Captain America: The Darkest Avenger

In truth, Captain America: The Winter Soldier is just as much a Nick Fury/SHIELD/Black Widow movie as it is a Captain America movie. As such, it is basically a a political espionage thriller and draws heavily from the Bourne Identity series and the more recent Bond films.  As a result, it is possibly the most violent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies yet.  Sure, there's been plenty of action in the previous films of the franchise but it was all more fantastic. Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a film full of assassins, soldiers, and spies; we are in combat conditions and, because of this, people are bound to get shot, stabbed and thrown into the occasional Quinjet turbine.

While some may be uncomfortable with the film's level of violence, it's part of what makes the film work.  In fact, many times I forgot that it was a superhero movie that I was watching.  However, whenever I forgot, I was quickly reminded when Steve Rogers would use his shield to dispatch somebody or when the disembodied consciousness of Armin Zola (you may remember him as the Red Skull's sidekick from the first Captain America movie) is living in a room full of ancient pre-PC (as in personal computer) super-computers.  The effect is less jarring than you might think and, in many ways, it is a tribute to some of the more bizarre elements of Cap's comic book mythos.  After all, it was within pages of Captain America that we first encountered M.O.D.O.K. (Mental Organism Designed Only For Killing) who is, quite possibly, the most ridiculous comic book villain of all time.


 Other aspects of the film keep it firmly in the realm of super-heroic fantasy as well: in addition to the Falcon's high-tech flying gear and a small fleet of heli-carriers, the film's central MacGuffin is an 'algorithm'  developed by Zola to weed out the worst of humanity before it has a chance to cause any trouble.  Whenever any of the more absurd elements of the film stretch beyond the limitations of what one would expect from a Spy-Thriller, you can just remind yourself that Captain America: The Winter Soldier takes place within a universe that is also home Asgardians and aliens.


For the most part, however, the film manages to play the story pretty straight.  Once again, they keep Evans out of the costume for most of the film and, even then, for the first two-thirds of the film, it is the modified SHIELD/Super-Soldier version of the costume which is a little less garish than the full on stars and stripes gear.  And when Cap finally does suit up, they decide to put him in his old-school WWII threads which always seemed a bit more functional to me than the outfit he sported in Avengers.

The cast is firing on all cylinders this time out and, once again, Evans manages to do earnest without being naive; he understands why SHIELD operates the way it does, he even understands the times he came from weren't as innocent as they seem, but that doesn't mean he has to like it. In his sixth time out in the role (seventh if you count his appearance on Agents of SHIELD), Samuel L. Jackson finally gets to show us a bit more depth to his Nick Fury rather than just simply being the epitome of cool and general badassery.  Meanwhile, Scarlett Johanssen steals the show and gets the best lines of the film playing the foil to Evans' uber-earnest Cap.

In the end, Captain America: The First Avenger was about a simpler, more innocent time.  The good guys were good and the bad guys were bad and one couldn't be more different from the other.  Captain America: The Winter Soldier is about a loss of innocence; this story exists in a time post-JFK, post-Vietnam, post-Watergate, post-9/11, where the lines between who is good and who is bad have become far more blurred.  It's about how many bad things we can do for the right reasons before we start doing them for the wrong reasons.  The aforementioned violence only serves to emphasize this much more brutal world that Cap finds himself in. Ultimately, Cap manages to rise above it, Black Widow questions a system that she had put her faith in and, more than anyone, Nick Fury learns that there is a price to pay when you cross one too many lines.

A Look Back at Captain America The First Avenger

As the release of Captain America: The Winter Soldier is upon us, I thought I would take a look back at the first installment.

I was legitimately impressed by Captain America: The First Avenger; this is mostly because I was probably looking forward to this the least of all the MCU movies.  Cap isn't a character who translates very well to film.  A lot of it is that costume; he's one of the most garish supehroes: decked out in red,white, and blue and, if that wasn't subtle enough for you, he has a big frickin' 'A' right on his forehead.

But, somehow, this movie manages to work.  A big tip of the hat should be given to the film's production team and director Joe Johnston for hitting the perfect tone for the film.  In many ways, Johnston was the perfect man for the job: he served as a second unit director on the Indiana Jones films and helmed the woefully overlooked The Rocketeer so he is no stranger to blending WWII iconography with fantastical stories and the golden aged nostalgia of the latter was particularly necessary for Captain America: The First Avenger.

This is one of the keys to making Captain America: The First Avenger work.  This is not the real WWII we are seeing; it is not meant to be Saving Private Ryan. Instead, Johnston gives us one of those Norman Rockwell-esque propaganda posters come to life.  Throughout the entire film (with the exception of the last few moments), everything has a slight golden hue to it.  This recalls not only the 'Golden Age' of comics but also a 'Golden Age' of America.  We often refer to the generation that fought the war as "The Greatest Generation" and this film paints an idealized portrait of the era.  The golden hue hints at a rose tinted vision of the past.  This WWII era America had no Japanese internment camps and, apparently, had already desegregated its Army (something that wouldn't happen in reality until the 1950's).

The second element that makes the film work is its emphasis on an often overlooked element of the Captain America's character: his origin story.  What makes Marvel characters great is it isn't the powers or the costume or gadgets that make them but, as Professor Erskine so kindly points out in the film, "who you are underneath."  And The First Avenger reminds us that, deep down inside, Steve Rogers is this skinny little guy who wouldn't back down from a fight.  Not because he was too stupid or because of some deep-seeded need to commit violence but simply because he doesn't like bullies. He stands up for what is right even when the odds aren't in his favor.  In many ways, he's a stand-in for every skinny little comics nerd who got pushed around. He's every kid who wishes they were stronger, not so they could get even, but so they could stand up for what's right. He's the kid who gets himself beat up for standing up for the even smaller kid. This is the film's heart and Chris Evans deserves endless praise for managing to pull off a character who is innocent without being naive.

April's Album of the Month: Teeth Dreams- The Hold Steady

I going to change things up for this months album of the month and plug my favorite new album, Teeth Dreams, by the Hold Steady.  This is an example of the band doing what they do best, combining early-Springsteen-style narrative with 90's alt rock guitars.  The aforementioned happen to be two of my favorite things so I'm currently in love with this album. The addition of a second guitar player has added to the bands crunch and, on a few tracks, the guitar playing borders on hair-metal extravagance.

Key Tracks: "Let's Get On With The Business", "Big Cigs", "I Hope This Whole Thing Didn't Frighten You", "Almost Everything"