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

Comments

Colin Fahey said…
looks way better than the first one
Mike Morris said…
Can Captain America save the US dollar?
Marty Nozz said…
Huge fan of the first movie.  This looks a bit more spy-fi. and that's fine by me.
Jason ON said…
The first movie want very good.
Marty Nozz said…
Was that a typo in there?  I loved the first movie, but I'm a big fan of Joe Jackson's The Rocketeer as well as Cap so I'm very biased.
Jason ON said…
Yeah, mobile keyboard typo.

There was no character development in the first one. Steve Rogers was a one dimensional character and that never makes for a good movie.
Marty Nozz said…
The lack of character development is pretty much because we meet Steve Rogers as a fully developed character.  He's honest, earnest, loyal, courageous and feels a fierce need to serve his country.  One of the key points of the movie is that even though he is physically altered to peak human levels and faces unbelievable enemies he stays constant and true to himself.  This plot point comes to a head when the Red Skull askes Cap what makes him so special.  "Nothin'.  I'm just a kid from Brooklyn."  The character does not set himself apart from everyone which I find very refreshing.
Jason ON said…
Marty Nozz, no one, and I repeat no one goes to war and doesn't change. Not even Steve Rogers.
Marty Nozz said…
You could see him more battle hardened by the end.  There was a sadness in him at the loss of his best friend.  Still, he never glorified wanting to go to war in the beginning of the film.  He felt a duty to fight.  He did carry himself much differently by the end.  Still, his character remained true.  The movie did skip over many things that happened in the comics, like Cap aiding those in concentration camps.  

Still, the movie was a lot of fun and one of my favorites.  It was just a good movie.
Jason ON said…
Remember in The Amazing Spider-Man movie when Peter Parker wakes up the next morning with his spider-strength and destroys his clock, shoots toothpaste all over the place and breaks the door?

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.
Marty Nozz said…
His mind, agility and reflexes were all augmented as well.
Chris Moore said…
Jason ON What the other guy said. The super soldier serum provides a total transformation - it's not just a muscle buff. He is, for want of a better description, as perfect as a human being can be. Judgement, coordination and reflexes are as much part of the package as the all-round physical toughness. Captain America simply can't walk into things or lose his balance or whatever. A common and defining feature of Captain America comic books has been the vast (often bordering on ridiculous) amount of exposition through dialogue and thought bubbles that takes place while he's in a fight or some high stress situation that would normally consume all of a character's attention. The world really does move very slowly for Captain America.  

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.
Jason ON said…
Ah yes, the magic serum gave him skill sets he didn't already poses. Sorry. Not buying it. Altering his physical attributes, I can "believe" but adding skills he'd never learned or remapping his mind? Not at all. Had his mind been remapped then his personality would have changed.
Marty Nozz said…
When did he get skills he never learned?  Sure the movie didn't show all the training he received, but he did receive military training.
Jason ON said…
I've received military training as well and I don't have many of the skills he miraculously had.

Marty Nozz said…
That's why he's Captain America and you're not.  ;-P
Chris Moore said…
I can't remember him acquiring any skills in the first movie. Sure he can throw the shield unerringly. He can throw anything unerringly. There is very little room for erring - his body does exactly what he wants it to do, he's naturally very bright and has good spatial sense, and he thinks incredibly quickly. There's just not much space for missing with a thrown object in all of that. It's not like he took a serum and could suddenly perform brain surgery. Now, comic book Captain America can throw the shield so that it hits its target and then bounces back to him, whereas that doesn't work for movie Captain America (the thing seems to spend most of its time on the floor). That's something that would take practice, and I'm rather glad that they didn't just have him bouncing it off three walls and coming back to him from the start.

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?
Jason ON said…
Or rather, how does it "bounce?" ;)

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.
Marty Nozz said…
Nah.  You're just a commie.  A fun hating commie.
Chris Moore said…
Sure, but your argument is based on this idea that he basically gets muscles. If you think of the serum as being more along the lines of the drug in Limitless...he's not got anything new - it's enhanced what was already there.

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. 

Chris Moore said…
Anyway, that's the development - Rogers deciding whether he's a principled good guy in a compromised world or an irrelevant relic from a bygone age who should have stayed in the ice, and then deciding what to do about it. His self-assurance and sense of his own relevance is something that got developed to a certain extent in the Avengers movie - let's hope that it continues to be explored in a reasonably substantial way.
Jason ON said…
By your very own admission the serum enhances what's already there, like the movie Limitless.

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.

Chris Moore said…
Yes, indeed so. The point is that you can fight pretty well if you've got all the natural advantages in the world, irrespective of how much training you've had. A big guy will typically beat down a little guy. A fast guy will typically beat down a slow guy. Steve Rogers becomes the strongest, fastest guy out there, and would certainly appear to be a competent physical combatant even without a significant amount of training. In any case, on the evidence of the movie, I'd expect (pre-serum) Steve Rogers to be able to take on anyone else of the same size, and it's just his misfortune that everyone's bigger than him. He doesn't come across as lacking in core ability, he's just too weak to make the punches that he lands count.

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. 

Chris Moore said…
As I say, I didn't care much the first movie - I would have preferred it if the movie had started with his being pulled out of the ice and his wartime life experienced as a series of flashbacks, instead of trying to cram what ought to have been years of the guy's life into a single story which starts with him becoming Captain America and ends with him getting frozen. I do expect to see him growing into what is possible for him now (the moment when he jumped out of a plane without a parachute during the trailer was an exciting one for me), and hopefully we'll see him learning to become more comfortable with his role in the modern world. But in any case, I'm glad that they didn't spend any time on umming and awwing about the effect of the super soldier serum on Steve Rogers, and it's been my general complaint that way too much time in these movies is spent on "origin story" (we've had two tellings of the Spider-Man origin since CGI got to the stage at which you could make a "good" Spider-Man movie. Give us a break, guys. We know. Everyone knows.). By all means, develop characters' motivations and backstories, but it's getting to the stage at which we're effectively having to wait for the second movie to really get past issue #1 of the comic book.
William Ellerbe said…
Marty Nozz It's amazing to see Captain Americans physical abilities. The stunts that he executes are incredible.

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