Reactions to
Iron Man 3 and
Thor: The Dark World were arguably polarizing. Audiences needed the film from Marvel they could get behind.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier was the right film at the right time. It received praise from critics and audiences and saw huge global success at the box office. It even managed to surpass some expectations.
More importantly, it changed the Marvel Cinematic Universe going forward.
Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is now working for SHIELD while still adjusting to a contemporary world. However, he finds working alongside people who deal in espionage and have agendas of their own tough to swallow. His suspicions and doubts are worsened when he finds out SHIELD is developing “Project Insight,” which is designed to launch new helicarriers that are built to eliminate potential threats. But things go awry quickly when SHIELD is compromised and Steve is labelled as a fugitive. With nowhere left to turn and few people he can trust, Steve is forced to team up with Natasha Romanoff (Scarlet Johansson) to uncover the truth. Along the way, they also have to contend with a mysterious assassin only known as the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan).
What separates a lot of superheroes from Captain America is that they usually suffer great injustice or get torn down so they can build themselves back up. Admittedly, there is nothing really wrong with this approach and its worked wonders for characters like Spider-Man and Batman. But it’s so refreshing to see a superhero in a comic book movie that starts off inherently good and stays that way. Cap didn’t have to undergo great emotional turmoil to become good. His character is defined in this line
from The First Avenger: “I don’t like bullies. I don’t care where they’re from.” Some would argue that portraying Cap as the hero with a deep understanding between right and wrong makes him a boring, stagnant character. The thing is Captain America is the example. He doesn’t have to grow to be better than us. We have to grow to be as good as him.
The conflict of his character is when his ideals and belief system come into conflict with his opponents. That is foundation of this film. Steve is unwilling to adjust to a system where as he says, “…holds a gun to everyone on Earth and calls it protection.”
The Winter Soldier is ultimately a celebration of the do-gooder. It shows in very subtle ways like removing the red, white, and blue uniform Steve suits up in and replacing it with a suit decked out with muted, dull blue and gray. SHIELD is trying to distort the idealistic image of Captain America, but Cap’s righteous sense of morality and strong personal views win out. The film may plunge the character into a darker and more complex situation, but he remains unshaken.
Looking back at my original review for the film, I called it “the definitive
Captain America film.” While I believe I went overboard stating that probably because I hooked on the film’s critical praise, I still stand by my placement of this film as the best Phase Two release thus far. The film does have problems that became more apparent on repeated viewing. Such as the climax features typical superhero antics that involve tons of explosions and aerial ships crashing into the ground and even in one instance a building (Marvel most really love this trope because this is the third consecutive film where this happens). Also, HYDRA’s plan doesn’t make a whole lot of sense when one actually thinks about it. Like if SHIELD and HYDRA are one in the same, why didn’t HYDRA just brainwash Steve and make him like the Winter Soldier? And despite the film’s title, HYDRA is clearly the main antagonist of the film. The Winter Soldier only has about 10 minutes of screen time in the entire picture.
That’s not to knock the character. He’s definitely one of Marvel Studios’ few good villains. Initially, he’s an unstoppable, enigmatic, almost mute killing machine. Right off that bat he sounds like another Marvel villain that is just an inversion of the hero (Iron Monger, Abomination, and even likely Yellowjacket from
Ant-Man). However, that preconception is shattered when the Winter Soldier is revealed to be Steve’s long-believed dead friend Bucky (I still remember the reactions in my theater from people who were unaware of this twist). This is a very welcome and surprising change for Marvel. Usually, the villain exists solely as a plot device to get the hero to take action. Here, the stakes become much more personal as it’s now about Steve trying to save his best friend rather than just defeat him. This isn’t the first comic book movie to take this route (
Spider-Man 2 took a similar approach with Doctor Octopus), but the fact that it’s been done so few times is baffling. Isn’t the point of being a hero is to save as many as you can? Why does the villain get left out? Sometimes it can be more rewarding to see a hero save a villain from their personal demons instead of seeing a hero save a random person from raining chaos and destruction.
As for the ending where HYDRA is exposed and SHIELD is destroyed, it certainly does change the landscape of the MCU moving ahead. We have yet to see what the entire fallout from this is exactly (For the record, I will be seeing
Avengers: Age of Ultron on Thursday), but I’m curious to see how the world and these characters function without some organization to report to. Regardless, we had finally caught up with most of the Avengers and they were ready to reassemble. Before that, however, it was time to go off to another galaxy.
Final Rating- 8 out of 10
Tomorrow-
Guardians of the Galaxy