I went to see Captain America last week. It’s funny how the movie companies are now making prequels before they make the main films now (the main film being The Avengers). Before the movie, I sat outside and sketched local Czech pub Little Prague. I’ve drawn the interior several times now but never really the exterior.

The movie was good fun, a little silly in places, but likeable, not ridiculous, not a made-for-3D ‘thrill ride’. some of the trailers before the movie were clearly such – the new Spiderman for example, coming out next year, looked too slick, too obviously 3D orientated, and lacking the personality of the Tobey Maguire Spidey (whose first two movies were great; the third one was dreadful, largely because it was overblown and too interested on spinning your head around a screen while nothing particularly interesting happened, oh a mid-air fight, oh he’s brushing off concrete blocks like they’re made of polystyrene, oh wow a man made of sand, and as for that stupid dance routine…) (that’s why they rebooted). Other trailers I saw, the new Three Musketeers, apparently back in the 18th century there were flying airship galleons that could do battle mid-air (it always has to be mid-air, doesn’t it? Do they think moviegoers can’t stay awake during ground-level scenes any more?); I’m pretty sure they didn’t have those in the original book, but I haven’t read it. My only reference (and come on, probably yours too) is Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds. Don’t ever try to reboot that, that series was a classic. Another trailer was for some doomsday plague virus movie with an all-star cast (they love those genres, don’t they) Then there was Rise of the Planet of the Apes, looks pretty good, Draco Malfoy is in it, so is the Green Goblin’s son, and William Stryker, and the Trinity Killer, oh and Gollum plays the chimp, Caesar the Geezer. Actually at first I thought it was a reboot of Bigfoot and the Hendersons now that they can reboot). I want to see it, mostly because of that shot of the gorilla jumping into a helicopter from the Golden Gate Bridge. Nice try, bananas, but how are you going to fly that thing?

After all of that, Captain America was quite wholesome and satisfying, with proper leather-jacketed and jack-booted nazi/megalomaniacal villainy, and a quite international team alongside the Cap, a ‘coalition of the willing’ if you like. The feel was not hugely ‘American’ in fact, not so much Captain America, but Team Member America. There are other overly patriotic macho nonsense films, so this didn’t need to be – to its credit, I think, but still surprising given that he is, you know, Captain America.

After the movie, I popped into Little Prague to finish off the last bit of colour in the first drawing, and to draw the sketch below. Didn’t spend too long there doing all the details (I have done that before), but captured the atmosphere.