The Star-Spangled Man

Every week during the Summer of Superheroes, SuperMike Matthews breaks down the ins and outs of a current superhero franchise. Spoilers may follow, so read at your own risk. 

                                                            

This week: CAPTAIN AMERICA! 

If you had asked me five years ago what I thought of Captain America, I don’t think I would have had very much to say. I’d have known who he was, sure, but that’s hardly the same thing as caring about him as a character. At best, I might have said something about Major Glory from the Justice Friends segments in Dexter’s Laboratory. Remember those?

Man, those were awesome.

The point is, times have changed, and today I’ve become a definite Captain America fan, to an extent that surprises even me. Would I go so far as to call him my favorite superhero? Not exactly: that would still be Spider-Man on the Marvel side (as it should be), and Batman overall (AS IT SHOULD BE). But that replica star-and-stripe shield is hanging on my wall for a reason, and you’d better believe that if I’m feeling superheroic on movie night, my go-to pick is gonna be good old Steve Rogers.

All this is to say that I probably won’t be very impartial on this one.

Captain America is one of Marvel’s oldest characters, and actually predates the company’s current name, premiering all the way back in 1941 when they were still called Timely Comics. In a way, he has a lot in common with the DC heroes that emerged at the same time as him, with his ‘everything is awesome’ approach to heroism serving as a kind of pro-American propaganda. Also supporting the propaganda theory: the fact that he was created as a super-soldier for the express purpose of winning World War II.

Yep. I am definitely picking up some subtle jingoism here.

Cap’s problem has never been relevance, in that sense, so much as relatability. See, the lion’s share of his Marvel brethren subscribe to the theory that being a superhero comes with a downside, and Cap didn’t really have any downsides during his Timely Comics years. When he was brought back under the Marvel banner, he was therefore given a second origin story, in which he loses his partner Bucky, gets frozen in ice, and wakes up in the future*. The new background helped him some, and the whole man-out-of-time thing has become a major part of his character, but it’s never quite overshadowed the cheesy, holier-than-thou aspects of his personality, namely his patriotism and unshakeable moral compass.

 * Anywhere between 20 and 70 years in the future, depending on which version of the character you’re dealing with. 

That’s why I give a lot of credit to Captain America: The First Avenger for its work in finally making Steve Rogers seem like a real human. I’ve gathered – to my dismay – that the film may not be a widespread favorite, but I for one really do love it, and that’s only partly because of its undeniable Raiders of the Lost Ark feel.

A complaint I often hear leveled at The First Avenger is that it takes too long to get to the action, ‘wasting’ what is basically the entire first act on pre-Super Soldier Steve. That may be true, but the time the film invests there is essential if we’re going to understand the psyche of our protagonist, and if you’ve been reading this blog, you know that that’s a pretty important thing to understand. The First Avenger achieves this by making it clear to us that Steve Rogers is not effortlessly perfect. In fact, he’s not perfect at all. He’s just a good man who has spent his whole life trying his best, even when his best wasn’t good enough. As Captain America, he finally has the opportunity to live up to his potential, and by communicating what his new abilities really mean to him, the film frees itself from any sense of pretentiousness or hero worship. 

Also justifying all the pre-hero business: The First Avenger elevates the dynamic between Cap and his sidekick Bucky, by not only making the two into childhood friends, but by having Bucky start out as the more capable one. The change adds nice depth and necessary weight to a relationship that could have easily come across as cliche.

I’m going to be honest: I don’t have many bad things to say about The First Avenger, other than that it feels pretty rushed in its second half. And as for this year’s sequel, The Winter Soldier, that film is so recent and so full of spoilers that I don’t exactly feel up to a full discussion right now. What I will say is that it’s a more than worthy successor to the first one, despite belonging to an entirely different genre – appropriate, given that the two films represent two entirely different periods of Cap’s comic book career. The film also continues to humanize Steve by making great use of his culture shock, gives him fantastic secondary characters to bounce off of in the form of both Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow and Cap’s long-time partner Falcon, and includes what is easily my favorite live-action interpretation of a supervillain, EVER*.

 * It’s probably not the one you think. (HERE BE SPOILERS) 

With nothing much left to say about the films themselves, I’d like to take a detour into another thought that I had not too long ago, one that was prompted by this series specifically, but that has implications reaching far beyond it:

The Marvel Cinematic Universe, for all its good points, has got to be the single most unsustainable endeavor ever undertaken in the long course of human history.

Let me explain what I mean by that.

Comic book Jesus Stan Lee once remarked that comic book stories are not actually about change, but only ‘the illusion of change.’ I don’t know that I would agree with him completely, but there’s no denying that as a serialized art form, comic books aren’t able to indulge in a true sense of finality. Certain writers may make an effort to put a nice little bow on their runs of certain titles, and I’m sure they succeed more often than not, but the fact remains that nine times out of ten, another writer is going to come in after them and start writing a brand new set of stories. On top of that, you have flashbacks, spin-offs, and one-offs that intentionally don’t go anywhere. From a statistical standpoint alone, some of these are going to be duds, or simply irrelevant to the big picture. Even when things do change in big ways, there’s always the possibility of backtracking. As the saying goes, nobody stays dead in comics but Uncle Ben*. Also Gwen Stacy, I guess. She stays pretty dead.

Which, when you think about it, only makes being Spider-Man that much worse.

 * The saying used to be “No one stays dead in comics but Bucky, Jason Todd, and Uncle Ben.” It’s been changed since then, because… well, you can guess why. 

Movies, on the other hand, are an altogether different animal. As much as Marvel Studios would like to give the impression of a living, breathing universe that continues even when we aren’t watching, they simply can’t put out 50 or more stories per month, every month, the way that Marvel Comics can. If a moment in the lives of these characters is going to be put on film, it’s being chosen for a reason, most likely because it’s going to have a major impact on the character moving forward. That means that each film carries much more weight than the average comic book story, and that in turn means that the MCU, despite being a teeny tiny fraction of the size of the overall Marvel Universe, already has much more momentum behind it. Allegiances can’t ping pong back and forth, captured villains stay captured, and the dead stay dead, all because of the need to keep moving forward.

 And also, who can afford to keep extending those contracts? – Ed. 

This practice is clearly evident in the Captain America franchise in the way that it leapfrogs so quickly from one milestone to the next. The First Avenger and The Winter Soldier both tackle major events in Cap’s life: the former, his career-defining years in WWII; the latter, the life-shattering reemergence of a familiar face long thought dead. The trick is that these events took place almost 6 decades apart in the comics, while the MCU has now covered that same amount of ground in something like three years. Granted, it’s not as though all the comic book stories that happened in-between are now moot, and the films’ events certainly didn’t happen back-to-back from Steve’s perspective. The Winter Soldier’s opening scene, in which Cap fights Batroc the Leaper, is representative of what he’s been up to all the while, and could probably fill an entire issue in print. Still, a lack of time and money means that we’ll probably never get to see those ‘less interesting’ gaps filled in on screen.

First Volstagg, now Batroc. Why do you taunt me so, Marvel?

This is another reason why I’m so quick to defend The First Avenger. Yes, it’s entirely origin story, but it’s also, out of sheer necessity, one of the only chances the MCU will have to put that early part of Steve Rogers’ life on film. In fact, if anything, we should be mad about not getting to see enough! Look at the Howling Commandos: they were bursting with potential, despite their minimal screen time, but if they were to be brought back now, they would all have to be somewhere in their 90s. It’s really almost beneficial that so much of the war was presented as a montage in the film; Marvel could set an entire movie during those skimmed-over years if they wanted to. And that’s something I can really only hope for, because I WANT MORE DUM DUM DUGAN, MARVEL!

BURN ME TWICE, SHAME ON YOU. BURN ME THREE TIMES… I'LL GET EVEN ANGRIER.

 Fun Fact: According to the official timeline of all his published appearances, Wolverine spent more years living through WWII than there were years in WWII. 

To get back to/recap the point I was making, a live-action series of superhero movies needs to focus on crucial moments, if only to make the most of the actors it has under contract. That’s hardly a problem unique to Marvel, but they’ve definitely made things harder on themselves by committing to a shared universe where the loss of any actor or character will be keenly felt. Again, recasting is always an option, but every new face that turns up is just another crack in the façade. I’ll have more to say about the broader stakes of this next week, but to understand its impact on a franchise level, all we need to do is look at what the future holds for Steve Rogers.

What if?

If it were up to me, I would use this section to speculate hopefully about Steve and fellow Avenger Hawkeye eventually teaming up with Age of Ultron newcomers Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch to finally form the long-awaited ‘Cap’s Kooky Quartet.’ Then we could all have a good laugh and head on home. Unfortunately, a look at the cast list for The Winter Soldier has me making a much more regrettable prediction.

Among the characters introduced in Cap’s second solo outing are Brock Rumlow, a.k.a. Crossbones, Sharon Carter, a.k.a. Agent 13, and, of course, the titular Winter Soldier. Each of them, taken alone, have more than enough significance in the hero’s mythos to justify a part in the film, but ultimately, there’s only one thing that they have in common: all three played major roles in The Death of Captain America.

That storyline, which lasted over a year, served as an epilogue to Marvel’s massive, company-wide crossover Civil War*, and made major waves in both the Marvel Universe and our real one. The MCU as it stands doesn’t include nearly enough characters for a worthy Civil War adaptation, which means that Cap probably won’t die exactly as written, but one way or another, it looks like the writing’s on the wall for Cpt. Rogers.

 * I wouldn’t read that whole thing if I were you. 

Chris Evans’ contract with Marvel will put him in at least three more movies, that’s true, but Sebastian Stan – who plays Steve’s comic-book successor – is still under contract for a whopping seven films post-Winter Soldier. It’s pretty obvious, then, what Marvel’s plans are for the character, and though I’d love to see Cap Classic mined for some more material, I have to admit that it makes a lot of sense. Bottom line, it could be a long while before we have to say goodbye to Captain America the hero, but if it’s Steve Rogers the man that you care about – and I would argue that it should be – you’d best start enjoying the time we have left with him.

Oh… Now I made myself sad.

Let’s all just take a moment and appreciate the Justice Friends, shall we?

Aw, yeah. That's more like it.

 Next Week: Six great tastes that taste great together!