I know, as I have mentioned before, approximately fuckall about the Marvel comic universe. I have heard of Captain America, but I’ve never read any of the comic books nor seen the first movie. So when the Internetverse was all abuzz for this new movie, filmed on a budget $95,000,000 higher than the cost of India’s Mars probe currently winging its cold and lonely way to the Red Planet, I was quite possibly the only citizen of the United States not consumed by the fires of anticipation. What wonders would the movie bring? How would it advance the franchise? Beats me. I don’t even know who Captain America is.
I am talking, of course, about the second (but for me, the first) installment of the Marvel cash juggernaut:
As the movie begins, we see Sonic the Hedgehog Captain America out on his regular morning jog, where he’s trotting around Washington’s tourist attractions at an average speed of approximately 40 miles an hour without even sweating, because sweating is gross and Captain America doesn’t do gross things. He zips past the Comic Relief, then zips past the Comic Relief again, then zips past the Comic Relief yet again–you know, just to make the point. The engage in dialog, of the sort that tells you we will be seeing more of the Comic Relief later in the movie. The plot wedges here for a few moments when suddenly, Sonic America Captain Hedgehog is notified that a Situation has developed and he should Prepare For Extraction. Quite why he’s out jogging when it’s clear he is in far better than great shape and has superhuman abilities is never adequately explored, given that we as the audience are left with the distinct impression that failure to get enough exercise is not really on the good captain’s surrealistically short list of character flaws.
The rest of the movie goes something like this…