Captain America: The First Avenger was my favorite stand alone Marvel movie, just edging out Iron Man. It was just a great introduction to the character and hit all the right notes. The Avengers kind of continued his story, but this being a proper sequel, it deals more directly with events from the first movie.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier takes place a few years after The Avengers and Cap (Chris Evans) is being sent on missions by Nick Fury that he is starting to question. Cap is joined this time by Black Widow (Scarlet Johansson) who once again steals the movie. Why Marvel has not given her a Black Widow movie yet is astounding to me. She is rivaled in the scene stealing department by Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie). We are introduced to him at the beginning of the movie as Steve is running and keeps passing him. It’s a pretty funny scene and they strike up a friendship and he reveals that he was a pilot. When he joins the group, they find out that he didn’t pilot planes, but wears a suit code-named Falcon. The scenes with him flying as the Falcon are so well done I just found myself smiling and darn near cheering. In fact, people in the theater did start to cheer when he first showed up in the wings. Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) also plays a huge part in this film, probably as much, if not more, than The Avengers. Fury is the first person to run into the Winter Soldier. Speaking of the Winter Soldier, I don’t know if everybody knows who he really is. Most comic fans do, and anybody that even pays attention probably does too, but I won’t say, just in case. He cuts his way through the movie and has a great fight scene with Widow and several with Cap. They set him up to be an almost equal to Cap in just about every way.
The action in this movie was different than the first film. It really reminded me of the comic the way he used the shield and he fights with a few more flips and kicks this time around. His costume is different than what was in The Avengers, but that was okay because I really didn’t like that costume. This one looks like the outfit that he wore in the comics when he was running S.H.I.E.L.D. and wasn’t Captain America. I actually liked it more than I thought I would, but it’s not the only outfit he wears in the movie.
The plot of this movie is much less “superhero” than what we have seen in previous Marvel movies. The plot about S.H.I.E.L.D. drug the movie down for me. I’m not saying it doesn’t work, but it was just more serious than what I was expecting. If it wasn’t for Widow and Falcon, I probably wouldn’t have liked the movie as much.
Overall, The Winter Soldier is a solid film, but just be prepared for it to be different than any Marvel movie to date. It also feels like this is only half a movie. They definitely set-up Captain America 3 by the time this one ended, and I can’t help but feel that it is the movie I would have rather seen. If they had told the complete Winter Soldier story and left out the S.H.I.E.L.D. storyline, I would have been happier. I kept thinking that the only reason they did this was so they could tie it into the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. TV show, which is a shame.
There are two credit scenes so stay seated. The first one being the best of the two and it caused the theater I was in to go completely nuts.
Share on Tumblr
