Thursday, July 10, 2014

Review: Avengers: EMH "Meet Captain America"

You know what I just realized? When Captain America threw his mighty shield, not everyone who chose to oppose his shield yielded.

0/10- SUCKS

Heh, jk. Let's review for real.

Characters

Captain America
He's exactly what you'd expect him to be. Truth, justice, American way, violently playing frisbee, etc.

Bucky
A solid Bucky. Young, brash, cocky, confident, cheerful. But what I like the most is how in this adaptation he sacrificed himself on purpose. Instead of Cap simply failing to save him, he saved Cap by kicking him off the missile.

And I'm sure we'll never see him again...

Red Skull
Boy, this episode is just chock-full of easy characters to adapt. This Red Skull is the epitome of a Nazi supervillain. Always one step ahead, but never succeeding in his evil schemes.

Kang
This is where it gets interesting. In the comics, Kang goes back and forth between being an evil dictator and a shades-of-grey anti-hero. Here, he's clearly the shades-of-grey anti-hero, but his actions will no doubt lead people to believe that he's an evil dictator from the future. That's a pretty brilliant mixture of his two characterizations. Kudos.

Plot
The same old story of Captain America's last adventure told again. But this episode did a good job with combining it with other elements of the series, like the Norse gods, Kang the Conqueror, and a nifty little Wolverine cameo.

I will ask this, though. If Kang knew about Captain America, why wouldn't he know that Cap came back? Wibbly-wobbly, whatever, that's the least of this episode's problems with time.

Censorship
Why no Nazis? Who are you going to offend? The Nazis?

Well, to be fair, the censors did offer the writers a choice of Nazis vs. guns, and the writers chose guns. Still, it seems more than a little disrespectful to the survivors of the actual World War 2, but I guess that's open for interpretation.

You know, Disney? Maybe you shouldn't be so worried about showing Nazis on your channel. Must I remind you?

That ain't Charlie Chaplin.
Don't make me whip out Song of the South.

Anyway, we've got one more of these to do. See you then!

1 comment:

  1. Scott Menville did a great job as Bucky. His portrayal reminded me of his Robin, but he definitely put a new spin on that voice. Steve Blum was also great as Red Skull, he brought a creepiness that don't think any other actor (cartoon or live-action) has been able to fully convey.

    I remember there being even more controversy when this aired because the map showed Hydra coming down from Russia and a few people thought the writers were trying to make Hydra Soviets rather than Nazis. I think it was an honest mistake myself and would have been avoided entirely if they were allowed to just use Nazis in the first place.

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