I'm super late to the party, but my two cents --
I thought I'd hate Captain America. PATRIOTISM! RIGHTEOUSNESS! But I had to watch all the prequels for the Avengers, right? Ah well, at least I'd get a good laugh, right?
Boy, was I wrong. I wasn't expecting Steve Rogers. Captain America? To quote Bucky Barnes: "Hell, no. That little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb not to run away from a fight. I'm following him."
The thing you've gotta see is that Steve Rogers isn't just your run-of-the-mill underdog. No.
In the area of eugenics, a strong anti-Irish climate, and a lot of distrust of Catholics and communists, Stan Lee gave us Steven Grant Rogers, chronically ill, Irish Catholic, working class, artist son of a working single mother (the artist bit's relevant because the artistic community in Brooklyn and NY was very, very liberal with strong communist leanings at the time) ... who gets turned into THE symbol of US-American-ness. And does the job so very, very well.
That's kind of akin to choosing a gay Mexican muslim (slight hyperbole, but you get my drift) for that job today.
So. I liked it, but probably not for the reasons most people did. I'm a nerd for historical accuracy, what can I say.
The_Walrus wrote:
But the Captain serves an important role. With the exception of Thor, the others are basically there because of their smarts; Banner and Stark are scientists with no military training, and Black Widow and Hawkeye fall somewhere in the middle, but generally aren't used to being in a team. Rogers is a trained soldier, and therefore a valuable leader and strategist. In this respect, his role is somewhat comparable to Batman in Justice League (though Batman is self taught, and if anything even less powerful compared to his allies).
Yes! And I love how the fact that he's both a soldier with some leadership experience and a bloody self-sacrificing idiot comes into all the films he's been in so far (Winter Soldier was a special brand of painful in that respect).
Tangentially related: has anyone else watched the Agent Carter series?