Joe Johnston’s Captain America: The First Avenger should have been a guaranteed pairing for success. Instead this 2011 superhero film creatively stumbled over a mess of priorities, some of which – like telling a strong story – seemed less important than others – like setting up the Marvel Cinematic Universe for The Avengers (2012).

The film tracks the World War II experience of Brooklyn native Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), a short, physically weak man whose incessant desire to serve the USA in combat sees him selected for an experimental “super soldier” serum. Injected with a substance that gives him remarkable strength, speed, and endurance, Steve takes on the moniker of Captain America and commands the fight against German Lieutenant-General Johann Schmidt, aka Hydra leader Red Skull (Hugo Weaving).

Joe Johnston, whose underrated action picture The Rocketeer (1991) demonstrated a keen skill for exploiting a period setting and World War II super-heroics, was a masterful choice to direct – and the basic set-up that the film generates in its first half is perfect for a number of exciting war-time action movies. Unfortunately Marvel Studios needed the Captain America character for its present-day Avengers film in 2012, and so rather than present an exciting adventure the second half of The First Avenger aggressively shifts chess pieces on a board to set things up for someone else’s movie. All of the potential innate to Johnson’s film is wasted. The story structure suffers as a result. What seems like the mid-point of an oddly long summer blockbuster turns out – rather abruptly – to be the climax.

It’s a big shame, because as was the trend of Marvel’s early features an extensive cast of respectable actors has been assembled to bring The First Avenger to life. Chris Evans, already a rising star in 2011, is pitch-perfect as Steve Rogers, and continues to be so in a string of subsequent films. Around him are the likes of Stanley Tucci, Tommy Lee Jones, and Toby Jones – all superb actors of a first-class calibre. Other cast members prove to be very effective as well, notably Hayley Atwell as female lead Peggy Carter, Sebastian Stan as sidekick “Bucky” Barnes, Neil McDonough, Derek Luke, and Dominic Cooper.

The design work is strong, and manages to make the Captain America persona both believable and engaging. More than any other first-generation MCU character, including Thor, I think Captain America was the hardest one to get right, and Johnston’s film succeeds admirably in that regard.

Sadly it is mostly for nothing, and the sum total of The First Avenger that remains relevant later could have been told in a 10-minute prologue to The Avengers. All of the potential of the setting and the period, of characters like Peggy and Bucky in their prime, of the US-army-versus-Hydra conflict, comes to nothing. All of the individual ingredients are excellent; they have been under-cooked as if they were just an obligation for the next MCU instalment.

As the 2010s rolled on, this sort of write-the-film-for-the-next-one plotting would increasingly plague the MCU, and result in continuity-heavy but dissatisfying works like Avengers: Age of Ultron. That trend, despite story elements and foreshadowing in earlier films, begins to affect the Marvel films from here. There is entertainment value in The First Avenger, but there is a lot more frustration and disappointment. This was a missed opportunity that Marvel was never able to recover.