Fridae

There seems to be a curse hanging over most retro superhero comic book movies set in pre-1945 America. Witness the list of failures: Dick Tracy, The Shadow, The Phantom, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. For some reason superhero films are set in that era make extra-conscious efforts to come off as innocuous in spirit as possible, and perhaps that is why overall they feel less effective, less urgent and have less impact. This is even more so when you consider how thoroughly the trademarks of the superhero film have infiltrated pop culture as we know it and how increasingly difficult it is to believe in the idealism they represented. Superheroes now feature in decidedly non-heroic narratives as fuel for laughs (Hancock, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, Scott Pilgrim vs the World) and non-superhero films increasingly feature characters that take on superheroic qualities, such as the recent thriller Hanna which featured a genetically altered heroine bred to be the perfect soldier.

Captain America: The First Avenger may signal the end of this curse. Captain America begins life as scrawny, put-upon Steve Rogers, whose innate hatred of bullies always puts him in fights he can’t win but which he withstands nonetheless. A sympathetic German scientist (Stanley Tucci) working for the US government dopes him up with what appear to be some form of advanced growth steroids that transform Rogers into the buff, brawny Captain America.

But such is the film’s innocuousness that Captain America isn’t immediately sent to the nation’s frontline as its ultimate weapon against Nazism. In fact, the senator sponsoring the project envisions Captain America as a mascot for the sales of war bonds... Rogers is such a good natured man that he plays with it gamely until disaster strikes courtesy of the nefarious Red Skull (Hugo Weaving), and he has to take matters into his own hands.

What results is probably the best comic book movie yet made in recent years to be set pre-1945, and for once strikes the balance between innocence, grit and camp without falling too much into either. Director Joe Johnston, no stranger to good-natured effects-driven spectacles like Honey I Shrunk the Kids and Jumanji, proves ideal to bring to life one of the most potentially corny figures in Marvel’s pantheon.

And he has indeed chosen a suitable lead. While never striking me as an impressive actor in any way, Chris Evans’s taste for the goofball (wailing Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” as a mercenary hacker in The Losers, among others) acquaints him well with the material. The supporting cast are equally game, from newcomer Hayley Atwell as intelligence agent Peggy Carter to veteran Tommy Lee Jones as a Colonel. Johnston and his writers, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely play their goofy premise with a deadpan tongue-in-cheekness, but add just the right amount of grit and darkness to make the stakes worth caring about.

Captain America may be the first Avenger, but hopefully he is also the first sign that the curse of the retro comic book movie has been broken, and that we can look forward to more superhero films with tommy guns, classic cars, jazz and snap-brim fedoras in years to come.