Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

[starlady]

I found the movie very satisfying. Not even hugely emotionally involving, just…satisfying, in that good serious way of seeing justice done, for example. The movie is very deliberate and methodical; for me, it wasn't exhilarating like The Avengers was, or even standard action fare like Thor 2 and IM3 were in the final sequences. I want to see it again as soon as I can, but it was what I wanted, and I appreciated that.

Really this movie should have been called Captain America: Drones Are Bad When They Attack White People.

I love Steve, and Natasha, and Sam, and Steve and Sam, and Steve and Natasha, and Natasha and Sam, and also MARIA HILL. YESSSSSS.

I liked the tech who refused, and the members of the world security council not going along with Pierce's plan. And apparently the bodyguard is Sharon Carter?!?!

That totally wasn't New Jersey. (Yes, I know, it was Cleveland.)

Not sure which way I feel about Natasha's backstory. A couple of people have said that giving her the full Red Room backstory would subordinate her storyline to Bucky's, which is not something I want to happen, and I do like that she and Hawkeye, of the Avengers, are the only ones who are just human. I guess either could be done well; I want them to come down on whichever side is handled better, I guess.

I thought the action scenes were really well done, though I did find the high body count a bit surprising. There were a couple points where I was thinking of Salt a lot.

I've seen a couple people say that the movie pulled its punches, and I agree with that, but I also think that it came pretty damn close at a few points, especially given how many characters hit the "SHIELD = Hydra" line.

Speaking of which, if Joss turns THE SCARLET WITCH into another one of his brutalized waifs, I will punch something. Preferably his face.

(Note the fallacy that brains can be uploaded into magnetic tape reels; that's a cybernetic/capitalist delusion that is very telling. Cognition can't actually be separated from embodiment, but informational capitalism and a whole bunch of cyberneticists would really like us to believe otherwise.)

In conclusion: I guess I still see Captain America as "let's do WWII right this time!" and CA: TWS is definitely a "let's get it right!" for the contemporary political moment. And you know what? It makes a damn good story for just that reason.

Comments

[autumnus]

you know, the question I am asking is did we indeed get Natasha's backstory? ;)

I mean Fury hid what happened to Coulson, and without spoiling too much of AOS, its not like he never edited things out from SHIELD records. This would be something to hide and 1984 could easily be Fury's sense of humor, alongside writer's humor.

I mean, as Tony Stark put it. "he is THE spy. His secrets have secrets". ;)

Just saying...

[starlady]

I think that we haven't actually gotten her backstory yet and the MCU could take it either way at this point.

ETA: That's a good point about 1984 possibly being a joke… Note the Pulp Fiction reference on Fury's grave, and the joke Natasha made in front of the Zola computer.

[cofax7]

Hmm, good point. I do really like the Red Room backstory for Natasha, and born in 1984 (I was in college then!) would not really work so well for that...

[melannen]

Yeah, I'm not sure why everybody's assuming Natasha's Red Room backstory is completely wiped at this point - one date in a not-top-security SHIELD file tells you exactly nothing that is true. Plus, she mentioned having worked for the KGB, which means that either the 1984 date is wrong, or she started being a spy before age 7 (or the MCU-KGB actively survived the Cold War in some sort of super-covert capacity), none of which is incompatible with an MCU version of the Red Room.

[seekingferret]

So many cheers for the New Jersey line in the Apple Store at my theater.

I felt like they did the high body count right- it always felt like we were supposed to be horrified at all the civilian deaths, that they weren't there for decoration.

The only way I felt that the film pulled its punches was not having a major loyalty twist in the endgame, and not having Nick Fury pull some shifty Nick Fury shit in the endgame. For all that they hit the "SHIELD=Hydra", no obvious 'good guys' except for Sitwell turned out to be bad guys, and the Sitwell reveal came far too early to really bite. Having Senator Stern be Hydra was satisfying, but only because we already disliked him. As my brother put it, in the end it turned out that the movie was a Captain America movie, not a SHIELD movie. Trust was affirmed over paranoia.

[recessional]

Which makes sense, given that it's got Captain America in the title rather than "SHIELD". ;)

[seekingferret]

Exactly. Though of course it was also a far more successful Agents of SHIELD story than the TV show has thus far managed, and my favorite moment in the movie was almost certainly Natasha using radical transparency as a military weapon against Pierce, which is everything I've ever asked for out of Agents of SHIELD.

[recessional]

"And it's trending!"

[starlady]

The only way I felt that the film pulled its punches was not having a major loyalty twist in the endgame, and not having Nick Fury pull some shifty Nick Fury shit in the endgame.

I would agree, but I think the MCU shows that we shouldn't discount the possibility of some kind of betrayal/trust thing/Fury doing something shady in future movies or in the space between them. Viz Coulson.

[seekingferret]

True, but I wonder how far that logic can go. A MCU film still needs to more or less stand alone, thematically as well as narratively. If they start shunting off climaxes until the next movie I swear I will give up on MCU instantly.

Coulson's a sort of different issue, because they already established in Avengers that Fury was doing something shifty there, with the bloody cards scene.

[starlady]

*nods* That's a really good point. I've been reading a lot about so-called transmedia lately, and I would say that so far Marvel is doing a phenomenal job of it; they have clearly learned where The Matrix 'verse went wrong. But at the very least I wouldn't b esurprised to see Fury with a bit part in CA3, doing something semi-related.

[swan_tower]

I'm kind of in awe of how well they've been doing the transmedia thing so far. Not that it's been 100% successful -- but they must have had a number of high-level planning meetings before they got started, to lay out a general road map of how the different properties would fit together. This kind of coherence doesn't happen on the fly.