SHIELD and the Winter Soldier

The title of this is correct and a correction for part of what Marvel Studios did wrong, this was much bigger than just a Captain America film, it took in so much more of Fury, SHIELD and beyond.

This is where they should have already begun the television series, Agents of SHIELD, so that it could tie directly into this film and the rest of the MCU.

The film begins with Steve Rogers, literally running circles around Sam Wilson (The Falcon) at the Capitol Plaza in DC.  Each time Steve passes Sam he says, "on your left", which remains an ongoing line between the two to the end of Endgame.  It begins a bond that doesn't begin to touch the one they had in the comics, and should have already happened and been expanded, but I digress...

Widow picks up Cap for a mission, rescuing hostages onboard a ship that isn't where it should be, with Batroc the Leaper as the primary villain in the ships capture, a formidable matchup with Cap and they have a great fight scene.  Meanwhile Widow has her own mission, obtaining data the ship was carrying and we start to get hints that all isn't well in SHIELD.  

If you've followed the MCU and Agents of SHIELD, you know where this goes, Cap, Widow, Fury & Falcon take down most of Hydra and SHIELD as well, but Coulson and others carry on SHIELD's fight in the series.

One of the most interesting parts of the film is when Doctor Zola (Toby Jones) reappears as a living computer, who tells Cap & Widow how Hydra survived and grew inside SHIELD.  With the way computers can transfer data, we have to wonder if Zola is really gone, or will he pop up on another computer screen someday?

Of course the great spin/twist in this one is that Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) is still alive and going by The Winter Soldier for the last 30-sum years as an assassin for hire, only the most important of targets.  He does an excellent job setting up and showing us who the character has become, the reprogramming scene is pretty intense, even one of the worst of the Hydra guys seems to almost feel sorry for him.

Nick Fury is killed, sorta, then comes back, and it must have been right after this that he went off world and was replaced by a skrull, went out for some intergalactic R&R I suppose, he'd earned it.

Like a lot of films that hit this order of an ongoing story, one has to ask, where was Iron Man and the others?  When all hell breaks loose in the nations capital, why don't other heroes come running?

Overall it's a pretty good film and finally brings Falcon into the MCU, but it was still to use this as a Captain America film.  Chris Evans needs to just accept his fate, he IS Captain America and should be willing to come back for whatever the MCU needs.

There is a lot more to this story, parts of it mirror real life, with a twist, but the writing is pretty obvious about it, I'll talk about it somewhere else, but not this page.

.... on your left! 😉

 

Thor, the dark world and the lousy story

One of the films regarded as the worst of the MCU and rightly so, it's pretty damn bad, for everyone, but Loki, although we do get a bit more of Thor's friends in Asgard like Sif and the Warriors Three.

The writers could have found a better way to address Thor's love and the transfer of the reality "stone".

Kenneth Branagh should have been left in charge of the world of Thor, he just understands the classics.

This film just feels uncomfortable from moment one to the end.  The over use of humor is really obvious and just makes it worse.  There is no real focus to the film at all, it's just handling a few points to move them on for the rest of the MCU.

Then there is the subtitling for the elves speech is just annoying for this kind of film, it's not a historical epic, it's a super hero film.  I'm guessing that Branagh left because he wanted to bring the script back to something more sane.

With a weak villain and a very weak script, the forced humor only adds to how bad it all is, and Marvel would foolishly up the "humor" in Thor's other adventures, taking away from the core of the character.

One of the better parts of the film, is the connection between Thor's mother Frigga, and Jane Foster, we should have gotten more of them together, but she gives her life to protect Foster.  Killing off Frigga was a huge mistake for all of it, especially for such and insanely weak story.  The short interactions between Russo and Hopkins were very good.  "It's only because I worry over you, that you have survived this long." great stuff.

Thor enlists the aid of his half-brother Loki to help him against the dark elves and Loki sacrifices himself in the battle (or so we think), and in the end Thor tells his father of Loki's sacrifice, only for us to find out that Loki is alive and has replaced Odin.  If this story had been told from the perspective of Loki, it would have been far better.

I consider, Howard The Duck, to be of greater value to the overall Marvel Universe than I do this sad film, Iron Man 3 might have been bad, but it's still worlds above this one.  Sad that I had to review two of the worst in a row, but that's how Marvel set the timeline. 

Next up : SHIELD and the Winter Soldier ... yes, you read that correctly... 

 

Afterlife showing respect for the dead

Ghostbusters II is a really great film to watch on New Years Eve, pairs up great with the disaster classic, The Poseidon Adventure, although I'd watch GB second to ensure you go to bed after a more happy ending.

One of the things that was so great about, Ghostbusters Afterlife is how it was respectful to the 2nd Ghostbusters film, it didn't mention it at all, in fact, if you didn't know any better, Afterlife would have you think that II didn't even happen, but also, they didn't say it didn't happen.  Too many people condemn Ghostbusters II, as sequels go, it could have been a lot worse, at least the Titanic finally arrived (awesome scene)!

The entire focus of Afterlife was on their film and the effects of the original movie alone.  There was absolutely no reference to the second film at all, none.  They also left it open that it could have happened, there was just nothing about it that held over for the new generation.

It ticked me off that when they released, Superman Returns, they made a HUGE deal out of denying the 3rd and 4th Superman films, it was made an issue, publicly and it was one of the dumber ideas in film history.  But here, they passed over a sequel with class and dignity, but left it open to being part of the GB world.  Maybe Oscar was running Ray's store while he went off to Oklahoma to help the kids?

In the next film, hopefully they do one, we could meet a character named Oscar, maybe the manager of a coffee house haunted by Slimer, or just a quick glimpse of that painting in a post credit scene, where Janine says something like, "oh good grief, take that awful thing down" from the walls of the firehouse.

The post credit scenes of Afterlife certainly did act as if they were going to make another film and move the crew back to NYC with Winston as the financial backer, which I thought was a great spin for his character.  No matter what, Afterlife will go down as one of the best sequels of all time, and sets up a TON of possibilities for the future of the franchise.