Thoughts on the Captain America: The Winter Soldier trailer

In short, I like it.

I found Captain America: The First Avenger to be a pleasant surprise; it took advantage of Cap's oft overlooked origin story (a puny guy who, despite his physique, was willing to stand up to bullies) and made it central to who Captain America is. Also, a subtle use of warm lighting throughout the movie helped create the image of a 'Golden Age' of, not only comics, but America; it was an idealized vision of The Greatest Generation and their WWII accomplishments.  It has all of the patriotism, sacrifice, and idealism but none of the Japanese internment camps. In that film's coda, you might have noticed a subtle shift in the lighting; when Cap finds himself in modern day times square, the light is no longer warm and golden but brighter, glaring, more real.

From what we're seeing in the trailer,  Cap finds himself thrust firmly into a much less idealistic, less innocent America.  The best Captain America stories of the last 50 (the ones that take place after his WWII deep freeze) have played off of the idea of him as a man out of time.  It was not long after his initial resurection that Vietnam and Watergate became potent symbols for how far we had come since our accomplishments of just a couple of decades before.  The stories in this era played off of our loss of innocence, just as more recent Captain America stories have played off of the compromises we have made post-9/11.

The new film appears to be playing off of this tradition with Captain America responding to Nick Fury's rationalization of pre-emptive warfare ("SHIELD sees the world as it is, not as we'd like it to be) with, "this isn't freedom; this is fear." Because, unlike Fury, he sees America as as it should be, not as it is (like I said, there were no internment camps in Cap's WWII). And, like the best Cap stories, it seems as though the film is leading to Cap becoming disillusioned with and breaking ties with the U.S. goverment while still believing in the espoused values of his country. In the comics, this ultimately paves the way for him to become independent of the goverment but, at the same time, remain a symbol for ideals that, sometimes, we don't live up to but that we should continually aspire towards. It's a story that long time Captain America fans will no doubt find familiar, but I'm sure this is going to look awesome on the big-screen.

Other Thoughts:

What we're seeing on Agents of SHIELD is supposed to be the 'C' team; the loveable band of misfits Coulson has assembled to run support for SHIELD's 'A' team.  In Captain America: the Winter Soldier, we get to see that 'A'-team: Nick Fury, Cap, Black Widow, and Falcon.

Also, I like the new costume; it's sort of a hybrid of the traditional suit with the more recent costume he sported in the Steve Rogers: Super-Soldier comics. In the first film, I liked his WWII era costume but I felt the Avengers costume was pushing it a bit in; the colors were a little too bright and it looked a little too much like the old long underpants superhero cliche (at least we were spared the buccaneer boots of the comic books of old). The darker blue works better and looks a lot closer to the standard SHIELD uniform that we have seen on Black Widow, Maria Hill, and Melinda May.