Is it Time for Another Captain America?
Posted on March 23, 2010 at 4:19 pm
This week’s announcement that Chris Evans (“The Fantastic Four”) will star in a new “Captain America” movie makes this the right moment to think about the history and meaning of the character. Never as iconic and popular as Superman or Batman, Captain America’s status has risen and fallen according to the political sentiments of the era. Unsurprisingly, he first appeared at a time of the most vibrant patriotism, the beginning of WWII. The character was Steve Rogers, a sickly young man who was given an experimental Super-Soldier Serum and “Vita-Ray” treatment that made him very strong and healthy in order to aid the United States war effort. His costume was inspired by the American flag. He has no superpowers but he carries a red, white, and blue indestructible shield. Captain America was often portrayed as fighting for the Allies and he was Marvel’s most popular hero during the war. 
But his popularity waned in the Cold War era. His explicit Americanism did not fit either the complacence and materialism of the 1950’s or the Cold War concerns. He disappeared from comics until 1964. Interestingly, a character who appeared to be Captain America was featured in a comic book story starring the Fantastic Four’s Johnny Storm (also played by Evans on screen). But that character turned out to be a villain in disguise. The unabashed pro-Americanism of the character did not fit well with the turbulence of the 1960’s and Captain America himself became so disillusioned with the government following Watergate that he took on another persona for a while. In another episode he led a protest against government oppression of superheroes that was a commentary on infringement of civil rights. The character has had many different iterations and the Steve Rogers alter ego has died and been brought back and been in suspended animation and been brought back as the Captain America identity has shifted as well for a while being taken over by Roger’s one-time sidekick. There is also a black Captain America named Isaiah Bradley, whose origin was explicitly inspired by the real-life Tuskegee experiments. He was injected with the serum before Rogers.
Chris Evans was one of the best things about the uneven “Fantastic Four” movies and I look forward to seeing where he takes this character.
). And as voice talent, he has George Clooney and Meryl Streep, whose smooth, subtle performances lend emotional grounding to balance Anderson’s clever but claustrophobic tendencies.
Bachelor mountain men brothers capture young women from the town one winter so they can marry them. An avalanche blocks off the pass and keeps their families from coming after them. But the women are furious and banish the men to the barn — until spring thaw, when everyone comes outside to enjoy the weather and sing Johnny Mercer’s lyrics: “Oh, the barnyard is busy in a regular tizzy, And the obvious reason is because of the season. Ma Nature’s lyrical, with her yearly miracle. Spring, Spring, Spring.”
The only Rodgers and Hammerstein show written directly for the screen takes place at the end of the summer, but it has one of the greatest songs ever written about spring, the Oscar-winning “It Might as Well Be Spring.” The lovely Jeanne Crain sings, “I am starry eyed and vaguely discontented, like a nightingale without a song to sing, O why should I have spring fever, when it isn’t even spring.”
One of the sweetest love stories in the movies is about a merry young woman who falls for a man who has lost his memory. They get married and are very happy until he regains his memory and goes back to his old life, no longer able to remember her or their life together. A lot more happens over many years, and the final scene takes place by the lilacs on a spring day that shows us — and the couple — all we need to know about renewal.
Four girls leave their snowy college campus for spring break in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It was considered very racy back in 1960 for its discussion of premarital sex (including one character who pays a very heavy penalty for having sex with a boy she barely knows) but is something of an artifact these days. Still the performances by Dolores Hart (who later became a nun), Jim Hutton, and Paula Prentiss and the themes of finding a way to balance intimacy and self-respect still hold up. 
“Nearly everybody gets twitter-patted in the springtime,” says the owl in this animated Disney classic about the young fawn. The spring scenes are among the most enchanting in a woodland story about young animals growing up. (NOTE: some scary scenes including a forest fire and a hunter who shoots the deer)
An isolated Buddhist monastery sits on a quiet lake in the middle of a forest, where one monk and his very young apprentice live a life of quiet prayer and contemplation. The film takes us through the seasons of the younger man’s life, from childhood through old age, with the final spring as a time of renewal, the now-old monk teaching his own young apprentice about life’s cycles and interconnections. 
Alan Alda wrote and directed a film that takes four couples through a year to the music of Vivaldi. It begins with a spring trip to the country, when they cook an elaborate dinner and plan the rest of their trips together for the rest of the year. But one couple breaks up and the husband wants to bring his new young girlfriend, it leads to some mid-life questions about meaning, trust, and loyalty. Alda’s wise script and sensitive direction and outstanding performances from Carol Burnett, Len Cariou, Jack Weston, and Rita Moreno make this one of the best films ever about grown-up friendship.