Captain America: The First Avenger (Joe Johnston)
Craptain Ameroids vs. Colonel von Eczemann, the fight of the century! I have to say up front I actually liked this film, and I'm sure that has more than a little to do with the 1940s setting, captured in all its USO glitz, sentimentality, and optimistic escapism. It's cheese, but it's a vintage cheese with a certain aroma, not a mass-produced cheddar on a supermarket shelf. The actors are well cast, Chris Evans, Hayley Atwell, Hugo Weaving, and Tommy Lee Jones make for a formidable quartet with fine chemistry, and the always good Toby Jones plays his sly weasel character with aplomb. The action is intense, helped by the increase of on screen violence and blood compared with previous MCU titles, which lends it the genuine air of a war movie, yet the tonal balance is not lost, and the film maintains its hopeful 1940s naivete all the while. It also helps that the action sequences aren't shot like a small earthquake is going off on set.
The first part of the film deals to some degree with heightism and in a fairly realistic way, as Steve Rogers is routinely picked on by men and ignored by women due to his short stature. His courage and integrity do not falter through all the harsh treatment he is given, but ultimately of course the solution is to grow a foot taller and get #swole. I am fairly short myself, and while I don't have a problem with the eventual transformation from skinny little dweeb to tall muscular hero, I did find Steve Rogers' situation at the start of the film very familiar and it would be nice to see the initial situation examined a little bit more seriously instead of being used as joke fodder. That said, Captain America: The First Avenger is the best MCU entry I've seen so far, the bar was not particularly high (no pun intended), but this far exceeds previous Marvel efforts for sure. Given that so much of what I liked about the film was tied up in the alternate history 1940s setting, the cheesy veneer and hokey optimism of the era it depicts, I feel like it might be the peak of the franchise for me.