Tripican.com – Movie Review: Captain America : The Winter Soldier | Get Advance Tickets Now on Tripican.com

Tripican.com is pleased to present Captain America : The Winter Soldier Movie Review. It’s a must see movie and is hitting Nigerian theatres this Friday, 28th March 2014! Grab your tickets while their hot now on www.tripican.com. Enjoy.

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So, Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier came out today. Over the last months, I’ve found myself growing more and more hyped about this movie.

Brief notes on my credentials as a Marvel movie reviewer – you may skip this completely: I’m pretty hardcore into the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), having seen all the movies multiple times and knowing all the inside jokes, references, etc. I’ve always felt that Captain America 1 : The First Avenger was underrated, and on each of my three viewings I’ve grown to love it more and more. It’s simply one of the most consistent MCU movies with a clear vision that infuses every scene. I feel that the pinnacles of the MCU are Avengers, Captain America 1 and – no, not Iron Man, but Thor 1, which also had a very consistent fish-out-of-water take on an obviously silly premise.

Anyway, let’s dive in.

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This is not a good Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) movie. It’s a good movie, period. I’m generally not prone to going all giddy over a movie while in the cinema, then cooling off over a period of time, so when I say that I’d rank this as one of the top 3 MCU movies so far, I feel fairly confident that this will also be my opinion a couple of months from now. It hits all the notes you expect going in – Steve Rogers growing accustomed to the new millennium to the amusement of everyone, self-deprecating humor, inside jokes – and then it hits some notes you’re not going to expect. More on this later.

Most of you will know the basics of Captain America 2 already – SHIELD intrigue going haywire, mysterious Winter Soldier showing up, ’70s spy thriller setting and tone – so I won’t dwell on that here. Instead I will say that, even knowing about the plot, the tone and cameos, there was a whole lot of surprises waiting for me, and there will be for you too. The plot is strong, taking Captain America and Black Widow from a position of authority into exile, and it cleverly moves us from a post-millennial, high technology setting into locations straight out of the Cold War without the use of flashback (although there is one actual flashback in the movie). Captain America 2 doesn’t get its best stuff from the action sequences (although they’re there, and they’re pretty damn intense), but from a long series of emotional and poignant moments as well as its focus on mystery and uncovery.

Captain America 2 does a good job in terms of its secondary characters. The newly introduced Falcon is, naturally, presented as badass and capable, but he’s a cool character because it’s not overdone and because his “superpower” is introduced extremely late and when needed. I don’t expect or feel any need to see him again, but he adds dimension to the film and to Steve Rogers. Black Widow continues to evolve as a character, and while female-friendly Whedon did give her some cool scenes in Avengers, this is the film where she’s actually a person. Meaning she gets to fade in and out between Romanoff and Black Widow, going from martial expert extraordinaire to a tired woman without makeup curled up in the front seat of a car. I’ve never been a fan of Scarlett Johansson as an actress, but I was a big fan of Black Widow in this one. To sum up, Black Widow finally went beyond the token female role in Captain America 2.

There is, in my opinion, a glaring weakness in the movie, and it’s a predictable one. Captain America 2 presents a doomsday weapon that, in true Marvel fashion, is way too far-fetched and full of logic holes to take seriously, and it tries to tie this weapon into a subtext about surveillance, drones, pre-pre-emptive military strikes and cyber warfare, but in the end, it’s silly. The gist of it is that once it’s turned on, it will kill a lot of people based on an absurd premise and without anyone acknowledging the consequences that it would cause. That’s too bad, because the general tone and the narrative journey of Captain America 2 is much more grounded than any other Marvel movie to date. This ties into the main villain whom I won’t name here, but suffice to say that while the villain/weapon-combination of Captain America 2 is slightly less flamboyant and cartoonish than movies like Iron Man 2 or the Thor movies, it’s still on the underdeveloped, stereotypical side.

Watch the Captain America : Winter Soldier Trailer

But in the end, Captain America 2 is a huge success and great addition to the MCU. It has so much heart that you could poke Loki‘s scepter right into it, and it has a tone that sets it apart from all the existing movies in a very welcome way. If this is the future of the franchise – movies that dare to play around with genre to distinguish themselves – then the MCU truly is on the way to becoming one of the biggest, weirdest and most delightful experiments in film history.

Note: I will strongly recommend that you make sure to watch Captain America 1 before heading off to the sequel. If you’ve followed the development of Captain America 2, you probably have a suspicion why I recommend this, but the fact is that Captain America 2 turned out to be much, much more of a direct sequel to Captain America 1 than I expected. It hamfistedly tries to bring you up to speed on what happened in Captain America 1 through a couple of exposition scenes, including a Smithsonian tour narrated by Gary Sinise, but I can tell you that revisiting Captain America 1 two days before going to the theatre made the experience a lot more engaging and emotional for me for a number of reasons.

Finally, a bit of nerdy stuff:
The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is becoming a crowded place plot-wise, branching off into many directions. Between Loki on the throne of Asgard, Thanos lurking in the shadows, the real Mandarin and the Ten Rings emerging and the Kree showing up, a lot is going on, and Captain America 2 isn’t afraid to add even more elements to the mix. That being said, while you may have heard that the movie “will leave the Marvel Cinematic Universe in an entirely new state“, I feel that this isn’t really true. Captain America 2 does set up new developments, but I feel that it does more for the Universe in terms of injecting subtle hints and name drops here and there. One namedrop in particular comes out of nowhere, but confirms what we already knew in our hearts.

There are two post-credits scenes. One is directed by Joss Whedon and is mildly interesting, mostly for its brief focus on what is to come rather than for its actual dialogue and acting. The other is completely irrelevant.

Culled from: www.asoiaf.westros.org