You have to admire Marvel’s long game.

Here is a studio that made five films just so they could make a sixth. More remarkably, it made them well. Iron Man is considered among the genre’s best, which is praise indeed for an undertaking once dismissed as little more than an extended prelude to The Avengers. In a year that has already brought us the surprisingly accomplished Thor, we now have Captain America as the final piece of the puzzle, and the second of the more troublesome origin stories to be dealt with.

That trouble is in the imagery. Captain America shares with Superman the curse of being fundamentally dorky. While their Stars-and-Stripes aesthetic make them ideally suited to the comic book medium, that same symbolism is what ultimately lends the err of ridiculousness from which their films often struggle to recover. In costume, Steve Rodgers is just such a hyper-stylised piece of Americana. Out of it, not so much. Born in 1920s Brooklyn, his arrival into adulthood coincided with America’s first tentative steps into war. While his friend Bucky made preparations for the big jump, Rogers’ was benched by a 4F stamp on his enrolment paperwork. Four of them, in fact. “You’d be ineligible on your asthma alone”, the doctor informs him, kind enough to forego mention of his weighing not a bit over 100lbs.

It’s only during his fifth attempt that someone finally takes notice. Dr Abraham Erskine, thick German accent, looks over a pair of round glasses. “Do you want to kill Nazis?”, he asks. Dewy-eyed, Rogers takes a breath. “I don’t want to kill anybody, I just don’t like bullies”, he replies, reciting the little known fifth verse of the Star-Spangled Banner. All that remains is to make of him a hero. For that, the tenuous connections of the Marvel universe conspire to place Tony Stark Snr at the controls of a mighty experiment, part Six Million Dollar Man, part The Fly.

The film is at its best when exploring the crass-commercialism of its origin: revealing how, his creator dead, Rogers is considered fit only for a travelling band of patriotic dancers charged with rallying support for war-bonds. It’s there that he meets a young intelligence officer by the name of Peggy, to whom he laments “for the longest time I dreamt about coming overseas and serving my country. I finally got everything I wanted, and I’m wearing tights”. It’s a meet-cute for sure, included presumably because all such stories must have one. It’s more muted than most: he can’t dance, she doesn’t have a partner for the ball, and that’s your lot. Well geez, come on: the Captain is far too busy fighting them there Nazis to have time for any floozyin’ dames.

The Krauts in question form a landing party in deepest Norway, led by the commanding Johann Schmidt. Naturally, his obsession lies not with purity or race, but the Covenant; that great cinematic MacGuffin that all Nazis believe to be the source of untold power. Schmidt’s plans for it are suitably dastardly (“His target is… everywhere“, reveals an informant), the central menace in a film that borrows liberally from Sky Captain, Hellboy, and even Rocketeer. It is also rather fantastical; more so than Thor, even. Physics have no place here. Captain America may not be a Norse God, but he might as well be for the scant limitations placed upon him: all too happy to throw himself out of, into, and onto planes, trains and any other near-death experience he can find. He approaches his fights with a similar gusto, which – in a genre built upon the wanton sacrifices of anonymous redshirts – offers the frankly liberating sight of a superhero who acknowledges that expendability with every swing of his shield.

Captain America often strays closer to the misfiring comic-book movies of the 90s than it might like, thanks in part to the least likely supervillain since Nuclear Man. Chewing the scenery remains Hugo Weaving’s modus operandi, and this is another role in support of his having become synonymous with grandstanding villainy of our time; never more than a moment from unleashing that broad maniacal grin, or succumbing to outright megalomania. In embracing those characteristics and pushing them to the fore, he is arguably better suited to the role than the franchise, one which – even at their most outlandish – Marvel seemed more eager to keep grounded than is otherwise demonstrated here.

If considered as little more than a final dash to the Avengers finish line, Captain America works well enough in endearing us to a character known almost entirely for his patriotic garb. Prior to its release, few would have know his real name, which would undoubtedly have suited our most modest of creations. A war-bond superhero, dashing and brave. America, glory be thy name.