Rated PG-13

What do you call five movies by different directors, about different characters, with separate stories and their own unique styles and themes, but which are all related and designed to come together in a special sixth movie in which they will all intersect? They’re not sequels, but they’re connected, and they all refer to and reinforce each other. Do we call it a film cycle? A series? A brace, a gaggle, a charge? It certainly sounds more like a film student’s experimental dream than a recipe for Hollywood blockbusters.

One thing you can call such a project is bold. When Marvel first announced they’d do separate movies for each of the members of The Avengers (Iron Man, The Hulk, Thor and Captain America) leading up, ultimately, to a great big Avengers superhero team movie, it seemed like a wildly ambitious plan, sure to fail at the first hurdle. Would the public have the attention span? Could Marvel even make their own movies without Hollywood’s guiding hand? Wouldn’t one flop stop the whole thing in its tracks? And could they possibly be consistent enough to see through such a large (and expensive, and risky) venture?

Counting both Iron Man films, “Captain America” puts us five movies and four years into this plan, and it now just seems brilliant, an idea so good that it feels, in retrospect, to have been essential.

“Captain America” takes us back to the Captain’s roots in the later days of World War II, as young Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) struggles to get into the Army. Unfortunately, he’s a little guy with a number of health issues, and he’s rejected repeatedly, but he doesn’t give up. Although both his parents were killed in the war, it’s not revenge he wants, nor is he bloodthirsty to kill Nazis, nor does he have a Napoleon complex. No, Rogers just really wants to help—help his friends, his country, the world. He’s just a really great guy. That’s one of the things that is so refreshing about the character; he’s not tormented by inner demons or childhood traumas, but instead has to struggle with how hard it is to be a nice guy in a rotten world.

Eventually, an experimental government program takes him in and gives him a chance to try a special “super soldier serum,” which promises to make him bigger, stronger and faster. It does this and more, making him not just big and buff, but also quite a bit faster and stronger than normal men.

Rogers is the world’s first superhero, but they don’t have the word for that yet. In fact, when the program gets sabotaged, they’re not sure what to do with him, at all, so he ends up being made into a symbol called “Captain America,” selling war bonds in a red, white and blue costume on stages across the country, accompanied by patriotic songs and beautiful dancing girls. Rogers isn’t thrilled by this, but he really wants to help, so he does it.

The only thing that trumps his sense of duty to his country is his sense of duty to his friends, and when he’s touring Italy and finds out his childhood friend is being held behind enemy lines, he breaks rank and storms into action, leading a spectacular rescue and becoming the Captain America of our imaginations.

Watching Cap punch and jump his way to victory is comic book adventure fun at its best, slam-bang-pow fistfights for justice against faceless Hydra agents and their nasty leader, the Red Skull (Hugo Weaving). The movie strikes a great balance, keeping the action and story light and fun and relatively bloodless (people mostly get vaporized by Hydra rayguns) without being campy. It just has a lot of heart, like Cap himself. Director Joe Johnston (“Honey I Shrunk the Kids,” “The Rocketeer,” “Jurassic Park III”) has just the right touch for that.

It’s impossible to consider “Captain America” as a stand-alone movie, as it’s deeply linked to the other films, and cross-references fly fast and furious—even if you’ve never cracked a comic book, you can connect all kinds of dots here. Super soldier serum? That was a problem in “The Incredible Hulk.” Howard Stark, the genius inventor? Tony “Iron Man” Stark’s dad, of course. A mystical Norse artifact containing immense power? That would be silly, except, of course, that we just learned all about Thor’s Asgard and their trippy star-hopping magitech earlier this year in “Thor.”

With the exception of the first “Iron Man,” none of these films are stand-alone masterpieces, but taken as a whole, what Marvel has done here is simply wonderful. Not only have they made five good superhero movies that are deeply respectful of their comic book roots and accessible and beloved by the general public, but they’ve turned movie reality inside out. Where once superhero films were a challenge, they now feel like a standard, and where once they struggled to break into the mainstream, now they seem like the very best examples of summer movie entertainment, reminding us why we used to love going to the movies. Make it big and bright, make it fast and fun, let the good guys win, let us imagine something beyond our daily lives and be transported.
What do you call five interrelated comic book movies in four years? You call it a universe... the Marvel Universe, and we live in it now.

Next stop: “The Avengers,” May 2012, directed by Joss Whedon.