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 : Captain Marvel (2019)

Monday Marvel Movie Review:

Captain Marvel, 2019, taking place in 1984 & 1989 on earth, chronologically the next events of the Marvel Universe after Captain America.

Never saw this one in the theaters due to Brie Larson's comments about who she did and didn't want to come seeing her film, an act which should have garnered far more and extreme scrutiny by fans and Marvel Cinema officials, but most seemed to just blow it off.

The film is a lot better than I expected, it's good, bordering on very good but not great, like a lot of the MCU it has a lot of holes and questions.

We open with Vers (pronounced, veers) who is an operative for the Kree Empire, and her training with her supervisor/commander Yon-Rogg (Jude Law) and being told about her "true potential", which they refer to enough that it should have raised your eyebrow.  The Kree's war with the Skrulls is hot and heavy, in a mission to rescue an informant, Veers is captured and promptly escapes with help from her plasma blasts from her hands.

Ending up on earth, after crashing through the roof of a Blockbuster Video, Veers encounters a two-eyed Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) and his rookie partner, Coulson (Clark Gregg), who pursue Veers as a potential enemy as she battles skrulls across Los Angeles.  We also see the early signs of Coulson's diehard like loyalty to Fury begin to come out.

The action and story really move well, the swerves are pretty well done, obvious but still well done, but we eventually realize, along with Veers, that her real name is Carol Danvers and she's not Kree but from Earth.

The new story behind her powers is really good and makes the film, as does her finally realizing her true potential.  You should bet a bit excited when she finally lets loose, it's a great scene.

In this film, we also learn how Fury lost his eye... really Nick?!?  Not to mention, some of the stuff that Fury pulls in this one, it's a wonder he was eventually given command of SHIELD. 😆  And also how a certain team he would later get together got its name.

Pulling at some sympathetic heartstrings along the way really helped this film, without them, it wouldn't be half the film it is, forget the power, the backstory and secondary characters make the movie.  It's not until the end that you really feel the size and scope of the war between the Kree & Skrulls, they should have put that weight on us far earlier.  Once you see one particular person, you know who are the bad guys in this one.

Sad that Cap and her is all that the world gets before the 2000's, the MCU could have/should have been given more.  Again, I've got my take on what the MCU timeline should have looked like coming up on January 1st 2022. 😉

The film gets 🌟🌟 and a half out of five ... and watch out for that damn cat ... SERIOUSLY... whatever happened to that thing??? 😺💥