Nit and Tev finally got out of the house to see the movie. It gets the Tahalshia Double Seal of Approval!
A few thoughts:
Steve's attempts to enlist are part of the same thing that keeps him from staying down when the movie-theatre bully was beating on him: he doesn't give up. This is the core of who Steve Rogers is, a man who will not give up. Even during the fight with Red Skull, this is repeated, as Cap says 'he can do this all day'.
Thus, when we see Roger's soldier training, he is the one at the back of the pack, struggling to keep up, but not giving up and not backing down even when the 'bully' is taunting him. Still, how he managed to get the flag off the pole just showed no grunt ever thought of that trick before.
We all saw the grenade trick in the trailer, but its the scene afterward, where Dr Erskine is having a drink with Rogers the night before that I felt was the important one. The history of Red Skull sets up how the serum ramps everything, body and mind and soul. I do not think the serum would ever have been usable mass-production, even if Erskine lived, just because of that effect on the mind.
Two little things about the Brooklyn lab made me smile. I have (somewhere) a graphic novel reprint of the Best of Captain America. In the Origin comic is a little old lady in an antique shop hiding a secret base, just as we saw in the movie. She has a machine gun, and tries to stop Erskine's killer as he runs away. I don't think he killed her in the comic, but it was a great Easter Egg. The other is the 'save the little boy' subversion, where the kid looks up and say "don't worry! I can swim!" Most other hero-films would have the kid needing rescued, so again, nice touch.
Agent Carter. Damn, honey, I wish I had your skills. She obviously spent a LOT of time at gun practice. I wish they'd gotten their dance... and I wonder how long she lived after that. She'd be in her 90s.
The US Bonds tour. *sigh* Well, it was a great tribute to the big 1940s musical era, and the war movies were as gung-ho as anything else produced at the time. While painfully cheesy, you had to admire the choreography. And the girls in short skirts. (Did anyone notice in the end credits one of the fighter planes had nose-art of one of the dancers?) Still, Rogers was right to think of himself as a performing monkey.
The comic books we see the kids and soldiers reading I didn't get a good glimpse of, but I'd not be surprised if they copied actual 1940s Captain America covers.
Now, while Rogers did get called a 'chorus girl' by our dear gruff Colonel, I thought I heard a hidden message there. Reverse-psychology from the Colonel? He gave Rogers all the info to get to Hydra base, all but dared Rogers to go out and try it himself. Or am I reading too much into that? It was clear the Colonel wasn't happy to see the Senator using 'his' supersoldier to sell bonds, and it was clear that Rogers was willing to go do the mission himself, hell or high water.
Bucky and the Howling Commandos were fantastic. Yes, there was a Japanese-American added ("I'm from Fresno"), but he wasn't there as a token, he was just as good a soldier as the rest of them. Even the "token Black Dude" wasn't just for show, he spoke and read German and French. The massive montage of Cap & the Howling Commandos taking out Hydra ops was simply beautiful. The teamwork was spot-on, and it was clear the Commandos were just as determined as their Captain. The various ways to kill a tank made me grin (even if one tank was a Fuckin' Bolo!!!).
However... Bucky. He wasn't just off being tortured; Zola was experimenting on him. Red Skull makes a off-hand comment to Zola that leads me to think Zola was also trying to remake the SuperSerum, just as the US was trying with Cap's blood. Bucky was improving very quickly as they ran out of the building. Almost like he was healing.
We never see a body for Bucky, and we know cold and ice put Steve in suspended animation.... (go look up "Winter Soldier")
Hydra's SuperTech was Cobra-level scary, and it was nearly all based on real Nazi prototypes and plans, and in movie all ran by BATTERIES. (ok, super batteries powered by a Tesseract, but still batteries.)
The fuckin' huge tank Nit tells me is 'just' a KingTiger, a tank that the Nazis did make a prototype for but was too huge for 1940s tech to make it actually MOVE. Doesn't mean I didn't call it a 'fuckin' Bolo' when I first saw it on-screen.
The smaller Tanks I swear are stolen from Cobra's H.I.S.S. mini-tanks. Same body shape, about the same size and duty (light, fast tank)
The prop-bombs are the scariest. It was clear they were suicide missions for the pilots, thus the toast given to them by Red Skull before Cap's arrival. It was a self-propelled, user-guided WMD.
The flying wing was just amazing. We still have problems getting ours to fly right without computer stabilization, and they aren't nearly as big inside as this one. The momentary gravity loss as they plunge was a very nice touch.
But now is the REAL trick. Red Skull touching the Tesseract, and we see a wormhole form (Bifrost, as per Thor movie). The Red Skull de-rezzing, then a beam fired up into the wormhole, but not up the actual BiFrost Bridge. I think we just saw the Red Skull find one of Loki's "hidden paths" that he bragged to Heimdal about.
As the Skull said so himself to Hitler's men: You call it Magic, I call it Science. Paraphrasing Thor, who said much the same thing in his own movie. That "Odin's Gem" was hidden in Norway, in an ancient cathedral carved with Norse Mythology, inside the image of Jormandr.... makes one think, doesn't it?
SideNote:
The DoubleDate at Stark's World Expo was great. The artificial man on display may be a lead-in to The Vision, or could be another old Hero the Red Tornado who was also a robot/android.
While it wasn't the IronMan entrance, Stark Sr. also knew how to play the crowds. The anti-grav car was sweet while it lasted ("I did say a few years..."). I would like to see Cap ask Tony "Where's the flying Car?" in the Avengers movie. After all, the Avengers do have several in the comics, to carry those who can't fly.