Superhero Snowflake

"Let SHIELD go!" - Elsa auditioning for Avengers 2

It occurs to me I never reviewed Captain America:  The First Avenger despite the scathing rebuke I had written about the director's plans for the character.  Suffice it to say, his first outing was actually a pleasant surprise that I rather enjoyed.

Now we’re into Phase 2 of Marvel’s plan for their movie world, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier continues the story of WW2 super soldier Steve Rogers following The Avengers (which was pretty awesome.)  It seems a common notion that The Winter Soldier has dethroned that movie as the best thing Marvel has done to date, and those folks do have a convincing argument.

While Iron Man is Marvel’s most consistently good movie (and my favorite) and The Avengers is the most fun ride, The Winter Soldier is the best story they’ve told.  Instead of your standard Guy Becomes Hero/Supervillain Needs Stopping movie, we have a man trying to hold on to the values of his time period while buffeted by the forces of an entirely new era. One part espionage mystery, one part social commentary, and one part superhero blockbuster, it manages to be both incredibly different from the previous Marvel films and yet still a solid sequel.

Unlike all the other Marvel heroes, Captain America really has no place to go after The Avengers, so he’s still involved with SHIELD almost by default. It’s clear that his reservations about all this covert double dealing going on with SHIELD have grown, and he not only starts questioning his orders, but the defining philosophy of his bosses as well.  SHIELD is looking to end threats before they become problems, but as Cap says, “I thought the punishment usually came after the crime.”

There have been accusations that this is some kind of pro-Snowden propaganda, but I found a refreshing debate going on between the characters.  Cap is not treated as automatically right by virtue of being the hero, and we get a nice range of points of view, from the villains’ desire to control everyone to Nick Fury’s insistence that it’s necessary in a dangerous world.  After all, with all these aliens, gods, and Hulks, what happens if you don’t act and the next Iron Man uses his technology to commit genocide?  What risks are we willing to take for freedom?

Helping that work is some fantastic chemistry between the characters/actors.  Chris Evans really seems to have this character down, and Scarlett Johansson has stuff to do this time other than look hot.  Anthony Mackie is a fun new addition as the Falcon, and I found it refreshing that his character didn’t suffer from a stereotypical tragic past, forcing him into a buddy cop relationship with Cap.  Instead he’s a guy whose experiences allow him to relate to Steve, and he follows out of a sense of respect for both the man he comes to know and his hero persona. Even the namesake Winter Soldier feels suitably menacing without having nearly as much screen time or dialogue as the title would suggest.

Of course all of that is framed by some straight up superhero punchy goodness.  I was afraid at first the action was going to be frustrating due to some shaky cam at the beginning and some stupid hero-accepts-villain’s-challenge-for-a-1v1 stuff, but by the end I was delighted to see action sequences that were interesting to watch and not chock fill of dumb villain tropes.  When a villain has a shot, they take it. If somebody goes down, there’s an attempt to get a finisher in.  The heroes take damage and that damage is even enough to require stitches.  We top that off with just some incredibly creative usage for Cap’s signature round shield to keep him from being a total Bourne clone, and all around, it’s a fun time.

Henry Jackman turns in a fine score, which gives me the opportunity to correct an opinion I had in a previous review.  When I talked about his score for Wreck-It Ralph I think I seriously undervalued his contribution to that film.  Upon repeat viewings, I’ve found a new respect for that soundtrack.  Since I felt similarly about this one, I suspect I may come around to that opinion again after a few times with this film as well.

On the bad side, it’s pretty predictable how things are going to play out and there are some standard action/espionage movie tropes, including a couple of real eyerollers. (Seriously guys, can we just get rid of the countdown to one second thing?) In addition, if you’ve seen the trailers, they’ve managed to spoil just about all the best “holy crap” moments like they did to Iron Man 3.  Lastly, it does have the baggage of “so, where’s Hawkeye during all this?  Maybe call Stark?” that The Avengers has created for all these movies with the Falcon coming across a little bit like a low-budget Iron Man towards the end.

Fortunately, that just feels like nitpicking a movie that I thoroughly enjoyed, enough that if one of you hasn’t seen it and wants to go, I’d be liable to come with you.  Oh, since people still haven’t learned, there is in fact a second extra scene at the end of the credits, so stick around for it.

*this post cross-posted over at http://theirfinesthour.net/