I'm not gonna lie, by the time I first watched this movie, I had completely forgotten who Chris Evans was, despite absolutely loving him as the Human Torch in the first Fantastic Four movie. So when the scrawny mini version of him appeared in this movie, I actually had no idea that it was an hilariously CGI edited version of a fairly well-known actor, I thought it was just some weird looking kid. Not so for my wife, who recognized him instantly and was promptly discombobulated by his appearance here.

That uncanny valley moment faded pretty quickly for both of us though. Evans owns the role with such earnestness that it’s impossible not to root for him. He never plays Steve Rogers as self-righteous, and that’s the key. There’s a quiet integrity to him. He’s not trying to be noble; he just is. He’s the guy who throws himself on a grenade without thinking, because that’s what you do. That clarity of character is a breath of fresh air in a cinematic universe increasingly filled with snarky geniuses and reluctant heroes.

Then there's Hayley Atwell, who was such a breakout as Peggy Carter that she literally got her own spinoff show. She's much more than a love interest and plot device, she's a real person: competent, funny, and unafraid to call Steve out on his nonsense. Ditto for Sebastian Stan as Best Buddy Bucky Barnes who we'll see plenty of later, no spoilers.

We also get Toby Jones, one of the most compact and unsettling British men alive, as Armin Zola, looking like he stumbled straight out of a Wolfenstein cutscene. He really isn’t your everyday stock Nazi scientist at all though; his terrified Zola is a man in over his head and well aware of it, constantly caught between fear and fascination. There’s a moment when Schmidt has just revealed he’s given the order to have our beloved Stanley Tucci assassinated. The camera cuts to a reaction from Zola, but also to a gaunt, tight-lipped man painting a portrait of Schmidt. Schmidt asks him what he thinks. There's a beat, just long enough to feel dangerous, before Zola announces, “Masterpiece.” And the painter lets out the tiniest visible exhale with a hard swallow, knowing that Zola could have just as easily sentenced him to death. It's so subtle and so perfect, and really demonstrates the dynamic between Schmidt and Zola. It's also the sort of microperformance that reminds you how much fun Marvel was having even in the margins.

Dominic Cooper’s Howard Stark is the only weird bit for me. He's great, he plays the role with a perfect kind of flashy playboy confidence that clearly sets the stage for who Tony will become. He’s charming, brilliant, and just a little morally ambiguous. But I find his casting incredibly confusing here; I actually originally watched these out of order and I saw Iron Man 2 well after I saw this so I was surprised when I checked the dates and found IM2 came first. It's just so odd to me that they didn't just use Jon Slattery again given that he plays Howard Stark in literally every other appearance in the MCU - including young Howard in Endgame. I tried to find any reference to scheduling conflicts or things like that, but all I could find was a couple quotes from Cooper about Endgame:

"I'm not sure why I wasn't in it. This is the first I've heard of it. Why am I not in it?"

"I'm trying to get employed by them again, please."

At any rate, this feels like the first MCU movie where Marvel really starts leaning into genre as a guiding principle. Director Joe Johnston (The Rocketeer, Jumanji) plays this as a straight-up wartime adventure, filtered through a pulpy Indiana Jones lens. You’ve got Hydra death rays, motorcycle chases, and commandos with flamethrowers. At any given moment, someone’s swinging from a rope while an explosion goes off in the background or leaping across a broken catwalk suspended above molten metal. It’s unapologetically retro, right down to the musical number, and it works because it's not trying to be gritty - it’s trying to be fun.

I think it's worth noting that “Star Spangled Man” slaps harder than it has any right to. That war bonds montage is pure 1940s hokum in the best possible way. It’s bright and cheesy and tacky as it shows Steve the man turned into Steve the product. It’s smart storytelling. It shows how the legend of Captain America was always a little ahead of the reality, and how Steve has to catch up to the role he’s been handed. It’s also part of the larger conversation this film is having with iconography. Steve spends half the movie being told he’s more useful as a symbol than a soldier, and the second half proving the opposite.

The score overall deserves a real shoutout. This is the first MCU movie where I actively noticed the music beyond needle-drops. Sure, Iron Man had AC/DC, and Thor had some majestic strings floating over golden Asgard, but Captain America has a full-throated, old-school Hollywood orchestral score courtesy of Alan Silvestri of Back To The Future fame. It’s bold, hummable, and heroic in that John Williams-adjacent kind of way. When that theme kicks in, it’s like Silvestri is drawing a line in the cinematic sand: from this point on, the Marvel universe has icons, not just characters.

And oh boy does our icon punch a lot of fascists. Let’s not overlook the fact that this movie is delightfully unsubtle in its punching-Nazis agenda. That’s not a bug; it’s a feature. There's a purity to the moral landscape of this film that’s both refreshing and narratively effective. Good vs evil. Red Skull vs Captain America. Glowing cubes vs punching.

This glowing cube, the Tesseract, is a neat device here. The fact that this World War II adventure movie contains the seed of the eventual Avengers-level threat is a neat trick. Marvel’s shared universe starts showing its teeth here, but in a way that doesn’t overshadow the story being told. The cube feels like just another sci-fi Nazi superweapon, but it’s actually an ancient Asgardian artifact, left on Earth centuries ago and stashed in a Norwegian church before being scooped up by Red Skull to juice his laser tanks. And just to clear up a long-standing source of MCU confusion: the glowing blue Tesseract here, which contains the Space Stone, is not the same as the glowing blue Casket of Ancient Winters, the icy MacGuffin that the Frost Giants are obsessed with in Thor. They're both glowing, they're both blue, they're both square and they're both apparently stored in poorly guarded Nordic buildings, but they are totally different objects.

You're welcome.

Critically, Captain America: The First Avenger got a pretty warm reception and currently sits at 80% on RT. It leans into its period setting without being kitschy, and unlike some early MCU entries, it doesn't feel like it's just killing time until the next crossover. It stands on its own while still teeing up The Avengers in its final moments. Cap waking up in modern-day New York and asking what year it is is just the perfect bookend to the adventure, and such a wickedly memorable scene.

Box office-wise, it did just fine with around $370 million worldwide on a $140 million budget. Respectable numbers for a relatively low-flash character with a deliberately old-fashioned tone. More importantly, it made people care about Steve Rogers, which is a harder sell than you’d think.

This movie’s real legacy is that it gave us a moral center for the entire MCU. Where Tony is the brains, and Hulk and Thor are the brawn, Steve is the soul. And it all starts here, with a kid from Brooklyn who just doesn’t know how to back down.

"Geez! Someone get that kid a sandwich!"

"I don't care what time it is, this one's waited long enough."

"Go get him! I can swim!"

"What I am doing? No, you have procedure tomorrow. No fluids."
"Alright, we'll drink it after."
"No, I don't have procedure tomorrow. Drink it after? I drink it now."

"If you got something to say, now's the perfect time to keep it to yourself."

My Personal Ranking

As I continue to go through all the movies over the next several weeks, I'll keep a running tally of where they fit in my personal spectrum of best and worst of all the MCU offerings. Feel free to throw your own list in the comments below!

Rank	Movie	Year
#1	Iron Man	2008
#2	Captain America: The First Avenger	2011
#3	Iron Man 2	2010
#4	Thor	2011
#5	The Incredible Hulk	2008

Next Up: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes finally team up, smash some aliens, and give shawarma a whole new cultural moment in The Avengers.