Hacker Cinema
Captain America
1990 · Film · 97 min
Directed by Albert Pyun
ActionAdventureScience Fiction
During World War II, a brave, patriotic American Soldier undergoes experiments to become a new supersoldier, "Captain America". Racing to Germany to sabotage the rockets of Nazi baddie "Red Skull", Captain America winds up frozen until the 1990s. He reawakens to find that the Red Skull has changed identities and is now planning to kidnap the President of the United States.
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33 comments on Hacker News
I had a more generous reading of the article. Let's say a nerd is an intelligent but introverted person who shies away from the world, focusing their energy on a narrow range of self-centered interests. At the office they work hard decreasing page load speed by 10%, then they go home and play videos games, watch MCU movies, etc.
In the past, this kind of one-dimensional inward-looking person was widely ridiculed as selfish, weak, a moral failure and an embarrassment. Unattractive and uninspiring. Perhaps even a genuine threat to society. Notes from the underground, Ivan Karamazov, Faust, Glass bead game, etc. I was reading 'nerd culture' as the celebration and acceptance of this kind of man in the current zeitgeist.
The point is that the heroes in the MCU stories didn't have to outgrow their nerd phase through virtues like courage, responsibility, duty - instead science made them into men. Peter Parker is bit by a spider, The Hulk got irradiated, Captain America got injected, Tony Stark's invention is a literal shell which superficially turns him into Iron Man and protects him from consequences/reality.
Hemingway travelled to a war zone and got shot - he's the polar opposite of these characters, and a far better example for young men.
RE guilt -> I was actually saying that productivity culture as you describe it has some overlap with nerd culture as OP sees it, and arguing that P.C. is also anti(faux?)-intellectual in the same sense. But yes, I do think that the high esteem those virtues were once held in influenced the lives people chose to live.
I wonder if this could be explained in a similar way to Hollywood movies. If the movies are designed to please the largest group of people, there is a greater chance people will choose to see it than another movie. The human law professors come with their own personalities, beliefs, and opinions that come through in their writing. An LLM has been trained to please the largest swathe of the population. That doesn't mean the answer is better; just like Captain America isn't necessarily better than American Beauty.
Hooo boy. I barely have time for this but...
1) First of all, you're talking about an imaginary universe with a character literally named "Captain America". Just to put this in the right perspective.
2) A single Google would show you that the Middle East often engages (AND has historically engaged) in all of that, and lots of other bad-actordom (please do not tu-quoque me here about the sins of the United States, I know about its meddling consequences). Do you know why? It's because the Quran endorses it. Do you want the quotes they use to justify it to this day? It's the same quotes that the Barbary Pirates quoted at Thomas Jefferson and John Adams when they traveled to Morocco to ask why their peaceful trade ships kept getting attacked... which shocked them... and which ended up in them forming the US Navy. So yes, the US military was literally created to fight the Islamic terrorism of its day. That is not propaganda, that is historical fact. (Source- This is wild, btw, if you weren't aware of it: https://www.masshist.org/publications/adams-papers/index.php/view/ADMS-06-18-02-0115 Find the paragraph that begins with "We took the Liberty...") Just to give you an idea how deep the rabbit hole goes here, and that it's not all just "durr hurr brown people bad" (I mean... that might be some of it, but it's absolutely not ALL of it). In short, the "Middle East trope" was largely earned, not applied... and the US was founded on good principles by good people (who, uh, owned slaves sometimes. Yes, it's complicated. I know.). (Related side note - the Crusades were largely a response to Islamic jihadic conquests. But I digress.)
3) F-35 criticism- No contest. I didn't realize that, actually. And I'm a 4 year USAF vet, so... I should have.
4) Regarding "choice of enemy"... funny story I read about this lately related to that is that the lead designer of the Call of Duty games is having trouble traveling overseas without a security attache because of the enemies he picked in his past games, lol. If you're curious, I can find the link. But the unfortunate truth is that the dramas set up in these media have to have SOME plausible semblance to reality. (I will return to this in a moment.)
5) "Any kind of semblance of "Oh the superhero now mistrusts authority" is there simply to make the actual propgadandized bullshit more palatable and believable" This is not a falsifiable claim, and I'll demonstrate why: A) If the movie depicts the US as flawless, you will see it as propaganda. B) If the movie depicts the US as flawed, you... Also see it as propaganda? See the problem yet? If there are no conditions under which a Marvel movie is not "United States propaganda" to you, then it is not falsifiable, end of story. It also completely misses any satirical elements, which were surely present.
Now, to my last point...
Ich sprech fliessend Deutsch. My mom is from Heidelberg and my dad is from Bremen and they emigrated to the US and I am a firstborn American with some particular German sensitivities that we likely share (couldn't help noticing your gmx.com email address). And so we get to the problem of Every Single US-Produced Historical Videogame using Nazis As The Enemy. Contributes to negative German stereotypes. I feel that. As a US citizen who is also German (100% German ancestry, actually), I want to apologize for that. There's gotta be some part of you that this pains, because it does me. Germans should be known for waaaaay better things they've contributed to the world, than that (Ordnung über alles! lol). So, I'm sorry. Perhaps that fed into some of your rage here. If so, I'd understand... possibly more than most. (I've also been called a Nazi more than once.)
> Meanwhile hollywood will churn out another hundred films about how Captain America would never let something like this happen because murdering innocents is not a line America would ever cross.
FWIW, Captain America's character arc throughout the MCU, at least (which is what I'd assume we mean by "Hollywood"), has largely been to realize that he can't actually trust the government and that not only is the government now corrupt (becoming so during his time skip), but it has always been just as bad: the "good government" he believed in from WWII was propaganda, it turned out SHIELD was a so deeply infiltrated with enemy spies that it was effectively an arm of HYDRA... even the UN's attempts at diplomacy inherently result in moral compromises that he refuses to accept, and, by the end, he ended up as a fugitive. I think you'd be hard pressed to watch these movies and think that Captain America's existence demonstrates that America would never cross such lines.
Yeah, people underestimate how hard it is to get a movie into a theatre AND get people to pay for a ticket.
Hollywood can barely get any well made movies past $100 million these days unless it's based on some well known franchise (minecraft, Captain America, Snow White) or it has some well known actor.
Depends how broadly you define it.
America literally produces movies about "Captain America", a heroic do-gooder who has superhuman strength, speed and endurance and who wears a flag as an outfit. In these movies he saves the entire planet. America spends like a hundred million dollars every year on that alone.
I think people have different thresholds to watching violence, and there's a spectrum from cartoon violence to street fights to war footage. My mom doesn't like to see punching, even in cartoon form. I enjoy everything as long as it's consensual, fair, and well compensated (so not street fights).
The most common preference is somewhere between a Captain America movie and a John Wick movie, I think.
Folks who can't stand to see real violence wish it just didn't happen, the way I wish street fights didn't happen. But you're not gonna get anywhere offering what an MMA fan understand as an inferior product. And the MMA fans know there's karate and wrestling and BJJ to watch, they just aren't as interested in it.
I don't try to rationalize it much. I know most people, especially in the circles I'm in, can't stand to look at it. I don't mind that.
The idea that society has moved past the need for violent spectacle or something just doesn't work for me, because I enjoy the sport. And plenty of other people do, too
Fighters for the most part are going to do what will make them the most money. If the fans are there for knockouts, they're gonna go for knockouts. If BJJ tournaments offered the same money making opportunities that MMA does, a bunch of fighters would very happily switch
Either you are living under a rock, are being purposely obtuse, or support the politics being pushed so you either do not see it or just willfully ignore it.
>There was no campaign speech to elect Biden in the latest Captain America
This is just a stupid statement
>I don't recall anything overtly political in most modern movies.
Snow White, Indian Jones 5, Just about Every Marvel Movie Past infinity War, 2 of the 3 Star Wars Films in the new Trilogy, The Little Mermaid... Shall I go on?
It is more pronounced in TV Shows however, She Hulk, Season 2 and 3 of Witcher, Rings of Power, etc etc etc
>So what exact "narratives" is everyone complaining about?
For starters [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPE7-PRL0M8
This that just just the tip of the ice berg...
Political narrative? Can we get even more vague? That's what I was getting at: People complain about movies and their "political narratives" and "political objectives" but nobody wants to mention specific narratives or objectives, and why they object to them. I don't recall anything overtly political in most modern movies. There was no campaign speech to elect Biden in the latest Captain America. So what exact "narratives" is everyone complaining about? Be specific.
EDIT: Looks like replier reached for personal attacks, so this thread has unfortunately derailed into flamewar :( Hitting the eject button.
Everyone getting angry at Netflix but not the real source of all the problems; the suit&tie media execs who are forcing these companies to shake their hands for exclusive deals, and pocketing fat wads of cash from these contracts.
Even before streaming, this has always been an issue and it ties in with the ludicrous amounts of money paid to movie stars, the cost of which is carried onto us consumers; and yet people blame movie theatres for the ludicrous prices, how fucking shortsighted - do people even think at all?
Why the hell is RDJ making 40M for a Captain America movie? Why is Will Smith being paid 40M for King Richard? Why Did Johnny Depp get a 35M wad for Pirates?
Sure these actors are all skilled professionals, but do we honestly believe those amounts are okay? It's clearly all of our collective, consumer faults at the end of the day; story of human history.
I gave a bunch of examples. I can give many more.
A middle aged woman who said I had to be lying about being vegetarian because she couldn't believe it was possible for humans.
A coworker who insisted it was impossible to speed up some code in a daily standup, for me to come back to on the next stand up and announce I had sped it up from 15 minutes to 0.2 seconds.
Basically every time I hear the cliché "common sense", the claim being made is somewhere between totally wrong or just misleading in various situations.
My mum was a firm believer in homeopathy, Bach flower remedies, magic of crystals, called herself a Catholic, and had a statue of (IIRC) Vishnu with her collection of books on how to tell your fortune with viking rune stones.
At one point her dislike of "chemicals" came up, so my brother and I riffed on the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide for a bit; she was engaged with the list of issues until we told her what that is, and never took on board the lesson that "one atom away from being bleach" means "is not bleach".
I was exactly the right age for Wakefield's claims about the MMR vaccine to convince me not to get it, and I only got around to doing the sensible thing several years after he was struck off the UK medical register and (if I understand right) downgraded from Doctor to Mr.
Compare what the British public as a whole say about Boris Johnson with what specifically the members of the Conservative Party say about him.
One of my friends in middle school was completely convinced that all gay men hospitalised each other from every sexual act.
I vastly overestimated my German language skills when I first got here, and my self-estimate of my skill level hasn't changed no matter how much better I get.
My brother was convinced that Captain America was the first MCU film to be released.
My father took several years to realise Google search results had a scroll bar and it wasn't just the top 3 that fitted onto his 640x480 screen. (He became a software developer almost as early as was possible, so that wasn't merely a case "old person can't use computer", unlike my gran who held the mouse at 90 degrees and expected it to still move as if she hadn't).
He also believed that water drained in particular directions due to the Coriolis effect, thanks to (what he didn't realise was) a magic trick performed somewhere near the equator some time when he visited Kenya.
Someone who got on a train from somewhere in London to Liverpool Lime St instead of to Liverpool Street station, and who only dared ask me when we'd arrive as we were half way through the country.
Every exam question I ever get wrong, every personality I misjudge, every scam I fall for, every troll I am baited by… even a few April Fool's jokes I didn't realise were jokes until years later.
I know the LLMs aren't human, but that specific flaw of "can be wrong without realising it, can be convinced by nonsense"? That flaw is very human.
It can't cringe over its mistakes like we can, so at least we've still got that.
Seems like a stretch. There have been many characters using the name Captain Marvel, male and female.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Marvel_(Marvel_Comics)
Miles morales is a different person. He is not Black Peter Parker. They coexist in context dead or alive or across universes or whatever.
If you watch a marvel movie you’ll see it’s mostly character drama, not superhero theatrics. The superhero alias is not the character.
The MCU captain America is currently the Falcon, a black guy, who is objectively much weaker (not a super soldier or powered in any way. He does have fancy flying tech but they’ve tried to convey that he’s clearly inferior). One of the more nuanced and better MCU entries directly addressing the inherent supremacist nature of superhero culture and the cultural implications of just switching the race of a cultural icon. Imo, those are actually important relevant themes to drudge through. They’re not forced woke ideas forced upon people. It’s very problematic if you can’t explore such ideas without criticism for trying to do so rather than critical responses to the ideas themselves.
There are players under 6ft, but not 5ft 3in players.
It is not a hard cutoff, but the probability of success with a certain height can decrease exponentially as height decreases.
Kevin Hart is not a leading actor either, he is the comic relief. In the movies I have seen, Dwayne Johnson is the lead actor. For example, Kevin Hart would not be Captain America, or even Black Panther. In fact, I think one of the Captain America movies showed the guy being short before he was enhanced and turned into Captain America.
You would not be able to sell a 5ft 3in actor as the fantasy escape for who people who want to fantasize about who they could be or the leader they would have.
> I've definitely noticed an overlap between the kinds of folks who want society to embrace and normalize violence against "Nazis"...
C'mon. Beating up and killing Nazis has been a core part of American culture for 80 years or so. Comics, video games, movies. Is Inglorious Basterds anti-conservative? Is Captain America?
Not for nothing, Everything Everywhere All at Once was produced by the Russo brothers who directed Avengers Infinity Wars, Endgame and Captain America movies. Also Michelle Yeoh is a pretty huge star both here and in China. Just saying it's not exactly an indie film. But it was original, for sure.
I don't engage with purchasable wearables (or super hero movies) but I do like the Captain America example buried in this post. A more practical offering like the choice to pay a tiny fee to unlock a few supplementary scenes about a character's back story while streaming something seems like an inevitability - unless I'm missing something and it's already been done?
> A character who is put down, becomes angry, then becomes powerful and carries that anger forward.
But... that's the opposite of what happens. It is addressing this exact concept and doing something different. He's literally asking to fight like a gentleman.
The dialogue in this scene is literally "can you keep your emotions in check long enough to take me on, or will it get the better of you?" And she rejects his cliche premise entirely as a false dichotomy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KK1Kv0IzUg
male centric story telling often uses combat ability as a metaphor for personal growth. Usually with literal dialogue or reflections on moral lessons used to emphasize this relationship with the tide of battle turning when the lesson is made clear.
I thought it was great to show that, while captain marvel's growth arc is not acquisition of strength but in deriving her self worth from herself rather than from her officer.
I agree it will be hard to make more captain marvel movies because there's very little that can challenge her, unless they're willing to make a movie without a significant violent conflict. Not easy.
Captain america is a great character concept too. I liked the falcon's series dissection of it. He's explicitly not a supremacist, while acknowledging the ease with which his circumstances could allow that- and do create that within other superheroes.
Dick Tracy might have been the best comic book film of the 90s; I thought it was quite well done, and where it failed it mostly failed by being true to its source material.
What is its competition; Judge Dredd? Captain America(1990)? The 90s Batman sequels? Now that I wrote this, I realize Blade was also a comic originally, but I liked Tracy better.
The American flag planting on the moon is one of the single most iconic and culturally significant events in American history, ever.
The movie is based off of a book written by an American.
The movie was directed by an American.
The movie was produced by an American.
For the movie to exclude this without it being a deliberate decision would be an oversight or coincidence beyond reasonable belief.
Yes, American flags appear in other movies. Captain America is a fictional character in a fictional universe. Use of the American flag in that context is not in the least bit comparable to the first time humans stepped foot on solid ground that wasn't named Earth.
The moon landing was also an iconic benchmark for world civilization as whole. Given that we have concrete knowledge of China forcing studios and actors to parrot China's values, it is certainly plausible that China did not want the crowning moment of this iconic human achievement to prominently feature America at that moment.
It's also plausible that foreign sentiment against the US at that time--not just from China-- was also a factor.
It is also possible the film creators wanted to present the moment as an achievement for all of civilization, without a focus on the US in particular.
But given the history, book, director, and importance for the US, I absolutely believe it was deliberate, and as such people upset about it do not represent a manufactured controversy. If you grew up during the height of the Cold War and the arms race with Russia and watched the moon landing, or have heard--as I have-- stories from my parents and grand parents how much that gave them hope during a very dark time, you also might be a little upset that your country's role had been erased in the crowning moment.
Captain America is generally about the conflict between patriotism and government loyalty. For a superhero movie, I'd say it's more thematically interesting than most. Government != political though.
Eh, depends on the lens you're looking through.
Some would say a movie with a hero named Captain America who is literally wearing a flag is clearly political - even if in terms of plot and message the film is disneyfied and chinese-film-censor-approved.
Lots of iceberg above the water, very little below.
In comparison, Full Metal Jacket doesn't have a hero dressed in a flag - but oooooh boy does it have a message about the experience and nature of war.
Why would you not read it?
As you dive deeper into Nazi era history a lot is based around the question who knew what, how plausible the denial of that person or this organisation was. Seeing the publicly distributed book that may or may not contain specific details regarding plans for war or "The Jewish Question" for yourself is an excellent starting point, no? I agree with other commenters here that the read was not particularly good, but definitely insightful.
I actually do not agree that banning symbols is bad: Especially the Nazis really had a hand for designing good looking stuff, and that will bleed into pop culture if you don't stop it, unconsciously associating the Nazis with "cool". Just look at the Hydra organisation in the Captain America Movies or Japanese Anime, where using Nazi design language was obviously not taboo. Of course, as you said, banning a symbol does not eradicate it, but it does not have to to have positive effect.
>, yet we (well, at least you) accept it from China. Why?
because it's not my job to tell China how to run their country. This is mostly a distinction without a difference anyway because the Chinese would obviously not enjoy watching a lot of movies in which they're the bad guy and Captain America saves the day.
It's like if you make a movie that insults the Prophet Muhammad a lot of Muslims won't like it, and neither will a bunch of autocratic governments, but it doesn't really make much difference in practice. If one of said countries was on their way to become the world's largest economy that'd probably be reflected in film production over time.
The real issue here is that global consumption now more closely reflects the actual demographics of the globalised economy, which means if producers want to serve all those markets they'll have to be more sensitive to different audiences or regulations.
It's like French radio stations demanding that a quarter of all lyrics be in French. If that was a 20 trillion dollar economy you bet a lot of musicians would make more French songs
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My point was that they would not have been impossible without CGI. All four of those movies could have been made prior to the mid-80s, with different technology. I chose Rogue One and Jungle Book because one comes from a family of movies that excelled in practical effects, optical compositing, and modeling and the other has a version which was made in the 1940s.
Decades ago, Finding Dory would have been hand animated (though, even that had moved begun moving to computers in the late 80s). I haven't seen Captain America, but I would guess similar types of movies existed before hand (the 80s and early 90s are full of over the top action movies and practical effects; some of which still hold up today).
Visual story telling doesn't require CGI. It might be the most pragmatic way to do things now (due to time, cost, complexity, etc.), but it's not the _only_ way.
Some 3D theaters are great, the IMAX ones tend to be the best because the projection equipment is top-notch, but others are really awful. The picture's dim.
Some 3D movies are great, like Avatar that actually shot things using 3D cameras. In other movies, like Captain America, they add the 3D in post and it looks like garbage. I appreciate a 3D movie done well, but too many are half-assed.
The real problem for me is if I can't see it in IMAX I'd rather see a film in not-3D but because the theaters have a hefty 3D surcharge, they're not interested in running the 2D version. I'm paying a ridiculous tax for something I don't even want, and I have no options other than going way out of my way to avoid it.
Maybe you like everything in 3D. That's fine. There are a lot of people that don't care for it and yet are forced into paying for it for lack of options.
There was a Captain America movie about this sort of thing.
It was: but the actors (and possibly others) weren't told that. As Red Letter Media says in their review, it actually tries and has some competence... just no budget. http://redlettermedia.com/best-of-the-worst-supergirl-captain-america-1990-and-roger-cormans-fantastic-four/ (worth watching just to see the insanely bad Supergirl movie get torn to shreds).
The throwaway line about 80s movies is wrong. There was a Punisher movie released in 1989, starring Dolph Lundgren(!):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Punisher_%281989_film%29
There was also a 1990 Captain America movie:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_America_%281990_film%29
(Which wouldn't technically be a contradiction, but the spirit of the line is that they weren't making movies then, not that they released the movie they made shortly after)
How about a comeback of 1990s style action movies like: Die Hard, Air Force One, Beverly Hills Cop, Lethal Weapon, etc.
Instead Sony plans new movies like Captain America, Avenger, Ants Man. They milk the Marvel brand to death. Sad and boring.
I actually find that eyes burning and watering is more of a problem with prolonged exposure to stereograms, although I get that with 3D movies using glasses too.
A while back, I watched Captain America in side by side mode on my computer. Only problem was that in SBS they put the left eye on the left and the right on the right. To view that as a stereogram would require "wall-eyed" vergence, which is basically impossible to do beyond a certain angular distance - I'd have had to watch it all tiny. So as an experiment in perceptual adaptation, I watched the whole movie cross-eyed, so that I perceived the depth as inverted.
It wasn't really enough time for full perceptual adaptation, although by the end of it, I basically found that my brain had stopped paying attention to dept whatsoever unless I consciously thought about it.
Anyway the point is that at the end, I let my eyes slide back into their normal state, and they burned for a while after like they were dry, but they didn't ache at all.
That said, I have spent a ludicrous amount of time in my life setting my vergence to values outside of the manufacturer's recommended range. So my results may not be typical.
I hope their use of imagery from the Captain America movie is covered under fair use or derivative work.
http://comicbookmarks.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/detail-6.jpg
Somehow I suspect that the transporter and warp drive won't fall that easily, but I admit you never know :)
The tech level in Captain America was all over the place, which is deserving of a rant in itself, but suffice to say it was the most annoying part of that movie to me.