All along, my hopes for Captain America haven’t been too high because they hired Joe Johnston to direct it, but this newly-released fight scene clip (aptly titled “Shield Fight”) might be enough to give us false hope for another day. The music is cheesy and overdone and ridiculous, and the Nazis seem to be shooting plasma guns for some reason, but the lack of shaky-cam is promising. And if you’re some kind of bullsh*t liberal arts major, there’s probably a thesis to be written about the symbolism of the personifaction of America running around kicking the sh*t out of everyone with a shield. “WHAT? I’M JUST DEFENDING MYSELF!”

Oh, and what was up with the guy who gets hit in the chest with the shield who falls forward? That thing must be made out of the same material as the bullet that killed Kennedy. And by Kennedy I mean JFK, not the MTV VJ. She of course died of dysentery.

[More clips available at IGN]

THIS WEEK IN POSTERS: I didn’t get a chance to do This Week in Posters in last week’s holiday-shortened week, so today’s is a DOUBLE GALLERY! OOH WHA-AH AH-AH! Click on for Muppets, Captain America, Danny McBride, and more.

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES: As Brendon writes on our aloof older-brother site, WWTDD, “I guess it shows Gotham crumbling because of something the bad guys did. But I don’t feel sorry for them because when they built their cities buildings into the shape of a bat, they had to know that would be bad luck.” I can’t sum it up any better than that, but I will say that Chris Nolan could Twitpic a shot of one of his dumps that vaguely resembled a bat and people would be tattooing it on themselves. People reeeeeally like batman, I guess I’m trying to say. The trailer is supposed to hit later this week, so expect mass hysteria, even if it’s just a still shot with titles over it.

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With 11 days until the release of Captain America: The First Avenger, Paramount Pictures knows comic book aficionados are starving for sneak previews, so they released a slew of images recently. Captain America, of course, tells us the story of Steve Rogers, a runty nerd that grew tired of life stuffing him into lockers, so he let the U.S. Government BALCO his puny ass into a super soldier with the agreement that he kick some Nazi ass.

From what the images reveal, Chris Evans, playing the titular ass kicker, makes serious faces like, “Hey government lady, I’m Captain America” and Hugo Weaving, who plays Red Skull, is all like, “Scowl, I’m a Nazi!” Pretty intense stuff. Luckily, I was smart enough to realize that if you print the images out and flip through them quickly, it’s like you’re actually watching the movie. So I can now offer this exclusive first review of Captain America – It’s a mess. Seriously, it’s all over the place. One second he’s a tiny dude and then he’s all jacked and then Red Skull has a red face but then he has normal skin and an ice cube.

It’s pretty confusing so check it out for yourself.

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Captain America is probably going to suck, but at least now it has a trailer and poster that will help you pretend it won’t for a few minutes.  The most solid trailer to date, this one shows how it was that the CGI weakling Chris Evans (a 90-pound asthmatic) came to be recruited into Operation Steroids Are Awesome by America’s foremost big-titted scientist (not to be confused with Blake Lively, America’s foremost big-titted test pilot). Sgt. Von Spectacles, Stanley Tucci, tells Drill Instructor McPockmark, Tommy Lee Jones, that the qualities he’s looking for are “more than physical,” the same lie I’m constantly telling Match.com. That’s when he throws a fake grenade on the ground and Chris Evans immediately dives on it like a Jersey Shore castmember (I’m sorry. So very sorry.). After that, he’s in. Then they shoot him full of ‘roids and shave his chest, and all the chicks’ panties get moist while Tool plays. USA! USA! USA! (*points foam #1 finger, helicopters penis*)

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THIS WEEK IN POSTERS: This week, we’ve got some Conan the Barbarian, a buttload of Harry Potter, and just enough Spanish Smurfs to keep things spicy.  Shall we? Are you ready to let your clicking finger take you on a journey of magic and discovery?  I know I am.

The Three Musketeers (landscape crop above, full poster here; source = Yahoo).  I know I spend an inordinate amount of space in this feature being all snarky and mean, but aside from the insulting assumption that Orlando Bloom is a bigger star than Christoph Waltz, this poster’s actually pretty cool.  Putting aside everything you know about the movie, the poster actually makes it look fairly exciting, what with the sword fights and the gunfights and the fire and the ladyboys and whatnot.  Knowing what I do know about the movie (that it’s basically a 3D, gnü-metal/graphic novel take on the Three Musketeers from the director of Death Race), I think the only question is whether it’s going to be ridiculously bad, or ridiculously awesomely bad.  Also, the placement of Orlando Bloom’s earring kind of makes it look like he has semen dripping from his mustache.  Might wanna fix that.

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