Captain America: The Winter Soldier make it so profitable, is its emotional bandwidth—all the vivid, nuanced life lived by its characters in between their frenzied escapades," and felt it fixed all the shortcomings of "The First Avenger" "and then some". Conversely, Kenneth Turan of the "Los Angeles Times" said, "["Captain America: The Winter Soldier"] is everything a big budget superhero film should be – except inspired." Manohla Dargis of "The New York Times" said, "Like many others of its type, ["Captain America: The Winter Soldier"] gets off to a kinetic start only to lose steam before blowing everything up." Robbie Collin of "The Daily Telegraph"
Captain America: The First Avenger Times Square on April 23, 2011. The film features nearly 1,600 visual effects shots, which were split between thirteen different companies. To achieve the appearance of the skinny, pre-serum Steve Rogers, director Joe Johnston stated that he used two major techniques: Captain America's shield, which serves as both a defensive tool and a weapon, came in four types: metal, fiberglass, rubber, and computer graphics (CG). Prop master Barry Gibbs specified that "We had the 'hero shield,' which was made of aluminum, for our beauty shots [and] close-up work. We then created a lighter shield that was aluminum-faced with a fiberglass