THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY: The World is Not Found in Your Books and Maps

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) – Directed by Peter Jackson – Starring Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, James Nesbitt, Ken Stott, Cate Blanchett, Ian Holm, Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving, Elijah Wood, Andy Serkis, Manu Bennett, Lee Pace, and Graham McTavish, Aidan Turner, Dean O’Gorman, Mark Hadlow, Jed Brophy, Adam Brown, John Callen, Peter Hambleton, William Kircher, Stephen Hunter, and Benedict Cumberbatch.

At the end of the day, THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY feels like a victory lap more than it does a wholly realized story, but it is a victory lap I am beyond happy to take. The first part of the new Middle Earth trilogy from Peter Jackson and Company is a very good movie but a large part of the joy comes from the way the film echoes Jackson’s LOTR films and not simply because this film’s story is wholly enjoyable.

This early ’80s Ballantine edition was the first HOBBIT I read.

Part of the blame for this comes from Jackson and part must be shared by the source material itself. I love THE HOBBIT beyond all books, but a large part of that comes from the place in holds in my heart. I remember reading Tolkien’s book for the first time as a kid in elementary school. By the time I ordered THE HOBBIT from those Scholastic book order forms schools used to pass around a few times a school year, I’d already developed a love of reading through the Hardy Boys, the Narnia books, the Old Mother West Wind stories, and the Three Investigators, but it was THE HOBBIT that first blew me away, that made me first realize there was more going on in a story that I could understand (which would only be exacerbated when I turned next to FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING), and THE HOBBIT that first made me want to be a writer. I devoured the book and ended up buying or acquiring it in several other editions over the years from cheap paperback to high end hardcover.

I love the book, but THE HOBBIT is not without some challenges – chief among them is the sheer number of dwarves involved in the quest to reclaim their ancestral home of Erebor. When I was in grad school at Purdue a few years ago, I was taking a class on environmental literature and the professor made the point that when most people read a line in a book that says, “I walked past a maple, oak, and pine tree,” most people interpret that as, “I walked past a tree, a tree, and a tree.” That’s roughly the way I feel about the dwarves in THE HOBBIT. Certainly, a few of them are easily discernible, but there are thirteen of them in Thorin’s Company.

Thirteen.

Thorin. Balin. Dwalin. Bifur. Bofur. Bombur. Fili. Kili. Gloin. Oin. Dori. Nori. Ori.

Or, as you likely just read that: Lead Dwarf. Dwarf. Dwarf. Dwarf. Dwarf. Dwarf. Dwarf. Dwarf. Dwarf. Dwarf. Dwarf. Dwarf. Dwarf.

If there had been 13 Avengers, it would have been darn near impossible for Joss Whedon to fit all of them into their narrative in a meaningful manner, and they’ve all got varied costumes and famous people playing them. Here, there’s 13 dwarves and while the make-up and costume people have done an outstanding job of making them all different, none of them are played by recognizable stars. Certainly, if you take the time to watch and re-watch and pay attention, I’m sure most of the dwarves do have individual personalities, but other than Thorin (Richard Armitage), Bofur (James Nesbitt), Kili (Aidan Turner), and Balin (Ken Stott), most of them might as well be called, “Dwarf Number 6″ and “Dwarf Number 11.”

Jackson is in a bit of an impossible situation, of course. If he cut half the dwarves, fans would scream at him. And a large part of the charm of Thorin’s Company is in their numbers, rather than individualized, purposeful, and meaningful character arcs. The dwarves are largely background characters, as Jackson’s film revolves around three primary characters: Bilbo (Martin Freeman), Gandalf (Ian McKellen), and Thorin.

Martin Freeman is phenomenal as Bilbo and I can totally understand why Jackson rearranged his shooting schedule to accommodate him. It was important for Jackson to cast someone who brought something very different to the table than Elijah Wood brought to Frodo just to help give THE HOBBIT its own identity in the mind of film goers. Freeman brings an older soul to the table, and Jackson’s HOBBIT works as an offshoot of the white, middle class male, mid-life crisis genre. What separates Bilbo from, say, Kevin Spacey’s character in American Beauty, is that he doesn’t realize he’s having a mid-life crisis. He’s very comfortable living in his hobbit hole, a condition that Gandalf is bound and determined to change.

Gandalf repeatedly yells, “You’re a Took!” at Bilbo while he’s trying to convince our hobbit to agree to sign on to adventure with Thorin’s Company, and castigates him for reaching a point in his life where he’s concerned about his mother’s silverware and doilies. The set-up for THE HOBBIT, then, works most closely (in the cinematic context of the mid-life crisis genre) as a fantasy version of Fight Club, with Gandalf in the Brad Pitt role and Bilbo as a stand-in for Ed Norton, a guy who’s become something he consciously wants to be, but subconsciously rejects.

Jackson and his team of writers and producers have done an excellent job at setting up a three-part arc for Bilbo. At first, he rejects adventure but then decides to tag along after Thorin’s Company has left. Then, he decides to go home after Thorin’s Company is knee deep in the adventure. And finally, he embraces his role as part of the company by entering a seemingly hopeless battle and saving Thorin’s life.

Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins

Like much of the film, Bilbo’s arc is folded into the larger spectacle – which is really what Jackson excels in, making big, emotionally-driven spectacles where the visuals serve to set up the weeping. It’s easy, of course, to dismiss Jackson’s LOTR films on emotional grounds if you’re uncomfortable with that style of storytelling, but I’m all for making films like Titanic and Love, Actually a part of my Blu-ray rotation. One of the things fantasy does extremely well, of course, is to transport us to other worlds, but in Jackson’s hands it strips away the noise of modern life and offers a simpler take on what’s important. It’s easy (and acceptable, I’m not telling you what to think) to hold up THE HOBBIT against something like Game of Thrones and reject Jackson’s film for its narrative simplicity, adherence to emotion, and its love of spectacle, but I’m happy we have both. If I’m only watching LOTR or Thrones for the rest of my life, though, taking LOTR is the easy, automatic choice.

That’s not to suggest THE HOBBIT is a perfect movie. While I like Martin Freeman’s performance as Bilbo better than Elijah Wood’s Frodo, THE HOBBIT is full of little problems, including its own worship of the LOTR trilogy. Time and again, the real joy in watching THE HOBBIT is in seeing all of the characters from LOTR pop up on the screen. Almost all of the battle sequences can be summed up by saying: “Hobbits get in trouble. Hobbits are on the verge of death. Gandalf arrives to save them.” That’s fine, and Jackson does a decent job varying up the execution of Gandalf’s last second saves. What hurts the film is paradoxically what saves the film: the arrival of all the LOTR folk.

We enter Bilbo’s story at a moment in time just prior to FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, which means we get appearances from both Ian Holm and Elijah Wood. As soon as we drop back into the present of THE HOBBIT, there’s Ian McKellen coming to call on Bilbo. Once the story gets going and the company needs a respite, we get appearances from Rivendell, Hugo Weaving, Cate Blanchett, Christopher Lee, and Gollum.

It’s in the Rivendell sequence where Jackson seems to most want to be, as he lets any moment with the LOTR crew linger for as long as possible. All of these characters are introduced in SURPRISE! fashion, with Elrond getting a huge entrance. The dwarves are under attack by a band of orcs who want them dead and Gandalf leads them through a secret passage into … SURPRISE! … Rivendell. Gandalf leads the wary dwarves to the city’s entrance but they are not greeted by Elrond. Instead, it’s revealed that Elrond had led the attack on the orcs that were after Thorin. The riders return and encircle the dwarves, but we don’t see Elrond until Jackson has milled the build up as far as he possibly could. Elrond’s inevitable appearance, then, is clearly designed as one of the film’s money shots, but it only has a significant impact if you’ve seen LOTR.

Ian McKellen as Gandalf the Grey

Otherwise, it’s just Johann Schmidt on a horse.

Gandalf and Elrond have a chat in which the Elven Lord tells Gandalf he thinks it’s a bad idea for Thorin to attempt to reclaim Erebor, but he’s not the person that the wizard has to bring to his side. Nope, that would be … SURPRISE! … Galadriel, and then … SURPRISE! … Saruman has popped in for a chat, too. These four LOTR alum then proceed to have a big discussion about the reclamation of Erebor, the alleged arrival of a Necromancer (Benedict Cumberbatch), and the potentially mushroom-addled brain of Radagast the Brown (Sylvester McCoy).

What don’t we get? The dwarves. (Curiously, what we don’t get here is the scene that seems to be tailor made for Jackson’s LOTR victory lap – a discussion between Elrond and Bilbo, but perhaps Jackson is saving this for one of the two remaining films.) Earlier, Thorin had given Elrond a map in hopes that he can translate it, but when it’s time for the grown-ups to chat, the dwarves are nowhere to be found. Jackson attempts to hide their absence in the narrative, revealing that Gandalf was keeping everyone distracted so the dwarves could sneak away (like Elrond, Galadriel, and Saruman couldn’t find them in about 17 seconds), but the impact on the narrative is that consistent point that short people got no reason to live.

Unless you’re a hobbit.

The dwarves stay in Rivendell basically comes down to them looking spooked when the elves return from their ride and then looking like slobs when dinner is served. This is typically what the dwarves do throughout the movie. At Bilbo’s house, it’s just a mass of dwarves eating and singing. With the trolls, it’s just a mass of dwarves being prepped for dinner. With the Stone Giants, it’s just a mass of dwarves trying not to fall off the side of a mountain path. Inside the mountain, it’s just a mass of dwarves being held prisoner by the Great Goblin. And on and on.

Ken Stott as Balin

Only two real personalities emerge with the dwarves: Bofur, because he has a kick-ass mustache and is the dwarf who has a real heart-to-heart with Bilbo when the hobbit decides to cut and run after having taken one too many tongue lashings from Thorin about not belonging on the quest; and Balin, because he has a white beard and serves as the calm voice of experience. James Nesbitt and Ken Stott do really stellar work here.

Ian McKellen has never been better than he is in THE HOBBIT. He’s playful, cantankerous, and haunted throughout the film. It’s not his fault that there’s a bit of repetition between his actions here and in LOTR, just like it’s not his fault the plot details of Gandalf’s arc are repetitive, too. When the dwarves get themselves caught in a bad situation, the question is never, “How are they going to get out of this?” but “How will Gandalf get them out of this?” Saruman dismisses Radagast as being a chronic substance abuser, and you can practically see all of the leaf that Gandalf has smoked in the creases around his eyes. Jackson does feel a little caught between Bilbo and Gandalf as to who’s the most important character in this story, but he gives his preference for Gandalf away in how the camera always seems to find the wizard in the film’s most important moments.

Gollum makes an appearance, too, and we get a very nice rendition of the most famous scene in Middle Earth lore – Bilbo stealing Gollum’s ring and then besting the ex-Hobbit in a game of riddles. The Gollum/Bilbo sequence from the Rankin-Bass production is one of my favorite scenes in any movie ever made, and Jackson does the live-action version extremely well. As anyone who’s ready Adventures of the Five: The Coming of Frost knows, I have a serious thing for underground lakes.

There’s great performances from McCoy and Barry Humphries as the Great Goblin, who would have stolen the film if he had a bit more to do. The mountain trolls were pretty funny as villainous, carnivorous foodies, but the orcs left me wanting this time around. Azog the Defiler (Manu Bennett) just never works as the Big Bad he’s supposed to be; he’s much better in flashback when he kills Thorin’s grandfather, but in the present he’s just a bully who makes other people doing his dirty work for him. Even when Thorin is laying on the ground, practically unconscious and unmoving, Azog sends a lackey to bring back the dwarf’s head.

What I’m left with is a film that I know is not perfect but is perfect enough for me. Like almost everyone else in the theater, I was ready for THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG the second THE HOBBIT was over. As disappointed as I was that Jackson didn’t show Smaug in all his glory, that disappointment rolled instantly into anticipation for the next installment.

I can’t let this reaction to THE HOBBIT finish without pointing out the ridiculous level of venom spat at this movie (before it was even released) in some quarters. If you don’t want to see THE HOBBIT, that’s cool. If you didn’t like LORD OF THE RINGS (or didn’t want to see them), that’s cool, too. But there was a particular branch of fandom that went out of its way to make overblown comments about how they could not care less about this movie, as if Peter Jackson had spent the last decade beating them up and taking their lunch money. I’m sure all fandoms have their venomous segment, but the sci-fi/fantasy branch seems particularly small minded, petty, and especially insecure. What struck me about the negative, pre-release reaction to THE HOBBIT (besides the inevitability of the hostility – the sci-fi/fantasy venom squad likes nothing better than to dismiss something popular like they’re having flashbacks to getting jammed into lockers in high school) was how many people offered these comments out of the blue. They did not just appear in Facebook, Twitter, and online comments sections in articles about the film, but were randomly sent up, like fireworks being shot off on August 7th in pathetic, desperate “look at me” declarations. I don’t get it. You don’t have to like a movie, of course, and you don’t even have to watch it, but very few movies are created with the idea of making your life miserable, so maybe it’d be healthier for you to just let it go, and talk up something you do like instead of proving how awesome you are by loudly proclaiming how much you don’t care about something other people do care about.

But hey, I’m not a miserable bastard, so to each their own.

________

I mentioned Adventures of the Five up above. Here’s a description:

Atomic Anxiety’s flagship production is an all-ages tale of five furry friends trying to stop an evil human from conquering the fantasy realm of Wonderland 31.

Thirty years ago, Johnson Frost was just a kid from the Real who got lost and ended up in the Fantasy, where he was to meet his destiny by saving the Wonderland 31. When it was time to go home, however, Johnson refused, hiding in the mountains where he helped the Yetis battle the Nutcracker Army for control of Wonderland. Eventually defeated and exiled back into our world, the once wide-eyed kid grew into a bitter adult with dreams of making himself king!

In the present, a new generation of kids visit Wonderland 31. Farm the Half-Wolverine, Aurora the Fox, Jasper the Porcupine, Flake the Rabbit, and Notter the Otter find the entrance while exploring abandoned miner’s tunnels inside the Western Mountain. They encounter a world of Nutcrackers and Yetis, of Marshmallow Bogs and Gingerbread Castles, and learn that Frost is coming back to conquer Wonderland with his Army of Invasives!

It’s up to the Five to stop him. Ignored by their parents and the Meadow’s Elders Council, the Five embark on the most dangerous adventure of their young lives to save both their home and a world they only just discovered!

You can order a print copy of ADVENTURES OF THE FIVE: THE COMING OF FROST from the following sellers:

1. Through Amazon.

2. Through createspace.

3. At Barnes & Noble.

4. Available everywhere! Incluidng your local bookseller by giving them the ISBN number (1453682333).

Additionally, you can order a digital copy for your KINDLE through Amazon and be reading in minutes.

TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON: Is Sam Witwicky the Most Useless Lead Character in Sci-Fi History?

Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011) – Directed by Michael Bay, Starring Shia LaBeouf, Josh Duhamel, John Turturro, Tyrese Gibson, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Patrick Dempsey, Kevin Dunn, Julie White, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, Peter Cullen, Hugo Weaving, Leonard Nimoy, Charlie Adler, and James Remar.

To answer the question posed in the title of this review: Probably not. On another day I might spend hours combing my Blu-ray and DVD collection, soliciting feedback, and perusing IMDB to try to find a worse lead character, but today I don’t have the time or the inclination to be bothered splitting hairs. After watching DARK OF THE MOON last night, I’ve struggled to find anything useful that Sam Witwicky brings to this installment of the Michael Bay TRANSFORMERS trilogy and I can’t come up with anything. He is a dreadful lead character sitting in the middle of a perfectly fine CGI orgy.

As he enters the film, we discover that Sam (Shia LeBeouf) has been dumped by Megan Fox and is now shacking up with Carly Spencer (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) in Washington, DC. He hates his life because he’s been out of college for three months and doesn’t have a job, yet. He’s mad because he’s saved the world a couple times and he can’t tell anyone and the government won’t help him find gainful employment. Carly doesn’t care about any of this, though. She loves Sam enough to buy him a lucky bunny rabbit and pay all of the rent. Sam doesn’t care about that, though, because all he wants to do is b*tch and moan about how awful his life has turned out to be since he, you know, saved the world a couple times.

Plus, his parents are coming to town! In a week! And if he doesn’t have a job by then, well, you know how parents are!

Ugh.

This basically goes on throughout the entire movie – Sam whines, Sam complains, Sam cops a bad attitude, Sam gets possessive with his girlfriend, Sam plays big man because he knows he’s a little man. It’s … so … tedious.

Watching DARK OF THE MOON it’s easy to see that the TRANSFORMERS story has progressed beyond the Sam Witwicky character. As much as Sam complains about not having an important life and being left behind as the Autobots play nice with the military, the truth is that the overall story really has left him behind. Michael Bay and his scriptwriters have done nothing to make us think Sam Witwicky even needs to be in this movie. DARK OF THE MOON is a military movie, and would have been much better served with Josh Duhamel taking over lead acting duties. Lt. Colonel William Lennox is smart, assured, in a command position, and, oh yeah, works with the Autobots every flipping day as a high ranking officer in NEST, which apparently stands for Networked Elements: Supporters and Transformers.

Honestly. Someone got paid to come up with that.

When Sam is on screen, DARK OF THE MOON grinds to a halt. There’s a whole subplot with him, Carly, and Carly’s boss, Dylan (Patrick Dempsey) that only gets mildly interesting when Dylan is revealed as being the Decepticons’ human liaison in their attempt to take over the world. Before this reveal, Dylan exists as a character just to make Sam look small. And Sam obliges by looking and acting small. Instead of being super appreciative of his girlfriend for being with him, he gets all jealous, which makes him even whinier and more insecure. We don’t need this angle; or if we’re going to get this angle we don’t need the “Sam can’t get a job” angle, because it doubles down on the lamest aspect of the movie. It’s almost like everyone got a blind spot with Sam and forgot this is a popcorn flick and not a male parody of Jane Austen. Dempsey is perfectly fine in the film; while not as extraordinarily gifted actor, he can handle fastballs in his zone and that’s what DARK OF THE MOON asks him to do. Casting is so much about finding the right actor for the right role, about knowing what an actor can do and what a role requires and then finding a perfect match.

Which leads us to Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. Because she’s a model with no prior acting experience (Bay apparently worked with her on a Victoria’s Secret advertisement), and because Michael Bay is a pervert, I’m required at this point to say something about her looks and inability to act. When DARK OF THE MOON was originally released, I remember some magazine (Entertainment Weekly, I believe), making at dig at her by saying she was Bay’s new robot or something, and while she’s not a very good actor, DARK OF THE MOON doesn’t require very good actors. John Malkovich is in the film, but it’s not exactly like they’re asking him to do Dostoyevsky. Huntington-Whiteley is supposed to be Sam’s hot girlfriend who her boss is trying to sleep with, and she does that well enough with that. (She has a sort of blank look on her face that I don’t find overly attractive, but she does have a British accent, which helps. You get the feeling, though, that Bay cast her just for her opening scene where his camera lingers on her legs and ass.) It’s not like the four or five scenes where she’s required to bring emotion to the role are going to make or break the film, after all.

The problem with her character is just that she’s sort of pointless to the main plot. Just like Sam is sort of pointless. DARK OF THE MOON would have been an infinitely better film if this whole Sam/Carly/Dylan subplot was not here and the focus was kept on the characters who get name-dropped in the title.

You know, the TRANSFORMERS.

There’s a reason why the film isn’t called SAM WITWICKY: HE NEVER STOPS WHINING.

I really hate the way Sam treats Carly. When a Decepticon kills a worker (Ken Jeong) at the job Sam gets thanks to Dylan, he jams Carly in his car and hauls over to the top secret NEST base in DC. She wants to know what’s what and why he’s freaking and he basically tells her, “Sit there and shut up.”

I’m sure the decision was made to keep Sam in the film because he was so central to the first film and such a big part of the sequel, but he’s just not needed in this one. Perhaps if they’d made him part of NEST, with a job he wasn’t allowed to tell his girlfriend about, there would be a reason for his nervousness when it came to Carly and her super-rich, playboy boss. As the film plays out, though, Sam is either an annoyance or in the way.

When DARK OF THE MOON sticks with the Transformers and the military, it’s a pretty good action picture. It still annoys the hell out of me that they make all of the Transformers look awfully indistinguishable when they’re in robot mode. It’s literally like someone gets paid a dollar for every single, separate part they can jam onto the robots. They might look reasonably cool in a still frame, but when they start moving around, it’s just a bunch of flashy metal and brief flashes of paint.

I dig the Transformers plot in the film. During the big war on Cybertron, Sentinel Prime (Leonard Nimoy) piloted a craft with super technology and it gets blown up and crashes onto the moon. This is the “secret history” that led to the Apollo program. Flash forward to the future and Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) finally finds out about all this after an incident in Russia, which introduces us to Shockwave (Frank Welker), and goes and rescues Sentinel. After bringing him back to life, the seen-it-coming-a-million-miles-away twist of Sentinel’s betrayal happens and then there’s plenty of awesome robot action.

The sequence in Russia with Optimus and Shockwave is pretty great. The highway chase scene is pretty great. Sentinel’s betrayal is pretty great. The storming of Chicago is pretty great.

The problem with all of this, however, is that the film doesn’t have enough faith in the Transformers plot without adding in all of this human junk. Megatron (Hugo Weaving) is basically an afterthought. It’s like they forgot that the main reason there is a Transformers movie is because of the Transformers. Did they even make a Sam Witwicky action figure back in the day? Whose favorite moment from the cartoon involves Sam being a whiny, self-entitled punk? Sam is so useless and so annoying that he just gets in the way. Michael Bay also brings back John Turturro’s annoying secret agent Simmons, though thankfully he’s toned down the craziness. He has perhaps the best line of the film, too, when he says to Sam, “Years from now they’re gonna ask where were you when they took over the planet? And we’re gonna say we just watched.”

I’ll give Bay credit, too, for making this film feel like an ending. While these movies have never really felt like a proper trilogy, the final action sequence feels like it’s a final battle. Optimus is in total take-no-sh*t mode, insisting the Autobots “will kill them all.” He personally takes out both Megatron and Sentinel. I could have watched two hours of the storming of Chicago instead of just an hour. This is where the film really takes off, where it gives Sam something useful to do, rescuing Carly and storming the city with Epps (Tyrese Gibson). Epps sets the tone for the second half. No longer a part of NEST, he tells Sam he’s going with him. When Sam asks why, Epps tells him, “These assh*les killed my friends, too.”

I mean, yeah. Turn this bad boy into a Western and we’re getting somewhere. Sam and Epps, NEST, the return of the Autobots … this is good stuff. This is popcorn entertainment at a really high level.

Unfortunately, having to sit through all of that Sam junk in the first half is like a movie theater refusing to give you your popcorn without first reading you all of the nutritional information and forcing you to eat spinach before you can have your snack.

I can’t believe this is the last TRANSFORMERS film, though. This franchise simply makes too much money. I wouldn’t even be opposed to Michael Bay coming back, but it’s time to let the Transformers take over their own franchise, become more well-rounded characters, and dump the Witwicky kid. Or at least give him something useful to do. DARK OF THE MOON doesn’t reach the heights of the first TRANSFORMERS movie, but it is a big improvement on REVENGE OF THE FALLEN.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER: The Insanity of the Plan Makes No Difference

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) – The 5th Marvel Cinematic Universe Film – Directed by Joe Johnston – Starring Chris Evans, Tommy Lee Jones, Hugo Weaving, Hayley Atwell, Sebastian Stan, Dominic Cooper, Neal McDonough, Derek Luke, Stanley Tucci, Kenneth Choi, Bruno Ricci, J.J. Field, Toby Jones, Richard Armitage, Samuel L. Jackson, and Stan Lee.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER is a very good movie, and certainly takes its rightful place alongside THOR and IRON MAN as appropriately awesome AVENGERS movies, but as with most of director Joe Johnston’s work, I never believe this world actually exists. It too often feels like we’re watching an old propaganda feature rather than a contemporary movie.

There’s a scene late in the movie where Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans) wakes up. He’s just crashed the Red Skull’s plane and we know he’s gone missing and we know that he’s found in our present, but the room looks like the 1940s. There’s a building outside and a baseball game on the radio and a woman who looks a bit like Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) comes in to check on him. Steve asks where he is, she lies, and he breaks out, discovering that he’s actually in a false room inside a New York skyscraper.

It’s a movie set, if you will, and it’s the perfect symbol of how I feel about this entire movie. Whatever happens, wherever it happens, its like watching a simulacrum of reality instead of a fully-realized world.

Now, that’s not to say that this is a bad movie, because it’s not. Far from it. CAPTAIN AMERICA is a highly enjoyable movie, with an earnest performance from Chris Evans leading the best ensemble cast in any of the Marvel movies, so far. But I never feel like I’m not on a movie set; there’s a … a cleanness, if you will, to the proceedings here. Everything looks newly constructed; even the old buildings look artificially old, like they’re copies that have been aged to fool pawn brokers.

That’s a minor, but consistent quibble with CAPTAIN AMERICA, but the larger weakness is that the film isn’t balanced properly. The first half of the movie is the origin and the second half is the World War II action versus Hydra, and because Johnston spends so much time building up the front of the movie, the back-half falls flat to me. The action is fine, but the Howling Commandos are just costumes lacking personalities, with only Bucky (Sebastian Stan) becoming someone real. The result is that while all of the punching and kicking and shooting is impressively done, very little here feels like it has to involve the characters we’re watching.

What makes me feel conflicted about the film is that the origin half of the movie is very well done, but it’s the least interesting half. By now, we’ve seen enough superhero movies that I feel like the origin stories could be condensed and we could get on with the actual story. It takes something like 45 minutes to get Steve into a Cap costume, and then another 15 or so to get him into action. None of this first hour is poorly told. Johnston does an excellent job demonstrating the determination of the normal, weakling Steve Rogers, a kid continually trying to get himself enlisted into the United States military and continually getting rejected. Steve’s determination is noticed by Professor Erskine (Stanley Tucci), who lets him into the army because he thinks Steve might possess the qualities he’s looking for in order to create the first American Super Soldier.

It just takes the narrative too darn long to get Steve to the procedure that will turn him into the Super Soldier. We have to sit through Steve getting beat up, Steve getting rejected, Steve being dour as Bucky spends his late night in the city, Steve going to boot camp, Steve being doubted, Steve proving himself, Steve and Erskine having a heart-to-heart, Steve being driven to the procedure, Steve undergoing the procedure, the procedure being successful, a Hydra spy revealing himself, shooting Erskine, and then Steve chasing the Hydra assassin down. All of it conveys the same message over and over again to ill effect; since we see Steve getting his ass handed to him by a bully, we don’t really need to hear him tell Peggy 30 minutes later that he used to get beat up a lot. It’s “show, don’t tell,” not “show, and then tell.”

It’s well told, it’s even decently paced as you’re watching it, but then we have to sit through Colonel Phillips refusing to put Cap into action despite his obvious physical qualities, so United States Senator Brandt turns Steve into Captain America and uses him to sell war bonds. We get a nice musical number and then Cap (for some reason) gets sent to the front lines where Colonel Phillips and Peggy Carter just happen to be, in order to entertain the troops. The troops could give a crap about the costumed mascot, which depresses Cap.

This short section of the film has a good song and dance number, but it feels too mechanical and contrived, and eats up too much time.

Things start to pick up when Steve insists on knowing from Colonel Phillips whether Bucky has been captured. With encouragement from Agent Carter and assistance Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper), Steve drops in on Hydra and busts all of the prisoners free. We get our first encounter with the Commandos, who are likewise trapped in Hydra’s cages, but while they become Cap’s team going forward, we don’t really get to know any of them. They’re only guys in uniforms, seemingly put together because they all have unique looks.

I’m going to stop here and level with you – I originally watched CAPTAIN AMERICA a couple months ago, but I’ve been putting off writing the review because I feared it would turn out like it has, seemingly more negative than I intended. I want to repeat – again – that this is a very good movie, but it’s not as good as IRON MAN or THOR. It’s like comparing Spider-Man 2 to Spider-Man; they’re both good movies but 2 is a bit better than 1 because it gives us a fully-realized story, and does so in a more confident manner, instead of covering what feels like well-worn ground as all of the creative types try to find their way.

I’ve watched CAPTAIN AMERICA since then, not wanting to write a negative review of a good film without giving it a few more tries. I appreciate the film more now, but in a different context. It doesn’t work for me as much as a superhero movie as it does an old matinee. I feel like Johnston has crafted a wonderful ode to the old matinee films that Steve is watching at the start of the movie that leads to him getting beat up. And let me be clear – this is a good thing. We should want superhero movies to show variety, and that the three AVENGERS movies are clearly made on the same blueprint but give us a different setting and work with different genres is a good thing. CAPTAIN AMERICA does that, at the same time it gives us a great character and tells a decent story. Perhaps my complaints are more like spending a night playing poker and going home disappointed because you’ve won $40 instead of $50. The film clearly has left me conflicted, but I think it’s a film I’ll grow to appreciate more over time. It’s not as good as IRON MAN or THOR but it is still good. Here’s why:

Chris Evans is a good, if limited actor at this stage in his career, but if you keep your demands in his range, he’s quite good, and CAPTAIN AMERICA keeps it in his range. He can do earnest and he can do determined, and that’s what’s asked of him in nearly every scene he’s in. (He can also do funny pretty good, but they don’t ask much of him in this regard in this movie.) He makes Steve an almost-too-good-to-be-believed guy, which is just what Steve Rogers is, and he does a fine job making this a “coming of age” story as Steve grows not only into his body but his abilities. At the start of the movie he’s a determined weakling whom everyone keeps rejecting, but when he gets his new, souped-up body, he’s put in his place by Phillips and Carter, then turned into a prop by Brandt, and then rejected by the soldiers. It’s Carter that inspires him to go after Bucky and once Cap pulls that off, once the soldiers accept him, his confidence rises and solidifies.

Hayley Atwell is fantastic as Peggy Carter, and Johnston and his writers do a good job of keeping her a solid character through the film. She falls in love with Steve, of course, but she doesn’t lose either her sense of self or her agency (unlike what happens to Jane Foster over in THOR). Atwell provides a good deal of the film’s humor, whether it’s punching a recruit in the face, or shooting a gun at Cap’s unpainted shield, and when it comes time for her to get teary-eyed over Steve’s impending death, she delivers that, as well.

Tommy Lee Jones is good as Colonel Phillips, playing the gruff, military man. It takes Phillips the longest to come around to Steve’s abilities, but when Steve brings the prisoners of war back to base, Phillips instantly comes around. It’s a really great moment and makes Phillips more than a one-note hard ass. Jones’ best scene in the film, however, comes when he’s interrogating Arnim Zola (Toby Jones). After Cap and the Commandos capture Zola off a Hydra plane, Jones gives him the hard sell in order to get intel on Hydra. Jones #2 is fantastic as Zola, a brilliant scientist who’s both intimidated by the Red Skull (Hugo Weaving) and wary of Hydra’s plan to take over the world, and their back and forth is short but sweet.

Hugo Weaving’s Red Skull is suitably menacing, twisted, and brilliant, but his best moments come early in the film. By the time of his final showdown with Captain America, he’s just a bad guy getting punched.

I could go on about the acting, but the point is that this is a very well cast film and it’s the performances that will keep me coming back. The front half of the film is the better half but also the least-interesting half. I care more about the last hour of the movie, but it feels rushed and clinical. What I like about the film is that it keeps staying entertaining, meaning that for whatever flaws it has in my eyes, CAPTAIN AMERICA is still a highly watchable movie. I’ll take that. When you factor in just how good it is to watch Evans, Atwell, and Jones play off one another, and the decent action sequences, I realize I’m probably nitpicking a bit too much.

If you want to say this is better than THOR, I can understand that. I just don’t agree with it. Ultimately, though, they’re both good films and are both fine additions to the growing canon of Marvel movies.

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