Captain America: The First Avenger

Rated: PG-13 (combat violence and a villain with scary red skin)

Does Tommy Lee Jones bring his own writers to the movies? At some point toward the end of “Captain America,’’ the Army colonel he plays gets some interrogation time with a runty Nazi scientist (Toby Jones, no conceivable relation). “You’re trying to intimidate me,’’ says the scientist. “I bought you dinner,’’ replies the colonel. Only he doesn’t simply say it. He performs it with all the brusque, macho, indolent comic authority that we recognize as “Tommy Lee Jones.’’ This is what the ongoing onslaught of comic book movies lacks: stars. Real stars. Robert Downey Jr. is the exception when he should be the rule. It’s possible we take these movies for granted because the marketing tells us we should.

Honestly, it’s the only way to find yourself sitting in “Captain America,’’ which was never a very good comic book, and as the Marvel Universe expanded into allegories for every -ism coursing through, combusting, and corroding American society in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, the series’s patriotic derring-do seemed defensively old fashioned. But Marvel’s movie division now has plans for an “Avengers’’ film, which will comprise Captain America, Thor, the Hulk, and Iron Man.

It was touching, the sight of a packed house sitting through the closing credits expecting the customary Easter egg, which here is a peek at what the next film will hold. The studio issued only a cynical title card announcing that Captain America will appear in “The Avengers’’ (the subtitle is “The First Avenger’’). People booed, but the whole movie is a long Easter egg, needlessly filmed in miserable-looking 3-D. (Remove your glasses occasionally and see how bright the snowscapes should be.)