Genre Essay

The trailer I will be analysing Captain America: The First Avenger. The film came out in 2011 starring Chris Evans as Captain America and Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter as well as many other famous faces. The genre of this film is a Superhero movie.

Ways that we call tell this is a Superhero movie, for starters is when Tommy Lee Jones, who plays Colonel Chester Phillips, says "He will be the first in a new breed of super soldiers", this makes the audience think that this is a superhero movie because of the connotations we have with the word 'Super'.

One of the first shots is after the well know flicking of comic book pages that appears in every Marvel film; as the flicking comes to an end we start to hear a voice over of a speech by Colonel Chester Phillips, saying "Wars are fought with weapons but they are won by men" before there is a medium close up shot of his face. After this we are shown a shot of a fight scene with Steve Rodgers (before her is Captain America) and a man we don't know the name of; during the fight he (Steve Rodgers) holds up a rubbish bin lid as a shield, this is extremely clever to have done this because later on in the trailer, when Captain America is created we see a shot him holding up a real shield which protects him.

The plot, from what I've seen of the trailer, is about a rejected military service man, Steve Rodgers, and how he is will to do anything to go into the military. He gets that chance when Dr. Erskine recruits him for an experiment and he agrees to it. From there it is all about Captain America saving, what I assume is America from an evil villain.

There are typical characters in this film them being; the hero, the main character, Captain America, who is there to save the day and the girl. Then we have Peggy Carter, the girl to be save, the damsel in distress or according to Vladimir Propp, she would be the Princess/Heroine. The role of the 'Princesses Father' would be Colonel Chester Phillips as he seems like the man in charge. The Villain is Johann Schmidt also known by his villain name as 'Red Skull'. The Donor or Mentor in this would be Dr. Erskine as he is the one who provides Steve Rodgers with the body strength/physique to be the 'Hero' and finally the helper would be James Buchanan Barnes, also known by his nickname as 'Bucky'.

The setting of this trailer is during World War One in America but some of it is set in other places when they go to actually go to War.

This Film has a lot of well-known stars such as; Chris Evans who plays Captain America, Tommy Lee Jones who plays Colonel Chester Phillips, Hugo Weaving who plays Johann Smidt/Red Skull, Dominic Cooper who plays Howard Stark, Stanley Tucci who plays Dr. Erskine and Samuel L. Jackson who plays Nick Fury. The Director of the film is Joe Johnston, who has also directed other well-known films like Jurassic Park 3, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and Jumanji.

The iconography in this trailer is the costumes/clothing because it is a superhero movie and we see superhero like clothing, like tight spandex and a mask, which are things that are most associated with superheroes. Something other the costume and clothing for the iconography is weapons as superheroes often have some sort of weapon or prop that they carry around with them, like Thor has his Hammer and Spiderman has his 'spider senses'.

One of the most obvious Binary Oppositions in this trailer is 'Good VS Evil'. Some other Binary Oppositions are: Life VS Death as if Captain America does not defeat the villain, then people are going to die.