Let's face it, Disney owns our ass. They have Star Wars. They have Marvel. They have Frozen. They might as well buy their own mint at this point. Well, like a rich douche on Instagram, they insist on flaunting how much they own us every chance they get. Enter the first official trailer for Captain America: Civil War.
It's a movie that's not nearly as hyped as Age of Ultron and maybe that's a good thing. Besides, why does Disney need hype at this point? They have a fucking Star Wars movie coming out in a month. I think they're worried about frying our brains with pure awesome at this point. Having fried my brain enough by sitting through shitty Batman movies in the 90s, I'm okay with letting some hype build for this one.
Will this movie be as big as the original Avengers movie? Probably not. Will it top Star Wars? Definitely not. Will it still be awesome? After seeing this trailer, I'm going to go off on a limb and say fuck yes!
Let's not lie to ourselves, people. America just isn't as popular as it used to be. The days of the all-American patriot has been replaced by a shitty Congress, two failed wars, Fox News, and reality TV shows. Mention America in some parts of the world and often the response will be along the lines of, "America? You mean that crazy country that contains five percent of the population, consumes 25 percent of the resources, and elected George W. Bush twice?" It's just way too easy to be overly cynical. Whenever someone claims to be all American these days, it's only a matter of time before that person starts with the gay-bashing, xenophobic, holier-than-thou bullshit. But there is still one American icon who can say he's an all-American hero without sounding like a douche-bag. And his name is Captain fucking America.
Feeling patriotic yet?
This is just one of the many reasons I was more excited for Captain America: The Winter Soldier than I was for any other comic book movie since Avengers. I've got nothing against Iron Man or Thor. They're awesome in their own right. But one of them is a womanizing drunk and the other one is a cocky demigod who gets to soak Natalie Portman's panties. That doesn't really make me feel patriotic. That just makes me feel inadequate. But Captain America is more than just a pretty boy. He embodies the most awesome qualities about America. The shit that gets Glenn Beck and Lou Dobbs horny are all perfectly conveyed in Steve Rogers, minus the gay-bashing and racism. The ideals of America may be more corny than a re-run of Leave It To Beaver. Truth, justice, law, and freedom seem like good talking points or the title of a Country music album. But Steve Rogers doesn't just believe in this shit. He actually fights for it. And he fights in some pretty badass ways.
Now the first Captain America movie had a pretty basic fight. All those beautiful American ideals were under attack by the Red Skull, Hydra, and the Nazis. It's impossible to get more anti-American than this without taking a shit in an apple pie. That movie did a great job of showing why Steve Rogers embodies everything that's awesome about America. Plus, he beat the shit out of Nazis. It's hard for a movie to be awesome that doesn't involve beating the shit out of Nazis. But the enemy in Captain America: The Winter Soldier isn't as clear cut. And even though it says Winter Soldier in the title, he's not the villain here. This whole movie is basically built around making Captain America fight for all the ideals of America, even if it means getting his ass kicked. It's a different kind of movie and a different kind of threat. But the way it's presented is every bit as awesome.
Feeling patriotic now?
I'll start off by just coming out and saying it. Captain America: The Winter Soldier is fucking awesome. Of all the Phase 2 Marvel movies that have hit the theaters, this is the best. However, it's not better by much. Anyone who enjoyed Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World will probably enjoy this movie for the same reasons. But what sets Captain America: The Winter Soldier apart is the bigger picture. Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World only had a limited impact. They affected mostly the characters around them. What happened in those movies isn't really felt by the larger Marvel MCU. But what happens in Captain America: The Winter Soldier is something that will be felt by damn near everyone that isn't in outer fucking space. And maybe that's why the next movie in Phase 2 is Guardians of the Galaxy. Without reading from the whole damn script, what happens in this movie basically undermines everything Captain America, SHIELD, Nick Fury, and the Avengers have done to protect the world. It's like being the only Giants fan in cage with 100 deranged Eagles fans tripping balls on meth.
Despite what the title says, the big enemy here isn't the Winter Soldier. In fact, he might as well be one of Kanye West's pit bulls. He's really nothing more than muscle. Granted, he's a badass, tough, ass-kicking muscle that gives Cap a fight every bit as tough as the Red Skull. But it's the assholes pulling his strings that are the real bastards. And in a revelation that shouldn't count as a spoiler to anyone who knows anything about Marvel comics in any capacity, Hydra is the one who tied those strings. That whole "cut off one head and two more take its place" isn't just a long-winded battle cry. It actually still applies here. But they've actually stepped up their game compared to the first Captain America movie. They're now working smarter and not harder. And that's where the big theme for Captain America: The Winter Soldier comes in.
Still not as evil as Nazis.
Captain America came from an era where the line between good and evil was very clear. America is good. Nazis are evil. It's so simple that it could be explained with a beer and cockroach. A lot of Cap's morals and ideals were forged in the World War II era. But in The Winter Solder, he's in a very different era with very different threats. The line between good and evil is really blurry. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. And as we saw in Iron Man 3, it's way too fucking easy to manipulate people into following some deranged sociopath who might just be a drunk. Hydra takes full advantage of this. It's even stated outright. When they try to take someone's freedom away, they fight back. So it's just much easier to convince them to give that freedom up. That saves them the trouble of building big ass war planes and bombing the shit out of major cities. It's probably not as fun and way more tedious, but it fucking works.
It may sound pretty fucked up, but is it really? We live in an era where basic human rights like privacy, freedom of association, and shooting a gun at an empty beer can for shits and giggles are being pissed on every day. Ask any minority who has ever been caught smoking weed how much their freedoms are valued. They'll probably tell America to fuck off and even Captain America couldn't blame them. He basically sees how SHIELD is now starting to operate in ways that the NSA only wishes they could operate. They're trying to basically create weapons so effective that they can kill anybody they want who just might be a threat. Never mind this bullshit about habeus corpus, getting a warrant, or innocent until proven guilty. After Loki launches an alien invasion, that's reason enough to shit all over the constitution. Some might call that an overreaction. I just call that too many people shitting themselves in terror at once.
At times, it seems SHIELD is the enemy. But SHIELD is not the enemy here. Hydra is the enemy. They're just an enemy that's a lot tougher to fight. That's why most of the action in The Winter Soldier involves running, sneaking, and general spy shit. It doesn't have the same class as James Bond and it shouldn't. Steve Rogers isn't some womanizing, smart-mouth drunk in a fancy suit. He's Captain fucking America. Even a few flirtations with Black Widow can't keep him from his mission to stop Hydra and save the ideal that is America. Let me say that again. Even flirtations from Scarlett Johannsen in a Black Widow costume can't distract this guy from his mission.
Suck it, James Bond!
Now this may be disappointing to some. In the first Captain America movie, there were plenty of romantic overtones and sub-plots with him and Agent Carter. And there are a few hints of that between Cap and Black Widow in this movie. But not much comes from it. All of those sub-plots are secondary for the most part. Black Widow is basically an ally and one of the few Captain America has. This actually might be better for her because it makes Black Widow much more than just a romantic interest. She demonstrates just how different she is from Captain America. She's a spy who lives in a world of lies. But in the end, she has to basically take a page from Cap's playbook and embrace the truth. And when a beautiful woman like Black Widow embraces the truth, that just makes her even sexier.
As if she needed it.
It's a nice and welcome change of pace from Iron Man 3 and Thor 2, which relied heavily on romantic sub-plots. This didn't have that. This just had Captain America teaming up with Black Widow, Nick Fury, Maria Hill, and his new buddy Falcon to take down Hydra before they could turn SHIELD against them. It's exciting, action-packed, explosive, sexy, and engaging. Every battle and every explosion is very well-done and nicely organized. Shit just doesn't randomly blow up Michael Bay style. And it's no over-the-top fighting on the level of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It's the kind of action that feels perfectly appropriate for a comic book movie and more than fitting for a battle with Captain America.
That said, the movie isn't without its flaws. The scale is epic and the battles are awesome. But at times, the plot does drag. It mostly happens in the early parts of the movie, but it quickly picks up. In addition, Winter Soldier is really under-developed. He has some nice moments, but they're all quite lacking. He's not nearly as bad as Malaceth in Thor 2 or the Mandarin in Iron Man, but his impact on the story really is secondary to Hydra. He mostly serves as an extra source of emotion for Captain America and that emotion really doesn't resonate that well in the end.
But the flaws in this movie are too few and easily overshadowed by all the shit it does right. The story isn't as basic as the first Captain America movie. It shows an evolution of the plot and an evolution of the threats the Marvel movieverse is dealing with. And like every other Marvel movie to date, there is a post-credits scene that sets up Age of Ultron. However, I didn't find it all that mind-blowing. I might have just been too sober. But if anyone had to leave early, don't feel bad. Not much was missed.
So where does Captain America: The Winter Soldier rank in Marvel's already impressive library of awesome movies? Well, it's not better than Avengers. That bar is simply way too fucking high. And in some ways it's not better than the first Captain America movie or the first Iron Man movie for that matter. But it's a movie that definitely deserves to be in the conversation in terms of Marvel's best work. It took all of the awesome elements that fans of the previous movies have come to expect and served them with a bottle of whiskey and a plate of bacon. It's as satisfying a movie as anyone could ask for without seeing Scarlett Johannsen in a thong. But she's in a skin-tight outfit a number of times so it's still pretty damn close. I give Captain America: The Winter Soldier an 8 out of 10. See this movie. Embrace your inner patriot. It'll remind us all that America can still be pretty fucking awesome. Nuff said!
There are very few things in this world that are worth waiting five years for. This is America. Usually, if we have to wait for more than a day we tend to say, "Fuck it, I'm going to a bar." For shit we're stuck waiting for, we tend to get easily distracted if we have to wait more than a year. This is a country where you could find the cure for cancer and solve world poverty, yet you will be completely forgotten the next day if news breaks that one of the Kardashians is in rehab. Yet as ADD as this country is, there is some shit we'll gladly wait for. The Avengers movie is a movie that's been building up hype for five fucking years ever since Sam Jackson had a brief two-minute part at the end of the Iron Man movie and after the fucking credits no less. Well now it's finally here and is really worth the wait? Well after having just seen it and after having endured my share of distractions over the past five years (most of them coming from titty bars), I can safely say that yes. It was so fucking worth it!
There's only so much I can do to dissect a two hour movie and explain all the ways in which it is awesome. I'll try to squeeze in as many as possible, but how much explanation do you really need? If you've seen the trailers, you've seen a good chunk of what it can deliver. Like most trailers, it tries to squeeze in as much as the good stuff as possible. The good stuff is usually shit that explodes, shit that laments over impending doom, and shit that has tits or a nice ass. The Avengers trailer is no different. Don't believe me? Look at the trailer and tell me I'm wrong.
But the trailer only tells one half of the story. I know, it's shocking...a heavily hyped movie that offers more depth than what you see in the trailer. But it's true. That big battle scene from the trailer was only the culmination of a story that hit the ground running and ran so fucking hard that if it had nipples they would be bleeding like a porn star after running 10 consecutive marathons. If you've been following the other Marvel movies such as Iron Man, Iron Man II, Thor, the Incredible Hulk (the new one and not the one that involved killer poodles), and Captain America then you'll see the story flow seamlessly. Even if you didn't see those movies (and welcome back from whatever cave in Mars you've been in for five years if you haven't), it's a very understandable story.
It boils down to a little something you could probably fit in your glove box. SHIELD is working with a new and potentially limitless source of power from a tiny little glowing cube called Tesseract, or the cosmic cube if you know anything about anything about Marvel comics. Following the events of Thor, Erik Selvig, the physicist who was grossly outshined by Natalie Portman, has been helping SHIELD tap it. Well that turns out to be a horrible fucking idea because during a test, it opens up a gateway that allows Loki to emerge. Despite being thrown off the Bifrost Bridge by Thor, he's as alive as a cockroach in a crack den and understandably pissed. Since he lost his chance to be king of Asgard, he'll settle for enslaving the Earth and ravaging it in the same way stoners ravage a bag of Doritos. I can think of some much better ways to cope with defeat, but none of them are nearly as awesome.
Armed with a special staff given to him by a shadowy alien figure that claims command of the Chitauri, he takes control of Dr. Selvig and Hawkeye to steal the Tesseract. Like Loki, they seem interested in taking the Tesseract and will gladly help Loki sucker punch the planet Earth to get it. Now why an advanced alien species is stupid enough to trust the god of mischief is beyond me, but I guess being an advanced alien species must get pretty fucking boring. Maybe they should focus some of that alien know-how on better weed, but that's their problem. With the most powerful relic on the planet in the hands of a disgruntled god, Nick Fury (the Sam Jackson Fury and not the David Hasselhoff Fury) starts assembling the Avengers. He enlists help from Captain America, whose only way of coping with this crazy modern world of iphones and internet porn by hitting a punching bag, and Tony Stark while he's in between cocktails. He even gets Black Widow to take a break from crushing Russian gangsters with her legs to recruit Bruce Banner. No one mentions how Bruce suddenly turned from Edward Norton to Mark Ruffalo, but like the Ashley Olson's eating disorder it's just not shit they like to talk about. The important part is Banner says yes and he agrees to help.
Seriously, who would say no to this?
What follows for a good chunk of the movie is the Avengers basically bickering and getting along about as well as Pat Robertson in a gay bar. It certainly doesn't help when Thor drops in looking to bring his wayward brother to justice for usurping the throne of Asgard, but it makes for a pretty awesome fight scene with Iron Man and Captain America. It doesn't sound too interesting on the surface, dedicating a good chunk of a big budget movie to just having a bunch of superheroes with overly bloated egos argue about whose dick is big enough to screw Loki over. But Joss Whedon makes this shit work. When you think about it, beings this powerful probably should clash. It would be even more disturbing if they all just got along, went out for beers, and took turns hitting on waitress. They're not exactly a team that was trained to work together. They were essentially cobbled together because Nick Fury was in over his head and didn't know how the fuck to handle shit that involves a renegade Asgardian god. The interpersonal dynamics really help flesh each character out. Some that really haven't been fleshed out like Black Widow and Hawkeye get some much needed backstory. It makes things all the more satisfying when shit starts to get heavy.
And yes, it does get pretty fucking heavy. Loki isn't just content with stealing from SHIELD. He needs some extra rare materials to make the Tesseract open the gate he needs to let the Chitauri in so he can grab a drink and watch them fuck up the planet. To do that, he uses his control over Hawkeye and a few tricks that involve pretending to surrender so he can further fuck with the Avengers. Along the way he helps expose a mystery that really twists the dynamics of the movie and of SHIELD in general. It turns out that they weren't researching the Tesseract to tap it's unlimited energy to give every man, woman, and child on Earth free electricity and cell phones that don't die out in the middle of a Mardi Gras wet T-shirt contest (still haven't forgiven Samsung for that). They were going to take a page right out of the Red Skull's playbook in Captain America and use it to make weapons. For reasons that are entirely understandable, the Avengers have a problem with this and Nick Fury doesn't apologize for it.
What? You didn't see me winking when I said I would use it for peace?
This secret threatens to undermine the whole order that SHIELD is trying to maintain in defending the world. To be fair, Nick Fury does offer a pretty valid reason. In previous movies like Thor, alien visitors and gods with way too much fucking time on their hands pretty much decimated an entire town. Granted it was in New Mexico and few outside of a few cattle rancher lobbyists gave a shit, it showed just how woefully unequipped they were. So why not develop the kind of doomsday weapons that tell guys like Loki and the Red Skull "You really want to piece of this, motherfucker?" Even if his reasons are valid, the Avengers aren't too keen on trusting a guy who only has one good eye and a shitty poker face. So when shit goes down, they decide to strike out on their own and end Loki's shit themselves.
Once everything is in place, Loki uses Tony Stark's own massive building that would easily compensate for even the smallest of dicks to open a portal. From there, the Chitauri hit New York almost as hard as the news about Tim Tebow being traded to the Jets. What follows is the kind of epic battle scene that Michael Bay probably jerks off to every night. It's even more satisfying than the previews imply, mostly because the movie dedicated so much time to setting up the dynamics between the Avengers. Plus, it's funny as hell to see the Hulk slam Loki around like a rag doll. Seeing it in 3D makes it all the more engaging. You couldn't ask for a better drawn out battle scene if Joss Whedon himself offered to pack your neighbor's garage with C4 and offered you a front row seat before blowing it up. It's the Avengers taking on an alien hoard and every moment is so immensely satisfying that if it were a hooker, Bill Gates would go bankrupt if he paid by the hour.
Overall, there's so much to love about this movie that I would need several blogs to list it all. Comic book movies have had their ups and downs over the years. Men like Joel Shumacher and Brett Ratner have tried their best to completely destroy the genre, but Joss Whedon and all the fine folk at Marvel have done a great job of giving those douche-bags the finger and showing them how you make a kick ass comic book movie. Watching the Avengers, it should give fans a true appreciation of how far we've come. And I'm not just talking about the five years of movies that built up the continuity that culminated in this one. A lot has happened since the days when comic movies were underfunded and not taken seriously. Now with this movie, it feels like the genre can finally spit on the critics and flex it's muscle.
We've come so far.
The Avengers isn't a perfect movie, but no movie is perfect no matter how many shots of Scarlett Johanssen's ass it tries to squeeze in. Some people will find some shit to be disappointed in. I personally thought it was bullshit when they killed Agent Coulson, but there is simply too much to love about this movie. It is the epitome of comic book excellence. For a long time, Marvel has been playing catch-up with DC since they had great movies like Superman all the way back in the 70s. Now with Avengers, they can finally say they have one-upped their asses and they are now the new standards in awesome. It is a great power for them to bear and hopefully they understand the responsibility of what they've done here. They can easily fall into the same trap as the Wolverine Origins and Superman Returns of the world, but with Avengers they have shown that they can do this shit right and do it well. I give the Avengers a perfect 5 out of 5. If there's even one cell of your body that enjoys comic movies, action movies, thrillers, or just shit that assaults your senses with weapons grade awesome then the Avengers is a movie you must see before you consider your life complete. Nuff said!
It's been a damn good year for Marvel's movie division. As I blogged earlier this year, Thor was a godly orgy of awesome complete with Natalie Portman's ass to make it all the more sweet. This movie, like Iron Man before it, is assembling a massive load of C4 caliber awesome to help build up the impending nuclear blast of pants-shitting awesome that is the Avengers movie. But like any self-respecting Marvel fan knows, you can't have the Avengers without Captain America. That's where Marvel's Captain America: The First Avenger movie comes in.
Now this movie wasn't without controversy and some of it was fairly warranted. The man who got the role of Steve Rogers, Chris Evans, is no stranger to Marvel movies. He also played Johnny Storm in the two maligned Fantastic Four movies, two movies that despite solid visuals had about as much depth as a two-year-old's fingerpainting. I've yet to see both movies fully sober and Chris Evan's flat performance was only the 5th thing wrong with that movie. But unlike some fans, I believe in second chances so I gave Chris Evans the benefit of the doubt with Captain America.
The movie starts out in the present with a scene all Cap fans should be familiar with. SHIELD, having too much free time and money on their hands, search an arctic wasteland for ruins of something deemed more precious than gold or the Grateful Dead's secret stash. They end up finding Captain America encased in ice and from here, we go from the present to the past. This is where most of the movie takes place, but it's not just one big flashback. If anything, the present is the prelude. The real meat of the story takes place in the 1940s where Steve Rogers is a sickly kid from Brooklyn and everyone else is busy shitting their pants over the prospect of Nazis taking over the world.
In these early parts of the movie, we don't get straight into the action. We actually get a glimpse into the kind of man that Steve Rogers really is. He's not some tragic figure who pisses and moans about everything. He's a guy who God slacked off on when crafting his body, but he doesn't let that stop him. He's willing to pick fights with guys who can kick his ass and he's willing to lie in order to get into the army to go fight the Nazis. He's basically the anti-George W. Bush.
One of the most powerful scenes in this area is when Professor Erskin, the man behind the super soldier formula, does a quick test to find his first specimen. He takes a grenade and throws it into a crowd of recruits. It's a bit of a dick move, but it makes a point. While all the other macho men tighten their assholes and adjust their panties, the sickly and weak Steve Rogers dives right on top of the grenade. I don't care who you are, but that shit takes balls and it proves more than anything that Steve Rogers is the man for the job.
So Steve gets his shot at the Super Soldier serum. And low and behold, it works. He becomes the strong, tough guy that used to beat the shit out of him. Except he doesn't let it go to his head. He uses his skills to chase after the goons from Hydra, who have secretly become the kind of force that Hitler could only have jerked off to in his sleep. They succeed in killing Professor Erskin, which pretty much puts Captain America on a collision course with these assholes that would dominate the rest of the movie.
At first, he doesn't get his shot. Rather than send him into the field to kick ass against the Nazis, the politician of the 40s show they're as shameless as the politicians of today. They send Cap on a PR campaign to beef up support for the war. They dress him up in what looks like the Captain America costume my old roommate wore to a Halloween party, which he later pissed in when he got drunk. But that's another story. Naturally, Steve Rogers doesn't care for this shit so when nobody is willing to throw him into the field, he throws himself into the field. With balls as tough as adamantium, he single-handedly frees over 400 prisoners from Hydra including his old buddy Bucky Barnes. This finally gets the point across. He's not a showman. He's a soldier and he's ready to kick some ass.
His chief opponent is the Red Skull, who throughout the movie is working to tap a power that if you stayed after the credits for the Thor movie you will recognize. Somehow, this guy got his hands on the fucking cosmic cube and is preparing to use it to sodomize the world on a level not seen since boy bands hit it big in the late 90s. There isn't much depth to the guy. He sees himself as a demigod, drunk with power. He doesn't get the same treatment that Steve Rogers gets in that we never find out what makes him tick. That's a bit of a shame because there's no denying that the son-of-a-bitch is motivated. He makes it a point to beat the shit out of Captain America any chance he gets. This is what leads to the big climax of the movie when Cap has to stop the Red Skull from bombing the entire eastern seaboard of the US with cosmic cube powered bombs.
It makes for a heroic finale, but the best parts happen when the credits stop rolling! Like with Thor and Iron Man, we get some extra scenes. However, this time it's a lot more than just a teaser. It's a full blown trailer for the Avengers movie! If you see this trailer and your brain is still intact, you're either comatose or dead! THAT'S how awesome it is.
So what can I say about Captain America overall? Well for one thing, it made me feel patriotic again. After a decade of George W. Bush, my love for America was ranked at about the same place as my love for my back scratcher. America doesn't give us a lot of reasons to love her these days, but Captain America epitomizes what makes America awesome. Chris Evans fully redeems himself from Fantastic Four. He depicts both the hero and the man with Steve Rogers. He leads a story that's full of action, personal drama, and depth. Moreover, the details in this movie closely connect with the other Marvel movies. Howard Stark shows up as does the cosmic cube and references to Norse mythology. It's a beautifully coherent and beautifully crafted story that sets the stage for the Avengers movie. For that, I can only say that Captain America accomplishes everything it set out to accomplish. For that, I give it a 5 out of 5. It's not quite as good as Thor, but it's within spitting distance! If you want to see the next step to the Avengers movie and get a sneak peak while you're at it, you owe it to yourself to see this movie! If you start agonizing over the prospect of waiting until next summer to see Avengers, then don't worry. That's to be expected! Nuff said.
.jpg)
