Captain America: Winter Soldier
Mar. 29th, 2014 05:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
schneefinkI saw Captain America: Winter Soldier! I loved it a lot. I went with a group of debate club people and we had a great time.
First, what I was probably most vocally excited about after the movie: Scarlet Witch! We're getting Scarlet Witch! And Quicksilver. Yes :D
I loved Natasha in this. She's not as good a fighter as Steve or the Winter Soldier because she's a normal human, but she's still extremely good and better than almost everyone else. (Attack an army complex with several security layers? No problem.) She has her own tricks and knows how to use them, including hacker skills because it's necessary in her job. She has trust issues a mile wide, she respects Fury a lot and it hits her hard first when she thinks he's dead and then when she finds out he wasn't sure if he could trust her. (He obviously had to trust some people, like the doctors and Hill.) She wanted to choose the right side, and now that she's not sure where it is she's off to find it. She's willing to expose her past with everything that entails if it means saving millions of people, and she shocks herself to give Fury the chance to shoot Pierce. She's wearing a necklace with an arrow (where was Clint?) She keeps teasing Cap and yes, she's good at multi-tasking. She takes no bullshit from politicians and she knows how good she is. Tl;dr NATASHA <3
We also got Maria Hill! I didn't know she'd be in the movie, I loved it :D And her taking a job at Stark Industries, watch out *g*
I also liked that we got a glimpse of "normal" SHIELD officers with Agent 13 and curly-haired guy.
And Falcon! The wings were awesome. So was Sam. He's following the Captain.
Steve <3 Steve Rogers, Captain America. I just saw the first one the day before yesterday and loved it. Still looking for his place in this new world. Not a soldier who just follows orders without questioning them, not even Nick Fury's. He's not afraid to get his hands dirty: the first mission on the ship showed that quite nicely, with the knife in the hand and other things. (But not immune to stupid honor stuff either, like the "duel" with the soldier on the ship.) Likes to jump from great heights. Very very hard to kill. Would like to trust people, but needs to get to know them first on a level that he "gets" them. Sometimes does stupid stuff, like leaving the USB drive in the vending machine. Very loyal. A leader that people want to follow. He was great.
SHIELD! Hydra! Sitwell evil! *flails* I did NOT see that coming. And Zola! Of course Zola was still a threat, silly SHIELD. SHIELD was too much power in one place, Steve saw that, then eventually Hill too. (I don't remember how Natasha looked in that scene when Fury looked around, hm.) That recent great Avengers vid about the war puppeteers, Hey Ho, seems almost prophetic now.
So are the Avengers going to be an independent task force now? With Maria Hill, who's working at Stark Industries?
What are they going to do with the "Agents of SHIELD" series?
The Helicarriers crashing down onto the city would in reality result in a ton of civilian casualties, and we've already seen several in the movie, but eh, artistic license.
I loved how they included so much and so little of the Winter Soldier backstory! Just enough to know that he was experimented on, cryogenically frozen several times, and they have the technology to wipe his mind. It was Hydra from the start, not the KGB, but there were still some Russian ties (he spoke Russian to his mercenaries and the file Natasha hands Steve is in Russian.) Russian Hydra, then. It's not impossible that he and Natasha crossed paths before - before the Iran story, even - if Natasha has also been subject to mindwipes, but we don't know enough about her backstory in the MCU. His fighting techniques were also cool: very self-confident and using what he has.
Fury was awesome, too. Badass, but not invincible; smart, but not all-knowing; stubborn, but willing to back down when he sees he has to (i.e. Steve.) THE spy.
Also I liked the moment when he's in his car waiting for the green light and there is a cop car with two white cops next to him, and with his comment you suddenly get the sense that even this extremely powerful and important and smart man could be harrassed by these two guys over there just because of his skin color. Ouch.
I think I got almost everything of the plot: Fury hired the mercenaries to take over the ship so he had an excuse to send Romanoff to extract the data because he suspected the SHIELD group working there of treachery, right? And then Sitwell and Pierce figured out he was onto them and sent the Winter Soldier to kill him. Natasha and Steve got the USB drive with the data from the ship, and it led them to Zola because Hydra hadn't expected the data from the ship to fall into SHIELD's hands and therefore hadn't bothered to hide the program's origins. Zola sends a signal to Hydra when he's discovered by Steve and Natasha and basically sacrifices himself. Steve and Natasha get out of there somehow because they are awesome. The rest was more straightforward.
Question: how much and which data did Natasha actually release? It can't have been "everything", because a lot of it is sensitive data (technology they don't want bad guys to have, agents currently undercover - but she probably exposed currently ongoing operations), but she didn't have time to go through everything in detail and edit things out, like her own backstory. How much information about Hydra did she release? Everything that was on that USB drive, but we don't know exactly how much that was (did the override they got thanks to Fury's other eye crack the encryption?) Does Tony Stark know that Hydra killed his parents? (Nice touch.)
The after-credits scene introduced more bad guys: Strucker, who has what's remaining of Hydra, Loki's scepter, and Pietro and Wanda. Not sure where they fit in, but we'll find out! That's a lot of bad guys for Avengers: Age of Ultron, just saying.
I assume Tony Stark wasn't in there because it happened simultaneously with Iron Man 3? (Or so they'll say.) It's easy to explain why didn't want to involve Banner, but I'm still wondering about Clint. Oh well, maybe we'll find out.
Tl;dr great characters, decent plot and ideas, a good mix of action, adventure, and a couple of funny lines; I loved it.
First, what I was probably most vocally excited about after the movie: Scarlet Witch! We're getting Scarlet Witch! And Quicksilver. Yes :D
I loved Natasha in this. She's not as good a fighter as Steve or the Winter Soldier because she's a normal human, but she's still extremely good and better than almost everyone else. (Attack an army complex with several security layers? No problem.) She has her own tricks and knows how to use them, including hacker skills because it's necessary in her job. She has trust issues a mile wide, she respects Fury a lot and it hits her hard first when she thinks he's dead and then when she finds out he wasn't sure if he could trust her. (He obviously had to trust some people, like the doctors and Hill.) She wanted to choose the right side, and now that she's not sure where it is she's off to find it. She's willing to expose her past with everything that entails if it means saving millions of people, and she shocks herself to give Fury the chance to shoot Pierce. She's wearing a necklace with an arrow (where was Clint?) She keeps teasing Cap and yes, she's good at multi-tasking. She takes no bullshit from politicians and she knows how good she is. Tl;dr NATASHA <3
We also got Maria Hill! I didn't know she'd be in the movie, I loved it :D And her taking a job at Stark Industries, watch out *g*
I also liked that we got a glimpse of "normal" SHIELD officers with Agent 13 and curly-haired guy.
And Falcon! The wings were awesome. So was Sam. He's following the Captain.
Steve <3 Steve Rogers, Captain America. I just saw the first one the day before yesterday and loved it. Still looking for his place in this new world. Not a soldier who just follows orders without questioning them, not even Nick Fury's. He's not afraid to get his hands dirty: the first mission on the ship showed that quite nicely, with the knife in the hand and other things. (But not immune to stupid honor stuff either, like the "duel" with the soldier on the ship.) Likes to jump from great heights. Very very hard to kill. Would like to trust people, but needs to get to know them first on a level that he "gets" them. Sometimes does stupid stuff, like leaving the USB drive in the vending machine. Very loyal. A leader that people want to follow. He was great.
SHIELD! Hydra! Sitwell evil! *flails* I did NOT see that coming. And Zola! Of course Zola was still a threat, silly SHIELD. SHIELD was too much power in one place, Steve saw that, then eventually Hill too. (I don't remember how Natasha looked in that scene when Fury looked around, hm.) That recent great Avengers vid about the war puppeteers, Hey Ho, seems almost prophetic now.
So are the Avengers going to be an independent task force now? With Maria Hill, who's working at Stark Industries?
What are they going to do with the "Agents of SHIELD" series?
The Helicarriers crashing down onto the city would in reality result in a ton of civilian casualties, and we've already seen several in the movie, but eh, artistic license.
I loved how they included so much and so little of the Winter Soldier backstory! Just enough to know that he was experimented on, cryogenically frozen several times, and they have the technology to wipe his mind. It was Hydra from the start, not the KGB, but there were still some Russian ties (he spoke Russian to his mercenaries and the file Natasha hands Steve is in Russian.) Russian Hydra, then. It's not impossible that he and Natasha crossed paths before - before the Iran story, even - if Natasha has also been subject to mindwipes, but we don't know enough about her backstory in the MCU. His fighting techniques were also cool: very self-confident and using what he has.
Fury was awesome, too. Badass, but not invincible; smart, but not all-knowing; stubborn, but willing to back down when he sees he has to (i.e. Steve.) THE spy.
Also I liked the moment when he's in his car waiting for the green light and there is a cop car with two white cops next to him, and with his comment you suddenly get the sense that even this extremely powerful and important and smart man could be harrassed by these two guys over there just because of his skin color. Ouch.
I think I got almost everything of the plot: Fury hired the mercenaries to take over the ship so he had an excuse to send Romanoff to extract the data because he suspected the SHIELD group working there of treachery, right? And then Sitwell and Pierce figured out he was onto them and sent the Winter Soldier to kill him. Natasha and Steve got the USB drive with the data from the ship, and it led them to Zola because Hydra hadn't expected the data from the ship to fall into SHIELD's hands and therefore hadn't bothered to hide the program's origins. Zola sends a signal to Hydra when he's discovered by Steve and Natasha and basically sacrifices himself. Steve and Natasha get out of there somehow because they are awesome. The rest was more straightforward.
Question: how much and which data did Natasha actually release? It can't have been "everything", because a lot of it is sensitive data (technology they don't want bad guys to have, agents currently undercover - but she probably exposed currently ongoing operations), but she didn't have time to go through everything in detail and edit things out, like her own backstory. How much information about Hydra did she release? Everything that was on that USB drive, but we don't know exactly how much that was (did the override they got thanks to Fury's other eye crack the encryption?) Does Tony Stark know that Hydra killed his parents? (Nice touch.)
The after-credits scene introduced more bad guys: Strucker, who has what's remaining of Hydra, Loki's scepter, and Pietro and Wanda. Not sure where they fit in, but we'll find out! That's a lot of bad guys for Avengers: Age of Ultron, just saying.
I assume Tony Stark wasn't in there because it happened simultaneously with Iron Man 3? (Or so they'll say.) It's easy to explain why didn't want to involve Banner, but I'm still wondering about Clint. Oh well, maybe we'll find out.
Tl;dr great characters, decent plot and ideas, a good mix of action, adventure, and a couple of funny lines; I loved it.
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no subject
Date: 2014-03-30 10:41 pm (UTC)By the end, though, with the helicarries, I kept asking myself: Where is JARVIS? Come on, you know Tony has allowed him to hack the hell out of Shield. There's no way he couldn't wipe that silly program and take over, especially since they were using Stark's technology to power most of it.
I suppose that Tony being busy with the events of Iron Man 3 and saving Pepper would make sense. Although my favorite theory is that he was actually waiting to see if they'd manage to destroy the helicarriers without him having to show his hand, and in truth the moment the missiles/weapons were launched nothing would have happened, except for their screens flickering dark with a sentence like: "Mess with the best, die like the rest."
no subject
Date: 2014-03-31 06:32 pm (UTC)Hah, troll!Jarvis, nice thought xD
no subject
Date: 2014-03-29 09:34 pm (UTC)I think- maybe- the implied thing was that he was experimented on by Zola to be a HYDRA project, then "died", then was found by that ?Russian soldier?, and then at some later and indeterminate time was recovered by Zola? Maybe?
Also, how did Natasha work for the KGB if she were born in 1984? I mean, enough that she left them to "go straight" by working for SHIELD? Unless she skipped over to SHIELD in 1991.
Are they planning on somehow stuffing the conclusion to the winter soldier story into Age of Ultron? Or is it just going to be left hanging until after it?
Mostly, I enjoyed the movie, but I walked away going ???????? and feeling a little frustrated.
no subject
Date: 2014-03-29 09:48 pm (UTC)This is the MCU, I'm pretty sure the KGB survived a bit longer here, at least unofficially. They might have changed the official name... If she starts actively working for them when she's 16 in 2000, changed sides in 2008 or so...
Yeah, it seems like there's a lot that'll have to fit into Age of Ultron. I wonder how there'll be any space for Ultron himself *g* But we'll see. I didn't mind the relatively open ending that much - it's definitely a more realistic take on the effects of brainwashing than Natasha curing Clint with a hit to the head ;) I hope they don't wait until after Age of Ultron to address Bucky again, but it's possible. On the other hand the actor has a contract for many movies, so obviously they plan to use him.
no subject
Date: 2014-03-29 10:14 pm (UTC)And my impression was that Zola didn't kind of restart HYDRA until well after the war, when he was accepted ala Wernher Von Braun, one would assume, into SHIELD, which was created a few years after the war, I thought? Maybe?
As to Natasha, I really quite like the comics stuff about her being much older. it lends itself to some interesting story potential. So until forced otherwise, I'm headcanon handwaving it as that SHIELD faked her info to something that made sense.
ETA random other thought: This movie couldn't be set around the same time as Iron Man, because it wasn't christmas. (man, that was so weird to watch in may). I also think Iron Man 3 was relatively shortly after the Avengers, but I think CA2 has been at least a while, since Steve has gotten all settled in and adjusted-ish.