MY MOVIE SHELF: Captain America: The Winter Soldier

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 76 Days to go: 52

Movie #364:  Captain America: The Winter Soldier

There are a lot of things I love about Captain America (Chris Evans), but one of them is definitely that he always seems to be surrounded by incredible women. First there was Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell), who I was thrilled to see still alive in The Winter Soldier (although ancient and bedridden), but now there are all sorts of kickass chicks in the Captain’s life, the most formidable and impressive being Natasha “Black Widow” Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), who, despite her playful teasing of his super old fogey goodness and her insistence on finding him a girlfriend, has a hell of a lot of chemistry with him. It might be a natural result of Black Widow’s seductive persona, but I ship them very very hard. Where his relationship with Peggy was very chaste and pure, I have a feeling a romance with Natasha would get very hot and steamy, and I’m into it.

Natasha isn’t just a possible love interest, though, she’s also a seasoned warrior and a strong ally. Anyone who still claims that Black Widow is a blank slate or has no agency of her own or isn’t interesting or couldn’t pull off her own movie is sexist and deluded. Black Widow is of course proficient at hand-to-hand combat, as all these action heroes are these days, but she’s also a technology whiz, a super spy, a master interrogator, and a woman with an enigmatic, shadowed past trying to make good. She also possesses a great deal of ingenuity, because where Steve Rogers is thinking of tactical means of confrontation outside the Apple Store, Natasha knows how to make them look like an innocuous couple, saving their hides and allowing them time to find out about the Hydra teams who’ve infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D.

That’s right, Hydra is back. Or it never really went away. And they’re mobilizing to take over the world. Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) is attacked on the open street, Alexander Pierce (Robert Redford) has sent his agents against Steve and Natasha, and twenty million people are about to die. Oh yeah, and apparently Steve’s old buddy Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) didn’t die in WWII after all and has been re-engineered as super assassin The Winter Soldier. It complicates things, to say the least. And the plot of The Winter Soldier is complicated as a result.

Complicated, but not unreachable. Having the Marvel universe expand around Cap has made the conflicts Cap comes up against expanded as well. And yes, I’ve seen the movie several times, but I think it explains itself well. Its twists, its double-crosses, and its revelations are all well-deployed to keep the action moving and the stakes raised.

Also — and this can not be overstated — Anthony Mackie is perfect. Whatever movie he is in, whatever role he’s playing, he is unbelievably great. In his role as Sam Wilson (The Falcon), Mackie is a great addition to the Avengers. Sam and Steve have a playful rivalry and a deep level of respect for one another, and Sam becomes the devoted and loyal friend Steve lost when he lost Bucky. And the film’s exploration of the nature of friendship and trust in and of itself is one of its stronger themes. Be it the friendships between Steve and Bucky, Steve and Natasha, or Nick and just about anyone, the movie is about loyalty and trust, and who you can count on in a pinch.

(Hint: You can always count on Captain America.)

MY MOVIE SHELF: Captain America: The First Avenger

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 77 Days to go: 52

Movie #363:  Captain America: The First Avenger

Of all the Avengers with their own individual movie franchises, Captain America (Chris Evans) is my absolute favorite, and the Captain America movies are as well. Unlike Tony Stark and Thor, Steve Rogers is an underdog, a weakling. He doesn’t win fights, he doesn’t win girls, and he’s not actual or even figurative royalty. He’s just a guy — an average, undersized guy with an oversized heart, an oversized will, and more courage than even the God of Thunder. In this way, Captain America is a uniquely American folk hero — a scrappy little underachiever who proves himself worthy of greatness and is rewarded, by way of a super secret scientific serum, with the body and strength to match his sense of duty and determination.

This is the America people like to believe in, the America of lore, and particularly the stars-and-stripes gung-ho America of the 1940s in which Captain America: The First Avenger is set. I’m certain this America only exists in stories, in nostalgic memories of people who may not have even been alive at the time, of the so-called Greatest Generation. I have no doubt of the greatness of some of the people at that time, of course, but I also know that people are people, and humans are humans, and just because stories of dissent and apathy and disillusionment aren’t told, it doesn’t mean they didn’t exist. That being said, however, the image of 1940s America is firmly entrenched in our collective minds at this point as a time of noble sacrifice and patriotic empowerment. It’s a feel-good story that endures. And it perfectly embodies the image that Captain America himself — the concept of Captain America, that is — aims to fulfill. Luckily, it all comes together perfectly in the film to create not only a rousing superhero picture, but a decidedly bolstering one.

But Captain America doesn’t serve to just reinforce the idealized Allied soldiers of WWII, it seeks to augment them. Steve Rogers is himself a super soldier, thanks to the efforts of super scientists Dr. Erskine (Stanley Tucci) and Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper), but what he received through science, Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) already possessed in her DNA. Carter is herself a super soldier — not through artificial means but through sheer force of fearlessness and skill. Whether she’s cold-cocking an insubordinate soldier bent on sexual harassment or staring now a madman in a car headed straight for her, Peggy Carter is no one to be messed with. She’s every bit a match to Roger’s own vim and vigor, and more compelling than their blossoming attraction is simply how impressed they are with each other’s courage and abilities. When Peggy interrupts a sexy Natalie Dormer coming on to Steve, she wastes no time expressing her frustration with him — by shooting directly at his new shield. She knows what she wants, that one, and she doesn’t have to be coy to get it. She’s AMAZING.

Of course, a super soldier needs a super villain to contend with, and that’s where Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving) AKA Red Skull comes in. Harnessing the power of the mythical yet all too real Tesseract, Red Skull has not only Captain America’s same super strength, but also super weapons to vaporize his enemies and the enemies of Hydra — a force even deadlier than Nazi Germany that costs a lot of lives — including Dr. Erskine’s — and costs Steve his best friend Bucky (Sebastian Stan). Schmidt and Hydra are formidable foes, not only for this film, but for other Marvel films as well, tying the whole universe together in a satisfyingly neat little bow — making the entire Marvel universe both easier to follow and to be invested in.

The true achievement of Captain America, however, is unlike any other superhero film to date: It makes me cry. When Steve sacrifices himself for the good of the people, as he was always destined to do, and he and Peggy share a painful goodbye disguised as a “see you later,” there are legitimate tears in my eyes. When Cap wakes up in modern New York City after seventy years asleep, I’m inconsolable. I want nothing more than a life in which Steve and Peggy get to share those 70+ years blissfully married to one another, saving the world and sexing it up. Think what a great world THAT would be.

Captain America is an origin story, a war story and a chaste romance all rolled into a comic book superhero film. And Steve Rogers is a fearless, flawless, idealized hero — the greatest of the Greatest Generation — never aging, never slowing, never backing down. I love him. And I love this film. He’s the star-spangled man with the plan!