Since I am starting this blog at the end of what I would call a very interesting summer movie season I have decided to post a review of every movie that has had a #1 box office weekend over the summer. This series will be called 2014 Summer Retrospective, and will begin with the following review of Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
Captain America’s
first movie, Captain America:
The First Avenger, was a mediocre entry in the so called “Marvel Cinematic
Universe.” While its world war setting
helped to set it apart from other movies in the Avengers cannon, it didn’t
really have much else going for it. It
just wasn’t particularly interesting.
Captain America:
The Winter Soldier, I’m glad to say, is a much stronger genre movie. The original Captain America focused on establishing “Caps” origin
story, resulting in an uninspired movie with surprisingly little punch, But
Captain America
2 explores the character to a much further extent.
This may be, objectively speaking, the best Marvel film
yet. It explores Captain America’s
difficulty with the modern world, in a brilliant extension of the characters
arc. And brings some fast paced
interesting action sequences, villains and twists to the table. I’m not going to so far as to say it’s a
perfect movie, but it’s a pretty good one.
One of the most important things a movie has to get right in
order to work is its characters, and Captain America 2 has plenty of them. We get to learn more about characters we’ve
seen in recent Marvel flicks as well as a few new faces that stand out. Nick Fury, Black Widow and Captain America
finally get the interesting arcs that they didn’t get in their other movies,
and Robert Redford’s villain and his Assassin, The Winter Soldier, are some of most
interesting Marvel movie villains yet.
And it’s not just the characters that set this movie
apart, the surprising thought provoking
message also plays apart. It portrays a
message that was touched on, in a much less subtle way, in Iron Man 2: a battle of freewill, and the line between
government protection and government oppression. When you finish watching Captain America
2, you may not only find your brain a-buzz with adrenaline, but with philosophical
questions as well.
Most of the problems I have with “Cap 2” are problems I have
with the Marvel series as a whole. The
visual style is uninspired, and the tone overly cheesy. You could show me a random screen shot from
this movie, and I would likely not be able to differentiate it from any of the
other Marvel Studios productions. I walk
out of every Marvel flick feeling like I’ve seen it before, because they’re all
basically the same. Captain America is less
predictable and same-y feeling then the other movies in it’s extensive series,
but that’s not saying much.
Captain America:
The Winter Soldier is not the best blockbuster that came out in the summer of
2014, but it’s definitely up there. It’s
a worthy choice for movie geeks and comic geeks alike. My personal vendetta against Marvel and it’s
vile mind control over the movie-going public aside, Captain America 2 was a
fun experience. I’ll bet people who
actually like Marvel will like this new adventure even more then I did.
Thanks for reading. If you have any comments, questions or commentaries feel free to comment, or email me at atchleyosa
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