whole page complaining about Ethiopian phone etiquette).Also, the idea of the French Resistance as representative of France of the time is a largely postwar (which also took a while to get going).
Yeah, Millar is a piece of work. I always feel it necessary to point out it was an Irishman who stuck those words in Cap’s mouth.
Context is important…that was right when we were renaming French Fries “freedom fries” and shit because of their refusal to support our bullshit invasion of Iraq.
I got a good chuckle out of it when I read it at the time. Fuck you.
We’d be calling them chips if it weren’t for the French bailing us out in 1775.
Yeah, that event in the comics was fitting with Millar, and less so with the character’s representation in previous Ultimates comics.
That has little to with Millar being an ass and much more to do with the political climate around the beginning of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Maybe he was party to liberating Drancy, and therefore defines his experience with French participation in the war was the Vichy regime’s complicity in the Holocaust rather than the Resistance’s sacrifices?Regardless of what the likes of Le Pen and Mitterand may claim, the French’s hands were not clean during occupation.
First Avenger did a lot to remove those jingnostic interpretations To be fair, so did Ed Brubaker’s run on Captain America.
Warren Ellis also mocked Ultimate Cap in Nextwave.
For that matter, € isn’t a letter.
Brubaker’s take on Cap is the definitive take, IMO.
I think you could make a strong case for Mark Waid as well:Followed by ten years later:
“The strong protect the weak.”I wish the Republicans would read this.
He’s 1A for me.
He’s 1A for me.
Millar aside, comics Cap has always been a sensitive liberal hero who hates blind jingoism, long before Brubaker, Kirby, Gruenwald, Roger Stern, JM DeMatteis all portrayed him that way in the 60s thru 10s.
What I love about Waid’s Cap is how he balances his earnestness with the rest of him.
Cap’s always earnest. Waid was one of the first writers to make him cool. That balance was what I loved about the Waid/Garney run.
Exactly! He’s earnestness, but not corny. My fave Cap, really.
That was damn beautiful.
I like to think of the Ultimates as a Marvel “What If…”: “What if…The Avengers started in the 00’s and they were all assholes?”
Yeah, Ultimates were “TWISTED(tm)!”
Also apparently Tony Stark was really blue and his whole body was a brain because they let Orson Scott Card write a bonkers prequel origin for him.
I entirely regret reading the Ultimates. It’s like they took each character and played some kind of “Dickhole Mad Libs” with them. Plus that whole scene where Nick Fury, a guy they’ve decided to draw as Samuel L Jackson, talks about how SLJ should play him in a movie is just cringingly awful.
At least they didn’t cast Johnny Depp as Tony Stark!
That was basically the premise for all the Ultimate Universe characters except Spider-Man.
True enough. Who could forget incel Reed Richards? (PS He’s in the main 616 universe now!)
Eh, Ultimate Cap gets a bad rap…but that wasn’t a great line.
I felt like The Ultimates was an angry 16 year old boys impression of what adulthood is like.
Which pretty much describes anything Millar writes, to be honest. I enjoyed Old Man Logan as much as the next guy but even there you have the same “edgy” cynicism you see in just about everything else Millar writes from Kick-Ass (the movie was great because the screenwriter/director basically took Millar’s outline and write his own version) to Wanted (from which Millar re-used the “all the villains team up to finally take out the heroes” backstory in Old Man Logan).I don’t have it on hand but I remember Ultimate Cap portrayed a bit more idealistic and relatable in Jason Aaron’s(one of my favorite writers in comics) Ultimate Captain America mini-series where he confronts Nuke, who is portrayed as a cynical, Vietnam-era mirror figure of Cap.
And as I explained to you at the time, no one gives a shit about Ultimates who doesn’t read comic books.Most people’s impressions of Captain America before this movie were, “he wears red, white and blue and fights for America”. They didn’t live in this alternate universe you propose where they had strong opinions on his politics.
Literally no one thought that about Cap. Outside of your little circle at any rate
Best part of Captain America, my favorite MCU movie, as the Red Skull is taking the tesseract at the beginning of the movie, he throws away the line, ‘…and Der Fuhrer digs for trinkets in the desert….’.I know it’s just an inside joke since Joe Johnston worked on Raiders, but in my head, that means Indiana Jones is running around out there somewhere
…Now I want an Indiana Jones/Captain America comic.
I would like a Peggy Carter/Marion Ravenwood team-up.
Then drinks at my house afterward.
you wouldn’t last.
I know! 😀
With sexy results!
“Team-up” is such a polite name for it…
Marvel Team-UpMarvel Two-In-One.
In my head I just want Indiana Jones to yell at Cap
“You belong in a museum!!”
As long as it doesn’t invlove shia swinging through the trees with monkies.
Oh God. Indy and Cap. Don’t do this to me. Now I’m gonna look forward to that and when it doesn’t happen … please don’t do this to me.
Oh, absolutely! I thought the same thing when I first saw it. If you listen, the music playing during that scene is VERY Raiders-esque. You know Alan Silvestri picked right up on that while scoring the scene.
I was just rewatching this the other day and the submarine that Stark uses to fish the tesseract out of the ocean at the end seems to be paying more than a casual visual reference to MODOK.
And as a cherry on top, in the third (i know weak) mummy movie, there are references to the O’connells being in the SOE during world war 2, same as Indiana Jones.Now we can have Dr. Jones, Peggy Carter and a couple mummy killers in some extremely awesome WW2 non-Super Squad!
Jesus Henry Christ, I want to watch that movie right now.
*slaps you* Thatsh For Blashphemy
I’m happy to see so much love for The First Avenger. It’s also my favorite MCU film, largely because it was more willing to wear its heart on its sleeve than other films. And Johnston was an obvious choice as director, but he was also the perfect choice.
Very much so. His eye and direction is a big reason I love it so much. He brought a really cool ‘80s action movie sensibility to it.
It was either that or “Der Fuhrer chases rocket packs in Hollywood…”
“And Der Fuhrer poaches raptor eggs“from Site B”
Well, no. That has a Joe Johnston connection but is not period appropriate!
There are no raptor eggs at Site B, but they have a tank if you’re willing to crank.
“While the Nazi Party is busy replacing the Fuhrer and other top officials with lookalikes after they were killed in a theatre by a Jewish-American hit-squad … this has been a weird damn war.”
You know where he is? He’s helping found the CIA! That line was in Kingdom of the Crystal Cate is hotter with dark hairsI will forgive Lucas for Jar Jar. I will forgive Lucas for Hayden. I’ll forgive him for Padme dying of the sadz.I will never forgive him for dicking around too long on Indy IV that we couldn’t get Indy as OSS agent!
“I’ll forgive him for Padme dying of the sadz.”Sadly, the idea that Princess Leia’s mother could die of grief is no longer implausible.
The Ark just contained the soul stone and mere mortals aren’t powerful enough to possess it. It’s all coming together now.
The thing is, the Nazis actually did dig for trinkets in the desert.Hitler was obsessed with the occult, and sent out all sorts of expeditions to find things that could be used as propaganda to support his notions of The Aryan Race™. The line could easily just reference that, with no need for Dr. Jones.
It’s amazing how well this movie has aged compared to some of the other early Marvel entries. Part of that is the casting (Chris Evans and Haley Atwell, namely). However, whenever I revisit it I’m not necessarily left wanting more Captain America in his war days, even though they breeze through most of his WWII heroics. Part of that may be because Captain America got better and is the only franchise in the MCU that has consistently built on what came before it which may be because Captain America has only had two screenwriter teams play in their sandbox: Markus & McFeely and Whedon.
Yeah, the Cap trilogy is amazingly strong in part because of the continuity and consistency of the same writers. Those guys not only GET this character, they’re able to use their experience to build upon the character and his section of the MCU. On paper, those three Cap movies are drastically different, but watching them, they incredibly feel part of an awesome, ass-kicking, heroic whole.
It helped that they have one theme in common: Saving Bucky Barnes.
Tomorrow’s Marvel Moment is the Avengers assembled circling shot, right? I mean what else comes close?
I’ve always been partial to the argument between all the Avengers in the helicarrier laboratory, right before Loki attacks. I love Mark Ruffalo in that scene.
“I’m always angry.”Wait, no that is DCEU (oh calm down).“Shawarma?”
“I’m always angry” is Banner’s best line in The Avengers. Second only to “Well, this all seems…horrible.”
I have so enjoyed Ruffalo as Banner/Hulk. He is the perfect lovable sad sack that can destroy you mentally and physically if he allowed himself the desire for half a moment.
A good argument could be made for the Shawarma scene, as it started Marvel’s practice of including a joke stinger in addition to the foreshadowing stinger.
i second shawarma
“Puny god.”
True story, the first time I saw The Avengers I missed that line because my theater was laughing so hard from Hulk pulverizing Loki.
Coulson’s big scene?
The son of Coul
You mean the one where he says all those words that spell out s.h.i.e.l.d.?thats got to be the longest line I’ll never remember, and I’ve got backwards-supercalifragilitic stuck in there along with the restaurant order exchange with Kronk in TENG
My favorite was always the interrogation scene: Black Widow all tied up and incapacitated, dressing down Coulson over the phone… “Look, can you not interrupt me here? This idiot is telling me everything!” Brad Bird gave a slight nod in this direction in The Incredibles (“Oh, my goodness, you’ve got me monologuing!”), but other than Zack Snyder’s execrable Watchmen, this is the first time we got a live-action acknowledgement of the trope, subverted now because it was 100% the hero’s plan, instead of being incidental (“Crap! We weren’t supposed to get captured!”), or tacked on because the writer couldn’t find anyplace else to put an exposition dump. Sit tight, folks – we’re gonna have us a superhero movie and we’re gonna have us some laughs, it’ll be a hoot!
I thought the purpose of the scene was more to foreshadow how Widow got information from Loki later in the helicarrier.Still a fun scene, though.
It’s so showy and on the nose that I friggin’ hate it.
It’s so showy and on the nose that I friggin’ hate it.
I like the scene where they’re all arguing in the presence of the sceptre (and making decent points) that suddenly pivots to them needing to put their shit together and suit up. Not sure I can make an argument for it being “the” moment of the film, but it does neatly encapsulate the idea of the Avengers in this film.
Is there a reason why Cap hasn’t said “Avengers Assemble” in the movies yet? They teased it at the end of Age of Ultron but seeing this is a lot of OG Avengers last movie and they haven’t said it once is pretty odd.
I unabashedly love this movie, and it’s been one of my top 3 MCU films ever since it came out. Chris Evans means as much to me now as Cap as Christopher Reeve meant to me as Superman when I was a kid, and believe me, for me, that’s big. That’s very, very big. I’d tell Chris as much if I ever got to meet him.
i’m not crying you’re crying.
It’s a good moment, but I disagree that it’s the defining one. The one that clearly shows who Cap is and why he does what he does is when he’s still a shrimp and talking to Erskine who asks “So you want to kill Nazis, eh?” Steve responds “No sir, I don’t want to kill anyone. I just don’t like bullies.” That line resonates every time he goes up against a villain, every time he protects a civilian and every time he butts heads with Tony. It also completely explains why he pushes back against Fury and then rejects Tony’s side in Civil War. He won’t be bullied and he won’t allow anyone else to be. If he’d stayed a shrimp he probably would have been the best school teacher or principal you ever had.
I’m just a kid from Brooklyn.
I always liked this exchange from Civil War after Cap stalemates Peter by dropping the onboarding ramp onto him.Cap: “You’ve got heart, kid. Where are you from?”
Spidey: “Queens.”
*chuckles, smiles a bit.* “Brooklyn.”It’s nice.
Cap’s commitment to formal introduction even in the middle of battle is admirable.
“I am Groot.”“I am Steve Rogers.”
Possibly my favourite Steve moment, and I have a lot of them.
It’s uncut Steve for sure.
Cap: “You’ve got heart, kid. Where are you from?”
Spidey: “Queens.”
*chuckles, smiles a bit.* “Brooklyn.” Aw, that’s one of my faves too. Love the fact that Peter Parker will give out his home town (I know, not the address, but he’s supposed to have a secret identity) to Cap, because.. it’s Cap. You can’t not respect him, plus he just said you have heart!
Scrappy recognizes scrappy. The two are cut from a very similar cloth, despite the many years that separate them.
I saw someone either on Twitter or Tumblr say it’s the most realistic moment in the film because the two New Yorkers can’t stop themselves from saying where they’re from.
I love Peter’s excuse to aunt May after that where she asks who beat him up and he’s just like “Steve from Brooklyn. His friend was HUGE”.
I was thinking the exact same thing. Cap isn’t out there to beat up bad guys or kill Nazis…he’s there to protect the innocent and push back against bullies.
Agreed. And I loved Tucci’s moment right before that:“Is this a test?”“Yes.”
That moment is great. Erskine’s dead serious about it, and I’ve always felt he’s saying, “Yes, it’s a test. All questions are tests. Does that mean you’ll change your answer?” Yep, that’s me reading far too much into one line of dialogue, but honestly, the way Tucci delivers it tells me there’s something more to those words.
No, I think that’s exactly how we’re supposed to read it.
Would have been my pick too. I’m German and used to Nazis as exposable demi-humans in US fiction but still have a deep affection for Captain America as this embodiment of hope in the comics so I was quite moved by that scene.
I think that the defining line from The First Avenger is Steve’s line about not liking bullies. It sets up one of the main themes of the series, which is what makes the good guys good is that they’re never looking for a fight, but only ever use fighting as a last resort. It’s reflected in the line in Ultron when Black Widow tells Bruce that one of the things that she likes about him is that he avoids fights because he knows he’ll win. It becomes the crux of the conflict of Civil War, when Tony and T’Challa go out looking to exact vengeance. It’s the only reason why we don’t root for Warmonger in Black Panther, even though he’s actually right. The main throughline of these movies is that violence should be avoided at all cost. Does it always land in a series about superheroes beating up bad guys? No. But it’s always what they’re going for.
It’s the only reason why we don’t root for [Kill]monger in Black Panther, even though he’s actually right.Dude, Killmonger’s plan was a literal genocide (albeit a genocide against a global oppressor). He was the bad guy.Like, had Killmonger wanted to turn Wakanda into a sanctuary, or leverage Wakanda’s wealth and knowledge to improve black lives globally, that’s be fine, but then he’d be T’Challa.
Except T’Challa wasn’t going to “leverage Wakanda’s wealth and knowledge to improve black lives globally” until Killmonger convinced him it was the right thing to do. Killmonger is the bad guy, but he’s actually right about the mistakes Wakanda has made in the past and continued to make until the very end of the film. If the movie hadn’t made it clear he’s also a ruthless killer with a warped sense of morals, I would’ve rooted for him to win.
If the movie hadn’t made it clear he’s also a ruthless killer with a warped sense of morals, I would’ve rooted for him to win.I don’t know how you can separate those out, though. Sure, you can delete the last bit from “We should be doing more to help people by having them join in a global race war” but then we’re talking about a different character, so it’s still impossible to say Killmonger was right.And basing the antagonist’s right-ness in part on how it created a positive change in the protagonist is the functional equivalent of saying the iceberg was right in sinking the Titanic because it taught us to put more lifeboats on ocean liners.
I’m not sure we’re talking about the same thing. When I say “Killmonger was right,” I’m referring to Wakanda choosing to hide for hundreds of years. When Killmonger says “Two billion people all over the world who look like us whose lives are much harder, and Wakanda has the tools to liberate them all… where was Wakanda?” he’s on the right side of that argument. His desire to liberate African descendants all around the world is a good one. His desire to liberate them by giving them advanced weapons and instigating violent revolution and war, not so much. (There’s a parallel there to past U.S. foreign policy methinks.)
#theicebergdidnothingwrong
#theicebergdidnothingwrong
Well that’s what’s complex about him. He has a partly noble aspiration coupled with a horrific one. T’Challa learns the good lesson and eschews the bad one.
Killmonger knows what’s wrong, but I think the point of the movie is that knowing what’s wrong is the easy part—Nakia makes the same point as Killmonger to T’Challa in the movie’s second scene. The hard part is finding the right way to address the wrong. When people argue that Killmonger was the stealth protagonist of Black Panther, they forget that his answer to the ravages of imperialism was more imperialism. Imperialism, just with “us” (really, him) in charge. For all that people want to re-imagine him as Luke Skywalker, Killmonger’s a fairly obvious villain outside of his claimed goals—he kills indiscriminately, he enjoys causing suffering, and for all his talk he acts solely in his own interest. He’s still a great character. He’s pretty much what I wish they could’ve made Anakin in the Star Wars prequels. He just isn’t much of a hero.
Not true. T’challa was already going down that path. For example, he brought the CIA dude to Wakanda to save his life. T’challa’s dad would have let him die.If Killmonger had come peacefully and introduced himself and talked to T’challa, the movie would have likely ended the same way with a lot less death.
A sense of morals formed by growing up black in America.
Killmonger was not right, and he did not want to leverage Wakandan resources to elevate black people. He wanted power and genocide.NAKIA convinced him of this. Why why why does everyone always forget that Nakia left Wakanda precisely because they weren’t doing enough to make the world a better place??But yeah, the guy who didn’t hesitate to shoot his girlfriend in the head when she got in the way was totally going to dedicate himself to improving black lives everywhere. FOH
He’d be T’Challa at the end after he learned the lesson from Killmonger. T’Challa at the beginning was fine continuing as they were.
Valid point. I forget that T’Challa was like Trump-lite in that he didn’t want immigrants besmirching the glory of Wakanda.
Clearly not “fine”, he was conflicted. Kilmonger helped made him see the other view, but that doesn’t make Killmonger any less of a shit.
His plan was righting wrongs against his people.
It’s just that he, unlike T’Challa or Nakia, was too broken by said wrongs to be unable to do so with anything other than death and violence.
That makes him a bad person, not a wrong person.
You cannot say you think Killmonger was actually right in one sentence, and then that violence should be avoided at all costs in the next. Violence is all Killmonger wanted. You want to know why I didn’t root for Killmonger? Because terrorism and genocide are wrong, and utter chaos is not a viable plan for revolution against your oppressors. That’s why I didn’t root for Killmonger.
Killmonger can be right in identifying and labeling the problem, and still be wrong in regards to its solution. They are not mutually exclusive.
Oh, the issues he had with the world were mostly just. He just lost me with the whole ‘let’s kill everyone as a solution’ thing. Which is why he’s the villain of the film.
Technically the same is true for Thanos, in that overpopulation can be a problem but his solutions are terrible and stupid.
The best villains to actually root for are the ones you’re not supposed to take seriously. i.e. Loki from Thor or Simon Phoenix from Demolition Man and they’re fun.With Killmonger, they tried to make him seem sympathetic and just grew up on the wrong side of the family and society but in the end, he just wanted to unleash his collective rage on the world.Killmonger wasn’t ‘right’, he was just ‘wronged’.
I think you misinterpreted what Killmonger was right about. Killmonger was right that them being isolationist was selfish and likely had led to many atrocities that could have been prevented. He was right that their closed borders that protected them, were morally wrong because they could open their borders and help countless others. It was a direct allegory to Trump’s border policy.Killmonger was wrong, because his method of reprisal was to unleash his rage on society. The resolution was that Wakanda opened up, but did so in a peaceful, welcoming way. It’s also a play on Malcolm and Martin. Malcolm’s ferocity and anger was used to pressure society into change, but Martin’s approach was the by far more palatable. So, Killmonger was right just wrong in his approach.
Well put. I appreciated that in the end, T’Challa listened to the words of Killmonger and did what was right to resolve the selfishness of Wakanda’s past. I’ll be curious to see how what effect his actions have on the world of the MCU going forward.
None, probably. Comics (and most movies) are static universes (for Earth anyway) and the destruction of Asgard suggests they’re staying true to that idea in the MCU. We won’t be seeing the huge social changes Wakanda could bring in the movies, just like we’re pretty unlikely to see any lasting changes due to Thanos killing half of creation.There will continue to be teams and individual super heroes, and their stories, but somehow a super genius like Stark won’t solve climate change or the omnipresent use of petroleum products, somebody like Capt. America (in Evans’ interpretation) won’t spark a social rejection in the US of tRumpian nationalism, Wakanda won’t solve the terrible situation of black people in much of the rest of the world.I understand that producers and writers don’t want to make ‘our’ world seem too alien when presented in the movies but the static universe idea is consistently the one thing that irritates me most about comic stories.
Just wanna point out that Nakia was arguing for the plan that T’Challa actually ended up doing (helping people with their technology) before Killmonger even got there so while Killmonger did kinda force some action he was in no way the only person who convinced T’Challa that he needed to do something about the injustice outside of Wakanda.
I think you misinterpreted what Killmonger was right about. Killmonger was right that them being isolationist was selfish and likely had led to many atrocities that could have been prevented. He was right that their closed borders that protected them, were morally wrong because they could open their borders and help countless others. Which Nakia was saying the whole time without being a genocidal megalomaniac but she gets no credit.
Sometimes it takes the will of a genocidal megalomaniac to force change. Nakia was advocating for change in an easily dismissable way. Killmonger would not be denied. I think we can apply that principle all over our society.
THIS, YES. I am so sick of people acting like what T’Challa did at the end of the movie wasn’t exactly what Nakia had said at the beginning.
He admits she was right, and asks her to lead the global outreach initiative.I mean, that’s not really no credit.
I meant from fans of the movie.
Fair
I think he means by the audience/fans. No one mentions her in these discussion – at least not as much as they should.
When they clarified, I agreed.
Well them dang ovaries got in the way. /sBut sometimes a lot of people need to die and way of lives destroyed before the point can sink in for some people.
For lack of a better phrase, it’s sort of a clever bait-and-switch by Ryan Coogler, I guess. Here’s this character that represents quite a lot of disenfranchised young black men whose endgame (sorry) was to just kill everyone who he thought was wrong or unjust. That’s the easy answer, for sure, but Coogler left it up to the audience (which most certainly included a lot of those young black men) to decide whether he was truly wrong or not. What it comes down to is that his argument was just, but his methods were not. To me, that’s the real crux of the film.
but Coogler left it up to the audience (which most certainly included a lot of those young black men) to decide whether he was truly wrong or notIf this was true (which I don’t think it is) that would be horrific and evil. WTF dude?
“See, people with power understand exactly one thing: violence.” – Noam Chomsky. Perhaps Killmonger understood his oppressors just fine.
Well put; I agree. I hadn’t really thought about it that way until you spelled it out. Though, I am skeptical of the “Killmonger was right” sentiment. He’s right about the world being unfair, but beyond that he’s got the mentality of a spree-killer. His plan is to exact revenge for decades of disastrous, ineffective nation building (which he was party to) by tripling down on it. Not healthy causes to be sympathetic to.
There’s so many great lines in TFA, but I too would put Steve’s line about bullies first:ERSKINE: So, you want to kill Nazis?STEVE: I don’t want to kill anyone. I don’t like bullies. I don’t care where they’re from.“I can do this all day” is more iconic but I think tenacity, while commendable, is less commendable than the desire to protect the weak.
I always wonder what Jack Kirby would’ve thought of that exchange. The little guy standing up to bullies is pure Kirby, but he also was extremely proud of the Nazis he killed in the war.
Dunno. There’s a difference between being proud of defending liberty (et. al.) and wanting to kill people to do so.
“I can do this all day” is pithy, but the things Captain America stands for are not so easily expressed. I like that almost all the Cap films give him space to have decently long conversations about what he believes in. He’s more than a fighter, he’s someone with a belief system that he thinks about every day.
kill is a hotep bag of dogshit.
“It’s the only reason why we don’t root for Warmonger in Black Panther, even though he’s actually right”
Aaaaaand I’m done, fuck off.
It’s the only reason why we don’t root for Warmonger in Black Panther, even though he’s actually rightlolno
First Avenger is probably the very best MCU movie, even with the awkward way Bucky Barnes is “killed off” so that he can return as Winter Soldier later. First movies in a series are the best and there are very, very, very few exceptions. And no, Winter Soldier and Civil War aren’t. Sebastian Stan does very well in showing Barnes’ admiration of the real Steve Rogers, which added a lot. People amuse themselves with slashing the pair, but Barnes is the only one in the world who really appreciated the man for who he was apart from the supersoldier thing. (No, Carter was aware of his ingenuity and courage but it was bulking up that made her take him seriously.)
Carter took him seriously from the start. It’s why the picture she kept of him was skinny Steve.
And the points where she’s most irritated with him are all post-serum. Part of her definitely, uh, took an interest in Steve’s buffness, but her heart belongs to the good man he was from the beginning.
Do you mean the best Captain America movie? I mean, I still think you’re wrong even in that case, but that would be a more defensible take than “best MCU movie.”
So good. I go back and forth between it and the scene in the enlistment station where Erskine asks him why he wants to go kill Nazis and he says something like “I don’t want to kill anybody. I just don’t like bullies.”We almost don’t deserve Chris Evans.
You ever talk to a friend or internet acquaintance about some movie/TV show/book/videogame/whatever that they don’t like, and you find yourself nodding along to every criticism they offer because you can’t really disagree with them, and at the end of the conversation all you can do is shrug and say, “Yeah, but I like it?”That’s me with First Avenger. Grant all the flaws critics identify in it – there are too many montages, the action is pedestrian, the whole thing feels like an obligatory set-up for The Avengers. But I love it to death. I love the performances and I love the movie’s simple good nature.Sam makes a good case for the “I can do this all day” line, but I think my choice would have been the ending – specifically, Peggy and Steve’s final conversation. It’s beautiful and heartbreaking and it’s Captain America’s ultimate sacrifice. But it also gets to the MCU’s bigger strengths – the ability to build up genuine emotional connections between characters and with the audience, an effort aided by the performances Marvel gets from so many actors. Seriously, Hayley Atwell’s reading of the simple line “I’ll show you how” is just devastating.
Dammit, why did you link that video? Now I’m… um… cutting onions.
It’s amazing how that clip immediately makes the viewer slice onions, isn’t it?One of my “I probably have too comfortable a life” complaints is that there’s no one video on YouTube with the entire ending to First Avenger – the plane crash, Stark’s search for the Tesseract and Rogers (Dominic Cooper’s “Just keep looking” always gets me), the closing of the SSR office with Atwell looking at Rogers’ file, “I had a date.”
why not have a dumptruck
So evil
You *sob* monster…
I have that conversation a lot with people who are sick of Marvel movies. It’s like yes, I can see all of your points, but I’m too much of a lifelong fanboy to care.
That ending was so sad that when the first season finale of “Agent Carter” even referenced it I was bawling.
HOWARD: Peg, all I’ve done my whole life is create destruction…he was the one thing I’ve done that brought good into this world.
PEGGY: Howard…I know you loved him. I loved him, too. But this won’t bring him back.
I also love how Phillips instantly knows where this is heading and motions Morita out of the room to give Peggy and Steve their final moments. He doesn’t even try to talk to Steve to give orders or pull rank. It’s a subtle, if simple, acknowledgement of respect and trust and… just heart.
There have been plenty of comments (justifiably) signing Evans’ praises for his performance as Steve, but damnit if Atwell isn’t just as incredible playing Peggy. This entire scene she’s pouring out her whole heart while pretending she’s got it together, and then she just breaks down and, man my allergies are flaring up today.
I especially love the way that scene is an homage to the Michael Powell film A Matter of Life and Death.
Who’s strong and brave, here to save the American waaaaay…
The trainwreck that was the 2011 Oscar nominations for Original Song (that was the time they had only two nominees) was most egregious in that song being omitted.
I have a few friends who are Disney Imagineers, and they said that one day, Alan Menken was in the office and played that song. I would’ve shit myself.
Watching that part of the movie actually lifts my mood. It’s just so optimistic and adorable.
Oh, I get all teary for it every time. I love the embarrassed-yet-pleased look Cap gives as he’s watching it.‘Guys, don’t look at the camera.’
AGREED.
While I am happy that Man or Muppet won that year, it is a shame this wasn’t nominated.
You know, it makes me think that within the Marvel universe if Steve had never been unfrozen there’d be all these conspiracy theories that he’d never been a war hero. “Um, he was just some movie star. You’ve seen the black and white movies of him right? They just said that he fought all those real battles as propaganda, when really it was just regular soldiers. Lol, do you still believe in the tooth fairy as well?”
I was just thinking about how Steve probably got to bang that whole kickline.
Well, he’s got the stamina for it.
If we’re going iconic lines of dialogue for this moment — especially ones explicitly refuting Captain America’s seeming baked-in jingoism to get the hero underneath — then frankly I’m amazed we didn’t instead pick:“I don’t like bullies. I don’t care where they’re from.”Longer, yes, but hits the character’s heart immediately. Particularly since there’s plenty of action heroes who keep falling down and getting back up again.
I’d go with two lines: Erskine’s great monologue about how someone who’s been weak understands the value of strength, and Steve saying simply, “I don’t want to kill anyone. I just don’t like bullies; I don’t care where they’re from.”
That, to me, is Captain America. Not a tough guy or a glory seeker, just someone willing to stand up for the downtrodden.
There’s a reason that his weapon of choice is a shield, after all.
I disagree.
The moment when Steve jumps to cover a grenade when all of his fellow soldiers run away–That’s Captain America.
It needs to pointed out that it was a dummy grenade — but Jones and Atwell were the only ones who knew.
I also like that he’s so selfless, but he’s not an martyrdom-prone idiot – it’s perfectly calibrated when he later pulls the pin out of the flagpole and climbs into the jeep exhaustedly.
It’s not a line of dialogue, but I really liked when Rogers was in training camp for the military as a pipsqueak, and the company was doing drills outside. I think it was Tommy Lee Jones’ characters (what an inspired acting choice this was) who threw out a dud grenade to see what the squad would do, and Steve was the only one to jump on it, not even knowing it wasn’t live. Both moments are good, but this one solidified him as a commander who would sacrifice everything for his squad.
“The George W. Bush era helped make it hard to see the United States as anything but a global bully…”
By the Gods, you’re young.
To the young man’s credit, he did say “helped.”
I know.
“Evans’ Steve Rogers has become the heart of the MCU”And that’s why I think it would be a HUGE mistake to kill him off.
If Evans is done with the role, as by all accounts he is, it makes sense to give him a dramatic and final resolution. Moreover, since the movies eventually gave up on giving Steve any sort of personal life in the present day (see, e.g., how despite clearly planning to make Sharon Carter a big deal, which is why the first movie has Peggy Carter as the love interest, they always ended up shoving that aside to bring in more Avengers characters), he doesn’t have any particular reason to retire or anything much to retire to.
My favourite scene in the entire MCU:
Revisiting the MCU films in the run-up to Endgame, I’ve come to the conclusion that First Avenger is a pretty underrated film. It doesn’t *quite* have the rhythm Marvel would hit down the road, but it has all the heart, a lot of really good performances, and a rock-solid pace. It deserves better shrift than it’s generally been given.
It’s first half is, for my money, almost completely flawless.
It’s the MCU movie I’ve rewatched the most. By a mile. While I enjoy them in the moment, the pleasures of the Phase 3 movies are generally fleeting and I find myself with no desire to ever revisit (most of) them.
I got less then one paragraph in, and “jingoistic bullshit.” There’s certainly a conversation to be had about the use of Cap at *some* parts of his history (that’s *some*, Sam) but the swiftness and urgency that the writer threw this childish phrase at us was howling with such insecurity, and such judgemental arrogance of what the writer had decided that obviously Captain America must be about, that it made up my mind on whether the writer was worth listening to. Sam either has a bunch of issues or is, I’m guessing, twelve? Thirteen tops. Sticking it to the man by totally calling out ‘bullshit.’ Go you, kid. You’re totally qualified to tell us about heroism. Bye all
What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I’ve been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I’m the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking dead, kiddo.
This is typical Sam Barsanti nonsense. He’s often tapped to write these comic-book related pieces while doing absolutely no research before making lazy generalizations, as if he had a roommate five years ago who got into comics and used to summarize them to him while they got high.
Oh Peggy, in this moment you channeled the wishes of every member of the audience.
“The Bush era”….get a clue. Its ALWAYS been like that
That was one of my favorite moments in the movie, and up until Civil War it’s a powerful one. The “I could do this all day” line is fantastic, and it shows that he’s going to fight for what’s right and the little guy. Which is why a better scene might have been at the end, (The real end – not the scene that should have been the Post credits scene) when the kid is running with the garbage can. It showed Captain America’s Legacy. It showed how he inspired others to be better. That’s such a small moment in such a big movie, I wish it got remembered more. Captain America: The first Avenger is one of my favorite MCU movies, it’s one of my favorite superhero movies of all time.
Dr. Erskine: Do you want to kill Nazis?Cap: I don’t want to kill anyone. I don’t like bullies. I don’t care where they’re from.
Cap was never problematic because he always stood for what America is supposed to be, not what it is in reality. He quit several times over government interference (I esepcially like when he quit cause Ronnie wanted him to fight freedom fighters).
Literally my first Captain America book was him becoming Nomad and fighting the Serpent Squad. Got it out of a quarter box in the late 80s and it is one of my most treasured possessions.
He fought Nixon in the Oval Office decades before Black Lightning would go on to do the same thing.
People are always surprised when I put First Avenger in my top 5 of Marvel movies. But it establishes Steve Rogers as a phenomenal person and a true hero, it sets up the crazy MCU stuff later, and the soft lighting and colors make it seem more like a newsreel. It basically does EVERYTHING it needed to, but adds a ton of heart, humor, and style.
My favorite moment is one I’ve never seen anyone else bring up: Red Skull says to Cap “You never give up, do you?” and he simply says “Nope!” as he charges in. That says it all to me: Cap is the kind of guy who doesn’t give a shit about making a clever quip or looking cool while being a hero, he just wants to get the job done.
Honorable mention to: “What makes you so special?”
“Nothing. I’m just a kid from Brooklyn.”
the first Captain America movie sucks. also i hope AV Club is getting some advertorial dollars from Marvel for all this nonsense “The Marvel Moment” branding and logo. Let’s devote more words to the dominant movie franchise of the decade!
“Even if everyone is telling you that something wrong is something right. Even if the whole world is telling you Captain America: The First Avenger sucks, it is your duty to plant yourself like a tree, look them in the eye, and say, ‘No, *you* suck.’”
Lighten up. Francis.
I have a bigger problem with the recently passed “Reading of things about Marvel is mandatory” legislation that was signed into law at some point, I guess?
President Luthor’s vendetta against Superman is getting really weird.
The Republicans tried to warn us about death panels. They were just wrong thinking they’d be about health care when they’re actually for pop culture article consumption.
Fuck off, you dumb child.
man you guys really take this shit seriously
Fuck off, troll.
on a scale from 1-10, how emotionally invested are you in comic book movies?
On a scale from 1-10, how much of a fucking troll are you?
Not only does Captain America not suck, it’s the best Marvel movie for a host of reasons. Y’know, if you actually care about things like character, theme, self-contained narrative, and using visual effects smartly to serve said character, theme and narrative…Maybe you’re more into quips and alien swarms?
it’s not even the best Captain America movie
I mean, Winter Soldier is definitely better if you like franchise bloat and ludicrous bad guy plans in 70s paranoia drag. And Civil War is better if you like morally incoherent vigilante conflicts. So, uh… you do you.
Found the edgelord. Feel better, son?
Quick question: when you came to an article about ‘Captain America: The First Avenger’ that’s part of a series on the MCU’s best moments, all of which have received a lot of comments by Kinja standards, and stated that both these things suck, did you imagine a lot of people saying, “My God, he’s right! What a fool I’ve been!”? Or did you just feel like shitting on something because, I don’t know, that’s how you get joy in life?
this website used to be a great place to learn about music, film and whatever that wasn’t blasted on the side of every billboard. you know, topics that require the author to have personal interests in things outside of massive corporate marketing departments. now i come here and we get a series on Disney properties. it’s a bummer.
Then fuck off back to Legoland and leave all us corporate drones to our buzz buzz buzzing, you arrogant, condescending twat.
This movie has aged really well IMO as I think Captain America is the best and most consistently developed character in the MCU.
What the hell does Bush have to do with it? Every president since Wilson has made America into a global bully. The only difference from pres to pres is who they are bullying.
Chris Evans is, in my mind, a case of perfect casting, immediately and strikingly comparable with another case, Christopher Reeve as Superman. Both make their mythical all-American decency human and relateable. Evans by approaching situations that should be wholly unfamiliar with an innate sense of compassion and understanding, Reeve by occasionally showing the character’s capacity to be a bit of a dick (“I’ve been (does awkward bench press motions) working out” is my favorite line in the second movie).
The jingoism is certainly part of the national character. It’s the truly disgusting and malignant part. American exceptionalism, is a blight. The smug assurance of Providence being on our side. The slavery. The genocide. Germans have owned up to their past in a way we never will because of the jingoism we internalize as Americans. What makes Captain America great is that he embodies another, but equally valid, part of our national character, our support for the underdog. This had a run as a dominant characteristic, but that’s certainly no longer the case. We have an entire party and most of their supporters who bitch about “elites” – in which they mean people who are smart and generally want to help the less fortunate, if even through simple language choices – yet support the overdog in every case. Anyway. Evans’ portrayal and my own upbringing always helped me identify with Cap because of that American sense of decency. It would only be fitting in this disgusting, degraded age, that his character, the one that embodies the best of the American character, is the one who dies.
Being able to absorb punishment isn’t always noble, and I don’t think it defines Cap at all, especially since suffering is what all the other characters have in common.
To me the most important character moment was when Dr. Tucci’stein tests Cap by saying (paraphrased), “so you vwant to kill NAZI’s…” knowing that after so many attempts to join and now being so close to his goal, it would be easy for Steve to agree, since he knows that’s what the Army wants to hear.Instead Steve says he doesn’t want to kill anyone, he just wants to stop bullying. Cap is someone who – when given absolute power – doesn’t become corrupted by then becoming the bully, hurting people who are now weaker than him in order to make up for how he felt when he was on the bottom. That is a genuinely special character trait in both fiction and in reality.
I like the First Avenger especially the first half. My main criticism is that when he actually becomes Captain America putting on the suit, it’s rather a rushed underwhelming moment. There’s no real standout action sequence to really show him as a special hero.Where i agree with the article is Steve Rogers’ progression to becoming the heart of the MCU. It’s really that 3 episode arc from Winter Solider, Age of Ultron to Civil War where the character became every bit as important as Tony Stark. Marvel have handled that positioning beautifully.I do believe Endgame will end with Steve dying or going to the Soul stone and re-uniting with Peggy living the life that he should’ve had.
I think we’re all forgetting the ACTUAL best line of this movie – ‘I bought you dinner.’
Your first paragraph just shows how much you guys really hate America. Please go away.
kill yourself
“Iff CGI”? Me thinks thou doth protest too much. The pre-serum Rogers is a technological marvel that is 100% convincing and still holds up today.
Yeah the CGI is terrific. The only part where you can see some seams is the very first scene of Steve in the Army clinic. The rest of it is mind-bendingly good. the effects can only possibly be considered ‘iffy’ if judged in contrast to the same technique used to revisit lil’ Steve and Bucky in ‘Winter Soldier’, which appears like it’s 100% real.
Sam, you ignorant slut.If your lifetime experience is that
The George W. Bush era helped make it hard to seeyou have been a complete waste of space. America has been making the World a more dangerous place for its entire existence.
kill yourself
I respectfully disagree. The phrase “I can do this all day” is just lazy writing plain and simple. That phrase is used in almost every movie where their is an ‘Underdog’ archetype. Its a throw-away line that writers use to manipulate their audience into rooting for said underdog.
Is it the zealotry we’re celebrating… or the underlying values that happened to be instilled in him… or the combination of the two? I mean… that quote emphasizes the zealotry specifically and, with a slight tweak of circumstance, it could have been a chilling peek at a super-villain (in the making).
I’m sorry but Uncanny Valley Tiny Steve is just incredibly distracting.
I think one of the best parts of that movie and Steve Rogers in the MCU overall is Dr Erskine’s talk with him the night before the operation.“Don’t be a good soldier, be a good man” becomes a pretty significant thing for Steve. I think especially in Winter Soldier.
For me it was when he instinctively jumped on that grenade.
The best moment in the entire MCU to date is “I don’t want to kill anyone. I don’t like bullies.”
I’ve always thought FA the most important origin film. You really don’t get Steve unless you’ve seen it. There are so many parts integral to his character. Bucky. Peggy. I don’t like bullies. Not a perfect soldier but a good man. He grenade. The flagpole. I can do this all day. Just seeing his determination to do the right thing when it’s amazing he’s not dead already from any number of ailments. The Howling Commandos. Putting the plane in the ice. Getting to dance with the right partner. I always wanted to smack Tony even though I love him for his initial behavior towards Steve. He’s fresh out of the ice having lost literally everything while, to him, it was just a few weeks prior he was in combat and mourning his best friend. He tries to talk to Tony on the plane about Loki and Tony mocks him for being a Capsicle. No wonder Steve didn’t like him. Having seen the FA and knowing all this it just makes the jab all the more callous.
But he was always so much more than a ‘propaganda tool’.What always made Captain America great, was that he didn’t spend a ton of time banging some “America is the best” gong. The only reason that the things he said could be directly associated with America, was the name and the outfit.Beyond that, what he would do as a character was highlight the best qualities of -humans- at large. He exemplified a search for greater truth, and a tendency to strive for understanding and compassion for others. He didn’t champion America as a nation, he championed higher ideals of what it means to be human, to be civilized.In a way, he was anti-propaganda. He tried to teach people to strive to be better, to not fall into patterns of fear and hatred, to focus not on what America *is* but what America could be if we all worked together to become something greater. And that’s not a thing that we can own. Any group of humans, any nation, could follow his lead and work towards a higher goal.He’s Atheist Jesus, I guess.
Atheist Jesus takes more than 3 days to wake up because it is cold outside.
Sounds more like non-sectarian Niebhuhr, haha
I’d say he was propaganda, but not so much pro-American as anti-Nazi. I was reading a post about him the other day that pointed out that he was created by two Jewish-American men who were, unsurprisingly, not down with the “kill all Jews” rhetoric coming from Nazi Germany. America wasn’t in the war yet, and they created Cap as a pointed way of saying they should be. Also, he was specifically blonde and blue-eyed so that they could depict Hitler being punched in the face by his beloved Aryan ideal.
ThE uS iS a BuLlY!!!1111
Meanwhile North Korea starves its own people, Russia makes a sexuality illegal, and China enslaves people to a social credit system. But oh of course the US is the bully in the room, not the most powerful free country. /s
kill yourself
You first, slacker.
The Most Powerful Free Country In The World With Four Million People Trapped In The Prison Industrial Complex, Forty Million People Living In Poverty, Military Bases In One Hundred And Eighty Nations and The Most Expensive Health System (TM)
This is still one of my favourite Marvel Studio films – at first just because it hit all of those great pulpy Indiana Jones/Rocketeer marks that I love (and with Joe Johnston involved, it’s no wonder). But after peeling that back, it’s all about the characterisation of Cap, someone who for me was one of the Avengers I was least interested in at first, until this film started his trajectory through the MCU. And there’s just so many great moment and exchanges between him and supporting characters. Also Hayley Atwell is a gem.
It’s just fun.
the best line in this movie was “even though the super soldier formula gave me super strength, my dick is average sized”
Honorable mention goes to Steve’s reason for enlisting, spoken to Dr. Erskine.Among many reasons for disliking #45, Steve’s response of hating bullies no matter where they’re from holds as my main reason.
I was going to come here and shill for the grenade scene as the Marvel Moment in this movie, but someone beat me to it. So let me nominate another other moment: the pre-op conversation between Steven and Dr Erskine. Mostly it exists to drop some exposition about the Red Skull, but within it there’s so much heart and warmth. It not only shows the kind of man Steve is now, but the man he chooses to be going ahead so he can honour the kind of man Erskine is – self-sacrificing, noble, willing to go against his own country if it’s the right thing to do – which only becomes more poignant after Erskine’s death.Plus it has the line, “I don’t have procedure tomorrow. Drink it later? I drink it now.” Still cracks me up.
Cap has turned out to be such an awesome inspirational character. He’s always been a favorite of mine and the MCU has treated him perfectly. Sometimes it’s great to read a retrospective like this and remember to be thankful I got to see this done right.
My favorite line was in response to the howling commando asking him if he knows what he is doing and he says “Yeah, I knocked out Adolf Hitler over 200 times”
Cap deserves more credit. People that know the character also know that he is the embodiment of a TRUE American. America isn’t a scrap of land, a group of people or a set of laws. It’s a system of ideals….. inalienable rights shared amongst all that must be upheld and protected at all costs. He helps the helpless, he fights the good fight regardless of if he’s on the right side of the law to protect everyone’s basic human rights. So Steve Rogers is always the prefect character to introduce when things are bad, because he reminds us of what is important.
#TeamCap FTW!!
Honestly, pretty much every scene in this movie is good. I know it’s not the “best” MCU film, but damned if it isn’t one of my favorites. Still probably the most stirring of them all, at least for me – you just root so hard for Cap. (And the supporting cast is incredibly underrated – Atwell and Tucci are especially memorable, but honestly, they’re all great.)
Another of my favourites is his exchange with Doctor Erskein. “Do you want to kill Nazis?”“I don’t want to kill anyone. I don’t like bullies. I don’t care where they’re from.”
Cap isn’t problematic. It’s that hating America is cool these days. The country isn’t perfect by any means but people act like we live in Stalinist Russia or Nazi Germany.
The George W. Bush era helped make it hard to see the United States as anything but a global bully
*eyeroll*
The George W. Bush era helped make it hard to see the United States as anything but a global bully
*eyeroll*
I feel like I’m the only one who cannot stand Steve Rogers
While the character has some great moments, I do feel Captain America is massively overvalued in the MCU. His origin is honestly a bit boring, he often can’t see beyond his own hero complex and he almost never has a a plan or contribute to the actual planning other characters do.
“The George W. Bush era helped make it hard to see the United States as anything but a global bully, enforcing its will on others and shunning those who resisted.”Yeah, felt like such a bully during Sept. 11th, 2001. And what happened to poor Saddam as a result! Just a victim of bullying, right? You mental patient.
I saw this movie about six months after I had weight loss surgery, and Christ, Steve Rogers’ instantaneous physical change hit way too close to home for me.
The first thing I thought of while reading this was the scene in IW where Cap’s pushing back against Thanos’ fist, veins bulging, and he lets out that scream. It’s the same tenacious determination to stand up for what’s right.
In terms of character defining dialogue I’d lean more towards the conversation with Bucky a few minutes later. Bucky’s telling him that soldiering isn’t the only way to help win the war, Steve kinda scoffs at the idea of collecting metal or whatever and counters with “Bucky, there are men laying down their lives. I’ve got no right to do less than that. Don’t you get it? This isn’t about me” “Right. Because you’ve got nothing to prove” There’s just so much there!
The unexpected ending of Endgame brought tears into my eyes not because I will miss Rogers but because Rogers’ legacy has been ruined. I wonder how could he go into the past and leave Bucky Barnes on his own? This makes me wanna throw away the Steve Rogers The Winter Soldier Jacket.https://bit.ly/2DSiptj