Captain America: The Reviews are coming in and its a heaping pile of....UPDATED!

[graffix13]

green bay press gazette? is that a supermarket giveaway? i hope this movie is terrific but when there are no reviews on rotten tomatoes 3 days before the opening i begin to get concerned. studios usually let sycophants get an early look to get the good press rolling. thor had 50 or so reviews on RT days before opening, GL had none.

 

Review embargo's 2 days before the movie comes out is never a good thing. With HP out last week you'd think Cap needed to get as much good word of mouth out as possible to build up some steam for the movie. I wouldn't get my hopes up on what the reviewers are going to say, most every time these embargo's are in place it's to keep a film from being put in a negative light ala GL.

 

Supposedly right now it's tracking for high 40s to 50M for OW.

 

Copied/Pasted from a thread on the CBR forums regarding the movie not being screened early (thanks Jmacq1):

 

The speculation (I repeat, purely speculation) I've seen on other sites is the embargo was put into place for two reasons:

 

One - To avoid the good buzz getting swallowed up by Harry Potter hype this past week/weekend.

 

Two - To keep things under wraps until they (possibly) "premiere" it at SDCC.

 

Either way, we know two things: The film WAS screened for critics, and the reviews will likely be out before the movie.

 

Indeed, this is not terribly unusual for MOST movies. Generally the bulk of reviews don't hit until a day or two before release, and the only reason there was a ton of advance review on Thor was because it opened internationally a week or two before it hit the US. If folks are worried about "good buzz" being wasted, bear in mind that most general audiences only read/watch/hear the reviews that pop up the day or two before the movie from their local news outlets. It's really only the "geek" crowd like us that meticulously searches out reviews all across the net, and by and large, our audience segment is already sold on the movie one way or another.

 

[Mark 1]

I can't be happier that there is a lack of humor or joking around by Evans...

 

That was one of the reasons GL wasn't great. More Reynolds than GL.

 

A few joking lines is one thing but if he were to act the way he did in Fantastic Four I would be very disappointed.

 

This movie just looks awesome to me from all the pics, review and trailer. Avengers 4 is going to be one amazingly hot book (it's already climbed).

 

Marc

[JiveTurkeyMoFo]

When I heard they were doing a Captain America movie, I was stoked.

 

When I heard it was set in WW2, I almost creamed my pants.

 

When I saw the latest trailer, I took the "almost" out of the previous sentence.

 

I'm pysched for this movie, reviews or not. Regardless of whether its on an Iron Man level (Great), a Thor level (Very Good) or a Fantastic Four level (), I'm going to thoroughly enjoy it. Cap is the "Superman" of the Marvel Universe, if for nothing else then his uncompromising integrity and devotion to his country. Seeing him kick some Nazi butt will be great fun indeed. (thumbs u

 

 

[TeddieMercede]

Copied/Pasted from a thread on the CBR forums regarding the movie not being screened early (thanks Jmacq1):

 

The speculation (I repeat, purely speculation) I've seen on other sites is the embargo was put into place for two reasons:

 

One - To avoid the good buzz getting swallowed up by Harry Potter hype this past week/weekend.

 

Two - To keep things under wraps until they (possibly) "premiere" it at SDCC.

 

Either way, we know two things: The film WAS screened for critics, and the reviews will likely be out before the movie.

 

Indeed, this is not terribly unusual for MOST movies. Generally the bulk of reviews don't hit until a day or two before release, and the only reason there was a ton of advance review on Thor was because it opened internationally a week or two before it hit the US. If folks are worried about "good buzz" being wasted, bear in mind that most general audiences only read/watch/hear the reviews that pop up the day or two before the movie from their local news outlets. It's really only the "geek" crowd like us that meticulously searches out reviews all across the net, and by and large, our audience segment is already sold on the movie one way or another.

I'm sure that is a comic fan's interpretation of the review embargo, but usually that's not the case and no it's not that common for a FULL embargo on reviews for a movie to be held until a day or 2 before a movie comes out unless the reviews are less then favorable. This also usually only happens on big budget releases where a studio is worried about OW.

 

With the way social media and twitter works now a days early word of mouth is really important for movies to build up steam for big OW's. If a movie is getting really good reviews the reviews will trickle out early, regardless of an international opening or not. HP reviews started coming out the Thursday/Friday the week before the movie was released.

 

Anyway I really hope Cap is good, I want all comic book movies to do well and I am excited to see it. But if the movie is really, really good Marvel/Paramount did a pretty bad job picking when to open the movie and now with the full review embargo until Wed.

[This is water]

When I heard they were doing a Captain America movie, I was stoked.

 

When I heard it was set in WW2, I almost creamed my pants.

 

When I saw the latest trailer, I took the "almost" out of the previous sentence.

 

I'm pysched for this movie, reviews or not. Regardless of whether its on an Iron Man level (Great), a Thor level (Very Good) or a Fantastic Four level (), I'm going to thoroughly enjoy it. Cap is the "Superman" of the Marvel Universe, if for nothing else then his uncompromising integrity and devotion to his country. Seeing him kick some Nazi butt will be great fun indeed. (thumbs u

 

 

I couldn't agree more. Critic reviews are not the end all. IMO they sometimes miss some of the great movies.

 

 

Either way It's Cap!

[bronze_rules]

http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/rorschachsrants/news/?a=42184

[FlyingDonut]

BTW to answer the original question 1) the reviewer is the Gannett News movie reviewer 2) the Green Bay Press-Gazette is a Gannett paper and 3) they put the review out a day earlier than they were supposed to. Oops.

[TupennyConan]

I want to know more about the cream in jive's pants

[Marvelfangirl]

I want to know more about the cream in jive's pants

[TupennyConan]

I want to know more about the cream in jive's pants

 

A little homoerotic humor to help me fit in more around here.

 

I apologize Marvelfangirl, to you & the entire known universe.

[This is water]

 

In case Jive's mental image wasn't enough.

 

Also, SDCC

[Marvelfangirl]

I want to know more about the cream in jive's pants

 

A little homoerotic humor to help me fit in more around here.

 

I apologize Marvelfangirl, to you & the entire known universe.

 

 

[Marvelfangirl]

[Dollarbill]

Just scored passes for advance screening tomorrow

[mad-dogz]

Midnight premier baby

[PeasOfCrap]

MOAR REVIEWS!!!!

 

http://www.villagevoice.com/2011-07-20/film/captain-america-movie-ignores-its-roots-for-easy-money/

 

Created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby for Marvel Comics in 1941, Captain America was among the first American comic books intended as an explicit work of patriotic, political propaganda: The cover of the first edition, available a year before Pearl Harbor, famously featured the titular costume hero punching out Adolf Hitler.

Chris Evans's muscles bulge, ladyfriend beams in Captain America

Jay Maidment/Marvel Studios

Chris Evans's muscles bulge, ladyfriend beams in Captain America

Details

Captain America: The First Avenger

Directed by Joe Johnston

Paramount Pictures

Opens July 22

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More About

 

The Avengers (Movie)

Captain America: The First Avenger

Adolf Hitler

Johann Schmidt

World War II

 

A nod to that classic beatdown has been worked into a retro-styled poster for Captain America: The First Avenger, but the film, directed by George Lucas protégé Joe Johnston (whose credits span Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and The Wolfman), seems itself concerned with a more timely fight: It’s the latest, and last, Marvel Universe prequel to superhero supergroup flick The Avengers, finally due out next summer after half a decade of buildup encompassing two Iron Man films, two actors cast as Bruce Banner/The Incredible Hulk, and the establishment of the de rigueur post-credit teaser scene. (Spoiler alert: Captain America doesn’t have one).

 

The film concerns the transformation of one Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), “a 90-pound asthmatic” repeatedly declared unfit to fight in World War II, whose persistence impresses Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci, heavily vamping), a German scientist working for the U.S. military alongside billionaire inventor/future Iron Man progenitor Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper). Steve is soon chosen for a top-secret military experiment, for which he’ll be injected with a serum that, as Colonel Tommy Lee Jones intones, will turn him from a weakling into “a new breed of super-soldier” assigned to “personally escort Adolf Hitler to the gates of hell.” Not that Hitler—or anything else ripped from real history or recognizable life—is really on the radar of this hokey, hacky, two-hour-plus exercise in franchise transition/price gouging, complete with utterly unnecessary post-converted 3-D.

 

Shortly after Steve (who is played in both supersize and diminutive form by Evans via still-creepily uncanny head-replacement effects) emerges from the experiment as an enlarged, greased-up Ken doll, a spy kills Erskine. Without his champion, this human-engineered living weapon is relegated to what an opportunist politician claims is “the most important battlefield of the war”—the media offensive. Touring the country fronting a live propaganda show designed to sell war bonds, star of his own comics and short subjects, Captain America becomes a folk hero for the folks left at home. But on the frontlines, he’s a joke. Then, with no apparent combat training but a roadshow-bred sense of showmanship, he mobilizes a rescue mission to liberate his best friend, Bucky (Sebastian Stan), and incidentally frees 400 Allied soldiers for good measure. Steve gets some vague support (and the film gets a spark of much-needed swagger) from his ostensible love interest, Peggy (Hayley Atwell), a tough-broad British soldier who has some kind of role in the operation that’s neither specified nor apparently anything that would muss her lipstick.

 

The lead villain here is Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving), a/k/a the Red Skull, a Nazi whose obsession with the occult is a bit much even for Hitler to take. Having almost cheerfully “left humanity behind,” Schmidt has assembled a splinter cult called HYDRA, through which he operates labor camps focused on harvesting energy from the Tesseract—a glowing cube thingy that Schmidt pillaged from Norway—and funneling that energy into weapons. It’s never clear what this power force actually is, but somehow it’s transferred to laser guns, which shoot streams of something or other to vaporize their victims on contact.

 

That putting such a corpse-obliterating weapon in the hands of everyday Nazi soldiers would have been something of a Holocaust game changer is one of a number of potentially rich parallel-historical details that the film doesn’t care to grapple with. Captain America assembles a ragtag multi-ethnic band of soldiers to help carry out his elite missions, but there’s not so much as a single mention of the ideological divides that plagued the times—and, subsequently, spawned the original anti-Fascist Captain America comics. So what is Captain America fighting for? Apparently nothing more or less than screen time in The Avengers.

 

[PeasOfCrap]

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/captain-america-first-avenger-film-213287

 

Sticking to its simplistic, patriotic origins, where a muscular red, white and blue GI slugging Adolf Hitler in the jaw is all that’s required.

 

If you take a World War II movie, dial up the action with contemporary visual effects and CGI, then give your hero a double dose of steroids and human growth hormones, you wind up in the movie/comic-book world of Captain America: The First Avenger. The movie is, of course, Marvel Comics' and Paramount’s filmization of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’s Super Soldier series that first appeared in comic books in March 1941, well before Pearl Harbor, so understandably this is one superhero movie that demands that the first movie at least be a period one. So you get an alternative WWII, say like Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds only without all that dialogue and enough oversized vehicles and outlandish sets to fit its beefcake hero.

 

Captain America delivers comic-book action that should satisfy Captain America’s fans, old and new, while Chris Evans’ no-nonsense yet engaging portrayal of a man who doesn’t know how to back away from a fight may cause young women to swoon and young men to join a gym. Yet the film will leave others wondering, especially following the film’s long gestation and marketing build-up, “Is this all there is?”

 

For in terms of even recent films, Captain America lacks the deft touch, appealing character interaction and sophisticated storytelling skills of Marvel Comics’ X-Men: First Class. And let’s not even bother to compare this to Christopher Nolan’s Batman series.

 

Sticking to its simplistic, patriotic origins, where a muscular red, white and blue GI slugging Adolf Hitler in the jaw is all that’s required, Captain America trafficks in red-blooded heroes, dastardly villains, classy dames and war-weary military officers. There is no ambiguity here. Nor does any superhero question his powers. No, sir, not in this war and not with these determined heroes.

 

While bracketed by a modern-day sequence, the movie otherwise takes place in a heightened rendering of the early days of the fight against Nazi Germany. Brooklyn’s Steve Rogers (Evans), son of a dead war hero, repeatedly tries to enlist in the military but his physical condition is pure 4F.

 

In perhaps the movie’s best or at least weirdest visual effect, Evans’ face sits atop an unbelievably scrawny body that recruiting sergeants shoo away until German-American scientist Dr. Erskine (Stanley Tucci with the phoniest of accents) sees something special in the young man. Col. Chester Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones, having a fine time) dismisses Steve as a “90-pound asthmatic,” not without justification. But the minute Dr. Erskine performs a “procedure” on Steve — with equipment that looks like it was left over from Bride of Frankenstein—suddenly Steve is buff and fast healing, in fact, nearly impossible to injure. Moments after his rebirth, he faces his first test as he races barefoot through Manhattan streets circa 1942 to take down a Nazi spy. This feat more than catches the eye of British military liaison Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell), not to mention the press.

 

An overnight media sensation, the military doesn't know what to do with Steve other than send him— shades of Flags of Our Fathers— on a bond-raising tour as the newly dubbed Captain America. When the tour takes him to Europe, he breaks out of the carnival show long enough to save the lives of nearly 400 GIs including his Brooklyn buddy Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan). This rescue cues a new assignment for Captain America.

 

Steve is now point man for Col. Phillips’ team in Strategic Scientific Research, along with the redoubtable Peggy Carter and inventor Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper), in taking on the Hydra organization, a Nazi science division that is even worse than the Nazis. In fact, it’s more like a worldwide criminal organization out of the James Bond era, intent on world conquest and more than willing to kill fellow Nazis. Everyone associated with this evil group shouts not “Heil Hitler” but “Heil Hydra.”

 

It’s run by the mad scientist Red Skull (go-to villain guy Hugo Weaving), whose red face may be the result of an experiment gone horribly wrong or just pain embarrassment at the Nazi clichés he is forced to play. He even listens to the soothing strains of Richard Wagner. Yes, he does.

 

Caught between contemporary tent-pole movie making and a period piece, the movie keeps featuring very odd visual anachronisms. You might accept the battles that feature sci-fi weapons along side vintage WWII arms but what to make of the Hydra soldiers’ Darth Vader costumes, those weird planes, cars and a submarine that maneuver within 1943’s earth, sky and sea and, most alarming of all, that red dress Peggy wears in the battle zone. It’s a knock-‘em-dead outfit that may be a special weapon all its own.

 

Director Joe Johnston makes certain that amid all the retro-futuristic nonsense his nucleus of actors playing SSR heroes fits well together. Evans nicely underplays the role, giving a Gary Cooper-ish air to the young hero who just wants to do the right thing. Atwell is a perfect throwback to that era: Darkly gorgeous yet tough as nails, she would look just at home painted on a bomber fuselage as she is slugging a solider who gives her lip.

 

Jones knows how to make every moment of screen time count with these grumpy and gruff characters he now plays, but Stan and Cooper aren’t so lucky: Their characters came out a little too thin in Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely‘s screenplay. Meanwhile, Weaving is very one-notish as the villain, which leaves it to Toby Jones, as his sidekick, to add a little nuance to Nazi villainy.

 

The tech team brilliantly supports the comic-book action without any single department showing off or adding unnecessary flourishes. A special tip of the hat here to Anna B. Sheppard’s costumes and Rick Heinrichs’ production design for maintaining enough period flavor so the production doesn’t go too overboard.

 

Oh yes, this film is yet another summer fantasy in 3D in certain theaters. For some sequences, the format works well enough but it’s hardly worth the extra expenditure. This gimmick is truly running out of steam.

[Norrin_Radd]

Friday matinee. Hope its good.

 

 

My ranking of summer superhero movies thus far....

 

X-Men First Class 8/10

Thor 7/10

GL 5/10

 

Hopefully Cap is at least as good as X-Men.

 

(For reference: 10/10 superhero movies would be Spider-man and Iron Man. Watch them anytime their on TV.)

[CKB]

I want to know more about the cream in jive's pants

 

Will you have more salty dialogue for us today?

[Norrin_Radd]