Captain America: The Winter Soldier

[eldaec]

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.

I'd agree with this. Everything that happened in that room I liked.

Actually Black Widow was the best thing about this really good movie.

But I struggle to compare everything else post-reveal with the scene you are talking about. The heli-carrier stuff was brilliantly directed action serving a mediocre plot.

[Khaldun]

Can I get a sense of what you think is a gold-standard plot?

[tazelbain]

Pacific Rim

[eldaec]

Can I get a sense of what you think is a gold-standard plot?

I mentioned the Dark Knight on the last page.

Perhaps it's better to say it isn't the quality of the plot so much as the plot getting largely switched off at the end.

And despite that issue even the carrier stuff was much better than the carrier battle scene in avengers.

[tazelbain]

I didn't think the plot Dark Knight was that great. Mostly it was hot-topic button pushing; ridiculous plans that only would work in movies; and Heath Ledger though some acting miracle pulling it all together.

[Khaldun]

i love Dark Knight, but to say that it has an air-tight plot is...kind of weird. It works because the performances and the overall control over the vision sell it. Same as Batman Begins, really.

[Jimbo]

My troop/minion told me (she is 24 and an RN too), "Nice I loved Captain America I saw it the other day. Had to bring an extra set of underwear with me." And Natasha/Black Widow butt was smoking hot. Oh the gals say it is a toss up between Captain America and Thor but some do like Iron Man.

Ya for eye candy!

[SurfD]

I only had one major gripe with the movie, and that stems more from the fact that I can't seem to work out the inconsistancy that is bothering me to some kind of logical conclusion:

[Abagadro]

I think Pierce just spoofed his clearance to hide what he was doing.

[SurfD]

I think Pierce just spoofed his clearance to hide what he was doing.

Right, but since that would still result in an equal level clearance (far as i know, Pierce and Fury share the same clearance level), that should not have prevented Fury from decrypting the files.

[Ironwood]

It would if he didn't have the key.  Think of the file having two properties ;  the unlock code and the 'last used'.  It says it was encrypted by Fury, but it doesn't have the key on record, so it has fuck all clue how to decrypt it.

If it helps.  Sure, it's technobabble, but it might get you over that mental block.

Because fucking flying surfer dude with a hammer, right ?

[Abagadro]

Also, by that time hadn't they locked him out of a certain level of the system except they left in his unknown "fucked up eye backdoor clearance activation magic."  It's a comics movie, just roll with it.

[eldaec]

I think Pierce just spoofed his clearance to hide what he was doing.

Right, but since that would still result in an equal level clearance (far as i know, Pierce and Fury share the same clearance level), that should not have prevented Fury from decrypting the files.

You are assuming level 10 doesn't have authority to classify something level 11. Under a textbook Bell-LaPadula access control model there is no reason why not.

But I interpreted the scene as the spoofed owner identifier (Fury Nicholas J) not matching the key used to encrypt the data resulting in a poorly worded error message.

[jgsugden]

It was not really secured by Fury, but looked that way so that if anyone else looked at it, it'd make sense that they would not be allowed.  Fury is well known for keeping secrets from the teams.

[Hutch]

Saw it today. One week after the premiere, and the Sunday morning non-3D matinee was almost full.
I loved it, and it's clearly a hit.

[Setanta]

Just saw this in 3D and it was a good fun movie. Definitely a Black Widow/Falcon movie though and could have done with a bit more of them as Cap is nowhere near as interesting in this flick. It didn't stop it from being good though. I did have a chuckle at the inscription on Nick Fury's tombstone.

Worth the money to see it on the big screen.

[NowhereMan]

Saw it and really enjoyed it. Wasn't quite as blown away by Widow as you guys were, even if Cap is more whitebread I think I enjoyed his straightman routine more in the scenes they had together. The movie worked well together and while they did downplay the thriller tone of the movie completely for the finale I felt like they kept the main themes of the movie consistent. It would have been nice to put a little more focus on things like Widow's decision to publish the info (at least making he seem conflicted and emphasised some potential consequences) but it worked for me.

I felt like Winter Soldier was set up for something but couldn't tell if it was a bigger role in Cap 3 or even a TV show. Seems to me he could be getting into whatever AoS season 2 is going to be, there's definitely a lot of resolution needed for him but I don't feel the movie lacked for not having it.

[Maven]

I saw this today, and enjoyed it.

Scarlett Johansson was given better opportunities in the movie with her character. The best scenes were between her and Chris Evans in more traditional dialogue exchanges and character development moments. This includes two scenes of vulnerability in acting, subtle, that were surprising to witness from her . The comic book moments were the least interesting, but I agree that the final action set piece was well designed and flowed much better than, say, the initial shaky cam fights on the deck of the ship at the beginning of the movie.

Falcon was well-integrated, Anthony Mackie did a great job.

Fallacious arguments abound in this movie's work, and rule of cool in full effect.

[murdoc]

This movie was great and as someone earlier in the thread noted, it showed a really good way for a 'boy-scout' type character to be in a current action movie. I am no Captain America fan at ALL, but so far the two movies have been, outside of Avengers, the best ones.

I didn't get most of the references though. I never really followed CA's comics since I found the character really dull.

[MahrinSkel]

I think Cap works because he's the typical Super spy/Supersoldier, but he's a complete Boy Scout.  There's never any ambiguity about what he'll do, it will be the Right Thing.  He'll manage to avoid having to choose between two evils, or his personal honor vs. the Greater Good, through the sheer purity of his own goodness.

After two generations of anti-heroes and flawed paragons with a dark past, seeing a Boy Scout kicking ass feels fresh.

--Dave

[Ironwood]

He asked if anyone wanted to leave the elevator.  He wasn't bragging, he wasn't being cool, he wasn't showing badassdom.

He was genuinely asking if anyone wanted to leave.

Seriously, for such a one note awful comic book character, he's really, really managed to come alive through these two movies.

[HaemishM]

It doesn't hurt one bit that Chris Evans has some innate charisma, or that the comics Captain America has some good stories in the last decade to draw from (the stuff written by Ed Brubaker and Mark Waid). But the screen writers also don't believe that a boy scout is a boring character. Though I liked Man of Steel, that's one thing that Zak Snyder really missed about Superman - good characters don't HAVE to be boring.

[Ironwood]

Alas, because I don't read many Cap comments, all I had going into this set of movies was that fucking awful 'Do You Think This A Stands For France' nonsense.  Offensive in every possible way.

So it was nice to get a human superhero.  Even nicer that he's now in this modern shithole and he's representing what America would like to be and trying to fight what it actually is.

Because in the real world, we'd have shot Fury years ago and blamed it on the brown folks.

[Margalis]

Alas, because I don't read many Cap comments, all I had going into this set of movies was that fucking awful 'Do You Think This A Stands For France' nonsense.  Offensive in every possible way.

That was part of Ultimate Avengers by Mark Millar. Ultimate Avengers, like a lot of Ultimate stuff,  was fan wank "interesting" only because it flipped the script on established characters.

After two generations of anti-heroes and flawed paragons with a dark past, seeing a Boy Scout kicking ass feels fresh.

I've seen this sentiment a lot and I think it has merit. Current DC comics are very much in the mid-90s "everything is dark and edgy" mindset as are their movies, whereas Marvel is often more fun and aspirational. So much of modern life is about snark and cynicism that being a Boy Scout is in some way more edgy than being edgy.

[Ironwood]

Mark Millar is a cunt.

[HaemishM]

Yes. I call him the Poor Man's Grant Morrison. He stopped writing interesting stuff in the early aughts.

[jgsugden]

Yeah, being dark and edgy in comics and comics movies is a lot like being negative and snarky on forums...

[Ironwood]

I actually meant personally, but never mind.  I didn't realise he wrote that shite.  Should have guessed.  Not all Scottish people are as fucking awesome and modest as me.

[Tannhauser]

Sorry Iron, got to bump you to #3 Best Scotsman

1.  Grant Morrison-IMO the greatest comic writer ever.
2.  Craig Ferguson-Nuff said.
3.  Ironwood-uh 'fucking awesome and modest'?

[Soulflame]

Alan Moore will send snakes to eat you.  Soon.

[Tannhauser]

Morrison only barely edges out Moore and I'm not sure if Moore's a Scot.  So I didn't mention him.  Please tell him to call off the snakes.

[pxib]

He never thought to seek those subtle arts that -- once the snakes have found the soulscent of their prey -- sate those same reptilian lusts that called them forth... and save the one they sought. Moore is a thing born without even the inkling of mercy.

That said, he's not too fond of the internet. Anything you say here is probably safe.

[Khaldun]

The thing is, you can't write a Boy Scout if you don't as a writer also have some strong opinions about what the Right Thing to do is.

So, on one hand, Zack Snyder can't do a Boy Scout because he wouldn't know the Right Thing was even if came up and gave him a blow job.

On the other hand, a lot of comic-book writers have written dull Captain America and Superman comics because their sense of "the Right Thing" was more or less cribbed from Boy's Life magazine circa 1955--not so much that this was Cap's inner life (which is fine in a way) but that it was also his actual world (which is dumb). Mark Gruenwald, who was otherwise a fine guy, is famous for the utterly dumb stories he kept writing about Cap where his agonizing moral dilemmas were things like "What should I do if a slinky villainness wants to make love to me and is willing to let us die in a fiery plane crash if I won't" and "Is it ok to shoot a terrorist if there's no other way to stop him killing a church full of people?"

You make a Boy Scout interesting not if you put him in situations where he's facing things that are a threat to his immaculate virtue but where he's facing things that are threats to OUR sense of what's right and wrong. Most of us wouldn't even think twice about schtupping a sexy person in a leotard if the alternative was dying in a fiery crash or shooting a terrorist if the alternative was fifty innocent people getting shot. But most of us wonder how to reconcile liberty and security. That's where we want to know what the boy scout would do--and where a good writer can't afford to temporize or try to split the difference. You have to make it really clear what you think the Right Thing To Do actually is.

[MahrinSkel]

Yeah, but they never lampshaded it.  Take the final fight scene:


The key to a good superhero movie is accepting the symbolic logic of the character as the primary driver of the plot, not trying to pick it apart and subvert it.

--Dave

[Ironwood]

Yes, that's exactly right.

Whereas Superman killed Zod.