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So, the day before yesterday Darcy & decided to watch The Winter Soldier (it was on Netflix, we hadn't seen it).
I'd taken a good deal in by fannish osmosis, so was expecting a bromance (well star-crossed in that Bucky was 'evil').
This proved incorrect.
The main friendship was Cap/Natasha (I love Natasha, so this was A-OK with me). But I had no idea that she was even in the film.
The secondary friendship was Cap/Falcon (Sam?). I sort of wish they'd done more with it, rather than The Falcon deciding to help out because... he could. He looked vaguely familiar, but didn't realise who he was until he put the wings on and I waved my hands around 'cause he had like a 3 second cameo in Antman.
As for Bucky, then... Well Darcy thought him way cooler than the Cap (all emo with his dark hair, and he had a cool arm too!) and I wish we'd gotten more of him? Like, it's his name on the film, but he's barely onscreen. And the Steve/Bucky friendship is covered in two blink-and-you'll-miss-it flashbacks. (This is of course where tropes are very handy, cause goodness knows male friendship is something so fundamental to stories generally that we can fill in the whole thing without knowing anything beyond the fact that they'd always be there for each other.) (I am sure the whole thing is beautifully fleshed out in the comics. But as a viewer, it felt a little... basic.)
Their actual interactions don't take much more than 5 minutes (maybe 10?) and most of those they spend fighting.
Sidebar: Who was the massively cool lady with the dark hair? Fury's right hand woman? Don't even know her name, she seemed more together & smarter than all the rest put together. Give her a film!
Plot... um. IDK. A thing. Stupidly ridiculous as these things always are, and I think I got the main gist, but mostly through knowing how these things work.
So is there more Bucky somewhere? Does Mr tortured & memory wiped & turned into a weapon get an actual story at some point?
Oh and it was fun to see how it built to Age of Ultron (which I have seen), with the twins at the end.
Mostly though, then this fantastically well-organised group of Nazis is just... too unreal? In the actual world, they're 'alt-right' keyboard 'warriors', not hyper-fit soldiers or massively scheming uber Bad Guys. (I mean, they do scheme, and cause a lot of damage, but it's just ugly and horrible and every day.) Give me Kylo Ren any day, he's more plausible than Hydra. The angry young radicalised white guy hung up on the past, who in another world would wear a MAGA hat and yell about the 2nd Amendment online.
Plus (BLACK PANTHER SPOILERS below)
Am I right in thinking that Shuri fixed Bucky?
I'd taken a good deal in by fannish osmosis, so was expecting a bromance (well star-crossed in that Bucky was 'evil').
This proved incorrect.
The main friendship was Cap/Natasha (I love Natasha, so this was A-OK with me). But I had no idea that she was even in the film.
The secondary friendship was Cap/Falcon (Sam?). I sort of wish they'd done more with it, rather than The Falcon deciding to help out because... he could. He looked vaguely familiar, but didn't realise who he was until he put the wings on and I waved my hands around 'cause he had like a 3 second cameo in Antman.
As for Bucky, then... Well Darcy thought him way cooler than the Cap (all emo with his dark hair, and he had a cool arm too!) and I wish we'd gotten more of him? Like, it's his name on the film, but he's barely onscreen. And the Steve/Bucky friendship is covered in two blink-and-you'll-miss-it flashbacks. (This is of course where tropes are very handy, cause goodness knows male friendship is something so fundamental to stories generally that we can fill in the whole thing without knowing anything beyond the fact that they'd always be there for each other.) (I am sure the whole thing is beautifully fleshed out in the comics. But as a viewer, it felt a little... basic.)
Their actual interactions don't take much more than 5 minutes (maybe 10?) and most of those they spend fighting.
Sidebar: Who was the massively cool lady with the dark hair? Fury's right hand woman? Don't even know her name, she seemed more together & smarter than all the rest put together. Give her a film!
Plot... um. IDK. A thing. Stupidly ridiculous as these things always are, and I think I got the main gist, but mostly through knowing how these things work.
So is there more Bucky somewhere? Does Mr tortured & memory wiped & turned into a weapon get an actual story at some point?
Oh and it was fun to see how it built to Age of Ultron (which I have seen), with the twins at the end.
Mostly though, then this fantastically well-organised group of Nazis is just... too unreal? In the actual world, they're 'alt-right' keyboard 'warriors', not hyper-fit soldiers or massively scheming uber Bad Guys. (I mean, they do scheme, and cause a lot of damage, but it's just ugly and horrible and every day.) Give me Kylo Ren any day, he's more plausible than Hydra. The angry young radicalised white guy hung up on the past, who in another world would wear a MAGA hat and yell about the 2nd Amendment online.
Plus (BLACK PANTHER SPOILERS below)
Am I right in thinking that Shuri fixed Bucky?
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I loved the fugitives on the lam feel of it and the way all of the interpersonal connections are getting more complex.
I love that we don't know much about Clint because he's actually kind of normal. That is awesome. And his talk with Scarlet Witch about whether or not she's going to rejoin the fight was the best scene of the whole movie.
I liked Romanov and Banner. The execution admittedly wasn't great, but I think there's a lot in there that's pretty interesting.
And then I watched Ant Man which was, indeed quite good. Though I'm getting annoyed every time I have to take a break from the main storyline to sit through yet another origins story. And the more of these you sit through in a row the more hideously boring every set up of powerful thing that could destroy everything and antagonist who wants it for themselves gets. Every time Michael Douglass came on scene I nearly phased out: you made a thing, some other guy wants it, blah, blah, blah fishcakes.
Scott's criminal friends were amazing, though. Give them a movie. And this is by far the most interesting super hero power mechanism of any of them. Like: there's a set of rules and you win through applying them in creative ways. That's the way to make me want to watch a fight scene.
no subject
I have zero recollection of what Ultron is or wants. Or indeed any of the plot.
Re. Ant Man, then yes, parts are SO GENERIC it's only bearable because he's so engaging, but the Bad Guy plan is... ugh.
Scott's criminal friends were amazing, though. Give them a movie.
IKR? The Mexican guy who picks him up and tells him what's happened while I-forget-Antman's-real-name has been in prison and immediately I wanted to watch THAT story, not origin story #whatever.
And this is by far the most interesting super hero power mechanism of any of them. Like: there's a set of rules and you win through applying them in creative ways. That's the way to make me want to watch a fight scene.
The train fight is the single best fight in any film.
And the KEY RING. It's just SO MUCH FUN.
OK, running away. :D
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Good luck!!
I have zero recollection of what Ultron is or wants. Or indeed any of the plot.
Tony is creating an artificial intelligence system to defend the whole earth from alien invasions and accidentally gives it sentience using one of the infinity stones. Predictably it immediately gets the wrong end of the stick and decides that protecting the earth means something different from not getting people killed. As soon as we get to that point it's boring, but the argument about what Tony is doing and why is actually quite good.
Re. Ant Man, then yes, parts are SO GENERIC it's only bearable because he's so engaging, but the Bad Guy plan is... ugh.
It's getting to the point where I'm preferring the super heroes who just pop up without their own dedicated movie because so help me, I do not care.
Also, another origins story, another shoehorned, underdeveloped love interest. I hate everything.
IKR? The Mexican guy who picks him up and tells him what's happened while I-forget-Antman's-real-name has been in prison and immediately I wanted to watch THAT story, not origin story #whatever.
The bits where he's telling a story in voiceover and all the people in the story are lip-synching along to his slang-y retelling of it: I know that's a pretty standard joke, but it's one of my favorite executions of it I've ever seen.
The train fight is the single best fight in any film.
That was great. They way they kept bringing up the tropes of that kind of fight and then inverting them over and over was fantastic. Also the giant Thomas the Tank Engine lying sideways through the side of the house, the eyes tracking back and forth.
no subject
Between this and Deadpool, is what I love.
Also the giant Thomas the Tank Engine lying sideways through the side of the house, the eyes tracking back and forth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMP_VoJC2sU
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I feel like Marvel is actually pretty good at generating interesting premises and then terrible at resolving them in thematically resonant ways. I mean, usually the resolution is just, "Let's punch it out!" I feel like Winter Soldier and Black Panther get away with "Let's punch it out!" because there's such a rich relationship between the combatants and because there's this element of not knowing who to trust and having to fight your friends, and also because they don't shirk on resolving the other elements once the climactic battle is done. But omg, Vision is such a dumb resolution to the Age of Ultron premise. He's my least favorite character in the whole MCU because I can't get over that.
(It occurs to me, having written that Winter Soldier and Black Panther both have "this element of not knowing who to trust and having to fight your friends", that they are both miles away better than Civil War, where that is the actual literal premise. Not sure if you've made it to Civil War yet, so I'll go light on the details, but: the debates are interesting if underdeveloped, and there is a scene or two where I buy into the pathos, but overall "the Avengers are fighting each other!" just comes across as more "the Avengers are having a water balloon fight in the back yard, isn't it fun?" and way, way less heartbreaking or unnerving than anything in BP or WS.)
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See I KNOW I have watched this film, but nothing about this rings any bells. Zilch.
I really like Black Panther though. And have no problems remembering the story/premise. <3
no subject
Oooh, Infinity Stone! Yeah, zero recollection, so thank you. And reminds me of the evil robot Santa from Futurama. ;)
As soon as we get to that point it's boring, but the argument about what Tony is doing and why is actually quite good.
That does ring a bell. A very faint one though.
It's getting to the point where I'm preferring the super heroes who just pop up without their own dedicated movie because so help me, I do not care.
And so say all of us! (With the exception of Wonder Woman, and any female superhero, really.)
Also, another origins story, another shoehorned, underdeveloped love interest. I hate everything.
Boo. Make them all bi/pansexual and make them hook up with each other. Fewer female characters, true, but more LGBTQ+ representation!
The bits where he's telling a story in voiceover and all the people in the story are lip-synching along to his slang-y retelling of it: I know that's a pretty standard joke, but it's one of my favorite executions of it I've ever seen.
Like I said - I like Antman, but damn, why does the Mexican guy not get his own film?
That was great. They way they kept bringing up the tropes of that kind of fight and then inverting them over and over was fantastic.
The payoff for watching all the generic stuff is great. :D