“I’m here to pick up a fossil” – on unchanging ideals in “Captain America 2”

Warning, spoilers are present below!

Several years ago, I reviewed the first Captain America movie, criticizing it for being too safe and glorifying war.  In “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” there is some degree of realism – mentions of PTSD, groups at the VA, doubting the morality of covert missions.  However, it’s very little of the movie, and what doubt exists is mostly for naught – Steve Rogers is still a straight arrow, boring and flat.  Even Romanoff, who supposedly has more flexible principles, was quite simple.  Also, I liked her better with dark, curly hair.   There was a great opportunity here – dropping a hero from days past into the modern world and watching him struggle to align his way of thinking with that of his new surroundings.  There’s a couple good moments where Fury describes how things must be realistic; unfortunately, Captain America barely changes, and instead just gets his way when he (of course) ends up being right about everything.

In terms of style, I thought some of the fight scenes were really too ridiculous.  It’s fine to have heroes bounce their shields off walls with billiards-like movements in a cartoon, but to see the same effect so poorly-rendered in a movie is pitiful.  Plenty of other superhero movies have portrayed high-powered fights with believable physics, so why couldn’t they here? I also thought the dialogue was for the most part bland, with the occasional cute quip thrown in.  Furthermore, there were devices thrown in just for the sake of advancing/delaying the plot – why does the Winter Soldier wear a mask?  So we don’t know who he is until it gets taken off.  I can’t stand storytelling that resorts to this kind of weak mechanism.  There are too many predictable cards – the sidekick who joins up (despite previously mentioning how happy he was to get out of fighting), the nemesis who turns out to be a former best friend, etc.  I had heard great things about Captain America 2, and had high hopes for it despite disliking the original.  After seeing it, I can’t fathom how it managed to score so high on Rotten Tomatoes (89/95%).

I do have to applaud Marvel for building up quite an expansive cinematic universe.  I actually enjoyed the television series, “Agents of SHIELD,”  which follows a team of less famous actors that constantly refers to movie characters like Thor or Captain America.  However, as I discussed in “The Avengers,” there’s a danger in involving too many heroes – someone will have to take the back seat, and things will eventually spiral into complicated mush.  In terms of Marvel’s main movies thus far, I thought the first “Iron Man” had some original ideas, but that since then, their movies have devolved into disappointing money-making pieces that are continuously churned out as if through an assembly line.  Sorry, Marvel, I think I’m going to have to stick with DC from now on.