Winter Soldier

[kindkit]

Today was payday, and I indulged myself in a movie. I picked Captain America: The Winter Soldier over several movies I was more interested in (Railway Man, Only Lovers Left Alive, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Lunch Box) because it seemed like the one that would lose the most if watched on DVD rather than in the theater.



Well, I guess this demonstrates that Captain America is just not my thing. Steve is likeable enough and certainly admirable, but he's not interesting to me. And it's not that I think good people are inherently uninteresting, it's that neither Captain America movie has had a script that knows how to create interest. Proof: Steve appealed to me a lot more in Avengers, which had a better script. Also, I don't think Chris Evans is enough of an actor to carry a movie centered around him, though he certainly has the shoulders to carry a lot of other things.

I found the plot silly, and not in the good "let's suspend our disbelief and have fun" way, but in the "oh, come on" way. Computerized Nazis with comical German accents, really?

I was spoiled for the big reveal about Bucky, because I used to be on the fringes of Marvel comics fandom and "Bucky became the Winter Soldier" is just one of those things you pick up even if you don't read Captain America comics. My knowing the big plot twist probably didn't help, but the thing is, for a movie called "The Winter Soldier" there was surprisingly little about him in it. My reaction at the end of the movie was "all that and Steve doesn't even get Bucky back yet?" I was seriously expecting (in part because I know there's been another explosion of Steve/Bucky fic) that the movie would end with Steve and Bucky reunited, but nooooo. I'll have to sit through yet another movie to see that! But not, because I doubt I could muster the interest.

I did think Sebastian Stan did a good job with what little unmasked, unfighty screen time he was given as Bucky. The scene where he's trying, in miserable bafflement, to work out why he feels he knows Steve was very well done. But that was about the only part of the movie I liked. Nick Fury is not a favorite character for me (I don't trust him) and Natasha spent way too much time advising Steve on his love life. I ended up spending most of the movie trying to figure out where in Washington DC they were filming, or in the case of some scenes whether it was really DC at all.

At least I can read fic now. There must be some good fic, yes? Recs welcome.



Before the movie they showed the trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy (which looks like an absolute piece of shit) and Days of Future Passed, which looks great and will be out soon soon soon! Also for about thirty other movies that all seemed to star Adam Sandler or one of his clones.

Comments

[lilliburlero]

I felt similarly disappointed by it: there seemed to be lots of opportunities to explore the characters' relationships and inner lives, without detriment to the action, and none of them were taken. I'm usually a bit impatient with the response I didn't care about any of these characters because it so often means the creator(s) didn't go straight for the obvious emotional jugular vein and working out subtleties and contradictions is hard work but with this film I just couldn't have cared less, and I didn't think it was because I was missing something.

[kindkit]

Well, going for the obvious emotional jugular is usually what makes me unable to care about characters; I like subtlety. But the Captain America movies aren't subtle--they can barely even manage to be obvious. There's just no there there.

[lilliburlero]

The first one I sort of enjoyed, though I said afterwards that it played like a two-hour trailer, and my companion, much better up in the source material than I, said that's because it was, for the Avengers movie. Winter Soldier just seemed to avoid or deflect every relationship it proposed, whether it was Steve/Bucky, or Steve's friendship with Natasha, or with Falcon. That said, I think the very limited emotional palette and range has, I gather, resulted in some pretty dense and intricate fic: it's not a fandom I read, though, so I'm afraid I don't have any recs.

[lilacsigil]

I enjoyed it very much as a Natasha fan! Apparently they filmed the whole thing in Cleveland, just to confuse the Washington DC people.

(And the computerised Nazi was Swiss!)

[kindkit]

Huh. Some of it looks very like DC--and I don't mean the monuments, but the streets etc. I wonder if they set-dressed Cleveland to make it more DC-ish.