The Road to the Avengers: Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

Of the comic that make up the basis for which the Avengers and it's prequels are based on, Captain America is the one that I loved as a kid After a few years of reading it, I was introduced to the Avengers and then the West Coast Avengers, which i doubt we will see a movie about. While following Steve Rogers as the Captain as he lived the nomadic life around the U.S. I was also collecting old comics from the early 70s when Captain America teamed up with Falcon. Somewhere in here, others portrayed Captain America as Steve Rogers lost his way. And so did I. I was a fan of Marvel's Paladin, our lawful good hero who did what was needed because it was for his country and every question he had he kept to himself because a good soldier doesn't question his orders. This was interesting to me, fighting for the system even though you are becoming disillusioned by the system. And then when you can take it no more, the hero removes himself from the system. I would have continued to read the series had it continued to follow Rogers as teh main character and shown me how a true patriot deals with a government that is less than it is supposed to be. Sure, they could have had someone else playing at Captain America, but that should have been in the background, as Rogers was the key. But, they didn't do that. You could go issues at a time without even a whisper of Rogers and then it would be a couple of panels about how he was out finding himself. Instead we got comics about fighting without any of the turmoil. I was genuinely sad the day I cancelled my subscription, especially so because I also ended my Batman subscription at the same time (Batman had just wrapped up the Year One storyline which I thought was brilliant, and went back to that 80s whack-a-doodle of the month format - they guy who ran the comic shop tried to get me to hold on a little longer because Year Two was about to start, but I couldn't do it) I had moved to the X-Men as my main Marvel title by this point, though I still kept getting the Amazing Spiderman. I actually stopped collecting those within another year as I had discovered Vertigo and Image comics and was reading a lot of one-offs and mini series by small presses. Pretty soon, I even stopped buying those and was putting all of my money into AD&D even when our group broke up to go to college because I was reading the pulp fantasy novels set in the Forgotten Realms and buying the books and maps to set my own games there which never properly materialized.
This movie had little to do with any of my memories of Captain America. This Captain is based on the updated story, with the updated costume. This Captain America is a soldier first and a super hero only incidentally because someone needed to step up and he could and did. I have read some of the modern Captain America related series - trying to get through that whole Dark Avengers thing and ultimately taking a break which has lasted about a year and a half now, because it was too many series pulling in too many directions. Captain America in these comics was okay. I completely missed the whole Ultimates thing in the Marvel Universe and have always intended to read it, but haven't yet, so don't what influence that had on this film, but I suspect little.
Watching Captain America rushing into a battle while firing away with his pistol is hard to get used to but ultimately I can accept this interpretation because He's a soldier first. The harder thing to accept is Chris Evans face/head attached to the skinny actor that played the pre-serum Steve Rogers body. That is just freaky looking and more than a little unsettling.
Ultimately, I liked this movie. The character of Captain America stays true to himself and like this whole solider-out-of-time angle that they bring us at the end. The comic book aside for a moment, this is also the most accessible film of the four in the series I've watched so far. They really should have had more of Rogers in the modern times at the end. He's certainly got to be upset that everyone he knew is dead or in their late 80s or beyond. It's also a little sad that the second most interesting female lead of the four films (after Gwyneth Paltrow's Pepper Potts) won't be making a return unless it's in flashbacks - I though Hayley Atwell as Agent Peggy Carter was one of the better characters I've seen so far in any of these films.

Captain America: The First Avenger on IMDb

Lincoln (2012)

What a fantabulous film.. I will take good acting over vampire hunting any day. All of the characters in this film were such characters. Even the small roles had enough showing to pick up character foibles and eccentricities that really brought everything alive.
Of course I had heard how great this movie was, but it was always about Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln. He was absolutely fantastic. When I can forget that such a well-known actor is playing the role, I think that is a sign that they're doing something very right. But, I was not prepared for very strong showing by Sally Field, David Stratairn and Tonny Lee Jones. I expect these three actors to do a good job, just as I expect Day-Lewis to do a good job, but they all really stepped it up a notch. But maybe The Amazing Spiderman, Alphas and Men In Black 3, respectively, are not the most dramatic of vehicles to show off their fine acting abilities. These four actors were essential to this movie's success and set the bar very high for the rest of the cast.
I loved seeing Hal Holbrook in period costume. He somehow looks more appropriate dressed as a gentleman from the nineteenth century than in contemporary clothes. Perhaps that is because the first thing I recall seeing him in he was dressed as Mark Twain, or perhaps he is drawn to those roles because they somehow fit him best. He is looking as old as ever, which is to say not a bit older than he did twenty years ago.
It seems hard to believe that there was ever a time when long beards were the norm de rigeur, but it warms the cockles of my heart to see so many whiskers. I am glad that no one has suggested recently that those of us with beards shave off our mustaches, as I've never liked that look and doing it would not only feel funny, but make me look funnier than I already am. It is interesting that so many of the young men were sporting mustaches, like Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the President's son, Robert Lincoln, as well as James Spader as Mr. Bilbo. I wonder if there wasn't a sort of generational rebellion going on? Probably yes and probably no. I suspect that like now, it was largely a matter of fashion more than anything else.

Lincoln on IMDb

Men In Black 3 (2012)

You know what I love about these movies? Aside from the song by Will Smith that roles with the credits, that is. I like that they follow their own logic. The rules of physics apply, as we currently know them, until they're not convenient anymore, and then J or K, usually K, pulls out or acquires some gizmo that they need to get the job done in a way that is not explained by science. It just does whatever needs to be done, with as many steps before it as necessary to fill up the movie. I'm not even being critical about this, I dig it. This is sci-fi comedy, or as I like to think of it, sci-co. See what I did there? With the play on sounds? Huh? Oh. I thought you weren't laughing 'cause you didn't get it. But, you're just saying it wasn't funny OR clever. Gotcha.
I'm writing this particular version of the post because it most likely leads to the possible future that one thing happens that I really, really want to happen; unless this is the time that you get the phone call right in the middle of reading this and never get back to it and end up taking that job in Tuscaloosa where you end up putting on a lot of weight because you're depressed for some unknowable reason and eat to fill the gaping hole left by not finishing this post; or the other one with the power outage that happens right after you finish the post and it ruins your refrigerator and on your way to get a new one you get into a fender bender with the woman with two small children and the youngest child, her daughter ends up becoming an automotive engineer instead of a research epidemiologist and therefore never develops the serum to protect most of humanity from the plague that starts the zombie apocalypse. If those two things come about, I guarantee I have not ended up with what I want. That's the crazy thing about time travel and timelines. Movies always deal with the big things that are typically in a very clear causal line back to an event that we'll call event-prime that needs to be changed or prevented from changing so that the horrible outcome won't occur. A lot of these same movies have all kinds of things happening with the time travelers that end up not effecting anything. Event-prime to the horrible event or to the happy event is always A then B then C, rarely anything more than 3 steps, too. In this case, event-prime is saving an alien from being murdered by another alien. If successful, this leads to Agent K in direct conflict with the assassin, and if K is successful, we get the happy ending. If the event-prime goes sour, the secondary even never takes place and so we get the horrible outcome. But, even if event-prime goes well, the secondary event can still go bad. Sometimes the movies present with a false event-prime. We know it's false because it is always a missed opportunity, and not one that fails.
But, is this what really is going on in the movie? No, I don't think so. I think it's more like the story version of a Rube Goldberg device. Event-prime happens - and it's almost always before the time travel occurs - starts a complex and often convoluted chain of events that lead to the desired outcome. I'm tempted to go all meta and say that by the very nature of movies, i.e. that they are prepared in advance for our viewing pleasure, prevents it from being anything but a carefully crafted series of events that have to go the way they do. Instead I will just look at it in terms of the movie reality. In other words, I'm saying that the failures have to happen in order to get the desired outcome. In this movie, if J had made it on time to stop the first murder, he likely would have been killed because he didn't know how much of a bad-ass Boris was nor did he have a way to use his time travel device. It had to be as difficult between J and K in the beginning as it was so that they would get the satisfactory emotional outcome later. In movies, everything happens for a reason. Everything. Are there different ways that things could have gone that would have led to the desired outcome? Most likely, yes, but there was some drawback to them, like having the movie be only 20 minutes long instead of 100 minutes long; or maybe more serious like the desired outcome is achieved but Detroit is accidentally blown up.
If this is the reality for someone knocks on your door in three, two, one, now. Don't answer. That so-called organic cleaner is a scam.
The addition of Emma Thompson as O who is the new director, is brilliant. If there is anything that lady can not do or do and not look sexy doing it, I don't know what it is and neither does anyone else. I hope she comes back for MIB4. I also liked David Rasche as X. Remember when he was Sledgehammer? I have these vague memories of that show, mostly my thoughts that it was awesome, because like Max Headroom, it was on later than my mom normally let me watch t.v., but for some reason I could watch it if I didn't let my little brother know. Sorry, bro. I guess the secret is out. For the record, mom also let me watch Hogan's Heroes while you were in Headstart, and Magnum P.I. while you were still in grade school and I was at the junior high. Based on my experience with tracking down an episode of Max Headroom in the last year and discovering that it wasn't terribly good, I suspect Sledgehammer will not be what I thought it was as a kid. Oh well. I'm perfectly content to let 10 year old me have those shows as cherished memories and adult me to think they kind of suck and to have both of these things occur simultaneously. I bet a lot of those shows totally sucked - like Automan, Manimal and Rip Tide. Actually, I happen to know that Rip Tide was on for four seasons, so it most likely sucked in a different way, the way that the Fall Guy sucks to the grown up me, the suckage from having shows only being remarkable by who the guest star is this week. Can you say A-Team or Buck Rogers (or the Electric Kid)?
Damn that Gil Gerard, he almost made me forget to mention Josh freakin' Brolin. Fortunately a future version of myself has traveled back in time to take care of this. Brolin was awesome. He was more Tommy Lee Jones than Jones was. It's just like when he played the Prez in W. He nailed the accent and the mannerisms so completely that you forgot who he really was. Kudos, Mr. Brolin.
Oh, and surprisingly, I didn't hate Bill Hader in this movie. Huh. First times and all that.
Also, I love that chocolate milk is what people who have experienced a timeline fracture crave. Moo.

Men In Black 3 on IMDb