Captain America: The Winter Soldier
It was a verrrrry good weeeekend....
...having to have worked Friday morning, the first in a few months, I had no grand expectations about how the weekend would turn out. At best, I thought maybe a quiet one with a few walks and a few more movies. Albeit I had prior plans to see Captain America: The Winter Soldier with friends on opening night, I was not thinking big. I figuured fun Friday night followed by relaxing murmur of a weekend off before returning to my commute and source of frustration.
When my friends and I were on our way to see Captain America: The Winter Soldier, I don't know what any of us were expecting. One of us had just seen The First Avenger the night before (not me). We talked mostly about comics in general, made fun of Metallica (low hanging fruit and all) and Game Of Thrones (I need to see it past the second episode still). We discussed various novels in the Star Wars canon as well as other, lesser-known sci-fi novels from Brent Weeks and Mark Lawrence. Overall, I was just expecting a night of good conversation and another solid Marvel film.
When the lights came down and the film began, it started akin to most other movies in the Marvel-verse. It opened on a light-hearted note but the locations scrawled across the top of the screen was a visual cue that there was action afoot. In the first scene, we were introduced to a new Marvel hero in the form of Falcon, par for the course for anyone who follows these films and the comics. Falcon is Cap's right-hand man in the Ed Brubaker run that inspired this film.
As you get dropped into the action aboard a ship of modern-day pirates, it delves into a series of stealth and frenetic action sequences that are the trademark of the Marvel movie. The choreography is tight, a little chaotic and overall well done. Generally speaking, they never shoehorn these scenes in and whether in the immediate or the grand scheme, they serve a purpose to the story and yes, story is something that the Marvel films are doing exceptionally well. Every hero in the Marvel universe has a back story, complexity, heart and bravado. Each film is an elevation of the medium done beautifully.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier fits into the overall arc of the Marvel-verse, but the filmmakers go a step further here. Rather than just a very solid action film, The Winter Soldier is decidedly a pitch perfect non-partisan indictment of post 9/11 America. They use the archetype of a man-out-of-time to hold a mirror up to our current societal and cultural ills and concerns and ask "Is this what freedom now looks like?". Borderline Libertarian while neither cow-towing to either extreme, the balance of message, plot and character development is a symphony of excellent craftsmanship done by people who were not hired to merely do a job, but to stamp their mark on a franchise.
Back to the film on the surface, the introduction of The Winter Soldier as the abused, tortured villain/anti-hero is also a masterstroke of what should the future of comic book films. No cardboard cutout of any kind, The Winter Soldier is part Terminator, part Solid Snake and all kinds of bad ass. Even in the era of Heath Ledger's Joker, Tom Hardy's Bane or Guy Pierce as Extremis, Sebastian Shaw as The Winter Soldier may be the best of the bad guys yet committed to film. Snarling, silent and seething like a heartless death machine, he amps up the intensity level of this film with every second he exists on screen. He is a villain with no agenda, no purpose and no endgame and yet, you find yourself hoping that somewhere deep within his core, there is a shred of humanity to be found.
It is difficult to say if The Winter Soldier is my favorite comic book film of all time. There have been so many great ones in just the past 6 years alone. There is a delicate balancing act done here that marries comic book lore with high-intensity suspense thriller and social commentary that becomes more impressive with each minute that the plates continue to spin. It is a very smart script written by people who seem to really have interest in not only doing great work, but doing a great service to a legendary character. If Captain America: The Winter Soldier is not the best comic book-related film to date, it is damn close.
...having to have worked Friday morning, the first in a few months, I had no grand expectations about how the weekend would turn out. At best, I thought maybe a quiet one with a few walks and a few more movies. Albeit I had prior plans to see Captain America: The Winter Soldier with friends on opening night, I was not thinking big. I figuured fun Friday night followed by relaxing murmur of a weekend off before returning to my commute and source of frustration.
When the lights came down and the film began, it started akin to most other movies in the Marvel-verse. It opened on a light-hearted note but the locations scrawled across the top of the screen was a visual cue that there was action afoot. In the first scene, we were introduced to a new Marvel hero in the form of Falcon, par for the course for anyone who follows these films and the comics. Falcon is Cap's right-hand man in the Ed Brubaker run that inspired this film.
As you get dropped into the action aboard a ship of modern-day pirates, it delves into a series of stealth and frenetic action sequences that are the trademark of the Marvel movie. The choreography is tight, a little chaotic and overall well done. Generally speaking, they never shoehorn these scenes in and whether in the immediate or the grand scheme, they serve a purpose to the story and yes, story is something that the Marvel films are doing exceptionally well. Every hero in the Marvel universe has a back story, complexity, heart and bravado. Each film is an elevation of the medium done beautifully.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier fits into the overall arc of the Marvel-verse, but the filmmakers go a step further here. Rather than just a very solid action film, The Winter Soldier is decidedly a pitch perfect non-partisan indictment of post 9/11 America. They use the archetype of a man-out-of-time to hold a mirror up to our current societal and cultural ills and concerns and ask "Is this what freedom now looks like?". Borderline Libertarian while neither cow-towing to either extreme, the balance of message, plot and character development is a symphony of excellent craftsmanship done by people who were not hired to merely do a job, but to stamp their mark on a franchise.
Back to the film on the surface, the introduction of The Winter Soldier as the abused, tortured villain/anti-hero is also a masterstroke of what should the future of comic book films. No cardboard cutout of any kind, The Winter Soldier is part Terminator, part Solid Snake and all kinds of bad ass. Even in the era of Heath Ledger's Joker, Tom Hardy's Bane or Guy Pierce as Extremis, Sebastian Shaw as The Winter Soldier may be the best of the bad guys yet committed to film. Snarling, silent and seething like a heartless death machine, he amps up the intensity level of this film with every second he exists on screen. He is a villain with no agenda, no purpose and no endgame and yet, you find yourself hoping that somewhere deep within his core, there is a shred of humanity to be found.
It is difficult to say if The Winter Soldier is my favorite comic book film of all time. There have been so many great ones in just the past 6 years alone. There is a delicate balancing act done here that marries comic book lore with high-intensity suspense thriller and social commentary that becomes more impressive with each minute that the plates continue to spin. It is a very smart script written by people who seem to really have interest in not only doing great work, but doing a great service to a legendary character. If Captain America: The Winter Soldier is not the best comic book-related film to date, it is damn close.
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