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Published on February 7th, 2011 | by Aaron

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Tease Me, Baby! – Captain America: The First Avenger

There were many reasons to be excited yesterday. For some it was the Super Bowl. A big sporting event that saw a cheese obsessed team play a Shaquille O’Neal film obsessed team. They wore giant pads and helmets while knocking each other down. Suitably, the other reason to get excited was that during the commercial breaks two comic book films had their TV trailers air.

Unfortunately due to the nature of TV commercials, we only got 30 seconds of video to look at. In the case of Thor, this meant that we got very little in the way of new images. Thor already has a lengthy trailer floating around online since Comic Con so it’s understandable that this TV spot would just be a re-hash of that footage. As a result I won’t really go into that trailer today, although rest assured if a new one comes out between now and release I’ll definitely dip back into that Asgardian fun-time.

Captain America’s trailer, however, is the first chance we got to see any moving images for this film. And while their time was short, they managed to cram a whole lot in! I’m going to try and break it down into the key elements and what I think are important signals of how this movie could turn out.

The trailer itself focuses almost entirely on the origin of the character. It answers the question of who Captain America is more than what he does. I thought this was a clever move on Marvel’s part because despite the fact that he is a famous character and instantly recogniseable, a lot of non-comic readers wouldn’t necessarily know that he’s not just a soldier who likes to wear red, white and blue. So a quick look into his transformation was a smart move in my opinion.

Take a look at the trailer with this video from Marvel.com and then I’ll go into specifics.

There were four shots in this clip that gave me hope that Joe Johnston knows what he’s doing in bringing Cap and this story to life.

– Steve Rogers is just a man who wants to help is country.

The beauty behind Captain America is that he was a young man who wanted to fight for his country during World War II but was too scrawny to be considered eligible for combat. His urge to do some good led him to volunteering for anything that might help. His transformation is a physical one not a mental one and that’s a very important point. He never stops being good, honest Steve Rogers. He is just given the tools to do the good he wants to do.

This image above shows that beautifully. Written on Steve’s face is the agony he feels. He is already a hero, look at him and you can see that he’ll do whatever he can. He is so desperately trying to crawl through that obstacle course. This is the first time I thought “yeah they get this”.

– Body talk

The skinny-ing up of Chris Evans looks good. We only get brief flashes of it here but the effects are impressive compared to previous films I’ve seen it tried.

Also, he has done a great job in beefing himself up for this role. He is not Johnny Storm anymore. In that regard, I can’t blame her for getting a quick touch in. I don’t think I could help myself either!

– Howling Commandos

YES!

Dum Dum Duggan and the gang are present. Not just in this shot but in most of the action we see with Cap. The Howling Commandos are a group they could have easily left out of this story but I’m glad Marvel made the effort of including them. Cap is a bad-ass but he is a member of the U.S. Army and it’s good they haven’t lost sight of that by including this infamous battalion.

Also, how good does that shot look?

– Red Skull

‘Nuff said.

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So needless to say after my yammering, I’m quite excited to see how this turns out. Not only for the film itself but also it’s knock on effect to the upcomming Avengers franchise. We’ve been fooled before with trailer footage but so far Marvel have kept me happy with the Iron Man films and even Ed Norton’s Hulk. Hopefully that streak continues.

These are exciting times for comic books movies and I look forward to whats ahead. I’ll be back to dissect the next trailer to hit the web whenever that may be.

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