There is so much “business” that the fourth big comic-book movie adaptation of the summer has to take care of that frankly, it’s astounding that director Joe “Jumanji” Johnston is able to take care of it all, and with style.
“Captain America” has to connect this World War II-era hero to modern times. The movie has to tie into all the other Marvel comic-book movies that are part of “The Avengers,” because as the title implies, the good captain is “The First Avenger.” It has to deliver the origin myth — how Captain America was born out of a “super soldier” experiment during WWII. The film has to back-engineer its way into the meeting between the Captain (Chris Evans) and the Avenger leader we know as Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and give us a credible version of future Iron Man Tony Stark’s inventor dad, Howard Stark.
And it has to be fun.
It is. The fourth comic-book movie of the summer is the best comic-book movie of the summer. Johnston has delivered a light, clever and deftly balanced adventure picture with real lump-in-the-throat nostalgia, with Nazis — who make the best villains — and with loving references to “Star Wars” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”
The movie’s first trick was turning hunky Chris Evans (“Fantastic Four,” “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World”) into what the ads in the back of comic books used to call “a 98-pound weakling.” They digitally “Benjamin Button” the guy into Steve Rogers, scrawny shrimp. But with World War II in full fury, Rogers is determined to serve his country, even if that country’s military rejects him as “4F,” unfit physically. He signs up for a special unit to be turned, thanks to a serum by Dr. Erskine (Stanley Tucci, in a kitschy accent), into super soldiers.