captain amercia

Despite their dominance in today’s movie theaters, Marvel Comics’ superheroes were once nothing more than a poor, pathetic lot of failed TV pilots and low-budget direct-to-video adaptations. Lou Ferrigno’s mop-topped version of The Hulk was the only thing happening for the company until Bryan Singer’s original X-Men (2000) proved that Marvel’s formula of mutant powers, social issues and complicated personal relationships could actually translate well onscreen. Up until that point, fans suffered through things like 1990’s Captain America.

This wasn’t Cap’s first trip to the screen. And it’s not even his worst. Besides an early adaptation in the ‘40s, he was crammed into a pair of ill-fitting tights and forced to embarrass himself in the late ‘70s in a series of terrible TV movies. By comparison, this adaptation by director Albert Pyun (The Sword and the Sorcerer, Cyborg) is actually fairly classy. But it’s faced with the same challenge The First Avenger (2011) ran into: how to make a goody-two-shoes hero from WW2 seem culturally relevant…let alone cool?

The script by Stephen Tolkin (the less talented brother of famous screenwriter Michael Tolkin) is remarkably prescient of modern-day comic book flicks that focus on the personal problems of superhero alter-egos. Just as Bruce Wayne’s angst played a larger and larger role in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, here we get an awful lot of Steve Rogers trying to adapt to a new era where everyone he loved is dead or ready for the nursing home. It’s a budget saver to be sure (less expensive battle scenes and special effects), but also somewhat less than thrilling.

After a moderately ambitious opening conflict between Cap and the Red Skull, America’s super solider is frozen in the ice until 1990. He awakes to find the Skull has become the behind-the-scenes leader of a large criminal organization with evil plans involving the President of the United States (who also just happened to run into Cap when he was a kid). In pursuit of his foe, Steve Rogers (played by a charmless Matt Salinger) travels to Italy to put a stop to his archenemy once and for all.

Supposedly hamstrung by nervous studio executives, the extras on Shout Factory’s collector’s edition blu-ray will have you believe the film is not even half of what it aspired to be. While that may be true, one could argue there wasn’t much there to begin with. What’s left is often embarrassingly corny and decidedly less than super. But it is a starting point that spun Marvel in a more mature direction.

The aforementioned extras include a 30-minute interview with director Albert Pyun and star Matt Salinger. The blu-ray transfer itself is no restored masterpiece, but does the hi-def job.