Dread Pirate Roberts
I loved the beginning and middle of Captain America... but really hated the Red Skull. "I vill take over da wurhld! Hahaha!"...

As in, not for one second did I believe that he could have. He was too snidely whiplash.




I really wish they would've gone politically incorrect and just had him fighting real relic-hunting Nazis instead.

WHO WANTS DESSERT
The first half of Captain America was a lot of fun, but once Red Skull takes of his mask the thing gets awful. I'm not the type of person who thinks that every adaptation ever would work better as a HBO miniseries, but when you condense 99% of WWII into a montage after the first half of the movie was all about letting the characters breathe and building things you've kind of fucked up on the pacing.

IrishWhiskey
Same thing happened in the Iron Man movie. Someone had the sense to let the characters breathe so the audience could learn their motivations and care about them. Then there's a kickass scene where the hero goes into the real world battlefield to use their power to do the things which actually motivated them (disarming terrorists/winning World War II).

At which point someone realized "Oh crap, we're most of the way through the movie and the heroes are fighting real world conflicts essential to their character and backstory instead of CGI monsters. Quick, abandon the other stuff and throw in Warmonger/Red Skull. Then instead bringing closure to the story use the ending to set up the next Marvel movie."

StanleyPain
He's a comic book hero who fights supervillains. What was the movie supposed to be about? Captain America doing battle with Rommel in North Africa?

takewithfood
My problem with the film was that Cap and the Red Skull weren't actually opposed to each other in the story. Cap's story was initially about his drive to do his duty and serve in the military despite his physical shortcomings; the Red Skull's goal was global domination via the Tesseract. The two don't really interfere with each other directly, only sort of coincidentally. Even when Dr. Erksine, Cap's mentor figure, is assassinated, he doesn't become particularly bent on revenge or anything. He only goes up against Hydra to save Bucky, and even after BUCKY dies, the mission just becomes about stopping the bombings of major cities.

By the time Cap and Red Skull face off, we have absolutely no reason go give a fuck. There is nothing at all between them, they are merely inconvenient to one another, with each sort of in the other's way. A super hero is really only as good as his villains, and that is not how you write and set up a villain.

Cap is incredibly likeable and so I loved the first half of the movie where he struggles to achieve his goal of serving in the military, but once he rescues Bucky and the rest of the shockingly racially diverse POWs, to me, the story is over.

Cherry Pop Culture
I'm not one for comic book movie adaptions. It's not my favorite movie, but was a fun and pleasant surprise. I'm just thankful it didn't go the dark and edgy route.

IrishWhiskey
Stanley: The montage of the Captain and his squad fighting Nazi military bases (albeit Hydra ones), seems to be one of people's favorite scenes. Similarly the action scene where Iron Man takes down conventional terrorists and military forces is more exciting than the robot battles that follow.

That said, the main problem is what takemyfood referred to. Both characters are strongly motivated in pursuit of a goal in the first 2/3 of the movie that relates to character development, and then a villain comes along to distract them from that goal. It's like if we spent most of the Spiderman movie watching Peter track down his uncle's killer, then just when he'd found him, Doc Oc shows up to pick a fight and end the movie.

GQ
ORIGINALLY that was the case, but then he got hit by his "Dust of Death", which while he had an immunity to it to prevent death, caused his skin to contract so tightly his head now looked like a red skull

duck&cover
How come in the movies he always comes pre-deformed, from a botched super-soldier formula?

Binro the Heretic
And I seem to recall him being a contemporary Hitler worshiper, not actually being around at the time Hitler was in power.

Meh, whatever. He was played by Hugo Weaving, which more than makes up for whatever hash they made of the continuity.

Bort
It's more complicated than that. Originally Johann Shmidt was a normal guy in a skull mask, but he died ... only to have his mind transfered to a clone of Captain America's body. It was that clone-body that got the Dust of Death.*

That's what the story used to be anyway; it's possible some of that has been knocked out of continuity.

By the way, here's the guy who did the mind transfering:

http://www.marveldirectory.com/individuals/a/arnimzola.htm



*: As revealed in Captain America #350. -- Bloviatin' Bort

Bort
Johann Shmidt was not only a contemporary of Hitler, he was trained by Hitler himself. One time in a Berlin hotel, Hitler was boasting that he could turn even the lowly bellhop (Shmidt) into an icon of fear, and that's how he got his start.

Camonk
Thanks, Bort, for saving me a trip to Wikipedia! I been dodging work lately by reading about Marvel comics on the wikipedia. That way I can avoid Mark Millar's turgid, godawful writing but still bask in how stupid comics are.

Bort
There's an interesting tic about Captain America: British writers (such as Millar) don't get the character at all, and any time you see Captain America behaving like a bully or acting like a closed-minded nationalist or approving of torture, you may rest assured it's a Brit who is doing the writing.

So yes, avoiding Millar is a wise strategy in general, but it's doubly wise where Captain America is concerned.