I grabbed the chance on opening weekend and was a little disappointed - not in the movie necessarily but in the turn out at the box office. I admit I watched the film at an odd hour, meaning not the peak time for movie goers to line up at the theater. None-the-less, I couldn't help notice that by and large those assembled for the screening were "older" - not your typical young crowd that the Marvel super hero movies seem to attract, making me wonder if the Cap - my all time favorite super hero as a kid - just isn't as popular anymore with the young crowd, not like Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.) or Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) or even DC's Batman (Christian Bale) or, for Heaven's sake, evil hero The Joker (the late Heath Ledger).
What's the world coming to? Admittedly, American patriotism is not exactly at an all time high (thanx to the idiots in American politics - and I do mean all of them), plus this new Cap movie is actually a period piece set in the early 1940s. Still, in a day when Superman is denouncing his U.S. citizenship to appeal to an apparent "New World Order" crowd and in the latest X-Men movie the characters are getting younger instead of older (I assume to impress the younger crowd), one must wonder what has gone wrong to dampen the enthusiasm for America's greatest hero of all time? Am I just that old and outdated?
I must be. Most of the other theater patrons were older (like me) and the crowd was rather sparse to say the least. That's not to say the other screenings weren't packed. Maybe the movie will do well by the end of the weekend when the final box office numbers come in. Still, it has me worried. I caught the movie at an early release party on Wednesday night - in spite of being "under the weather" - yet I still enjoyed the movie greatly.
It doesn't help that the film is being released a week after the final Potter thriller and a week before Spielberg's Cowboys & Aliens - a tough sandwich when you're in the middle. And Marvel didn't give the movie as much promotional play as they typically do, like for the recent Thor flick and X-Men First Class. Add to that the difficultly of trying to make a quality movie about such a dynamic super hero and it makes the chances for a successful Captain America film difficult at best.
For what it's worth, the producers did a pretty good job with the film and it was well worth the ticket price to see my favorite shield-wielder in action. If you miss it you will have missed a good flick - nuff said.
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