Phase Two of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is shaping up to be
even better than Phase One. The MCU has become a deep, complex world,
and
The Winter Soldier makes
the most of this, exploring and reacting to the status quo and then
shattering it. It's a back-to-basics action film, a
Bourne-like
political thriller where Cap becomes an enemy of the state. It's a
faster, more violent, less kid-friendly take on the character and his
world than either
The First Avenger or
Avengers Assemble.
As wonderful as it was to see a
period superhero film with
The First Avenger,
Captain America works best as a man out of time. The original comics
brought Cap only twenty years or so into his future, the rolling
present of the comics universe eventually forcing him to confront the
morally questionable United States of the twenty-first century. The
MCU, however, has dropped the Captain straight into the murky world
of modern geopolitics and the War on Terror (TM), a world to which
his straightforward and noble morality is spectacularly unsuited.
This is the stark truth of the modern world. It's not that the
military and governments of the past didn't compromise their morals
in order to hold onto power or to fight for the greater good. It's
that now, we are under no illusions that this is the truth of things.
While I don't buy into the concept of a vast conspiracy steering
global history, it's no secret that those in power do not always have
our best interests at heart; or that, when they do, they may take
some appalling actions in order to protect them.
Steve Rogers isn't a man to
compromise his morals, something that is both his strength and his
weakness in this story. In a world where no one can be trusted, he is
the one man who can be. Chris Evans is still utterly perfect as
Rogers, convincing as the unstoppable pinnacle of the human form at
the same time as he portrays a vulnerable naivety. Pairing him with
the Black Widow is a clever decision. She represents the exact
opposite of Cap; someone morally compromised who learned how to be a
better person, while Rogers is having to learn that sometimes, he
needs to be worse. Some of the work is already done; from the outset,
this is a more violent version of the Captain than we've previously
seen.
While this is a thoroughly
modern, up-to-date actioner, it wears its influences on its sleeve.
Retro elements abound, from the forties flashbacks to the
seventies-style vibe of the politics and espionage. Samuel L. Jackson
brings his usual
Shaft-like
cool to all his scenes, even when he's violently incapacitated. The
Winter Soldier himself, the crucial element of the movie, may be a
21
st
century character but is screamingly nineties in his design. Cap
himself looks better than ever, sporting a stealth version of his
uniform for the initial night operation, before going plain clothes
and finally reverting to his forties outfit from
The First
Avenger. Each look is a hell of
a lot better than his
Avengers outfit.
(What will he wear for
Age of Ultron?
Will he have a new Avengers Ensemble?)
The Winter Soldier stands
above all the preceding MCU films in terms of action. While it's
saddening to realise that the most spectacular sequences will have
been primarily created in the computer suite, the genuine live-action
setpieces are still breathtaking. However, this is no Michael Bay
gratuitous explosion-fest; everything pushes the story forward and
allows further insights into the characters, and how each of them
approaches a war situation. And, because this is a treatise on 21
st
century American warfare, there is plenty of collateral damage.
Indeed, this is the entire point of the film. While it is revealed
that SHIELD has been compromised, that revelation is almost
unnecessary. It's entirely feasible that a US-based military
organisation would see defending the world's freedom and using
horrifying weapons of mass destruction as somehow compatible.
Sebastian Stan makes a great
impression as Bucky Barnes, in spite of spending more than half his
screentime silently dealing out punishment. His chemistry with Evans
sells their scenes together; you can still see Bucky somewhere under
the Winter Soldier mask. Stan is signed up for a nine picture
contract; with Evans only signed up for six, with three down already
(surely his cameo in
Thor 2 can't
count?) I think it's reasonable to assume that the movies will follow
the comics and rehabilitate Bucky as the replacement Captain America.
That, however, is in the future. For know, there's the still the
battle to recover Bucky from his enslavement as the Winter Soldier.
The remaining cast all impress;
there really isn't a bad performance in the film. Anthony Mackie's
Falcon has a great rapport with Cap, giving the film some of the
bromance that Bucky and Cap had in
The First Avenger.
They've even managed to make the Falcon's flying gear look feasible
and not completely ridiculous, always a challenge when translating
comic visuals to the screen. Robert Redford oozes old American class
as the duplicitous SHIELD supremo Alexander Pierce. There's a
beautiful cameo by Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter, and Emily VanCamp
makes an impression in her debut as Sharon Carter, surely set to
become a more significant character in the MCU. Cobie Smulders gets
the screentime she deserves at last; Agent Hill absolutely rocks in
this film. In fact, for such a boys' film, this is strong on powerful
female characters. Scarlett Johansson sometimes seems a little
uncomfortable as Romanov, but then again, this could be a deliberate
character choice. In any case, we know she is capable of more than
she shows in this film; if anything,
The Winter Soldier is
a great argument for a non-superpowered, Black Widow spy thriller.
It's just a shame the poster designers decreed it was necessary to
take such bizarre liberties with her appearance and photoshop the
hell out of her.
There are other unexpected
apperances. Jenny Agutter has her sexiest screen moment since her dip
in
Walkabout. Toby
Jones reappears as Arnim Zola, in drastically altered circumstances
reflecting his peculiar evolution in the comics, in a scene that adds
an eighties techno-feel to the movie's retro mash-up. Frank Grillo
makes the most of his role as Brock 'Crossbones' Rumlow, a thoroughly
nasty piece of work.
In the end, this is a film about
lies, compromised morals and the problem of trust. Today's corporate,
surveillance-controlled America (and by extension, Britain and much
of the west) threatens to become more of a danger to freedom than the
regimes it pits itself against. While this movie will do nothing to
combat that (it belongs to Disney, for Christ's sake, so it's not
exactly innocent in the corporate evil stakes), it reflects the
populace's growing disquiet with the nature of of our civilisation.
It raises the question of whether the only way forward is to tear
everything down and start again. There will be, at the very least,
massive repercussions for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Agents
of SHIELD (with which I am
lagging behind, being in the UK) will certainly be affected, and the
set-up for
Age of Ultron will
be somewhat different than in
Avengers Assemble.
Oh, and make sure you sit through
the credits. Not only are they a minor masterpiece in themselves, but
both the mid-credits and post-credits scenes are worth waiting for.
