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The Verdict

As familiar as the plot elements are, Captain America: The First Avenger comes from a decidedly more commercial origin than the original comic book it was based on. Both the film and the original comic book it’s based on are attempts to tell an interesting story, but whereas the comic book had more of a political agenda, the film is more focused on telling a profitable story.

Whereas the comic book was specifically looking to engage people’s political opinions about the war, politics have become divisive in the modern world in a way that can be very unprofitable. Somewhere near the end of the film, Red Skull tells Captain America that he wants a world without flags. Captain America doesn’t want this and says as much, but in the modern world he emerges into at the end of the film, flags are losing the meaning they used to have, thanks in large part to the emergence of global corporations that are far more powerful than individual world governments.

Marvel itself is now owned by the single largest media conglomerate corporation in the world. (That’s Disney, of course.) Whereas the success of the original character meant increased nationalism and enthusiasm about a war overseas, the success of a new film based on the character will, in some small part, increase the power of a multi-national corporation which sees individual flags as decoration in an increasingly pluralistic corporate world. Judging from opening weekend, the new Captain America film will be big, but in a world where Captain America is part of a ridiculously large catalogue of properties owned by a multinational corporation, his significance is reduced considerably. It’s a small world after all.

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