Captain America, the Winter Soldier

[shapinglight]

Further to my last post (sort of), I just watched Captain America, the Winter Soldier and enjoyed it very much -enough that I wish I had a slightly less tangential icon to use for this post than one of a Thor costume.

I suppose it's a very different animal to Joss's Avengers movie, but I can't help feeling that was terribly juvenile in comparison (though of course there's an inescapable juvenile aspect to all super hero movies).

ETA: scratch the icon thing. Found some nice ones by Next to Normal on Dreamwidth.

Comments

[liliaeth]

Not sure if I'd go with juvenile, more like joyful and inspiring.

These days a lot of movies think it's mature to go to the darkest deepest part of humanity, so to have movies that glorify the good in mankind, feels to me far more mature.

What I love about Steve Rogers, is that it's not his powers that make him a hero. It's the goodness inside of him. He's great not because he can hit people really good, but because he can inspire people to bring out the best in them.

Wintersoldier had some great moments in showing that after Cap made his speech to loyal SHIELD agents, expecting the best of them, and as a result they gave that and did what they could to help fight the Hydra agents amongst them.

But then maybe I'm just tired of the cynicism that takes over most media.

[shapinglight]

Hmm, I actually think Winter Soldier is a deeply cynical movie, which doesn't detract from Captain America's essential goodness, but instead emphasises it.

[lyr]

I really enjoyed it, too. Good themes, engaging characters, nice pacing. And I liked Natasha and Steve as buddies. I may someday need to write the epistolary/phone conversation fic that I feel goes with that movie, because I feel certain that they would have tried to contact people over the course of the events in the movie. You know, like Natasha would have tried to call and warn Hawkeye before she leaked their identities, and Steve would have rung up Tony to ask how best to bring down the Helicarrier engines that Tony did, after all, design. That's the kind of thing that itches at me in a creative way that actually enhances my enjoyment of a movie.

[shapinglight]

I'll look forward to reading them.

I admit, I really cannot stand Hawkeye, and the fact that Natasha was associated more with him than with any of the other characters made me not like her very much in Avengers. I also didn't find either character a good fit in a film where most of the characters were outrageously over the top.

Natasha worked really well in this movie, though. I liked her a lot

[lyr]

That's funny - it worked the other way around for me. I liked Hawkeye better because of his relationship with Natasha. And also because I have beta'd a lot of fic about him, so I have more fanon than canon in mind when I think of him.

[shapinglight]

:)

As usual with me, I haven't read any fanfic about them. Despite being sorta, kinda multi-fandom now, I still don't read any fanfic that's not BtVS/AtS.

[yourlibrarian]

I'm glad you liked it. I thought it was quite a good film -- rather different in tone than IM1 and 2, which, to me, were the standouts in the other single-char films, but then the lead character is quite different. In fact it's rather interesting to me to compare IM1 and Cap2 and IM2 and Cap1. I think each has had a movie that was more about the character and another that was more about the environment he's operating in.

I agree with you that the cynical bent of the film only serves to highlight what is special about Cap. Yet despite the fact that he's supposed to be anachronistic, I think his struggle to figure out who to trust and what to do is a very contemporary one.

[shapinglight]

Yet despite the fact that he's supposed to be anachronistic, I think his struggle to figure out who to trust and what to do is a very contemporary one.

Yes, I agree with this.

I haven't seen IM2. I suppose I ought to try and get around to it.