There's a moment in Captain America: The First Avenger that exemplifies why Steve Rogers has the right stuff. Rogers, a "90lb asthmatic", is in boot camp when Tommy Lee Jones' Colonel Chester Phillips tosses a dummy grenade at the recruits to test their mettle. Everyone ducks for cover, except Steve, who selflessly throws his scrawny body over the explosive device in the face of certain death, his only concern that those around him reach safety. That's Captain America.
Welcome to Road to Doomsday, GamesRadar+'s weekly MCU rewatch series. Over 15 weeks, we'll be revisiting each Marvel movie and TV show on Disney's list of essential movies to watch ahead of Avengers: Doomsday, sharing our thoughts upon rewatching and deciphering what we can learn about the next Marvel mega-event from each entry. Why not relive some MCU highlights and watch along with us? We'll be back next Friday with The Avengers. But first, Steve Rogers goes to war…
Revisiting The First Avenger after 15 years and 33 subsequent MCU movies is a surreal experience. The First Avenger was always supposed to evoke rollicking, patriotic wartime action-adventure movies, like Where Eagles Dare or The Guns of Navarone. But the extent to which it feels like a throwback to another era, even compared to its Phase One MCU statemates, is striking.
Sure, Skinny Steve – a cutting-edge effect at the time – doesn't always hold up as well as you might hope. But that's not what I'm talking about. More than any other Marvel movie, The First Avenger feels like a relic of a time not too long ago when popcorn blockbusters were lovingly handcrafted, morally direct, and charmingly earnest. As Doomsday is dinged across the four corners of the internet for its sludge-brown environments, The First Avenger deserves props for its gorgeous tactile sets, impressive prosthetic Red Skull, and stirring Alan Silvestri score.
Red scare
In recent years, Marvel has put increasing importance on the idea that its characters must speak to a contemporary audience (confronting personal trauma being a major theme in both Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Thunderbolts* is evidence of that), but The First Avenger keeps things black and white: Hydra super-Nazis bad, Cap-led Allied forces good. This is perfectly in keeping with Steve Rogers as a character – a Boy Scout whose one transgression in The First Avenger is to kiss Natalie Dormer (who wouldn't?) After a decade-and-a-half of flawed heroes and misunderstood villains, it almost feels refreshing.
To this day, it's Marvel's most sincere movie by some distance, and perfectly establishes Steve Rogers as the MCU's unshakeable pillar of uncomplicated heroism.
Director Joe Johnston was a smart choice; the veteran filmmaker lends the period movie a classical feel closer to his '90s steampunk adventure movie The Rocketeer than anything else in the MCU before or since. Even the movie's direct sequels – The Winter Soldier and Civil War – are far murkier and more complicated affairs that put Steve's beliefs to the test as much as his superhuman abilities. The First Avenger is a better movie for its simplicity and warm sense of humor that never punches down and doesn't contain a shred of Stark snark, despite Tony's dad, Howard, enjoyably figuring into the story.
To this day, it's Marvel's most sincere movie by some distance, and perfectly establishes Steve Rogers as the MCU's unshakeable pillar of uncomplicated heroism. The first hour is near-perfect superhero myth-making, as the little guy from the Bronx is, by some miracle, given the tools to fight back against bullies. The wider MCU connections are elegantly woven in, and never feel heavy-handed. It's only after Cap properly suits up for the first time that the film stumbles (though his WW2 uniform is still the best Rogers has ever looked), with a little too much repetitive derring-do and action that feels quaint, especially compared to what's come since. The number of tall things Rogers bounds over during The First Avenger borders on the absurd.
Bucky's abrupt 'death' doesn't hit the way it should either, but their relationship here resonates more because of what comes after, particularly in The Winter Soldier. And it's a shame more was never made of the Red Skull in the MCU. Hugo Weaving famously was not a fan of the makeup process, and didn't even return for the Red Skull's appearances in Avengers: Endgame (where he was played by Ross Marquand), but Weaving hams it up in an outrageously enjoyable way; like Loki, he really shouldn't have been a one-and-done villain.
The last dance
So why is Captain America: The First Avenger on Marvel's essential watch list in the run-up to Avengers: Doomsday, and not The Winter Soldier or Civil War? The obvious answer is Peggy Carter. It was revealed at SDCC 2026 that Hayley Atwell will return in Avengers: Doomsday, almost certainly as Peggy and not Captain Britain, who was bisected by Wanda in Multiverse of Madness (much to Atwell's chagrin). Peggy is the mother of Steve's child, seen in the very first Doomsday teaser, and you can bet Steve's family is a big part of the reason why he returns from multiversal retirement to fight in Doomsday.
There's a fun bit of foreshadowing in The First Avenger's opening sequence. In a church in Norway, Red Skull locates the Tesseract – the jewel of Odin's treasure room – behind a carving of a snake on a mural of Yggdrasil, the tree that connects the Nine Realms. Of course, since then, Loki has become the God of Stories by sitting on the throne at the base of Yggdrasil. We also know from Thor: Ragnarok that Loki liked to turn into a snake to play pranks on his brother, Thor. Could that snake actually be a representation of Loki Laufeyson?
Peggy and Steve's relationship is at the beating heart of The First Avenger and, for my money, it's still the MCU's defining love story. Like Brief Encounter, just with more vibranium shields, Peggy and Steve's romance is so touching because it's (mostly) unrequited and ends on a desperately sad note. Infinity War gives it a run for its money, but for my money, Marvel has yet to beat the final stretch of The First Avenger. Steve and Peggy's anguished farewell, discussing date logistics while Cap crash-lands in another act of noble self-sacrifice, is an emotional sledgehammer. And has any MCU movie had a better final line than "I had a date"?
It's such an important relationship that the entire Infinity Saga ends on the pair finally reuniting in another time and place for the final shot of Avengers: Endgame. For all the attention on Robert Downey Jr. returning in a new guise, you can bet that the Russos and Doomsday screenwriter Stephen McFeely (who penned every mainline Steve Rogers movie and both Infinity War and Endgame) aren't going to underserve their main man.
Of course, I'm concerned about Evans returning as Nomad in Doomsday. The somewhat underwhelming glimpses of Steve in the trailer so far haven't exactly instilled confidence either. Part of me wishes they'd leave him be, happy at home with Peggy. He had the perfect happy ending; why risk ruining that? But The First Avenger establishes Steve Rogers as the moral center of the MCU, and he might just be the hero the flailing Marvel Universe needs right now. Who can blame them for not wanting to forge ahead without him?
Captain America: The First Avenger is streaming now on Disney Plus. Avengers: Doomsday releases in theaters on December 18.
Look ahead with our list of upcoming Marvel movies, and remind yourself where The First Avenger fits in with our Marvel timeline. See you next week as we revisit The Avengers.
