This is frustrating.
I was pretty lukewarm on Captain America this summer, largely because a shockingly fresh origin story got lost in a series of montages and boringly cut, nonsensical action. What did the movie need more of? Fleshed out war sequences that merged old school cinematic battle with the comic book sensibilities.
Guess what the scene below, were it actually finished and included, would do quite specifically?
It’s a crying shame Captain America wasn’t built out of more pieces like this. I know many people enjoyed it, and I by no means hated it, but all of those excellent performances and great production design could have been wrapped around a story engineered around more active bravery and ground-level comradery like this. Adding this specific scene would have by no means changed anything –it’s not exactly a stunning piece of filmmaking or anything– but it does suggest to me that amidst all those battle montages there was some grit and character and danger.
Oh well, I’ll keep my fingers crossed for Captain America: Total War or whatever. This deleted bit can be see on the DVD/Blu that hits shelves next week.
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6 comments
I agree with Renn. Other than some great character work, I don’t remember a single thing about Captain America. I really wish it had some action scenes that were worth remembering.
Captain America had great action scenes as written and you can see them trying to break through the blandness of the filmmaking. I mean, come on! There was a chase between a car and a super powered man on foot, a motorcycle chase with fun sci-fi-ish tech used to dismount the enemy riders, the boarding of a train via zipline and a fight on a plane that featured moments of zero gravity. Every single one of those set ups had the chance to be a awesome and memorable action scene. It reminded me of Batman Begins in that the script had great set ups (I like to think that it was Goyer’s B-movie sensibilities at work) that were botched by the incompetent action direction of Nolan (which was far worse than anything appearing in Captain America btw). However, both of these movies still work for me based on the strength of the character work. Maybe I’m crazy, but I think that strong character work is a much more notable attribute than memorable action scenes.
I can see why this scene was cut from where it was in the film. It would have interrupted the emotional through-line they were building behind Roger’s emergence as a fake war hero and his growing disenchantment with being a nothing more than a propaganda piece. It could have been inserted a bit later right before Rogers storms off to save his buddies single-handed.
That said, I agree the film needed better action set pieces and better character development, but this isn’t it. This is really no better than any of the other action scenes in the film. Poorly cut and shot, no build-up at all before the reveal, and an incredibly cliche cutaway shot at the end. The entire film suffered from this weak direction.
Not in an action movie, it’s not. The trick is to infuse the character work INTO the action scenes to create the camaraderie and humanity necessary to make the action scenes compelling—and memorable. It’s why the Raiders, Die Hards and Aliens of the world work so well. You don’t have to choose between character and action. You need to do both well to make these kinds of movies work.
Really, he wears a hat during war, and not a helmet? Come on, really?
@Nick
Yeah, I found that incredibly stupid. I guess they thought it would be HILARIOUS if they had a guy wearing that hat even when he was fighting.
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