(This past weekend saw the release of Marvel Studios newest film, Captain America: The Winter Soldier. So your humble host, and contributor Dan Grote, went out to see if the movie lived up to the hype. Here's what we thought)
Dan Grote: Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a
movie of basements with sub-basements, secrets with sub-secrets, ops within
ops, escapes via quickly created holes in the ground, and tall buildings with
really long elevator rides and easily shattered glass. And Cap and Black Widow
go to all the floors.
My friend
Rob called it the Empire Strikes Back
of the Marvel Cinematic Universe after he saw it, on account of
storytellingwise, it's easily one of the best of the bunch (up there with the
first Iron Man and Avengers). But I'd compare it to a
different Star Wars movie,
considering the mission at the end is essentially to blow up three death stars
by exploiting the womprat-sized weakness at each of their cores. Also, Robert
Redford’s character finds the lack of faith of the other members of the World
Security Council disturbing.
Matt
Lazorwitz: While I see both those comparisons, I would liken the movie more to The Dark Knight. Both are intense,
action based films with plots that mirror current political fears. In 2008, urban
terrorism was a fear that permeated every day, which granted hasn’t really
changed, and that film’s Joker was this idealized (for want of a better word)
urban terrorist; he just wanted, “to watch the world burn.” The Winter Soldier deals with a fear
that has come to the fore in the past couple of years; the fear that Big
Brother is watching. In a day of Edward Snowden and the NSA leaks, the idea of
terror using what the government has set in motion, or the government using
that knowledge to itself instill terror, is a real one, and the film takes it
to the logical endgame in a world where things like S.H.I.E.L.D. exist.
DG: Seriously,
though, this movie is more than two hours long, but I would have gladly sat for
three. As someone who loves Cap, especially Ed
Brubaker’s run on the book, this movie gave me everything I wanted: Action
heroes with dry, cool, wit; geopolitical intrigue, a WarGames reference, at least three cameos that made me smile
despite my dropped jaw, what briefly appears to be an old British woman who
isn’t Helen Mirren fighting people, and Alan Dale.
Most
refreshingly, it was leaps and bounds better than Captain America: The First Avenger, which, let’s be honest, was a
two-hour-long Act I, as much as I enjoyed it.
ML: While I
haven’t read the Mark Waid mini-series of the same name (and I know I need to,
especially with some real good press on it lately), this is one of the best
examples of showing how Cap is a, “man out of time.” He doesn’t dwell on it,
and it’s not just played for laughs, with scenes of him looking at iPods and
commenting about record players, like it could have been. But the general sense
of not fitting in, of not knowing who he is and where he should be, was done
perfectly, not dwelled on, but always there. And the final action scenes of the
movie, where Cap re-dons his World War II era costume, both show who Cap is and
when he is most comfortable, but also are physical representations on the theme
of the world of the past in conflict with the world of the present being
crafted by Hydra.
DG: The
relationships between the movie’s main protagonists are spot-on, especially
between Cap and Falcon (Anthony Mackie is a fantastic addition to the MCU,
btw). There's always a danger of Falcon being treated as Cap's sidekick, but
that was never the case. They were always partners. And in the movie they find
common ground as soldiers having a hard time adjusting to being “home,” which provides
a perfect way to weave in Sam Wilson’s background as a social worker in the
comics.
ML: The
rapport between Chris Evans and Anthony Mackie was clear from the film’s
opening scene. The two played off each other perfectly, not just in how they
were written, but how they were realized by two great actors. Evans has come
into his own as an actor as Captain America, and while he hasn’t done a, “golly
shucks,” sort of performance, he’s always stood apart. Giving him a friend in
the present lets us see a different aspect of him. And Mackie plays the Falcon
as a hero in his own right, looking to Cap for inspiration but not looking at
him as his boss.
DG: Cap and
Black Widow make great work spouses, which is good, because ScarJo eats up a
lot of screentime. It’s pretty much a team-up movie the whole way through. She
and Cap even go on a Scooby Doo-like
adventure in a dusty old basement with a secret room behind a bookcase (which
leads to my favorite surprise scene in the whole movie).
And Cap and
Fury, well, it could have ended up being more of the same from Avengers, if they hadn't removed him
from the equation early on.
ML: I was
also happy to see Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill given a time to shine. Maria
Hill in the comics is a hard character to like, as she seems to be just to the
left of classic Marvel hardass government guys like Henry Peter Gyrich, always
waiting for the heroes to screw up. Here, she is Fury’s loyal right hand, and
has plenty of action scenes and plenty of brains, and works with Cap and
company not begrudgingly, but as part of the team.
There are
actually quite a few strong female characters in the film, especially when you
look at it in comparison to other superhero movies. Black Widow and Hill alone
would be impressive, but when you also factor in Emily Vamcamp’s Agent 13, who
doesn’t get a ton to do, other than have some great fight scenes, but is set up
nicely to be the female lead in Cap 3 (hopefully Black Widow will have
graduated to her own film by then), you have more women fighting then in pretty
much any movie I can think of that isn’t specifically an ensemble movie about
women warriors. And one final note, Haley Atwell’s brief appearance as an aged
Peggy Carter is both beautiful and tragic.
DG: Directors
Joe and Anthony Russo are known for their work on NBC’s Community, and you can see that show's genre-bending humor in the
movie, especially when they play with tired action flick cliches like
threatening a low-level baddie with a fall from a tall building to extract
information.
There are a
couple of shots toward the end that are boldfaced homages. Cap plunges into the
water - again - and after Cap is shot in the stomach, he lies in the exact same
pose He did when he was killed in the comics. And of course the scene where
all the fake D.C. cops attack Fury reminds of the Blues Brothers (and, uncomfortably enough, of racial profiling).
With that
same Fury scene in mind, I want to tell whoever first thought of having a car
or truck flip forward and explode in movies this: I love your work, but I'm
worried it's been overused, especially in superhero movies (see also X-Men: The Last Stand, The Dark Knight).
Also as you
watch this scene and the rest of the movie, ask yourself: Why was Fury the only
person allowed to have bullet/shatterproof glass? If I lived in the MCU, after
this movie, I would invest in a glass factory; that’s all I’m saying.
Audience
observation: There were at least three people in a not-that-packed theater who
gasped when the Winter Soldier took off his mask. Compared to some of the other
surprises in this movie, this one was horribly kept, but I’m happy those people
got an extra thrill.
ML: Before
we get to wrap ups and final thoughts, I figured it best to actually talk about
the film’s title character, the Winter Soldier. This film is so much more than
that, more than just about that one figure, but I frankly couldn’t think of a
better title, and it certainly is one that is dynamic and interesting.
Sebastian Stan does a great job acting with just his body and eyes. His origin
works well here, fitting seamlessly into the universe that has been crafted,
and Stan plays the tormented side of the character as well as he does the ruthless
side. I don’t know exactly where they’re going with him in the future, but I
hope we get to see more of his interaction with Cap.
DG: Biggest
quibble (and I don't consider it all that legitimate a gripe): Batroc was not
Batroc-y enough. I'm not saying I wanted the purple-clad French martial arts
master to be a joke, but I did want him to fight with more bravado and
braggadocio. At the very least yell "Zut alors!"
Random
observation: In the first action sequence on the ship, when Cap takes out the
first pirate from behind, I really wanted the words "Y silent
takedown" to appear on the screen, because I've been playing a lot of Arkham Origins lately.
Trailer
notes: I was disappointed the Guardians
of the Galaxy was the same one from two months ago. Next to Lucy in my notebook, I wrote
"ScarJo is LIMITLESS SPECIES." Who the hell looked at Kelsey
Grammer's resume and said "How have we not put him in the Expendables movies?" I do not buy
Megan Fox as April O'Neill.
ML: This
film had some of the best fight choreography I have ever seen. The up close
fighting between Cap and Winter Soldier was that tight, Taken style, with tremendous economy of motion, while fights
between other characters was broader and more open. I like how Black Widow
doesn’t fight like Cap, who doesn’t fight like Falcon. That was smartly done.
As a
personal pat-myself-on-the-back moment, when Agents of S.HI.E.L.D. debuted, I observed that it felt like the
season’s seeming big bad, Project Centipede, were like Hydra, and wouldn’t it
be great if that played into Winter Soldier
since it would be coming out near the end of the season. This is being written
Tuesday morning, so I haven’t seen the new episode yet, but judging by scenes
from last week’s episode, I just might have been clairvoyant.
Oh, and
just in case you don’t know, stay through the credits in this one. There are
two scenes like in Thor: The Dark World,
one mid-credits, teasing an upcoming Marvel Studios film, and one at the end, giving a final sting to this movie. It’s 2014 and we’re nine movies into the
Marvel Cinematic Universe; I was shocked at the number of people who got up
right as the movie ended, and more shocked at the people who left after the
first scene. You stuck with it this long; what’s five more minutes?
So, in the
end, the consensus here on The Matt Signal is that Captain America: The Winter Soldier is one of the strongest entries
in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and a good film over all. On a scale of one
to five, this one gets five cybernetic Soviet issue arms up.
(Post movie trip to the Bargain Book Warehouse. Yes, I wore an Invincible t-shirt to see Cap. You don't wear a band's t-shirt to their concert, you don't wear a superhero's shirt to his movie.)
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