This actually looks pretty good.
This actually looks pretty good. I thought the first CA was a little too airbrushed and while this one doesn't look overtly gritty, it at least looks real.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLWsK1ZFunA&feature=youtube_gdata_player
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLWsK1ZFunA&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Comments
There was no character development in the first one. Steve Rogers was a one dimensional character and that never makes for a good movie.
Still, the movie was a lot of fun and one of my favorites. It was just a good movie.
There was none of that in CA. He went from being a 5-foot-nothing to being a super-soldier over the course of minutes. Even if the serum did indeed make his body grow and his muscles bulge, his mind would not have been able to control his new body with anything resembling grace and agility. He would have been tripping, running into things, knocking things over, off balance, etc.
And apparently a perfect body gave him perfect aim when throwing a disc without having to actually practice. The next thing you know, he's jumping out of planes without having taken a single class at jump school (and whether or not his body could handle it, there are tasks that require the brain more than brawn).
There was no development between Steve Rogers the puny human and Steve Rogers the super-soldier.
The development path for the Captain America character lies more along the lines of gaining experience (the comic book Steve Rogers had years of fighting the nazis under his belt before he entered the world of modern costumed crimefighting - movie Steve Rogers does not have that), fitting into the modern world, and representing a set of American ideals that are not always represented by the US itself.
The trailer looks pretty good in the third respect. It is also becoming clear to me that what I've always thought - that a flying aircraft carrier is just asking for trouble - is going to be shown correct over and over again in any movie with SHIELD in it.
His mind isn't remapped by the serum, incidentally. His body simply becomes as efficient as it can be, which speeds up his entire nervous system considerably. Obviously, anyone who experiences a significant change in their body chemistry is inevitably going to experience changes in the way that they think, but this sort of thing tends to get brushed over in comic book stories unless it is to be used as a Plot Device(TM).
I agree with you in that I too did not care for the first movie at all (although it's better than the previous attempt D:), but I think that you're being too hard on the effects of the serum. You simply can't have a character acquire physical perfection and then struggle with it, because the broad concept is that he gains the ability to do more or less anything that any human being can do with ease. It is entirely different to Spider-Man, both in the narrative sense (misfit teens are going to struggle with things more than a guy who's got all the stones in the world but doesn't have the physique to match, until...) and situationally (becoming physically superhuman and acquiring completely new abilities is markedly different from being buffed to the pinnacle of human ability).
Let's talk about the shield if we're complaining about stuff. The shield can, supposedly, absorb any force directed at it. So how do you move it?
The serum may have granted Steve Rogers peak physical fitness, but it cannot remap the mind's synapses to take advantage of those new muscles. Those connections are made in the mind on an individual level as things like walking, feeding yourself, solving math problems and learning how to parachute out of an airplane are experienced.
YYes, I appreciate the irony that we're debating a fictional comic book super-serum, but let's look at it objectively:
Even if Steve Rogers had exited the chamber and then run after the Nazi spy, it would have happened on reflex, in an area of the brain acting, not thinking.
Fighting skills, tactical awareness, a special forces ability to fight hand-to-hand (and remember we saw Steve Rogers being beat up for lack of fighting skills) would not be transferred by a serum. Those are learned skills. Not to mention his change in height and weight (mass) which would have caused him to trip and stumble until his mind became used to the changes, much like someone going through physical therapy with new artificial legs or arms.
Are these skills he could have learned? Absolutely. But we didn't see him making mistakes, we saw him dancing on a stage for months after his change.
Even in the first Hulk movie we see the newly born Hulk stumbling about. Iron Man goes through a series of flubs, the aforementioned Peter Parker, even Superman has to make attempts to fly (Clark Kent in Smallvile goes through seasons of learning to control his powers). Batman hurts himself over and over, learning from his mistakes.
Everyone seems to have a moment of growing pains except someone who's powers were given to him in a matter of minutes and suddenly he's perfect. We're supposed to accept that?
Good stories are about character development. That. Is. Always. The. Case.
Steve Rogers didn't change. Morally and ethically he was the same man he was a the beginning of the movie. Physically he'd changed, but even then we didn't see him coming terms with his new power. Even in the Avenger's, while still one-dimensional, he at least goes from follower to leader.
Captain America: The First Avenger had an opportunity to answer the question: does power corrupt? Or, how does power change a man, but it didn't. It was a very bland movie.
I don't see his having acquired fighting skills. First off, he gets beaten up at the beginning because he's tiny and weak, not because he doesn't know how to throw a punch. His subsequently increased strength, endurance, agility and coordination, reflexes supposedly fast enough to dodge bullets...if you get into a fight with all that, then skills don't necessarily need to come into it. This is exactly the same situation as Spider-Man, who also can fight effectively with no combat training by relying on strength, reflexes etc. Actually, Wolverine's another example of this - he's heavily reliant on the metal bones/healing factor thing to prevail in fights in the movies so far, and I take it that the latest movie sees him actually learning to fight properly rather than just scrap. The canonical Captain America is among the finest hand-to-hand combatants in the Marvel universe. I don't see the movie character being anywhere near that yet, in that he doesn't really perform a great deal of WOW moves - he's basically doing what feels right. I mean, I hope you'll agree that Black Widow and Hawkeye both came across as more finessed physical combatants than Captain A in the Avengers movie. Hopefully, this is something that we'll see developed - he'll start optimising his natural assets rather than relying on them.
I honestly don't buy this getting used to abilities = character development thing. Steve Rogers is a guy with loads of balls but nothing to back it up who gets a chance to be the man that he ought to be. That's the narrative. Spider-Man's narrative, for example, is very different - he's a not particularly heroic guy who acquires powers and then has to figure out what to do with them, eventually becoming a costumed hero with a guilt-atonement motive. Spider-Man goes powers -> heroic motivation. Steve Rogers goes heroic motivation -> powers. Neither of these is superior, but they do lead to different narrative paths. The development that they tried to push in the first movie (and will hopefully do more successfully in this one) is the journey to become a symbol of American idealism in spite of the government not always doing the same. We see this in the first movie when he rejects his role as a stage performer in order to actually do something. This is the tension in the Captain America story - he's a quintessentially principled guy who struggles to fit into a world full of compromise, in which his peers are spies and vigilantes. Consider the essential problem - he's been in the freezer for over half a century and wants to fit in, but has to figure out whether his own judgements are principled or just antiquated. He will also (I imagine) come to accept that he's effectively on his own - that you have to choose between being a figurehead and fitting in. This whole thing is a real narrative treasure trove and is more interesting than him bumping into a few tables or accidentally breaking a plate while he's washing up. I mean, it has to be said that they put very, very little effort into this development in the first movie, which is why it was a little bit duff (I totally agree with you that it was bland - I have no idea why it's got a high rating on Rotten Tomatoes, although it might just be relief that it wasn't totally rubbish). You basically had "the decision" which functioned as the crossing point between the part of the movie with no explosions and the bit with lots of explosions.
And by your own admission Spider-Man, and to a lesser extent Wolverine, rely on their power more than any trained fighting skills.
Which is exactly my point. Steve Rogers had no skills. We so to know if he would have fought better as a average sized man, but we do know he couldn't fight as himself.
If there serum enhanced mental acuity, as you guys are suggesting, even as much as it enhanced his body, then Steve Rogers would on par with Tony Stark, Reed Richards or even Peter Parker in regards to intelligence. But he's not, he's just a "normal kid from Brooklyn." Instead if a suit that gave his powers, a spider bite that gave him powers or training for decades, he gets an injection -- a magical injection that not only transforms his body to peak human capabilities, but transforms his mind as well?
And he doesn't change?
Nope. A simple underdtsnding of neuroscience suggests that any rewiring of the brain to adjust to him new body would rewire his character in some way, shape or form.
The serum doesn't enhance his intelligence as such. It does make his body (by which I mean his entire physicality) as efficient as it can be, including his nervous system, which means that he thinks faster than he used to - thus my earlier comment on Cap's extensive exposition in moments of crisis in the comic books. Pre-serum Steve Rogers is characterised as very bright and in possession of excellent spatial and observational skills (thus his civilian career as an artist). The serum enables him to use his mental assets faster, not necessarily at a higher level (he can't solve a problem that he couldn't before, but he can do it quicker).
It is somewhat challenging to bring neuroscience specifically, or any kind of hard scrutiny generally, into comic book stories. Why isn't Peter Parker constantly ravenously hungry? Where does his super strength come from? (Spiders aren't super strong - they're exactly as strong as they should be given their size and structure). How does the Invisible Woman see when she is (and her retinas are) invisible? How does Reed Richards apply leverage when he's stretched, or, indeed, manage to extend an arm several metres without it flopping to the floor? How does the Hulk stay balanced when he picks up something that's dozens of times his own weight? How can Daredevil take any sort of injury without being crippled with pain? Why does The Thing not overheat and die? I mean, the problem with the whole Captain America thing is that the narrative is that he obtains perfection through the use of a special chemical, and that particular narrative suggests that the physicality obtained as a result of that chemical is a wholehearted and complete improvement. It is as if Rogers was the chrysalis and Cap is the butterfly. So from a narrative perspective, having him struggle with his transformation because of the practical considerations (which would have to start with "so how exactly did this transformation take place? What precisely happened?") that you raise sort of runs against the grain of the narrative, and if you do that, then it's not Captain America's story any more. And it can't be stated enough that the concerns that you raise on this subject should apply by an order of magnitude to every other "acquired powers" super hero. Captain America is just Steve Rogers+. Everyone else actually acquires new abilities that they have to get used to.