OK, it's time for the first movie I've picked, the one that is chronologically first from WWII: Captain America The First Avenger. I'll work on condensing my thoughts as I go along, but this is everything that was running through my mind!
· SHIELD finds the HYDRA ship. It's a good thing that the Lieutenant is a Captain America fan enough to recognize the shield. Too bad it wasn't Coulson.
· HYDRA invades the very same Norwegian town that will become New Asgard
· I love Red Skull’s car; I’m glad it ends it up in the Void driven by Pyro
· Why did Odin let such a powerful item like the Tesseract stay on Earth? And so easily found? We later find out it’s an Infinity Stone in a glass cube
· “While the Fuhrer digs for trinkets in the dessert.” A Raiders of the Lost Ark reference?
· SKINNY STEVE! The effect is still a little Uncanny Valley but looks decent enough. That same Skinny Steve in another Multiverse pilots an Iron Man-like battle armor (see Captain Carter below). I gotta ask though: How much longer would Skinny Steve lasted in WWII Homefront New York? He was asthmatic and had a host of other afflictions. Would he have lasted if he got a letter from Col. Phillips saying Bucky died? One more thing: "I can do this all day..."
· AND BUCKY! Notice how Bucky throws away the paper the same way Steve will throw away the flag pole parts
· How’s Bucky a Sergeant already? And in the same unit as Steve’s dad?
· Stark Expo 1943 in the same location in New York
· The Human Torch android
· It’s Clara from Doctor Who!
· Stark introduces the flying car that he will later perfect a few years later in Agent Carter and with Lola (Phil Coulson’s car)
· Don’t want to bring you down, but watching in the flying car audience is the person that will eventually kill Howard Stark and his wife some 50 years later
· What did happen to Gilmore Hodge? Is there a variant out there that has him as a bully Captain America?
· Peggy Carter and Colonel Phillips. Tommy Lee Jones is effortless as a commanding officer, a soldier. Hayley Atwell is brilliant as Carter and would occupy the roll for years to come
· Camp Lehigh: a location that will see Steve break into twice in the future and the birthplace of Ms. Marvel
· The Super-Soldier Serum enhances what’s inside: Red Skull becomes more deranged and deformed, Steve, Bucky and Isiah Bradley become the ultimate soldiers, John Walker and Emil Blonsky both go mean and crazy for a bit but becomes better, etc
· Steve gets the Serum, but I also can’t stop thinking about Peggy getting the serum in What If and becoming Captain Carter (another variant makes it to the Illuminati in Multiverse of Madness
· “Go get him, I can swim!”
· Love that song, “The Star-Spangled Man with a Plan!” It’s catchy in a WWII Looney Tunes-era kinda way
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· She-Hulk stated that Steve had sex with a girl during the USO tour during this time. Could it have been with the same actress who would later play Star-Lord’s mom, making Peter Quill Cap’s grandson?
· The Dancing Monkey page would later be on Steve’s desk in Civil War. Guess somebody saved it
· Oddly enough: who would get Bucky's KIA letter? He was an orphan, right? Would it have been an empty apartment belonging to one Steve Rogers?
· Guess for his first time jumping out of an airplane, Steve used a parachute
· Arnim Zola’s experiments with Bucky was how Bucky survived the fall, losing his arm and going into some kind of cryogenic sleep for a few years until HYDRA found him again. Over the decades, they must have put a chemistry set into that guy, including their version of a Super Soldier Serum
· Also, Cap is doing what Isiah Bradley did – freeing POW’s, gathering intel and weapons – but Cap is rewarded for it and Isiah is punished
· It’s the Howling Commandos, complete with a Fresno-born grandfather of a New York High School Principal and you can also add a future SHIELD agent – Tripp from Agents of SHIELD
· Guess the Serum gave Steve a photographic memory
· I would have liked to see the prototype shields with the electromagnets in action. Also, where did Howard get the Vibranium and turn it into a circular shield?
· Oh look, it’s Natalie Dormer
· Agent Carter in RED. As my friend Riotkitty mentioned at the time, where was she hiding ALL THAT?
· Captain America’s compass. Somehow the picture inside survived the ice and defrosting intact
· The Howling Commandos have a HYDRA Enigma machine
· Coney Island Cyclone, the same one Spidey hangs from at the end of Homecoming
· Zola captured, not given to the Swiss, but held as a captive of the SSR until Operation Paperclip
· I never saw him as continuing HYDRA’s good works but becoming the “second head” within SHIELD
· Like The Flash, Cap can’t get drunk
· Evidently, Cap’s motorcycle survived getting blown up: it was rebuilt from the exploded pieces or it’s a replica in the Smithsonian
· The Valkyrie (we’ll see one of the namesakes in Thor a few years later) has a long-ass runway
· “YOU COULD HAVE THE POWER OF THE GODS!” Actually Steve did when he had Thor’s Hammer Mjolnir and controlled lightning to fight Thanos. Also, did Red Skull forsee Cap forgoing his shield and patriotic uniform to fight as Nomad during the Infinity War timeframe?
· Damaging the Tesseract opened a Bifrost and sucked Red Skull into outer space! There must have been some cosmic intelligence that transported Skull onto another planet (Vormir) and become a nearly all powerful judge of whatever creature found their way there to get the Soul Stone. Red Skull had to be beaten down to cure him of his wanting world dominance, add to the fact he deliberately had no one to sacrifice, add to that he had one Infinity Stone in his hand but was traded to another one for over 70 years? Is Red Skull free now that the Stones have been time traveled back to where they should be and are now destroyed?
· A bitter love story ending for Steve and Peggy, a scene that has been played over and again in the Agent Carter series and One-Shot. By the way, the Stork Club was real – it was a dance club located in Manhattan for over 50 years and was popular with servicemen and celebrities. They probably played It’s Been a Long Long Time many times!
· SHIELD got one of their agents to dress up in WWII\SSR attire and visit Steve in his “recovery room.” The actress Amanda Righetti (she was great and gorgeous in The Mentalist TV show) wanted to make sure Steve’s mental capacity was still there after being frozen for 70 years – hence the repeat baseball game and the fake room
· Speaking of the repeat baseball game: the May 21st, 1941 game that had the (then) Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Phillies with a grand slam
· Cap runs out into modern Times Square with billboards for Mama Mia, True Crime ID and Eclipse gum.
· Best Post-Credit scene ever setting up the Avengers
