Tag Archives: Movie-Review

I’ll confess, I’ve been shameless about my anticipation for this movie. I’ve pounced on each clip and feature video as they have been released over the previous months (unfortunately, as it turned out, giving away bits of some of the best scenes), gulped at the first appearance of Ultron on my monitor, and allowed possibilities to play out in my head as I’ve pieced together different glimpses of some of my favorite comic book heroes brought to life on the screen. Going to the theatre on opening weekend wasn’t even a question…it had to be done. Tickets were ordered ahead, plans were made, and I settled in to see what Whedon had brought for us this time.

As with the first Avengers film, this fulfilled my expectations.

Well…mostly.

First, let me say what’s obvious. If you’re going into this film expecting nothing more than fantastic action and super-heroic sequences with a bit of Hulk-buster armor thrown in, then you won’t be disappointed. This film is large (literally dizzying in my first few moments in the theatre), superbly paced and, while a bit predictable, still keeps you on the edge of your seat. For those of us a with a history, though…those of us invested in the stories of these characters (and I would point out that, if you haven’t kept up with the rest of Marvel’s cinematic canon thusfar, then Age of Ultron will be a bit less effective as a standalone film), we’re not going for only that. We want to see the heroes’ struggles, the epic good vs. evil conflicts that take place internally as well as externally. And, if Age of Ultron has a weakness that I can point to, it’s that Whedon handles the internal conflicts so well, that the external conflicts become more slight.

Captain America, as he assumes the mantle of leadership with the Avengers that he took during the Winter Soldier, encapsulates the through-line of the movie best with a single statement: “This is about whether we’re heroes or monsters.” Our heroes struggle with their own self-perceptions on this continuum, and the world sees them on both ends. Does the world want to be saved by the Avengers in every case? Who can protect the world if the Avengers (read: the Hulk) lose control or go rogue?

And, perhaps more to the point, what happens when the best of intentions, the purest of motivations, bring about a result that is terribly wrong?

This film walks an interesting line between a character-driven piece (we get to know Banner, Romanoff and Barton so much better in these two and a half hours) and a plot-driven piece. The most rewarding surprise of Age of Ultron to me was that Whedon accomplished so much with the minor characters. Hawkeye, specifically, is allowed to shine here, and it is his line that summarizes the choice to act as a hero, the intentional decision that must be made, when he tells the Scarlet Witch that, if she wants to hide until the battle is over, he will send for her at the end. But, he emphasizes:

“If you step out that door…you’re an Avenger.”

That was the line that gave me chills in it’s purity, and yes, it’s in the trailer, but it carries so much more weight when in context.

Whedon is making clear here that heroism is marked by a choice, even when that choice doesn’t always succeed. While that choice can take the form of entering the fray to protect innocents despite your fear, it can also take the form of fleeing the person you love in order to protect them. While the Scarlet Witch displays her heroism by leaping into the battle, Banner displays his, paradoxically, by fleeing a different entanglement in the end. Two sides of the same impulse, both equally right, we feel…this is what Whedon does so well.

And speaking of the Scarlet Witch, Marvel seems to be winning me over. Due to legal nonsense between studios, you see, Marvel is not permitted to cast the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver as mutants, and so their origins are explained differently, here. I anticipated having big issues with this, as it’s very non-canonical, but Olsen’s performance was actually so impressive that I found myself not thinking about it until I had left the film. Perhaps I’m getting soft, or perhaps this a case of an actor adeptly handling a superb script. I’ll go with the latter.

Because the inner conflicts of the heroes are so pronounced, what suffers is the villain. In fact, the most serious flaw of the movie that results from the internal/external imbalance is that Ultron is cheated. Every time this character appears in the comics, he is terrifying. He’s nearly indestructible, he’s capable of so much evil. When the Avengers face Ultron, they’re never really certain if they’ll walk away. Here, his dialogue seems out of character frequently (I’ve never read Ultron as being in any way comedic), his dangerous visage dismantled on a regular basis. I’ll agree with Forbes that Ultron, despite his depictions in the excellent trailers preceding this film, is hardly terrifying. He is, in fact, so easily dispatched by the Vision in the end that the act feels cheapened and cartoonish.

The continuity is handled well, as lead-ins to the Civil War and continuation of the Infinity War story arcs are there for anyone who wants to see them, and feel consistent and well-explained. Whedon intersperses a smattering of religious metaphors, here, as well, but they never quite become fully cohesive, unless the point is a theology of evolution beyond ourselves. The Vision certainly has moments of appearing as a Christological metaphor in both dialogue and appearance, but I don’t think that Whedon is going for something that overt or…and I shudder to use this term here…simplistic.

When saving the population of a city from death by ushering them aboard the SHIELD helicarrier, Quicksilver remarks, “This is SHIELD?” Captain America’s reply is, “It’s what SHIELD is supposed to be.” And, while we feel the weight of the Winter Soldier’s events in those words, and see foreshadowing of the Civil War to come, we also understand that the purest of motivations, when misled, can lead to the most catastrophic of consequences.

Perhaps what most differentiates the heroes from the monsters lies in how those consequences are handled.

If you haven’t seen Age of Ultron yet, make certain that you do.

In the past, there were films based on the favorite comic book characters of my youth. The first X-Men film left me positively giddy. I still have collectible figures floating around from the second. X-Men: The Last Stand left me angry, frustrated that such careless writing could have wreaked so much havoc on the story and characters. I thought the franchise had died at that point, until the Wolverine origins film. I prefer to just not talk about that one.

Then we were treated to X-Men First Class. I did talk about that one. Then there was the latest Wolverine film, which, while not exactly memorable, held a bit more promise. So, all that to say, when I saw the first trailer for X-Men: Days of Future Past, I held out hope. Days of Future Past is such a classic X-Men story arc, acclaimed by fans to be one of the best X-Men story arcs ever, in fact, that, if anything were going to save this cinematic canon, it would be this. I took a deep breath. I pounded down my cynicism. I made plans to go. I even saw it in 3D. I was hoping against hope that this film would repair the damaged history of the X-Men film canon.

History is, after all, what is at stake in the story. The X-Men must find a way to travel back in time to prevent an event from occurring that has led to a dystopian future in which mutants are hunted and killed by lethal and unbeatable robot Sentinels. This is an apocalyptic war that has destroyed most of the world, leaving it in Sentinels’ hands. So dark is this future, that, as Wolverine claims, “I’ve seen a lot of wars. But I’ve never seen anything like this.”

And Wolverine, of course, must be at the forefront of the story, because this is the only way that Fox has held on to any momentum with these movies. Historically the fan favorite of all the X-Men, Wolverine is reprised by Jackman, the same as all of our recurring characters are reprised by their original actors. This is good, and Jackman manages to breathe some life into this script, which speaks to his acting ability a great deal. Since, as Kitty Pryde must project someone’s consciousness back into the past to alter the course of the moment in history when everything changed, but the journey would destroy anyone else, Wolverine must make the journey because his healing factor will keep him alive. So, into the past he is projected…

Except, wait. Remember your (canonical) Marvel history here? It was Kitty who was projected into the past, not Wolverine, and since when can Kitty Pryde project anyone’s consciousness across temporal barriers? Oh, that’s right…since never!  Adaptations are one thing, but completely re-building characters…especially characters that have already been established on film…well, that’s just bad form.

And, speaking of bad form: The discrepancy in period settings and technology is serious enough as to completely break my suspension of disbelief on several occasions in the film (Cerebro is housed in the Xavier estates’ hi-tech sub-basement as always, while upstairs, Hank McCoy’s communication scanning setup feels decidedly steampunk in nature). Quicksilver, another long-time fan-favorite character, is introduced in this movie (somehow, Wolverine knows him?). Whenever we see a new character introduced in these movies, with the possible exception of Nightcrawler, we’ve been disappointed, and Quicksilver is no exception. The scene in which he is outrunning bullets is so campy, so implausible within the rest of the story as to not fit at all, and left me shaking my head wondering if the writers had any idea what they were doing. Primary characters reprised in Days of Future Past are relegated to fast-paced action scenes, with nearly no characterization work at all except for Wolverine, Xavier and Magneto. How a character as strong and important to the mythology as Bishop can be introduced, be visually impeccable, and experience no character development at all, leaves my jaw agape.

For Magneto and Xavier, at least, there is a moment in which Magneto recognizes the wasted years spent fighting each other, but even the insight into Magneto’s character we gained during X-Men First Class is left behind, and Xavier’s development, while a solid attempt, is ultimately shallow and without solid foundation.

In fairness, the film is redemptive in the end. While none of our heroes actually act as heroes, the emphasis on humanity’s ability to choose to do what is right at any time is the overarching theme. Unfortunately, this is overshadowed. Our heroes, fighting for their own survival, are decidedly un-heroic here. Our villains are bad for the sake of being bad (what, exactly, is Trask’s motivation, again?), and the potential for the themes with which the X-Men deal so profoundly…the danger of a police state, acceptance instead of fear, oppression of minorities…never really come to the surface. Perhaps the glimpse of redemption is a drop on a parched tongue in the end, and seemed more profound that it actually was.

In summary, X-Men: Days of Future Past plays off of the revisionist history established in X-Men: First Class while attempting to reconcile the disaster made by X-Men: Last Stand. The result is a scattershot and un-researched adaptation of a story arc permitted to run amok, explained away by history being changed, while also explaining away a contradictory history in the events of X-Men: Last Stand while attempting to tie up the decidedly atrocious ending of the latter in a neat bow. It’s too disorganized, too flippant, and ultimately too simple. This is shallow scripting and un-motivated character development, no more than a fleeting glimpse at what this story has, and should have, been.

Of course, there is a hidden ending (people amazingly continued to leave during the credits, although I can’t blame them after sitting through that), a hidden ending so visually awkward that I had to ask my friend who the character was in the end. It was a villain that I knew well from X-Men history. I didn’t even recognize him.

When the Captain America: The First Avenger was nearing it’s release, I remember having a conversation with an old friend over coffee. He wondered what would be done with the character on film, the undertone being that he was concerned that Cap would be reduced to the hard-fighting, propagandized embodiment of the “American dream.” I refuted that the character has a long history of being much more than that, and the capacity was certainly there if the writers chose to realize it. Certainly they did in the first film, and I had high hopes…and high standards… for this week’s debut of Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

I also find myself recalling another conversation with another friend who collected comics as I do. He operated a comic book interest group in the city where we lived, and said in one of our conversations that comic books provide a snapshot of where our culture is or has been at any given moment in history. I think that’s true. I also think that the potential for this is even greater as our heroes leap from the page (some beautifully, some less than spectacularly) onto the screen. If ever there was a super hero story to date that wrestled with the changing times in which we find ourselves, it is this film. If ever there were a character to wrestle with these massive issues and give hope in our fight to defend…or even to understand…our identity, it is Captain America. If ever there was a time to put these questions onto the screen, it’s now.

Oh, and those high standards? They were exceeded in nearly every way.

Steve Rogers, remember, is a man out of time, a member of the “greatest generation,” the product of an era when true freedom was felt to be threatened and a nation of people were willing to do whatever it took to defend that freedom. He is displaced to our current time, and left to sort out a country extremely different than the one for which he fought. Captain America symbolizes everything that we would want in a hero…good for the sake of good, annoyingly good, an ideal that is more powerful in spirit than in any physical capacity. You likely recall his line from the Avengers, when, saying that he had been told that America won the war when he emerged from his icy hibernation, he added, “They didn’t say what we had lost.” It’s hard to look at where we are and wonder if we haven’t lost a great deal. The ideal of sacrificing for what we believe isn’t in question. The question of our age is rather, what is it that we’re sacrificing? How far is too far, and what is it, exactly, that we believe?

This film does what the super hero genre is most uniquely qualified to do, and pulls that lingering question under a spotlight to be examined. Were I to isolate a single theme for The Winter Solider, it would be this: What is freedom? Nick Fury holds one ideal, and guides SHIELD in that path. “We take the world as it is, not as we’d like it to be.” He’s angry that Captain America won’t accept that ideal. After all, he reasons in early and very meaningful dialogue, Captain America’s generation got their hands dirty protecting freedom, and did things that they weren’t proud of. The Captain’s response is that they did indeed, but that they did so for freedom, not fear.

In a post-terror-attack world, has our definition of defending freedom become a reactionary one driven by fear? Conspiracy theorists would tell you that this has given rise to those who say that there is such a thing as too much freedom, those who would act for what they see is the greater good of the entire country without that country’s consent or permission. Our surveillance society concerns of today is the example that most likely leaps to mind, and the movie captures this fear, wrestles with it, forces the audience deeply into both sides and the answers at which they arrive to the questions, the questions that have to be asked. The movie asks them, in a way that I can’t recall a super hero story doing since the Watchmen came into print. And, while that might be shockingly high praise that will be off-putting to some, I’ll say in my defense that, in order to explore the character of Captain America as a sequel deserves, the writers had to delve deeply into the anxieties of the times, into the questions that we all have on our lips, just as Moore did with his anti-heroes. The difference here…the thing that Captain America symbolizes above all else…is that there is hope.

Captain America, after all, may be the first super hero, but he is also much more than a super hero. He is a symbol of the everyman, and someone who must probe the questions that we are frightened to probe. This film is simply just deeper than the rest of the Avengers canon, and, while the films preceding it have certainly laid the foundation for this, there just hasn’t been a film to date that was more capable than this one of exploring the issues at hand, and I am so glad that Brubaker, Markus and McFeely did not shy away from doing so, because this screenplay is simply, unquestioningly superb.

Fitting Marvel’s history of placing all-star casts in the Avengers films, this certainly is no exception. Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, and Samuel L. Jackson all bring outstanding performances to the screen, as do Cobie Smulders (who we discover may play a very important role in upcoming films?) and Anthony Mackie as he debuts the Falcon to our lineup of heroes. Evans allows Steve Rogers to develop as a character is huge ways here (his scene opposite Hayley Atwell is…wow…). Also, for long-time comic book fans, Agent 13 makes an appearance, hopefully the first of many, and I’m happy to see the thorough evolution of the Black Widow (and, if I may interject and channel the voices of long-time fans everywhere…please, Marvel…she needs her own film!).

My only complaint with the film, if this is a complaint at all, is that the themes which it explores are so huge, and it’s treatment of them so thorough, that the Winter Solider story arc (which I won’t spoil if you’re unaware of who he is) lacks a bit in where it could be taken. That is, by the end of almost two-and-a-half hours in the theatre, I wanted to see him developed more.

From a closer perspective, the choreography of the action sequences are generally excellent here, although the final and climactic face-off between Captain America and the Winter Solider became a bit too predictable. The pacing is ideal, giving the audience just enough time to relax before returning to the edges of their seats, and the plot twists…well, let’s just say I didn’t see this one coming.

Captain America is an iconic character for reasons that many don’t realize. He simultaneously symbolizes and calls into question our nation’s identity. This film realizes that potential, and I can’t imagine anyone not taking something huge away from the movie. Super hero fan or not, Avengers fan or not, you will not be disappointed here, you will be enriched.

And, just in case you’re not conditioned for it yet, don’t leave when the credits roll. There are not one, but two hidden endings, one of which introduces three important new characters to the Marvel universe.

I give Captain America: The Winter Soldier a solid ten out of five stars.