chrisevansdaily | Entries tagged with review

macfraser82.livejournal.com

I found another excellent review for Captain America 2. (Same writer as the review before) but this time it's more about the movie in generell.
In my opinion very well written and very informative :D
But again, be aware SPOILER!! ;D

I've been rather entertained by the number of reviewers who smugly namechecked Edward Snowden while writing about this movie, but they do have a point. CATWS is about as "realistic" as you're going to get in the superhero genre, in a way that I found far more satisfying than the stereotypically ~gritty reboot~ atmosphere of the Dark Knight trilogy. Whether you or not you're a fan of Nolan's Batman movies, I think it's fair to say that they were masterminded by someone who doesn't have much affection for the comicbook superhero genre, which is quite funny considering the overt silliness of The Dark Knight Rises. CATWS provided an excellent balance between a relatively realistic concept (SHIELD's PRISM-inspired surveillance helicarriers), and the inherently optimistic nature of Captain America as a character.

Steve Rogers may do a lot of punching in this movie (perhaps too much punching, dare I even say it), but his real "superpower" is his status as a role model and leader. In the end, it's Steve who decides that SHIELD is beyond salvation, Steve who inspires Falcon to join the fight, and Steve who persuades SHIELD agents to ignore direct orders because it's the right thing to do. As with Bucky and the Howling Commandos, he's the guy with the guts to go first when confronting everything from schoolyard bullies to the guys giving him his orders, and as a result you can really understand why people want to rally behind him as a figurehead. He may not have the firepower of Thor or Iron Man or the political sway of Fury and the top brass at SHIELD, but he's the one trustworthy rock in the shifting moral sands of SHIELD and HYDRA, and that's what makes him important.

It's a little depressing to compare Steve Rogers to the bastardized version of Superman we saw in Man of Steel: a guy who needlessly fought a battle in the middle of Metropolis when he could've just flown it out into a field somewhere (HELLO CIVILIAN CASUALTIES), and who then snapped the neck of his enemy. Meanwhile Captain America (not just a soldier but also one of the few superheroes who occasionally wields an everyday gun) primarily fights with a shield, and ends his final battle scene by lying down and surrendering because he'd rather die than kill Bucky. I just wish there had been another scene like the one in Avengers where he coordinates the civilian evacuation in New York, but that would've been logistically impossible because all of the public fight scenes were desperate chase scenes across DC motorways.

The superhero genre has spent a long time trying (and usually failing) to bring compelling antagonists to the big screen. Either you get an excellent actor to play someone so utterly batshit that their motivation doesn't matter (i.e. The Joker), or you use a shades-of-grey villain with an comprehensible motive (i.e. Loki or Magneto). Then there's the additional problem of the end-of-movie showdown, which is usually only interesting on the first viewing, and in some cases not even then. The Avengers has the best battle scene I've seen so far, because the it pays a great deal of attention to each of the characters' strengths and abilities, rather than just being a rockem-sockem war of attrition. Captain America was sadly one of the worst examples in this regard because Red Skull was a terrible villain, and the movie would've been vastly improved by just adding 20 minutes more of the Howling Commandos instead.

CATWS seems to have learned from its prequel's mistakes, and thus the structure of the final showdown follows a similar model to that of the Avengers, with the added bonus of having no specific Bad Guy for Steve to punch into submission. Instead, Steve and his allies have to deal with the far more amorphous problem of HYDRA, which in the 21st century has less to do with battling a preposterously evil-looking Nazi cult, and more to do with the general theme of moral greyness within the government establishment. You can tell by process of elimination that Alexander Pierce is the "bad guy," but the truth is that he's not all that different from Nick Fury, which is kind of the point of this entire movie.

One of the central tropes of the superhero genre is the "two sides of the same coin" nature of a successful superhero/villain pairing. Superman mostly fights aliens (with the exception of Lex Luthor, who is the opposing figure for Clark Kent rather than Kal-El), Spider-Man deals with animal-themed scientists, Iron Man goes up against a lot of scientists, engineers and people with robot armour, and so on. Obviously the vast array of superhero characters means there are plenty of exceptions to this, but as a rule, the most popular superhero/villain pairings are between characters who mirror each other in some way.

In CATWS, there isn't really a central figure who takes the position of the Red Skull. The waters are far murkier this time round. Bucky is Cap's direct opponent, but none of us really want Cap to "defeat" him. Professional kickpuncher Brock Rumlow (you know, the punch-kicky man) is evil cannon fodder. Zola is an expository prop. Alexander Pierce is the closest we get to a primary supervillain, but his power is more to do with what he represents than what he actually does. I'd actually say Cap's main "enemy" in this movie is the loneliness of his life in the 21st century.

The film never explores this in any explicit way, but I think CATWS is a story about a guy who is borderline suicidal. Steve Rogers may not actively attempt to kill himself, but he literally tells Sam Wilson that he doesn't know how to be happy, and the opening action sequence involves Cap throwing his shield and helmet aside to have a pointlessly macho showdown with Batroc. This is not the behaviour of a normal Steve Rogers, and while we can potentially attribute that particular scene to bad writing, Cap's overall mood throughout the film is that of a lonely, unhappy person who doesn't really have any reason to carry on living. He's sticking with SHIELD because he thinks they're the only viable option, not because he actually believes in what they're doing.

The depressing thing is that the film's "happy ending" is Steve finding out that his best friend is alive (which gives him a motivation to keep going), but this is tempered by the fact that Bucky has spent the past seventy years going through unimaginable trauma. And I'm still not entirely sure if Steve had any intention of surviving the helicarrier being blown up, since he didn't make much effort to do anything except save Bucky. All this, from the supposedly un-gritty Marvel Studios.

Steve Rogers is a fundamentally friendly guy who operates best when surrounded by a unit of soldiers he can trust, and CATWS dropped him into the polar opposite of that scenario. The tone of the film is somewhere between a Cold War spy thriller ("Trust no one.") and a Bourne movie with Cap as the fugitive -- and the lack of a specific Bad Guy means that Cap is out of his comfort zone in more ways than one. He's forced to fumble his way through the unpleasant internal politics of SHIELD, where he is treated as a pawn by both Fury and Pierce, and has no one to turn to except Natasha and some guy he met while jogging at the park.

Honestly, I think this movie would've benefited from milking the "all my friends are dead" angle some more, or at least including one more emotional scene where Steve mourns or talks about Bucky. Hopefully we'll get some of that in the sequel. As it is, I was very satisfied by the way Marvel struck a balance by inserting their most wholesome superhero and into their most unpleasantly realistic story concept so far. CATWS was politically and culturally relevent without really supporting any ideology other than "freedom," and was about a thousand times more coherent than the incomprehensible mess of Occupy and terrorism references in The Dark Knight Rises. Even taking into account blatantly ridiculous moments like Zola's bunker scene, I think this movie should be the new gold standard for realism in the superhero genre, as opposed to grittiness for the sake of itself.

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macfraser82.livejournal.com

A friend of mine (thanks again

gi_jules) just found this amazing blog who had this fantastic Winter Soldier review.
It's really digging into the whole movie and movieverse.
And suddenly i have all this feelings again T_T

Captain America: The Winter Soldier -- The Tragedy of

Bucky Barnes

Bucky's role in this movie is the point where Marvel nerd and non-nerd audiences part ways. Going by the reactions I've seen from film critics and my non-fan friends, Captain America: The Winter Soldier was an entertaining superhero movie that probably should've had more dialogue and fewer action sequences. But if you go by Marvel/Captain America fandom, EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS FILM WAS AGONY AND LIFE IS A WORTHLESS HELLSCAPE UNTIL STEVE AND BUCKY CAN BE TOGETHER AGAIN.

Needless to say, I fall into the latter camp. If you want to preserve the illusion of this blog as an impartial source of pop culture analysis, stop reading this post and wait for the next part of the review, because I have A Lot Of Feelings about Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes.

Marvel Studios movies are very good at making everything equally engaging for new audiences and people who are familiar with the comics, but I suspect that Winter Soldier was their first stumbling block. CATWS has inspired an overwhelmingly positive audience response so I wouldn't describe this issue to be a "failure," but there's clearly a gap between people who came into the movie already invested in the Winter Soldier's backstory, and people who didn't. It's kind of like if someone made a movie about Sherlock Holmes' return from the dead, but half the audience were only familiar with Watson and therefore didn't really understand why everyone was freaking out over the dead guy who reappeared an hour and a half into the movie.

I saw several reviews that pointed out the Winter Soldier had very little screentime for a title character -- in fact, that the film more or less could've stood up without him. And from a plot perspective, I suppose it could. They could've just subbed in any old assassin character, and the plot would've worked out just fine. Except this fails to take into account the fact that Bucky is the emotional core of the Captain America story thus far. To fully understand this, we need to go right back to the beginning of the first Cap movie, when Steve and Bucky were growing up together in Brooklyn.

I've written already about how lonely and miserable Cap is in this movie, but I think it's fair to say that he's not just lonely for all the friends he lost in the 1940s -- he's lonely for Bucky, specifically.

"Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky," he says, when he finds out who the Winter Soldier truly is. Steve certainly misses Peggy and the Howling Commandos, but that loss is bittersweet. He at least knows that Peggy lived a long and happy life, and besides, he only knew Peggy and the Commandos for a few months, whereas he and Bucky had been living in each other's pockets since childhood. Steve's scene with Peggy is upsetting because it's the one moment that really highlights the time travel aspect of the Captain America story: he can never go back. Peggy went on without him -- she had to.

But Bucky's absence is more like (to use a rather inappropriate analogy) a missing limb. Not only did Bucky never get anything remotely approaching a happy ending, but Steve never really got any practise in functioning without him. Within days of Bucky's death, Steve was piloting an aircraft into the ocean, and when he woke up he was thrust straight back into active service, in a totally alien environment but with SHIELD governing his every move -- even stationing a spy at his door.

Even in the 21st century, Steve is still living in the middle of a war story -- or a post-war story, with Steve failing to get the closure he needs because he never really "came back" from WWII. The movie soundtrack even includes a classic wartime love song about missing and then being reunited with your sweetheart, It's Been A Long, Long Time:

"Haven't felt like this, my dear
Since I can't remember when.
It's been a long, long time.

You'll never know how many dreams
I've dreamed about you.
Or just how empty they all seemed without you.
So kiss me once then kiss me twice
Then kiss me once again.
It's been a long, long time."

Steve has a copy of this song in his apartment, and the lyrics really could fit with anything: Peggy ("Kiss me once again."), Bucky ("Haven't felt like this since I can't remember when.") or even just his old life in general ("You'll never know how many dreams I've dreamed about you."). Honestly, it's quite astonishing how much misery this movie manages to pack into two hours of mostly action sequences and espionage subplots, particularly since Captain America is supposedly one of the "lighter" superheroes, compared to the unending grimdarkness of Batman. I guess this is the difference between "manpain" and "a man in legitimate emotional pain."

By this point Steve already been in the 21st century for about two years, and we don't really see much evidence that he's failing to deal with the 21st century as a concept. He's a resilient guy, after all. What we do see is him being horribly lonely and no longer displaying much of the kind of optimistic, target-oriented attitude we see in the '40s. I suspect that if Bucky was still with him, things would be very different.

The thing is, Steve and Bucky's friendship wasn't just a "they grew up so they're as close as brothers," thing, it's way more dynamic than that. Their relationship may be symbiotic, but it was never particularly balanced. Growing up, Steve was sickly and physically weak but had precisely the same personality as he does now: unendingly hopeful and moral, with no conception of backing down from a fight. Hence why he's constantly getting beaten up, with Bucky having to wade in and finish those fights for him. Bucky is incredibly protective of him, which must have caused a fair amount of confusion when Steve turned into a near-indestructable supersoldier.

It's a classic partnership between idealism (Steve) and pragmatic cynicism (Bucky), with Bucky playing the role of Steve's protector and #1 fan. It takes the supersoldier serum for everyone else to realise what Bucky knew all along: that Steve is an inspirational figure, destined for great things. There's this beautiful transitional moment in the first Cap movie when Steve has just rescued Bucky and the other soldiers from the Red Skull's lab, and Bucky calls out for everyone to cheer for Captain America. This is basically the first time Steve has ever received outside recognition for being the person he is, and you can tell that while Bucky's happy for him, he's also a tiny bit resentful because he knows that Steve is no longer "his". The tables have turned, and now Bucky is walking in Steve's shadow, rather than the other way round.

GIFs by rogersbarnes

Before, Steve had resented Bucky for his physical strength and the way he was able to get into the army while Steve was repeatedly marked down as physically unfit for duty. After he becomes Captain America, the tables begin to turn, with Bucky probably recognising that Steve's strength and heroism comes at a price (to their friendship, at least). But in the end that resentment between them doesn't matter, because whichever way you flip it, they define each other. CATWS purposefully sets up tons of parallels between them -- Steve falling from the Helicarrier just like Bucky fell from the train, Bucky being defrosted, Bucky being strapped down in the chair like Steve was when they gave him the serum, Bucky being physically "improved" in a twisted mirror-image of Steve's supersoldier perfection, the pair of them facing off along that walkway on the Helicarrier -- which serve as a constant reminder of how closely their stories are intertwined. Even if Bucky isn't onscreen, he's still always lurking in the background, out of the corner of Steve's eye.

The most significant moment is surely the end of their showdown on the helicarrier, when Steve finally gives up. For the first time ever, he backs down from a fight. Why? Well, not only can he not bring himself to kill Bucky, but there's also the fact that fighting Bucky no longer serves any purpose. Steve doesn't really have anything to live for if Bucky doesn't remember him, and he's already fulfilled his mission by bringing down the three HYDRA helicarriers. Bucky isn't the "enemy," he isn't a bully, he's just a malfunctioning weapon who can't help what he's been programmed to do.

This is the point where I flush all my emotions down the toilet and go to live in an igloo made of frozen tears, because what the hell. This is a goddamn SUPERHERO MOVIE where the denouement is the hero effectively committing suicide because he can't cope with living in a world where he's killed his best friend. Earlier on when Steve tells Sam that he doesn't want to kill Bucky, he's not just saying that he can't kill Bucky, he's tacitly admitting that he might even fuck up the overall mission and endanger millions of lives because he can't use lethal force against his friend. Then Captain America just casually drops his shield into the Potomac, because he knows he isn't coming back from this.

Watching CATWS the second time, one thing that really hit me is how brilliant Sebastian Stan's performance is. He may not have as big a role as Nick Fury or Black Widow, but by god does he make his limited screentime count. In particular, every one of his action sequences really stands out because his fighting technique is just so much more brutal than anything else onscreen. Steve's fighting style is designed to be this combination of extreme gymnastic ability and slightly old-fashioned martial arts techniques, and Black Widow's style is beautifully fluid, but in the end the Winter Soldier is just terrifying.

Compared to the badass but relatively generic hand-to-hand scenes between Steve and the various HYDRA goons, the Winter Soldier is a whirlwind of pure death. He tears the steering wheel right out of Steve's car. He skids across the road, using his metal hand as a brake. Hilariously, he stands right in front of Fury's car to blow it up, which kind of does away with the Winter Soldier's image as an invisible ghost.

In the middle of a film that's all about shades of grey and working out who you can trust, the Winter Soldier is simultaneously the scariest character in the film... and never really "evil." He's single-minded and brutally violent, but he still never really gives the impression of being unpleasant in the way that Alexander Pierce, Sitwell, or any of the HYDRA footsoldiers are. I've seen a handful of comparisons with Loki because they are both, I suppose, "ambiguous villains." But to me they honestly seem like polar opposites. The whole point of Loki is that he's very easy to understand and empathise with as a character, but he's still an unnecessarily cruel and malevolent person. Plus, most of his decisions boil down to, "Because I want to." Beside him, the Winter Soldier seems like a motiveless vaccuum, devoid of emotional responses or desires until Steve shows up to knock a hole in the wall between Bucky and his memories.

So yeah, by the time we get to the two or three scenes where Sebastian Stan actually gets to act with his face and voice, I am a shrivelled husk of my former self. Thor and Loki's relationship is probably the most fleshed-out and compelling in the MCU, but the death and resurrection of Bucky Barnes still manages to be a goddamn operatic tragedy in about a tenth of the screentime. This entire movie is basically a set-up for Steve's quest to find the Winter Soldier and bring Bucky in from the cold in the next movie, and their tiny handful of scenes together is enough for me to pack my belongings and move to a cabin in the woods where I can cry in peace. But before I do that, let's talk about why Sebastian Stan deserves 500 Oscars for this movie.

First up, well done for managing to illustrate the true meaning of Bucky's Red Room/HYDRA mind-wipes in just one scene. The Winter Soldier's relationship with Alexander Pierce is a direct parallel to Steve's relationship with Nick Fury. Steve is able to doubt Fury's trustworthiness because he has such a solid bedrock of moral certainty, but Bucky never had that luxury, even back when he was fully himself. Now, Bucky's mind is a quicksand, and Pierce may be the only vaguely familiar face he knows. Having imprinted onto Pierce like a baby duckling, why not believe him when he says the Winter Soldier "shaped the century"? (Yet another parallel between Steve and Bucky, by the way: Captain America shaping the world as a heroic icon and comicbook character, while the Winter Soldier shapes things from the shadows, carrying out anonymous assassinations on behalf of HYDRA.)

The Winter Soldier's facial expressions are almost childlike here, and the way he passively accepts that mouth guard tells you everything you need to know. He could probably kill everyone in the room within seconds, but instead he just lies back and lets them torture his brain to mush for the hundredth time. Before now he seemed like such an intimidating figure, but this scene shows the Winter Soldier what he really is: a little kid or a blank slate into which people insert their own goals and missions, fully-formed. "But I knew him," he says in miserable confusion, sure that he recognises Steve's face from somewhere. But Pierce, the voice of God, refuses to explain any further. THIS IS JUST. TOO. UPSETTING. Sebastian Stan's entire acting career of weeping while being emotionally abused by unpleasant father figures has all been leading up to this role, and I for one am not amused.

Just in case the general emotional trajectory of this movie was to cheerful for you, the "happy ending" is Steve Rogers waking up in hospital after voluntarily falling to his death. Good news, Steve! Your best friend is alive enough to only half beat you to a pulp. And now he's wandering around D.C. trying to get his memory back, looking even less healthy than he did when he was in full brainwashed assassin mode. If Captain America 3 doesn't include at least one emotional embrace and/or scene where Falcon forces Bucky go to therapy, then I'm leading a mass revolt on Marvel Studios HQ, you mark my words.

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