Captain America (1990) Matt Salinger, Ronnit Cox, Ned Beatty

[Trekker4747]

Captain America (1990) Matt Salinger, Ronnie Cox, Ned Beatty

Okay I went to a comic-themed convention locally Saturday evening, never been to one before so my buddy and I thought it'd be cool. I got a Bryan E. Ward drawing of Doctor House (it looks cool, and I like the show) I met, briefly, Alaina Huffman and got her signature (unfortunately in hind sight I should have gotten it on a photo of her rather than on the Smallville promo material I got it on. I may get it framed in a two-picture frame one side being this signed promo piece the other a photo of her (really, none of the photos she had there of her were something I wanted.)

Anyway, that's all beside the point as I also got a couple of bootleg DVDs. One of The Holiday Special and the other of the 1990 Captain America movie.

This thing is another in a long line of "Awesomely Bad" movies that must be seen. If you've never seen it the movie is a laugh riot my buddy and I watched it and were riffing on it like no one's business. My slim knowledge of CA's origins tells me that it -more or less- gets his origins right (soldier tested with super-soldier serum, ends up fighting a bad guy (in this movie Red Skull) gets strapped to a rocket that CA is "somehow" able to get to miss its intended target in LA and instead has it crash in extreme Northern Alaska where CA is frozen for nearly fifty years before being discovered and thawed out in contemporary times. The rest of the movie is, blah.

I may take a stab at writing up a recap of this movie (in the same vain as The Agony Booth) and link or post it here, but anyway I'm sure others have seen it so let us discuss it's special brand of terrible!

 

[Gaith]

io9 recently reported that the director is working on a new cut and a legitimate dvd release.

 

[DWF]

The target of the missile was the White House, how it got to the White House and then to Alaska is beyond me. But the movie did have some big names in it, the writer though just didn't like the Captain America outfit.

 

[OsmiumJohnnycake]

Doesn't this film have Cap wearing a mask that covers his real ears but has a pair of flesh-colored fake plastic ears on it? It has been a long time since I've seen it.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs8rFsmhNTc[/yt]

Ah, 1970s TV:

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exLO3zKa69Q&feature=related[/yt]

 

[Trekker4747]

The target of the missile was the White House, how it got to the White House and then to Alaska is beyond me. But the movie did have some big names in it, the writer though just didn't like the Captain America outfit.

Yeah, the missile is fired off from Italy (I think) towards D.C. (probably a 4,000 or 5,000 mile trip) Cap "somehow" kicks the missile out of it's path (at the last minute none-the-less) and it continues on for another 4,000 miles or so to get to Northern Alaska. May, those Italian Nazis really knew how to make their missiles! How is it we lost the technology for missiles with an 8,000 mile range in the last 50 years.

And I do not like Ronnie Cox playing such a nice guy. As a president he's still pretty much a little boy and he calls his best friend to tell him about the "return of that superhero" he saw 50 years earlier when he was in his across-the-street-from-The White House hotel room. Where he tried to take a picture of The White House with an anachronistic camera.

 

[Aldo]

When I was a kid this movie got a lot of airtime on the movie channels of the day. So I ended up watching it quite a bit, and you know what? I liked it. Sure it's nothing great but it was another superhero movie and back then I was less stingy when it came to movies of this type.

I haven't seen it in ages, and I doubt I'd enjoy it now, but as a kid, it was alright to me. Only problem I had with it was Cap was barely in his outfit, seemed a little odd to me to have a movie about Captain America and have him out of his suit for most of the movie.

 

[OsmiumJohnnycake]

Ah, 1970s TV:

Oh man, Reb Brown from such classics as Yor: Hunter from the Future and Strike Commando made a couple of 1970s Captain America movies? Somehow this fact eluded me all these years. I am excited about these.

 

[Trekker4747]

Yeah, the costume is stupid and it's not even given a great introduction either. We go from the scene of him wanting to go stop the missile directly to him in the plane, in a flight suit over the costume. We see some of it under the suit and he pretty much says, "This costume is dumb." and then the project-leader guy says, "Yeah, but the designer liked red, white and blue; so...."

And, ugh, those stupid rubber ears, ugh. Don't get me started on them! What the hell were they thinking, there's no way they could've thought that they could have pulled that off. I've read that it was done because having the actor's real ears through the latex of the suit was comfortable or something. Surely a better solution could have been found?

But, nope, instead we've got these dumb, really fake looking, ears on the side of his damn head. Hell, why did he need any ears on it? Overall the old-age make-up isn't too bad I mean they make the girlfriend look good in the old-age makeup when he runs into her in 1990 the "creature makeup" on Redskull looks pretty good, but those ears? GOD!

I also love how we're not really told why the shield is special, or why he needs it. If I recall in the comics the shield is an allow of Vibranium and Adamantium in the movie it's just a "special" shield he happens to have.

Now, I need to get a copy of the DTV movie featuring Reb "David Ryder/Blast Hardcheese/Punch Rockgrind/Bob Johnson" Brown.

 

[Christopher]

And I do not like Ronnie Cox playing such a nice guy.

For much of his career, playing nice guys was all he did. Then he got cast wildly against type in RoboCop and made such a strong impression as a villain that it totally reversed his typecasting.

 

[Trekker4747]

Unfortunately I only know him from Robocop, Total Recall and maybe one or two others where he as a bad guy (usually a corporate asshole) and, hell, even his role in TNG wasn't entirely as a good guy.

 

[Aldo]

Unfortunately I only know him from Robocop, Total Recall and maybe one or two others where he as a bad guy (usually a corporate asshole) and, hell, even his role in TNG wasn't entirely as a good guy.

Never seen Beverly Hills Cop? In the first two films he played a really good guy. In fact (outside of Robocop) I'm not sure I've seen Ronny Cox in a villainous role.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I will always remember him as the dad in "Apples Way"

 

[Trekker4747]

Unfortunately I only know him from Robocop, Total Recall and maybe one or two others where he as a bad guy (usually a corporate asshole) and, hell, even his role in TNG wasn't entirely as a good guy.

Never seen Beverly Hills Cop? In the first two films he played a really good guy. In fact (outside of Robocop) I'm not sure I've seen Ronny Cox in a villainous role.

Ah! Yeah, he was the "good" head of the LAPD in the Beverly Hills Cop movies, wasn't he? But even then he was a pretty straight-laced, serious man and not the childish, gushing, goofball we see in Captain America. And, let's face it, he plays the corporate asshole far better.

 

[the G-man]

I will always remember him as the dad in "Apples Way"

Me too. As others have pointed out, it wasn't until RoboCop that he started playing bad guys.

 

[A beaker full of death]

Oh good. Another thread devoted to bashing this film. If this were a popular film this would be considered trolling.
This film gets the costume and story right (except for the Red Skull being Italian. I never got that. He looks badass, though). Sadly, the lead is weak and the production values non-existent.
The costume looks great; far better than that monstrosity they're spending millions on now. And as for the ears -- not only did I never notice before someone from this board said so, I STILL don't see it.

But hey, bashing a movie with no digital effects (and, indeed, no budget) is kewl. Carry on.

 

[JoeZhang]

Oh good. Another thread devoted to bashing this film.

Because it is dire.

If this were a popular film this would be considered trolling.

This isn't rocket science... it's not popular because... it's crap! We can see it in the context of its production values and come to that conclusion.

 

[Trekker4747]

The costume looks great; far better than that monstrosity they're spending millions on now. And as for the ears -- not only did I never notice before someone from this board said so, I STILL don't see it.

I, personally, wasn't greatly impressed with the costume it made no sense and looked out of place given his intended place(s) of operation. And, really, you didn't see the ears? For most of the movie they're either cast in shadow or not clearly shot or the camera isn't on them very long but there's a shot fairly late in the movie (I believe after he puts on the suit in present-day) where it's obvious. The rubber/latex quality of the ears is about as good as the old-age makeup used on the girlfriend. Which, as I said above, is decent for the time the movie was made in put full-face covering on an actor is worlds different than two ears stuck on the side of someone's head where his face is his natural skin. The ears stand out.

he movie is picked on because of some over-the-top acting, some under-the-bottom acting, terrible cinematography and a weak plot. Does CA do anything in this movie that makes him seem heroic? His very first mission he fails at. Sure the missile misses D.C. but mostly by luck. If Red Skull had been a little more competent he would've just killed CA right there and fired the missile off (not having to worry about possibly messing up its flight characteristics by strapping a man to it.) When Caps is thawed (somehow) in modern times in modern times he simply gets up and walks away. Now, sure, this is mostly what happens in the comics but the suspension of disbelief is a bit more forgiving in comics. (It's this point I wonder how they'll handle in the new movie.)

He then does nothing much heroic for the entire movie, not even putting on the costume until near the end. Which, sure, he needs to make an emotional journey but even that isn't very good and poorly done. And when he is fighting all he does is throw his shield. Wow. Awesome.

Sorry, the movie is corny as hell.

But hey, bashing a movie with no digital effects (and, indeed, no budget) is kewl. Carry on.

Bashing this movie has nothing to do with its lack of digital effects or lack of budget, people commonly praise movies lacking in both all of the time. "District 9" was very well regarded considering it had a limited budget. (But, okay, good effects.) Superman: The Movie had a fairly small budger and limited effects and it's very lauded by Superman fans.

So the bashing on this movie has nothing to do with it's lack of budget or lack of special effects it's picked on because it's a bad movie with no story worth investing in, terrible acting, a hero who gets out-heroed by an aging politician, a hero who abandons people in the middle of nowhere and steals their car, and story that really makes not a whole heck of a lot of sense and is filled with holes. (Near the end why is the President suddenly talking with/interacting with the girl in the familiar?)

Sorry, it's a shitty movie. Simple as that. It's possible to make a good movie with no effects or production budget with mediocre actors but the director has to have the ability to make the most out of it. This? This did not happen.

I mean, "somehow" Captain America walks from extreme Northern Alaska to a more temperate area of Canada seemingly in the time it takes Red Skull to send his League of Babes from Italy to that same part of Canada! The movie makes no damn sense. Red Skull activates a giant nuclear bomb at the end of the movie, is somehow charmed? Distracted? By the tape of his parents' death/his kidnapping allowing CA to knock Red Skull into the sea. The bomb? The huge nuclear bomb that was going to make most Europe uninhabitable for a couple of centuries? What happened to that? Did we turn it off? We see the timer count-down to "1" and then.... nothing happens.

The movie was just plain stupid, period.

 

[Admiral2]

Re: Captain America (1990) Matt Salinger, Ronnie Cox, Ned Beatty

I'm not gonna rag on the movie cause the producers - Golan and Globus - were experts at making half-budgeted movies that I found entertaining and I want to cut'em some slack. (Delta Force ruled!)

Also, I am reluctant to diss any movie with Ronny Cox in it 'cause Ronny Cox is THE MAN!

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

The costume looks great; far better than that monstrosity they're spending millions on now.

No; the 1990 costume looks silly and cheap and the 2011 one looks great. It gets about as close to looking like something that a human being might actually choose or have some reason to wear as any outfit so silly in conception could.

You know, I don't care how "faithful" a comic book costume is if, when rendered onscreen, it looks completely and implausibly dumb. Captain America's costume is one that does. So, for that matter, would the original Thor outfit.

And BTW - this movie isn't being judged as bad in hindsight. It bombed in 1990 because it was bad, and the perspective of time has worked no miracles for it.