Captain America: The Winter Soldier

[Threash]

I loved the movie, start to finish.  My only real nitpick would be not even name dropping Hawkeye.  There were perfect in-world explanations for every other Avenger not being around (Stark retired, you can't just call up Thor on your cellphone, Banner is as much a problem as he is a solution), but Hawkeye is an actual S.H.I.E.L.D agent and closely associated with both Black Widow and Cap and you don't even have a throwaway line as to why he isn't around?

[Khaldun]

Saw an interview with Kevin Feige where he says Hawkeye's whereabouts during this film are addressed very explicitly in Avengers 2 and in fact are part of the lead-in to the film's narrative.

[Ironwood]

Banner is as much a problem as he is a solution

Part of the plan, I noticed, was shooting Banner with the guns.  I kinda wondered how that would have fared for them.  Sure, hitting Stark and Strange and the President from Orbit is cool, but The Hulk ?

I think they chose poorly on that particular count.

[Threash]

Banner is as much a problem as he is a solution

Part of the plan, I noticed, was shooting Banner with the guns.  I kinda wondered how that would have fared for them.  Sure, hitting Stark and Strange and the President from Orbit is cool, but The Hulk ?

I think they chose poorly on that particular count.

Yeah, he even said on the avengers that he put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger and "the other guy spit out the bullet".

[tazelbain]

That's common knowledge to the audience not necessarily SHIELD/HYDRA.

Why would HYDRA care anyway? Just because handgun couldn't kill BB doesn't doesn't sub-orbital laser cannon won't. Worth a shot. They don't give shit collateral damage.

[Soulflame]

The Hulk can jump to the helicarrier, and destroy it in short order.

I'm fairly certain there's no chance that the weapons on the helicarrier would even scratch The Hulk.

[RhyssaFireheart]

Isn't that predicated on the fact that he's in Hulk form though?  I'd get the impression that the reason BB couldn't kill himself is that the Hulk is sharing his consciousness, kind of hard to kill yourself if the other mind in your head can stop you.  But getting hit by a sub-orbital cannon - he'd have to know it was coming in order to "defend" against the damage by Hulking out.

[tazelbain]

How would Hulk jump to something he can't see?

[eldaec]

Does plot armour work during someone else's film?

[jgsugden]

Oh, goodie!  This is going to devolve into a Hulk mechanics discussion. 

[tazelbain]

Are there limits?  Can Hulk jump slingshot around the sun to time travel to 1982 and help ET return to Jurassic Park?

[jgsugden]

Are there limits?  Can Hulk jump slingshot around the sun to time travel to 1982 and help ET return to Jurassic Park?

MCU Hulk, 616 Hulk, Ultimates Hulk, or Lou?

[tazelbain]

Gay Hulk from Endor.

[Soulflame]

Isn't that just Chewbacca?

[Ironwood]

Now really, really regretting bringing it up.

(But he'd get hit by a gun, hulk out and SMASH all 3 carriers.  Just saying.  The inference in Avengers was that Banner actually pulled the trigger in Banner form.)

[Tannhauser]

That's my take; by staying angry all the time, Banner has found a way to keep the Hulk at bay and can turn him on fast by just letting his foot off the brake so to speak.

[jgsugden]

So, the theory is that Banner - who wanted to die - was too dumb to figure out a way to kill himself that would work?  The implication in the movie was that Banner couldn't kill himself... and I think he'd be smart enough to figure out a way to hire someone to kill him when he was not expecting it if that would have worked...  Banner can't die without Hulking.

I was disappointed in a couple things. 
A very good movie, but they had just a few wtf moments that bugged me.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Comic book logic and the same problem since comics began.  You simply can't factor in every character in a comic universe in every story otherwise superman shows up and ends every single batman story in 2min.  You can either try to address every possible continuity problem and fail miserably or just ignore it and let fans speculate.

Personally I'm glad they went with the latter because trying to explain everything(Even a bunch of throwaway lines adds up) makes for terrible stories both on film and in comics.

[Ironwood]

A very good movie, but they had just a few wtf moments that bugged me.

Um, how would they know who it was ?

[jgsugden]

A very good movie, but they had just a few wtf moments that bugged me.

Um, how would they know who it was ?

[Ironwood]

You almost got me.  Almost replied to you.


Not making that mistake again !

[jgsugden]

You almost got me.  Almost replied to you.

Not making that mistake again !

I'm glad, in this second response to me, you've clarified that you do not respond to me.

[Soulflame]

With that out of the way, can we go back to talking about how good a movie this is?

Because it's really good.

[Ironwood]

It really is.

I'd actually go as far as to say it's the second best Marvel movie yet.

Which, as I've mentioned before, is some achievement given how utterly lame the characters and story potentially could be.  All the cast, with the exception of Redford, really, really went out the way to sell this one.  I couldn't believe that I was taking Falcon seriously.

It was brill and if you haven't seen it, you ought to.

[Reg]

I dunno... Was it as good as the new Star Treks? How does it compare to the Hobbit movies?

[Surlyboi]

Mackie fucking sold me on Falcon. And any movie that has Marvin Gaye's "Trouble Man" in it is better than pretty much anything. Ever.

[Jimbo]

'Nuff Said!

That was a bad ass movie. The Falcon was awesome as was the rest of it, way better than the dude in the red outfit from the 80's. Cap and Buckey's interaction and fight was great too. Damn, now I want to buy a Harley....

[Ironwood]

I dunno... Was it as good as the new Star Treks? How does it compare to the Hobbit movies?

Why you got to be like that ?

[Reg]

 

[eldaec]

If I was going to be fussy I think the only reason this isn't as good as the dark knight, or cap1, is that they don't manage to carry the thematic content of the first half into the action at the end. It makes the end feel like a fairground ride and lacks threat.

They almost went there after Cap's speech where they hinted at a "trust the people with the truth" vs "fascist efficiency" battle, but it kind if fizzled out into explosions and replace-the-widget because Robyn from HowImetyourmother said so. The winter soldier was an irrelevant distraction here more than anywhere.

I'm at risk of getting piled on for criticising a comic book film, so will stress again. It is a good film. This is more a general niggle that I almost always have with marvel films. Makes the last half an hour drag in all of them. Captain America 1 seemed to handle it best, but probably by accident.

[HaemishM]

Without calling in the Hulk to take down the helicarriers, I'm not sure they could have done anything but a replace the widget type of narrative conceit to accomplish what they wanted. I think not doing a bombastic comic book fight scene to end the whole thing would have been a better film/story but would have been ill-fitting if you compare it to the previous movies in the cinematic universe.

I think though they should be applauded for taking the risk of stretching the Winter Soldier's individual story across two movies rather than wrapping it up in this movie. That part of it had a very Empire Strikes Back feel - yeah, we got this threat taken care of but bad shit is still out there and there are story threads that clearly are being left hanging for future movies.

[RhyssaFireheart]

I think though they should be applauded for taking the risk of stretching the Winter Soldier's individual story across two movies rather than wrapping it up in this movie. That part of it had a very Empire Strikes Back feel - yeah, we got this threat taken care of but bad shit is still out there and there are story threads that clearly are being left hanging for future movies.

Which is actually fine.  While the hanging plotlines aren't too in-your-face, it feels like there's enough there for another movie.  I didn't leave the movie saying to myself "but this, that and the other thing didn't get resolved" because there was a resolution to the movie.   Even if that resolution was a big cinematic fight scene.  Still, it does seem weird that the character the movie was named for doesn't have his resolution, it didn't feel like we were left completely hanging either.

[eldaec]

I agree they have to have a bombastic action sequence, but the trick Marvel usually miss is the Dark Knight thing where the action is still asking the same questions the plot did earlier.

Early on the film is asking if shield, Fury, and Black Widow are making the right compromises to defend the planet, just as the Dark Knight is about (among other things) the relationship between the mob and it's heroes. In the Batman film that runs right through the action as well, which means I stay more invested in how they'll end it. In the marvel films they just end the plot and start exploding things.

But 'not quite as good as Nolan Batman' isn't a bad place to be. 

[Khaldun]

I really feel like you were not paying attention if you think the 2nd-half action is not answering the question "are we making the right compromises to defend the planet?"

The film answers, resoundingly, "No, no we're not." If you think about it, there really isn't a single thing that the Marvel Universe SHIELD has actually been right about *as an organization* in the history of the films. You could say, "well, that's because they were actually HYDRA and evil and shit" but that's not actually what the movie says. The movie says in the 2nd half action, "Even the 'good guys' went along with a plan that *stank* of HYDRA because they'd talked themselves into thinking it was good, until Captain America took a look at the plan and said, 'No fucking way are you doing that' and then took decisive action to act on that belief." 

[HaemishM]

I think the whole choice Widow has to make about disseminating the information at the end, despite the personal consequences it might have for her, is a pretty good way of taking the plot of the first half of the movie all the way through the action-y bits.