CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR - Perpetual Motion Machine

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Directors: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo
Writers: Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely
Cast: Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr., Sebastian Stan, Scarlett Johansson, Chadwick Boseman, Daniel Bruhl, Anthony Mackie, Don Cheadle, Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Jeremy Renner, Emily VanCamp, William Hurt, Paul Rudd, Tom Holland, Frank Grillo, Martin Freeman, Marisa Tomei, John Kani, John Slattery, Hope Davis
Runtime: 147 mins.
2016

In the month since the release of Captain America: Civil War, I have been trying to parse my feelings about the film. I've always been a sucker for comic book cinema, ever since I was weaned on Sam Raimi's Spider-Man movies,* but as I've become more discerning and my tastes have shifted, I've grown less and less comfortable with easy bankable formulas. In fact, my adoration of nerd culture in general has soured for reasons I'd prefer not to get into here.

*Spider-Man 1 + 2 still being the best pieces of superhero cinema in existence, with a sideward nod to The Dark Knight.

Over the years I've frequently pushed to redefine the arbitrary boundaries of what is fit to be included in discussions about art and academia to include certain "vulgar genre fiction" properties. I've tried to rally against biases folks have towards superhero fiction, children's movies, animation, speculative fiction, and so on. It's not about the surface level signifiers; it's about being able to meet a story on its own terms.

That being said, I've also had to flip that script on myself and confront my own delusions about properties that I wanted so badly to adore. 2012 was a watershed year for me; I had to face the one-two punch of The Amazing Spider-Man and The Dark Knight Rises, both movies that I wanted to love so badly that I was blinded to their myriad flaws. In both cases, my wake-up call came in the form of my favorite film critic, Film Crit Hulk, who wrote eye-opening screeds against both of these films. Here they are, if you're interested.

Film Crit Hulk Smash: THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN HAS 99 PROBLEMS BUT AN UNCLE BEN AIN'T ONE

Film Crit Hulk Smash: HULK VS. THE DARK KNIGHT RISES

CAPTAIN AMERICA: Cap Gun

In the weeks leading up to Marvel's next blockbuster juggernaut, Captain America: Civil War, we will be looking at every cinematic iteration of those two warring rapscallions, Captain America and Iron Man.

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Directors: Elmer Clifton, John English
Writers: Royal K. Cole, Ronald Davidson, Basil Dickey, Jesse Duffy, Harry L. Fraser, Grant Nelson, Joseph F. Poland
Cast: Dick Purcell, Lorna Gray, Lionel Atwill
Runtime: 244 mins. (25 min. premier and fourteen 15 min. episodes)
1944

The first and most perplexing thing to note about the 1944 Captain America serial is that it has absolutely nothing to do with Captain America. When I learned about the serial's existence, I was fully anticipating a propaganda-heavy war story, especially considering the time in which it was made and released. Instead, we get the story of Grant Gardner, a District Attorney who occasionally dresses up in a red white and blue costume to fight bad guys. Sometimes he doesn't dress up though, and it's just Grant Gardner fighting them. Also, Captain America doesn't have a shield and just wastes people with his pistol. Seriously, Gardner and Captain America rack up quite an impressive body count over the course of this serial, a fact that none of the authorities seem at all concerned about.

To top it all off, Captain America doesn't seem to have any powers, and, hilariously, he just drives around in a regular car. Unsurprisingly, Timely Comics (to become Marvel Comics in the 1960s) was unhappy with Republic's blatant gutting of their character, but Republic's response was basically, "None of that stuff was in the sample pages you sent us, plus we're in production already." Film historians think Republic just pasted the Captain America likeness over a pre-existing project they had in the pipe. Thus Captain America's first onscreen appearance is aggressively non-canonical.

That doesn't make it bad, though. The serial follows Captain America's pursuit of mysterious criminal The Scarab over a 25-minute premier and fourteen 15-minute episodes. In classic cliffhanger serial fashion, each episode ends with Cap in grave danger, to be resolved in the next chapter. These serials are considered to be cinema, but structurally they're really more like proto-television.