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! 😉

 

MRM: The band is finally together, The Avengers

The buildup of the MCU Phase 1 came to a head in this groundbreaking film, that brought these heroes together to fight against the invading army of ... Loki, well sort of.

In the very first scene we learn that the villain isn't really the main villain, just someone doing his bidding.

Nick Fury shows up at SHIELD HQ to find the teseract has been "misbehaving" as we're reintroduced to Dr Selvig (from Thor) and Hawkeye  who points out that the teseract is a door and that doors open from both directions, which it quickly does, and Loki starts blowing things up, as well as taking Selvig and Hawkeye as his "personal flying monkeys"... no worries, Cap gets the reference.... or does later... 

One of the more important scenes that a lot of people might overlook is when Nick is speaking to the "shodowy committee" and we see that they are just bureaucrats and don't really get what should/needs to be done, but still people in a position of power that can cause problems.

The recruitment scenes are good, get the job done, but (other than Nat & Banner) really don't have a lot of emotion.  Bringing Cap & Banner onto the Carrier is good stuff, seeing Cap have to pay off his $10 bet with Fury is great bit between "old soldiers".

Thor is drawn in just in his search for Loki, but they make up for that in an really well written scene between Thor and Coulson on the Helicarrier.  Helmsworth should have been on an episode or two of, Agents of SHIELD, maybe a two parter with he and Coulson working, just the two of them, good matchup of characters.

Arguably the best scene in the film is the confrontation scene in the Helicarriers lab, when Loki's influence is affecting all of them, and stirring the pot.

"The world is filling up with people who can't be matched." is one of the phrases that Nick uses to justify more movies about hero's that are already there before The Avengers.  Who else is Nick talking about?  This is probably the biggest hole that they never really address.

This is also when we get that great scene between Cap & Stark when Cap challenges, "Big man in a suit of armor, take that off, what are you?"  But also in that scene, Stark shows his latent hate for Cap by calling him "you're a laboratory experiment Rogers, everything special about you came out of a bottle." which anyone knows, that's really the least of Cap, but they put it in to pump up the Star character and tone down Cap.  The scene didn't achieve what it should but did some of what they wanted, even if it was bad for the story.

The scene is interrupted by Hawkeye's attack on the Helicarrier.  Banner and Romanov fall to a lower level where Banner does his "party trick" and the Hulk is loose on the carrier, just as Loki wanted.  The ensuing battle on board splits the team up with Hulk and Thor knocked off but Hawkeye is brought back with a little smack to the coconut.

This also leads to the tragic loss of Agent Phil Coulson (yeah, I know 😉) as Loki stabs him in the back.  Fury uses the incident to motivate the team, and while in deep thought over what happened, Stark gets a revelation... "son of a b*tch", and he knows where Loki is heading.

Another great scene is the dialogue between Loki & Stark, sorry Tony, the threatening... it's a scene where we see Stark playing with Loki's emotions about Thor and then a final line about Coulson.  But in here we also get to see the real Iron Man, the nuts & bolts Iron Man instead of that nanotech nonsense.

The battle in New York is outrageous and a great climax for this phase of the MCU, but we see another issue when Cap lands on a police car and tells some police what he needs, the officer looks at him and says, "why should I take orders from you?".... IT'S CAPTAIN FREAKIN' AMERICA... so we have to see him smash some aliens for one minor laugh in the script, not a cool thing.

During the battle, here comes the shadowy committee again, bureaucrats making fool decisions for a fight they aren't part of and don't get, and Nick trying to tell them how foolish they are.  We see them again at the end of the film, where Nick pretty much brushes them off, too bad he couldn't do that earlier.  We get hints at this committee but overall in the MCU, they really never make a difference either way from here out.  One has to wonder, how many were on our side and how many were Hydra.  Looking back now, that committee seems like it was pretty useless in the MCU.

An end credit scene finally shows us Thanos, which was pretty cool but it was a bit obvious to begin with, studios let too much slip out before films are released, or many put the whole story into their trailers, not great filmmaking. 

In the end, Nick's plan worked, but was it by design or did he get lucky with the Avengers?  Did they get along because they could or because they had to?  We see some of that answer in a great, and simple, post credit scene of the crew having schwarma (I don't know what it is, but I wanna try it).

The film gets 🌟🌟🌟 and a half stars out of five, it was great to see the team together, the fight is good, but overall the film doesn't hit as hard as it could have.

 

MRM : Captain America The First Avenger

It's #MovieReviewMonday and time to review one of the MCU's best, Captain America : The First Avenger, as we begin our weekly series to review all of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with who knows what else, thrown into the mix on other days... 

Like I said, I think this is one of the best of the MCU films, it is true to the character but still has a flood of holes and mistakes in respect to the characters and their history.

Marvel decided to begin the MCU with Iron Man instead of Captain America, which I think was the first mistake.  This was to push the silly notion mentioned in "Iron Man" made by Howard Stark, "All things are possible through technology" and pushing the agenda that tech is the only savior of mankind 😵.  Now don't worry, I'm not going to get biblical on you, that's not my point at all, it's about Heart.

Like too many super hero films in the past, they tried to force far too much into the first movie, there is so much more to Caps story, the 1990 film (poster at right) being a great example. Second mistake, too much in one movie.

The Howling Commandoes, The Invaders, even the legendary character of the Red Skull deserved more than just one movie, despite his later appearances to lead souls in their search for the soul stone.  It just wasn't right given the history of the character of the Red Skull.  So their third mistake was just one film taking place in World War Two.

Personally, I'd have ended this film after Cap has rescued Bucky & the rest of the 107th, and quitting his duty as a chorus girl.  "Let's hear it for, Captain America!" should have been the final line of the film before going to credits.

Throughout the history of the character, numerous villains have admitted that Captain America is the "most dangerous" Avenger because of his leadership and inspiration of others, that should have been the focal part of the film, like the scene at the flagpole or the scene with the grenade, Heart.

In the end of the original film, when Rogers wakes up in modern times, they are playing a replay of a baseball game, we should have already heard part of it, by them doing a scene of Rogers and Barnes at the game together, showing more of their friendship, so not just Cap is alerted when we hear the game playing later.

The cast was terrific, Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Dr Abraham (Stanly Tucci), The Red Skull (Hugo Weaving), Col Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones), Dum Dum Dugan (Neal McDonough were all amazing and it's too bad that most were wasted on one movie.

The story of the Howling Commandoes and The Invaders could have also teased at later films and characters involvement in the MCU, as well as introducing Baron Zeom Sr (another reason for his son to hate Captain America and the Avengers) who could have been the key villain for the 2nd or 3rd film.  Now I know what you're thinking... "third film, when does he go in the ice?", in my plan, not until the 4th film, but I'll go through all that in my, Ultimate MCU post on January 1st 2022 😉.

There is just so much lost on today's fans by only doing one Captain America film during WWII, the importance of war correspondents, morale at home and Patriotism for, not just America, but the world to win that one.  People need to understand what Rogers and others went through and why those experiences changed so much.

One of the mistakes the studio made was not making an official poster that remade the classic Uncle Sam recruiting poster of Cap pointing forward, it seems to be like a simple given to me and many people that I've talked to, but for some reason they didn't put those out, it would have made a great teaser.  

Here we see a fan made poster about War Bonds from his showtime and work as a US Army "chorus girl" as Col Phillips called him.  The marketing for this movie was pretty disappointing, but today's Hollywood isn't much into American Patriotism, one of their major downfalls.

Compared to the rest  of the MCU, this film gets a decent score of 🌟🌟🌟 out of five, but as a stand alone film, I'm afraid it only gets 🌟🌟 out of five.  They dropped, tripped over or just plain ignored all kinds of opportunities with this one.

 

Peggy Carter : The Power Broker

 

Being sick at home 🤧 and watching movie marathons does have one good thing about it, you come up with some really great, if not slightly crazy, ideas for those characters and film franchises. 😵‍💫

Since Steve Rogers went back in time, to return the stones in Endgame, he decided to live out his life with the love of his life, but what else happened?  What if this part of life is what would create the opportunity for Peggy Carter’s niece to become, The Power Broker, in the MCU we know?

After a bit of a “honeymoon period” Steve and Peggy decide to get back to fighting the evil in the world and, in secret form, The Invaders, with Namor, the original Human Torch (no sidekick), the Whizzer, Union Jack and even having Peggy occasionally suit up as a female, Union Jack.

Doing all this completely under the radar would expand Carters connections and end up giving those connections to her niece, who uses it a bit different than her aunt.  

This makes the younger Carter being “The Power Broker” a lot more believable than just another agent who just happens to gain all this… 

This kind of project is what could fulfill the rumors and lure Chris Evans back to his star spangled role, more adventures as a younger Cap in WWII, which would be awesome.  This would allow seeds to be planted for things that are or will pop up in the current MCU.

After Marvel gets things worked out over Fox and the X-Men we could see Captain America’s adventure in Madripoor with Wolverine from back in the day.

Not having The Invaders and officially having, The Howling Commando’s in the MCU was a big mistake and could make for some great movies and build the Captain America legacy that it deserves.