The time has come for our first ever episode of Marvel Replay, and it is a good one (although, aren’t they all a good one?). To kick us off, we are discussing Captain America: The First Avenger (CATFA) and Captain Marvel.
To give a quick background, I want to give a gentle reminder that we are doing the Marvel Replay in Timeline order. If you are new here, I recommend being careful with timeline order now that doing it like that may cause spoilers. If you are a veteran fan, which I assume many are, you have nothing to worry about and can go on right ahead to listening to our thoughts on both of these films. Another thing I want to note is that these episodes cover our thoughts and feelings on the films, which means we may point out some things we don’t love or may discuss how it effects later films. These episodes do not consist fully of rundown episodes like our usual episodes do and we are doing these to cover some of the older material for fun. Keep this in mind! We love all of these movies, but a good fan can criticize something they love. So without further ado, listen to the entire podcast episode to hear our take on CATFA and Captain Marvel!
Now, to start with CATFA, I have to say, is a doozy. I think a lot happens in this movie that establishes so much in the MCU. What I will say I like is that it was not the first film to come out (Iron Man was), so when watching in timeline order, some of the kinks have already begun to be worked out. I think my biggest issue, which Taylor can agree with, is that some of the CGI of the film itself has not exactly aged very well. But listen, if this is our biggest complaint then that means that this has to be a pretty good movie.
As an origin story goes, it does a great job in establishes the man of Steve Rogers and shows why he is the most worthy (see what I did there) of all to get the super soldier serum. I think when you know the character and where he goes, seeing his origin and knowing that in most of the films he does not stray from this is powerful. One of my personal favorite aspects of this film is that Captain America was fighting against something he didn’t understand fully, but fought because he knew what was right. I think this is something we see a lot in Steve Rogers, even all the way to Thanos. Obviously by the time of Thanos he is more aware of the weird world out there, but it still boils down to his righteousness.
Switching gears to Captain Marvel, I think I can easily say I see a lot of complaints about this film and character. My personal thoughts are that Captain Marvel isn’t a bad character necessarily, I just truly stand by the fact her timing in the MCU was way off. She entered right in between Infinity War and Endgame, the two biggest Avengers movies to date. Politely speaking, people weren’t looking for a new origin story, they were in waiting for Endgame to see what would become of all their faves that got dusted. Now during the rewatch, I will openly admit this was only my second time watching this movie. I watched it in theaters and that was it. I wasn’t sold by it. But I think that is for the very reason above: it simply was released at a bad time. When doing the rewatch, I was much more appreciative of the film itself.
However, and a big however, this film had a lot of problems. This is born out of the fact that, at the end of the day, it is second in timeline order but came out relatively late in the movie list. Some of it felt sloppy, like the fact that Fury lost his eye to a cat after they explicitly make a big deal how last time he trusted someone he lost an eye. Personally, this being how he lost his eye fell really flat for me. Fury has been on the ins and outs of Shield for many years, going through many lives, and the best they could do was a cat?
On the flip side of this, I liked seeing young Coulson and especially enjoyed seeing the Avengers Initiative being made from Fury’s interaction with Carol. But I can’t help but wonder how much more powerful that might have been had this movie come out earlier. Part of it felt as if there was too much backtracking, as at this point the MCU was just about coming out in timeline order. The crude back and forth we got at first was now turning into simple order. And then Captain Marvel came and messed that up again.
The only thing left for me to say is that the Tesseract and the entire storyline of it in Captain Marvel was also messy and feels out of place. We know the Tesseract was in the 70s thanks to Endgame, and we see theme experimenting with it in Avengers (2012). Yet it was in space in the 90s and no one at Shield felt put off at the fact that the Tesseract had been MIA? Understandably, they gave it to Mar-Vel to experiment with, but we have no clue how long she had it stashed up in the ship with the Skrulls. So you’re telling me Shield just lost the Tesseract for a few years and no one was worried about it? The inclusion of the Tesseract in Captain Marvel, personally, was unneeded, as a simple throw away line could have explained the Mar-Vel had experimented with it. Showing it, especially in space, just seemed a little rocky to what was already an established timeline for it.
All in all, as I said before, no one is perfect, even Marvel. And as Marvel fans, we love the movies no matter if they have flaws or not. There isn’t a misstep with Marvel, they are always on point with their films and definitely don’t take our criticism of certain scenes negatively. True fans are always able to establish that what they love will have things wrong with it. Now, I hope all of you have enjoyed our first episode of Marvel Replay and make sure to go listen to the podcast for an even more in-depth conversation. As always, keep up with the old and new with Marvel, cause Marvel just blew your mind, so let’s talk about it.
Image: “Captain America and Captain Marvel”, Brad Gullickson, FSR
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