Every week, a group of friends and I are rewatching a Marvel movie in preparation for the Avengers: Endgame. Might as well talk about them on the way, right?
Finally, this is fun again. I really enjoyed Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Lexi says it’s her favorite Captain America. I still prefer the first one.
Winter Soldier fundamentally works because it has probably the best premise in the entire superhero genre: The Russo Brothers took a spy thriller and made the protagonist a soldier who is morally opposed to spying. I normally don’t give much weight to a story’s premise- a great premise done badly is just upsetting (Looking at you, Iron Mans 2 and 3), and a bad premise done well is a wonderful surprise. If carefully and artfully executed, any premise can make good art. That said, Winter Soldier starts out with an excellent foundation.
Winter Soldier is well-directed, cleanly and competently produced, and has a solid script. It’s a lot of fun! A great character piece exploring Steve Roger’s inner workings and motivations. It digs deep into how Steve Rogers has changed since his time in WWII, and more importantly, how he has not. It’s easy for a superhero movie to fall into the trap of just being action-and-blams, and Winter Soldier dodges that very well while also having a satisfying amount of action-and-blams.
Do we care about Bucky? I am legitimately asking. I don’t know. Everyone I watched the movie with seemed to care about Bucky, but I… don’t. I always thought the only people who cared were Steve Rogers and Tumblr, but maybe I’m wrong? Oh right. Bucky isn’t dead, actually. He’s the Winter Soldier. And that leads me to my biggest complaint:
3 different characters are brought back from the dead. In the same goddamn movie. Look, I know this is superheroes, but within the context of the MCU so far, dead characters have stayed dead. Obadiah Stane? Dead. Anton Vanko? Dead. Yinsen? Dead. Loki?
Yeah okay Loki faked his death twice, but come on. It’s goddamn Loki. He has the powers of a god and can make anyone see anything. He made everyone think he chopped off Thor’s hand in that one part!
Bucky Barnes, Arnim Zola, and Nick Fury all die and come back. Bucky died in First Avenger. Arnim Zola died of cancer in the… 80s? 70s? Nick Fury got shot through the chest, died on the table, and then sci-fi’d his way back to life in the same goddamn movie. I hate it.
What is the point of putting your characters in danger if they’re just going to come back? What are the stakes? Why should I get emotionally invested when I know it’s going to be all right in the end*?
My other complaint is less a critique of Winter Soldier and more a critique of action movies of the last decade: Cuts. Cuts cuts cuts. Most of the fight sequences in this and most other recent action movies (The Taken series is a great example) have so many cuts in the action that it’s difficult to tell what’s going on besides shooting and punching. Studios do this for a specific reason: Money. It’s hard and expensive to do long, extended shots, so they don’t. The art suffers for that decision, though, and it’s a real shame. Movies like Mad Max: Fury Road get the praise they do because they took the time and spent the money to make the biggest bestest spectacle in years. The way Hollywood on the whole is editing action scenes makes movies feel less like art, and more like assembly line filmmaking.
*In 2 or 3 months I’m going to give the exact opposite of this argument for Infinity War, so… stay tuned for that.
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