Captain America

Some of you may have noticed that I did not post last week. Some of you may care to know that I did not post because my wife had given birth to our 3rd child. And then there are those of you who couldn't care less and are yelling at me to "get on with the post already!"

When I first started writing for Mormon Geeks, I explained that I was the least geeky out of the 4 of us. I don't really play RPGs that often. I don't really read comics. I haven't even seen The Dark Knight, Iron Man 2, or X-Men First Class.

I like to think of myself as a "slow geek". And I don't mean slow in intelligence, but slow in when I can indulge my geekiness. After almost 2 months of having the disc, my wife and I finally sat down this past weekend to watch Captain America: The First Avenger.

So, this isn't really a review of the movie itself, as it is to look at the storyline. So, if I'm a slow geek, this was a slow movie. What I was expecting was an action-adventure movie with a lot of fights, but decent storyline. What I felt I got was a rehashing of some WWII facts mixed in with a side storyline.

(SPOILER ALERT: I will be revealing specific things about the end of the movie.)

At one point, the movie made me feel like Hitler wasn't nearly as scary as Johann Schmidt aka Red Skull. Not only that, but the way Captain America "defeats" Red Skull made me feel like he just got lucky. Captain America also "sneaks" into a Nazi camp earlier in the film. It was at this point that I really started to suspend belief.

For an author / writer, the goal to keep the audience interested in the story is to make sure the reader doesn't get a chance to suspend belief in the what is going on. Rogers' invasion of a Nazi camp, even for the character, didn't seem plausible. Yeah, there were some cronies killed, injured, whatever, in Captain America's invasion. But really, it really should have been a little more difficult for him to get through an entire Nazi troop.

I did, however, like it as an alternate WWII movie. That really did fit the film's style. It did get me excited for The Avengers. That is a movie I'm really hoping doesn't disappoint.

Alien abductions are involuntary, but probings are scheduled.