Captain America: Winter Soldier (2014)

[The Stingray]

The Winter Soldier was a great villain. He was supposed to be the Terminator and terminate shit, which he did. Not every villain has to be a wisecracking joker like Loki. And the WS being a brainwashed weapon, à la Bourne, directed towards his old friend, added layer to his character. My only minor complaint is that being a titular character, he could have been in the movie more.

[Fullbuster]

I respect the notion to go for a more serious-minded story, but you kind of undermine your goal when you throw in the same kind of implausible stunts every other action/superhero movie uses. The Bourne movies kept them to a minimum.

It's comicbook movie,thank god these stunts and battles were there!!!!!It's like asking a comedy to be gloomy and dark.

[Harpospoke]

Just saw it for a 2nd time and I'm buzzing.

 

I've loved movies since I was very small.   The ones which effect me fill me with a feeling I can't get anywhere else.   It's like a drug to me.  This movie is giving me that feeling so I'm giving it a 10/10.    I've got a lot of "perfect" movies on my list....all of them have something that might be a "flaw"...but when they make me feel that "feeling", it's going to be a 10.

 

I love the action.   Captain America is a total badass in the comics and here we get to see that.   He can do things no other human can do.   I'm not in love with the quick editing style...but the action scenes were so good it's not really a problem for me here.   There was some serious stunt work going on...a lot of hard work that should be applauded.   We get to see why both Black Widow and Nick Fury are people to be reckoned with.   Winter Soldier found out that BW and Fury are harder to kill than he thought.    Was also excited to see how cool the Falcon looked in flight...that was awesome looking.   The Fury chase scene...wow.   Most badass car ever?   The elevator scene was insane.  The Cap/WS fights...sweet!    Ask me to pick a favorite action scene and prepare to wait as I struggle to decide.

 

I love the plot/pacing.  Everything felt like it moved along in a very structured way that built upon itself as it went.  My pulse was pounding most of the time and I was at a fever pitch at the end.   I was never bored or wishing the next scene would hurry up and arrive.   Every scene felt important to me.

 

I loved the emotion.   I would be tempted to pump my fist one moment ("hell yeah!") and then have watery eyes the next (the Steve/Peggy scene).   They even threw in some laughs.   "On your left!"   The second viewing had me emotional over the Cap/BW conversation when she asked if he would trust her.   The answer was pure Steve Rodgers and the look on her face was touching.

 

I love the characters.  

Steve Rogers is a character I admit in the same way I love Kal El.   Just a purely good being which rarely exists in this world but you can't help being in awe of them when you do encounter them.   You know them...the people who never fail to open doors for people, give money to the needy, stop to offer assistance on the highway, and believe that people are good.

Black Widow is now more interesting to me than ever.   She has a troubled past which continues to haunt her.  Nice to see how this movie fleshed her character out more.   I'll admit I want her and Cap to have a romance...hey...sue me.

Nick Fury...finally we see why he is in his position.  The guy thinks on his feet and is cool under fire.   Not sure what Marvel is going to do when Jackson retires.  So many ask where they will get another Stark...what about Fury?  Who else can play that character?   Cap 2 just made him a much better and more prominent character too....so you can't put that genie back into the bottle.

Falcon.   So much more than a sidekick like War Machine.   WM feels like "Iron Man light" to me.   Another guy in a suit....yawn.   Falcon is his own man and is completely different than Cap.   We see why he respects Cap and it makes sense he would want to fight alongside him.

Maria Hill even gets to show up and contribute in a way which doesn't feel tacked on or intrusive.  It fits right into the plot.

Pierce.   Robert Redford.   I'm a fan.   I didn't think of him as anything other than the character which is a tribute to him.   He made me believe that he believed he was doing the right thing for humanity.   And for a moment I was even pondering if he was right (similar to Watchmen).  He's not a cardboard "bad guy"....he thinks he is the good guy.

Winter Soldier.   First...I think he looks awesome.   I love the way he looks.   Second, the pathos of his story makes me want more.   He's a badass too....good lord.

 

The acting.   This time I really noticed what they were all doing and everyone seemed to hit their marks.  I especially loved that moment between Evans and ScarJo when he tells her he now trusts her.  Both actors nailed that moment.   Made emotion swell up in me.

Edited April 7, 2014 by Harpospoke

[Harpospoke]

One part that I lol'd at though was when Falcon was battling that evil Hydra guy and the Hydra guy kept babbling about how powerful he is, and finally Falcon just goes "Man, shut the hell up." It was perfect because that's exactly what I was thinking.

Same reaction from me.   I actually lol'ed in the theater.

[DeeCee]

The Winter Soldier was a great villain. He was supposed to be the Terminator and terminate shit, which he did. Not every villain has to be a wisecracking joker like Loki. And the WS being a brainwashed weapon, à la Bourne, directed towards his old friend, added layer to his character. My only minor complaint is that being a titular character, he could have been in the movie more.

Maybe the title was a little bit of misdirection as to who was the real big bad.

[Jack Nevada]

I just found the movie dull and unimpressive. Neither the dramatic conspiracy stuff nor the explodey action mayhem were engaging to me. Some good moments in there, but I really wish I had enjoyed the film more. And who knows: maybe I will on subsequent viewings. It's happened before.

[23IsEverywhere]

Finally, I have seen a good...nay great stand alone Avengers movie.  The only good movie in this whole universe is Iron Man.  The rest have varied between shit and okay.  But now Captain America Winter Soldier has finally turned out to be better than all the rest.  The story was well done, Romanov is bad ass and still sexy as hell and the action scenes are terrific.  Evans looks like a Mr. Universe contestant now and his fighting style is pretty cool.  I liked seeing him fight George St. Pierre at the beginning, loved the War Games line (Shall we play a game), loved the checklist of things Captain America had to do and loved the Pulp Fiction epitaph on Fury's tombstone.

 

9/10

 

Questions for all the Marvel loonies:

 

Why was the main soldier bad guy so tough?  He's the one who fought Falcon at the end, I think his name was Brock.  Why was he such a formidable match?  Was he genetically altered as well?

 

Why was Black Widow and the other Security Council members going to fry?  What was on their shoulder or their body that would cause them to die or pass out or whatever it was that Pierce said it would do?

 

Who are the twins?

 

Was that Loki's specter in the mid credits scene?

The main soldier becomes Crossbones.  He has no special powers but is the world's most skilled hand to hand combatant.  In the comics though I don't think in the MCU he was trained by Taskmaster.

[baumer]

The funniest part for me was "shall we play a game?" Thats a Wargames reference and I laughed my ass off when BW said it.

Edited April 7, 2014 by baumer

[baumer]

Those of u who know all the minutia of Marvel should participate in the marvelpedia located in the Marvel section.

[DeeCee]

I think this has the most little Easter eggs linking to both other aspects of the MCU and the real world. Another one is that the Triskelion is across from the Watergate building.

[darkelf]

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/captain-america-winter-soldier-writers-694051

We couldn't do that without Kevin Feige coming in and saying "Hey, it's OK to take down SHIELD." It allows Steve Rogers to effect change. And there's no greater example of the Marvel Universe and how it operates than SHIELD. If Steve can take that down, then he's brought a significant change. We'll throw out ideas, and Kevin doesn't want us to take small steps. So we'll take big swings, and sometimes he'll pull us back and sometimes he'll add to it and say "No. Bigger. Let's take down all of SHIELD." Then we rub our hands together and go "fabulous."

 

Blame Feige 

 

There are things we talked about writing that I don't think we got around to writing. Like, are we going to examine who Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp) really is? Which we've left for the future. There's no room in the movie for Steve to stop and go "Wait. You're the great-grandniece of the woman I love? And is it weird that I'm attracted to you?"

Interesting.

[dashrendar44]

He was more a henchman then a villain. 

 

You mean like Bane.

[ddddeeee]

The funniest part for me was "shall we play a game?" Thats a Wargames reference and I laughed my ass off when BW said it.

I thought it was a Saw reference LOL

[dashrendar44]

That's not my point.  

 

My point is that (here's what I gathered) Fury thinks there is a bunch of clandestine stuff going on underneath his nose so he hires so pirates to take over a SHIELD ship.  As it turns out, SHIELD is harboring members of Hydra who have infiltrated their organization and with government money that no one asks questions about, they are building giant ships that are linked by satellite and they can find any person in the world and kill them millions at a time.  Rogers, Banner, Fury and many others are all on this list.  This WMD is okayed so that they can make the world safe.  Sacrifice a few for the greater good.  Also, Hydra worked with SHIELD (although sHIELD didn't know it) and over the years they basically scared people into begging for more security.  And then it went all wrong.  Redford is the kingpin of HYDRA and he did all of this right under Fury's nose.

 

Am I missing anything? 

 

What doesn't make sense?

 

SHIELD wants to greenlight project Insight, a Minority Report meets "Fight Terror With Terror"-style top secret military program on a worldwide scale to "protect the world" for its own sake without asking to create a new world order (that is later revealed to be Hydra's agenda that has been a parasite within SHIELD since WW2). But Fury is smelling foul so he tries to play a game of chess within its own organization to spot the mole. Pierce tries to blame it on Fury like he was the conspirator to take him out of the chessboard. That totally falls in line with the paranoid atmosphere "trust no one" that the movie is getting at and Rodgers/audience is thrown into.

Edited April 7, 2014 by dashrendar44

[Plain Old Tele]

You mean like Bane.

 

I'm Bane,

Yes, that's my name.

When you hear the name Bane

I guarantee you the pain.

I'm coming after you, Bruce Wayne,

I'm stronger, smarter, clinically insane.

[dashrendar44]

I'm Bane,

Yes, that's my name.

When you hear the name Bane

I guarantee you the pain.

I'm coming after you, Bruce Wayne,

I'm stronger, smarter, clinically insane.

[BadAtGender]

Maybe I'm getting old. I suppose I mostly agree with Tele about this. The movie was okay, but never specifically wowed me at any point. There was a lot of potential, but very little of it was realized. A lot of people have said that this is the most Avengers-like film of Phase 2, and that's correct, but considering how I don't think Avengers was especially great, either, that's not high praise. CA2 feels like Avengers-lite, with all the disjointed plot transitions therein.

 

If only they had gone for a taught political thriller, full of conspiracy and shadows. But they never bothered to really capitalize on the sense of Cap being on the run from a system gone bad.

 

If only they had really played up the connection between Cap and Bucky, to make the conflict very personal and harrowing. But we just get two real interactions between them and some surface reminiscing from Cap.

 

If only we had gotten a real sense of character from, well, anyone in the film. But the film was too expansive and effects laden to really hunker down with a few core characters to get their motivations and such.

 

(Marvel, I am BEGGING you to give us more Maria Hill. Cobie Smulders is fantastic in the role and has been criminally under-utilized.)

 

I can accept all those issues, though. Once I realized that it was going to be just another action & effects film, I mostly enjoyed it. Although I have to say the climax was pretty underwhelming. There wasn't a bunch of wow factor at any point when the helicarriers started blowing each other up.

 

Contrast it to Thor 2, which had a hellaciously fun and inventive final action sequence. There was a lot of humor and cleverness in the portals. Or to IM3, which, although a bit overblown, did manage to twist things up with Pepper right at the end.

 

So, not a film, I hated, but it didn't overwhelm me. I suppose I'm just whelmed.

 

Well except for the direction. That was pretty poor. I wish Marvel had actually gone and gotten Paul Greengrass to direct it. Because he can actually make things tense.

[dashrendar44]

 

Contrast it to Thor 2, which had a hellaciously fun and inventive final action sequence. There was a lot of humor and cleverness in the portals.

 

 

You gotta be kidding me...

 

CWS climax blows Thor 2's out of the water, in terms of

 

-Action and set pieces (3 helicarriers shooting each other over Washington DC without losing the thread in what's going on screen, 3 characters battling in parallel tying set pieces together),

 

-Tension (There was absolutely no tension at all in Thor 2's final mostly comedy reliefs whereas the CA2's atmosphere brings some kind of stakes that don't rely on Stellan Skarsgaard's underpants but real life context)

 

-Meaning (the irony of those helicarriers crashing into Shield tower like Captain America is throwing those like he's throwing his shield boomerang into their faces to purify and starts everything over from scratch on a better basis harkening back to his stance "This is not freedom, this is fear". Just like Hydra infiltrated Shield like a virus using advanced technology, Captain America is like a vaccine of moral values conquering back the best out of people one by one old school style)

 

-Characterization (Steve Rodgers is the Yin to Bucky Barnes Yang, both former friends, relics from another era turned supersoldiers then manipulated by organizations in the face of political agendas in the shady 21st century, they got to find back their true selves and gain back their places in this world as they are out of time)

 

-Emotional conclusion (Cap giving up fighting to save his friend because he made an oath till death since WW2, his friend saving him back on the shore. All the movie drives the point of true friendship and everlasting trust in a grey world home ).

 

No contest.

 

Very pleased to see a Marvel movie that took more than 5 minutes to elaborate a plot with coherent subtexts running throughout while staying true in their depiction of the characters mythos. (Thor 2 and Avengers got none of that).

Edited April 8, 2014 by dashrendar44

[redfirebird2008]

Enjoyed it very much. Definitely one of the best Marvel movies. I'd rate it 8/10 for now.

[BadAtGender]

I completely disagree. There was a lot of clever choreography in Thor 2's climax. CA2 may have been "bigger", but that doesn't mean it was better. I didn't laugh during it. I didn't go "wow" at any moment. When the carriers started firing, I pretty much shrugged, because the way they filmed it with Hill hitting the button didn't feel "strong".

 

But, hey, to each their own.