Review Detail
8.8 10 10
Enjoyment
9.0
Out of all the MCU movies I enjoyed Captain America the least (or Iron Man 2 it is a close call)
While the movie has its fair shares of good ideas and a nice retro vibe it just dragged forever to me. The Red Skull was doing evil things the whole times but nothing that had a genuine effect on the hero’s journey.
The entire storyline is very simplistic: cap gets born, he frees soldiers, they invade the fortress of the overlord
With that little plot the movie just dragged for me, so when AEMovieguy annoucned a quickened version I was more than intrigued.
And what a ride this edit was!
The time flies by like nothing and similarly to his Harry Potter shortening the edits are very well chosen and a lot of time pretty creative.
I was not sure how the new opening would work and found myself laughing at it because it is a pretty cool “meta”-framing device as the people in the cinema complain that the movie should finally start, which would have been a fantastic way to open the movie in the cinema after having to endure millions of trailers before the movie you really feel like “come on just start the goddamn movie”
Further on the plus side most of the re-editing manages to energize scenes that were pretty unremarkable in the original. Moving Lee’s monolog during the training montange manages to combine two sequences without losing anything and adding much more energy than “mandatory exposition” followed by “mandatory montage” now it is just one mandatory scene that goes way faster.
Pretty much all the quickening helped me enjoy the movie much more. We don’t need to see Steve apply a million times as it is stated so many times thorough the movie. Also removing the bland Red-Skull/Weaving shots from the Doctor’s narration helps wonders and does not remind you of matrix revolutions with dozens of Hugo Weavings.
Almost all of the Red Skull scenes where he is scheming are gone and the movie profits a lot. Pretty much all the Skull does is extract the energy from the cube – which Stark finds out later and feels redundant in the original. In this version we discover what the red skull has done alongside the heroes
The only scene I missed was the portrait of the skull which was a pretty neat foreshadowing, but hey..
Removing the framing device also works wonders and helps the cliffhanger to be at least surprising to the audience. In the original it is not really a big surprise when Cap wakes up and you spend more time wondering why shield has set up the chamber in the style of the 40s… in this version it still makes little to no sense (“we wanted to make the transition easier”-yeah for sure) but you don’t have time to think about this because like Cap you are not sure what exactly is going on
The minor nitpicks:
While I liked the trimming of the Red Skull I would have preferred for the first confrontation to be a bit longer.
The idea of intercutting the Captain America war montage with the announcer of the tour is pretty fun but I still think the money-shot of the shield on the back is a pretty cool shot of the hero being fully formed and it gets downplayed a bit in this version
Overall a vast improvement and to everyone who kinda liked Captain America but felt it was a bit lackluster just go watch this version
9/10
While the movie has its fair shares of good ideas and a nice retro vibe it just dragged forever to me. The Red Skull was doing evil things the whole times but nothing that had a genuine effect on the hero’s journey.
The entire storyline is very simplistic: cap gets born, he frees soldiers, they invade the fortress of the overlord
With that little plot the movie just dragged for me, so when AEMovieguy annoucned a quickened version I was more than intrigued.
And what a ride this edit was!
The time flies by like nothing and similarly to his Harry Potter shortening the edits are very well chosen and a lot of time pretty creative.
I was not sure how the new opening would work and found myself laughing at it because it is a pretty cool “meta”-framing device as the people in the cinema complain that the movie should finally start, which would have been a fantastic way to open the movie in the cinema after having to endure millions of trailers before the movie you really feel like “come on just start the goddamn movie”
Further on the plus side most of the re-editing manages to energize scenes that were pretty unremarkable in the original. Moving Lee’s monolog during the training montange manages to combine two sequences without losing anything and adding much more energy than “mandatory exposition” followed by “mandatory montage” now it is just one mandatory scene that goes way faster.
Pretty much all the quickening helped me enjoy the movie much more. We don’t need to see Steve apply a million times as it is stated so many times thorough the movie. Also removing the bland Red-Skull/Weaving shots from the Doctor’s narration helps wonders and does not remind you of matrix revolutions with dozens of Hugo Weavings.
Almost all of the Red Skull scenes where he is scheming are gone and the movie profits a lot. Pretty much all the Skull does is extract the energy from the cube – which Stark finds out later and feels redundant in the original. In this version we discover what the red skull has done alongside the heroes
The only scene I missed was the portrait of the skull which was a pretty neat foreshadowing, but hey..
Removing the framing device also works wonders and helps the cliffhanger to be at least surprising to the audience. In the original it is not really a big surprise when Cap wakes up and you spend more time wondering why shield has set up the chamber in the style of the 40s… in this version it still makes little to no sense (“we wanted to make the transition easier”-yeah for sure) but you don’t have time to think about this because like Cap you are not sure what exactly is going on
The minor nitpicks:
While I liked the trimming of the Red Skull I would have preferred for the first confrontation to be a bit longer.
The idea of intercutting the Captain America war montage with the announcer of the tour is pretty fun but I still think the money-shot of the shield on the back is a pretty cool shot of the hero being fully formed and it gets downplayed a bit in this version
Overall a vast improvement and to everyone who kinda liked Captain America but felt it was a bit lackluster just go watch this version
9/10
S