Review of "Captain America: The First Avenger"

Captain America: The First Avenger is a particular favorite of mine in the MCU, and is the first of the Captain America trilogy. It stars Chis Evans, Hayley Atwell, Tommy Lee Jones, Stanley Tucci, Sebastian Stan, Dominic Cooper and Hugo Weaving.

This movie takes place in the early-to-mid 1940s, during World War II, and Steve Rogers (Evans) is working to enter the U.S. military alongside his best friend Bucky Barnes (Stan). When he's chosen to become the first "Super Soldier" for the military, he gains super-strength, and takes on the identity of Captain America to fight the organization HYDRA, a Nazi faction headed by the Red Skull (Weaving). Rogers is aided by SSR Agent Peggy Carter (Atwell) and Howard Stark (Cooper; Howard is Tony Stark's father).

The First Avenger is directed by Joe Johnston and was the first MCU movie written by Marvel mainstays Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, who would later go on to write several other MCU movies. They wrote a great story filled with likable, well-developed characters and plenty of action, which I like in my superhero movies. Another first-time arrival for the MCU in this movie is composer Alan Silvestri, who goes on to compose other movies in the franchise. His Captain America theme is especially fun to listen to, and you can feel the patriotism and time period in the instruments.

The "period piece" setting for this movie is an inspired choice, and great pains were taken to ensure that the production aspects were reflective of the time period. The costumes, the weapons, the vehicles, even what little "big tech" is there is meant to keep the time setting as close to reality as possible.

All of the actors are great as their characters. Evans makes Steve Rogers a character we instantly root for, and his quieter scenes manage to contain a lot of weight. Atwell's Peggy Carter is such a fun character, and apparently a lot of people think so too, as she goes on to get her own show (which ended way too soon, I might add). And then Stan's Bucky has a great dynamic with Rogers, which makes his return later in the franchise all the more complicated and their later friendship more tragic. Dominic Cooper's Howard Stark is definitely Tony's father, containing all of his trademark intelligence and "gentlemanly" behavior. Finally, Hugo Weaving's Red Skull is a favorite villain of mine in the MCU. He manages to really bring that Nazi sense of menace and ferocity, and the prosthetics that make up his red face look very great.

As the last MCU film released before The Avengers, there are a lot of things in this movie that set up future adventures in the MCU. One of them is the introduction of the Tesseract, which re-appears in The Avengers and beyond as one of six "Infinity Stones." That term becomes important later on, so get to watching these movies already. :D The struggles Rogers goes through in this movie sets up his arcs in future Captain America and Avengers movies, and viewers will love the connective tissue between all these films.

Captain America: The First Avenger: a great MCU movie that does an admirable job of setting the stage for The Avengers and future storylines.
I hope you enjoy it.