With the utter bombardment of super hero movies in the past decade, nearly every major character from the Marvel and DC universes has had a screen adaptation and possibly several sequels, but there has been one major oversight in all that time. Perhaps his invitation was lost in the mail, or it just slipped our minds, but Captain America is hurt that his chance to come to the party has been so overdue. Now that “Captain America: The First Avenger” has arrived, Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, gets to show us why his shield throwing is much better than claw slashing, web-slinging, or hulk smashing.

Movies about super heroes do not have do be penned by Shakespeare himself, but they do need to stand out a little bit if they are going to gain or keep my attention. “Captain America: The First Avenger” is a very bland, by-the-numbers super hero movie. The action scenes are very generic. The music consists of loud, fast-paced tones when there is a conflict on screen and softer, subtle tones when the scene is calm. The dialogue is as forgettable as the characters that spoke it. In fact, the actors (of which there are a number of big names in this movie) are so unremarkable, they could easily be replaced with other people and I would not have thought twice about it. “Ladies and gentleman, tonight the role of Captain America will be played by Colin Firth.”

A major issue I had with this movie was that there was no story arc or character development. Steve Rogers is the same guy in the beginning as he is at the end. The villain Red Skull wants to destroy the world for some reason that is never really addressed. I never even found out why he wears a mask that makes him look like Hugo Weaving! The little plot that there is for this movie is little more than a guy with a red face wants to destroy the world, but a guy dressed in blue wants to stop him. They fight. The movie ends.

I do give credit to ”Captain America: The First Avenger” for having really good special effects, particularly with mapping a CG Cris Evans head to a thin body. You spend a decent chunk of the movie with this short, skinny character and it’s important that head doesn’t look completely unnatural. I know Chris Evans is not that puny in real life, but I did manage to believe for a short while that he could be.

Maybe this movie could have used a different script or maybe I’ve just seen too many super hero movies over the years, but I was very unimpressed with “Captain America: The First Avenger.” Nearly every aspect of this movie felt more like it came from a mold, and less like it was created. Unless you’re just looking for something to do, I’d skip this sadly uninspired super hero movie.