Well Captain America: The Winter Soldier is the latest Marvel blockbuster to hit the silver screen and it seems to be very popular with movie goers and critics alike. I managed to catch a screening of it this weekend, and I thought I’d share what I thought was best about America’s greatest hero’s return. This is less of a traditional review and more a collection of my thoughts on what made the movie work. Now before we begin I’ve only seen the movie once so I apologise if you feel I’ve missed anything critical. Warning there will be spoilers.
5. The Tease: What a tease! With the end of S.H.I.E.L.D I wondered what was going to unite The Avengers again. Well, the reveal of Baron Von Strucker and his possession of Loki’s staff, which looks like it contains one of the Infinity Gems certainly seems like it’ll be enough to unite Marvels mightiest heroes. Even more intriguing was the reveal of a famous brother and sister, who have obviously lost their mutant connection, so how do they have powers now? Is it through the gem? Are they Inhumans? Is it potentially something else? I don’t know but I do know that I’m very excited for The Avengers 2: Age of Ultron now.
4. Nice to see the development of a post Avenger’s world: Something I’ve always wanted to see in a comic film is that action has consequences. I was worried after Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World that Marvel, were shying away from showing just how the world changed after the alien invasion of New York. Even in their books Marvel are guilty of actions never having consequences. The problem with doing that is the tension begins to dissolve and it begins to strain credibility as to why these events don’t reshape the world. I mean look at 9/11 and the impact it had on the world.
Well thankfully this film does a fantastic job of showing us just how S.H.I.E.L.D have reacted to a post Avengers world, and the lengths that Fury would be willing to go to, to protect Earth. The movie is littered with nods to The Avengers, and has more than a few blink and you’ll miss it references, which really help with the world building.
3. The potential for a Black Widow Movie: The Winter Soldier, does a more than competent job at making, Scarlet Johansson’s, Black Widow more than just eye candy in a black leotard. In this film we really begin to see the character beneath the cat suit. She’s morally gray and almost like a secret weapon for Fury, he knows that she’ll cross a line that Cap won’t. There are other nice little character beats which flesh her out beyond her roles in Iron Man 2 and Avengers. The best example of this is the trust that begins to build between her and Rogers, who start the movie in very different
However most intriguing is the end. You see, because of one thing or other, Black Widows past is leaked onto The Internet during this film. It’s kind of brushed off, because more explosive things are literally happening at the same time, but it got me thinking. Was this Marvel’s clever way of setting up for a Black Widow Solo movie? With this film they’ve certainly proven that you can make an interesting superhero spy movie, and the effort Marvel goes to, to make her interesting on her own certainly makes me think this is the direction they’re heading in.
2. A nice relevant plot with an interesting choice of villains: With everything that’s going on in the media currently about government surveillance, free internet and the whole NSA debacle this film feel very relevant. Where do we draw the line and say that government intrusion has gone beyond protection and become surveillance? It’s a difficult question and one that the film doesn’t shy away from. Rogers being an idealist is obviously opposed to the idea that S.H.I.E.L.D will start attacking targets before they become a threat. While Fury and Black Widow are much more pragmatic believing that this is the best way to protect the world.
Which one’s right is never really decided as the HYDRA plot soon emerges and our heroes are forced to unite to stop this powerful weapon being misused. I was actually impressed at the film for not coming down on anyone side. It would have been very easy for the makers to just decide that Rogers was right because he’s the hero, but they don’t make that distinction. The villains in this are interesting choices, the titular Winter Soldier is a brutal combatant and every way a match for Cap. However it was HYDRA and the way they’ve infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D which was so interesting. The notion that they’d perverted an organisation with such a noble cause was a perfect allegory for the way in which Bucky had been corrupted and made to fight his old friend. All in all good choices and the plot felt compelling enough especially near the end of the helicarriers flight.
1. Proof of Genre Concept: Comic books are a form of cross genre media. Currently I’m reading a number of different titles, all of which have different genres ranging from action to romance. The problem is that Hollywood’s comic book movie has always been an action adventure. Even the lauded Dark Knight trilogy, while an interesting look at the war on terror and the idea of escalation is at its heart an action film.
Now I’m not going to claim that The Winter Soldier isn’t an action adventurer it clearly is, but it does contain elements of 70’s spy thrillers. The idea of the three “Insight” helicarriers screamed Bond villain to me. I’d like to think that this film is a good proof of concept, we can have superhero films about literally anything, and they can be comedies or sci-fi epics that just happen to star comic characters. I definitely think that this is the way Marvel was taking its movies anyway, Iron Man 3 was definitely a good comedy film and the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy looks like it’ll be an excellent Sci-fi romp. However this was the first film of Marvels, that I’ve seen that gave me a feeling of complete certainty that this idea’s got legs.
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