Captain America

Captain America

I’d been really looking forward to Captain America: The Winter Soldier since they announced it, and doubly so since an early press day last July in which the creators spoke about how they intended a darker, more realistic approach to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and wanted to deal with threats to national security, and referenced Cold War spy and conspiracy films like Three Days of the Condor and The Parallax View. This all sounded wonderful, but I’ve learned never to get hopes up too high. This was silly, of course, because Captain America: The Winter Soldier delivered exactly what was promised and more; it’s the kind of movie Marvel should have always been and always henceforth should make.

The main issue with the post-Avengers movies that people have is that, surely, any threat in Iron Man 3 or Thor: The Dark World should have warranted a call to at least one of the other Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, if not all of them. One could easily say “Sure, Thor could handle this, and Iron Man has enough suits to handle that, but it probably would have been a lot easier if they didn’t have to.” With The Winter Soldier, we get the advantage of it being a solo movie AND a team movie AND a movie that furthers the greater Marvel Universe AND changes the game of everything. It’s most certainly NOT a placeholder until The Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Let’s address the solo movie factor first. For me, the heart of all of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been Steve Rogers, a/k/a Captain America, played by Chris Evans. Of all the Avengers lead-up films, Captain America: The First Avenger was the one I was most surprised and delighted by. Despite his incredible new abilities of strength, speed, and stamina, Rogers remained an Average Joe who wanted to do the right thing and serve his country. He is the everyman superhero, and the one most people can relate to. Tony Stark is a billionaire playboy with an ego the size of Pittsburgh, Bruce Banner is essentially a monster trapped in...

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