Can I take a brief minute here to explain why I am sick and tired of the superhero gimmick/popularity/fad that has pervaded America for the last decade? They're boring! They're the same recycled story over and over and over again. How many X-Men movies can we have with the same problems occurring and everyone living and dying and coming back and getting older and getting younger and blah blah blah. How are we going to reboot Spider-Man not THREE YEARS after the final installment?! How many times is Superman not going to die from Kryptonite??? The only comic book/superhero films worth watching right now are the Dark Knight trilogy and that's only because Christopher Nolan decided that people needed something new! Can we break down why all these movies suck?
Superman: He's colorful, he's family oriented, his villains suck, and he only has one weakness. Just one. Otherwise he has no fear. So, when anything goes on down here on Earth, we know NOTHING is going to harm the poor bastard. Then, when Kryptonite becomes an issue, it DOESN'T KILL HIM. It just inconveniences him for a bit before he's back to normal. Is it like feeding chocolate to a dog? A lot of chocolate over a long period of time will eventually kill them...?
Hulk: He's a nerdy doctor guy who becomes a huge, poorly animated green rage monster without the capacity for coherent thought-- sometimes-- who mashes things with his fists. Coooooollllll. No way that big budget smashing and explosions and family-friendly pretty colors would ever get in the way of these films.
Thor: Snooze. He's a mythical God who fights other mythical creatures and his brother sometimes runs amok causing shit for people of Earth, but doesn't really cause any real damage and since he's a God, he's not really going to die or get hurt in any way, so............ yawnnnnn.
Spider-man: These movies are lame because no one has the balls to make them great. The reason we need a superhero is to thwart super villains. The villains in the Spider-man movies are a bunch of pussies! Nobody kills anyone! I think the Green Goblin kills like ten army generals in the first movie... then nothing. I think Doc Ock kills like one person. Sandman and whoever the hell Topher Grace was never killed anyone. Nobody dies! Nothing happens! If there's no threat of death or evil why do we watch??
That's why Christopher Nolan's Batman movies were fantastic. They were all grounded in reality, as if these psychotics came out in today's time causing havoc. He uses practical means of heroism in his version of Batman and they feel more like true crime/Scorsese films than Superhero films. And you know why? Because his villains are outstanding. No one gave a shit about Christian Bale as Batman. You watch because Heath Ledger was the perfect Joker... a psycho who kills a TON OF PEOPLE and actually poses a true threat to Gotham unlike Sandman who turns into, what can essentially be considered wind and knocks out a few windows casing homeowners some insurance stress. Bane blows up a stadium killing an entire football team (minus Hines Ward, a'course). Nolan doesn't rely on an excess of bad CGI to back up his movies, he uses character and the art of writing a good script to make a good movie.
This is also why I thought Iron Man 3 was so great albeit underrated. We've seen Iron Man do the same thing countless times... we know his powers... we know his struggles... we know it. He's done. So, what else do we do? How about changing what could've been a big budget explosive mess into a private investigation in a low-key town and a curmudgeonly older dude learns life lessons from a relationship he establishes with a kid. Also, how about taking the "supervillain" trope and turning it on its axis and showing us an original side we haven't seen before. If you're going to keep mass producing these films, then give us something new!
Now, in regards to Captain America: The Winter Soldier, they ALMOST succeeded in showing us something fresh. I'd have to say that Captain America is probably the hardest superhero to do a film about in today's era considering he's one of the dumbest ideas that originated from straight American propaganda. So, you make the Captain aware, you almost meta the films and give it an original twist to today's era, try your hardest to eliminate the stuuuuuupid suit and you may have a step in the right direction.
This film ALMOST felt like a Christopher Nolan superhero film. The villains were actually smart and tough and killed innocent people. There was a definite threat. The action scenes were done with very, very limited CGI and it felt like a crime/action film rather than a superhero flick. This was much appreciated. However, after two-thirds of a really interesting movie... it falls back to superhero tropes of giant machines targeting the city and tons of CGI destruction and action. It's tiring. It's fun to watch buildings get destroyed and huge ships crashing and exploding into the ocean... for awhile. But, it's exhausting. I just want to watch a good film that doesn't have to rely on this type of Michael Bay-esque action.
Everyone plays their parts geniusly and I have now been fully convinced that Chris Evans is worth it as an actor. Robert Redford kills it as always and Anthony Mackie will be huge, just you see. It was a well-acted and almost entirely well-written superhero film that succumbs to the old ways of-- if you don't know how to end it-- just blow shit up mentality that I really hope we can escape from in the next decade.
B
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