True confession time: I've yet to see a single Marvel movie in theatres. That record will probably be broken this suffer for Age of Ultron; until, then, I'm still playing catch-up on the studio's phase two superhero sequels. Of these, Capatain America: The Winter Soldier garnered the most general praise, even from such nitpicky forums as Honest Trailers. After viewing it with my family over Christmas, I think I can see why: of all the Marvel movies to date outside The Avengers, it plays the most like an actual living comic book.
Even as superheros are grab more and more attention, there's still a reluctance to embrace their full comics origin and potential. Blame it on Nolan's Dark Night or 9/11 or both, but too many of these heroes hide from any sense of geeky gee-whiz wonder. While Marvel's done its fair share to show that superheros can have fun, most of these movies have still modified the subject matter to come across as more realistic or palatable to a postmodern world.
Captain America bucks that whole game with a big giant kick, multiple times. Action sequences of the titular hero (Chris Evans), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), and his new pal Falcon (Anthony Mackie) show them performing truly superhuman fights, with one-liners and flourishes that would look right at home in a set of panels. Evans and Mackie both look pumped to the max in their ridiculously tight shirts, and even Johansson as a female lead ripples with muscle.
More than looks, though, is the overall tone. No one sits around agonizing over the choices they've made or their lost loves, even though both of these concerns are presented in due course (with strong supporting performances from Samuel L. Jackson and Hayley Atwell). Instead, these storylines are given their appropriate amount of time to feed into an overall plot of hazy loyalties, massive conspiracies, and old-fashioned cinema heroics.
This focus doesn't make the characters less interesting. If anything, the decision to let the story dictate things rather than character dynamics (and the usual accompanying petty drama) make these people imminently more appealing. Nothing in the movie is at all believable in strictly logical sense, and yet I believed in Black Widow as a talented spy and chief antagonist Secretary Pierce (Robert Redford) as a manipulative fifth column leader.
The movie doesn't waste precious time trying to convince me that this nonsense about HYDRA co-opting the US to create global conflict in the 20th century is plausible. It simply delivers the setup and rolls with it, letting the film inhabit a nice alternative reality that comics have always enjoyed, making the final showdown far less preposterous and more enjoyable than if they'd tried to play it straight.
Though much has already been written about the interaction of Cap and Black Widow, I'll go on record as applauding it as well. Even with scenes where they kiss and strip to their undershirts, there's no misplaced sexual tension between these two. Instead there's the refreshing interaction of two characters focused on the mission at hand, joining with fellow brothers (and sisters) at arms to save the world. That's about as comic book as it gets.
Hopefully Winter Soldier's success shows that superheroes don't have to conform to someone else's playbook to win our hearts. I think the world has plenty of options for dark motivations and antiheroes. When a hero like Cap comes to the screen there's only one thing anyone cares about: seeing a straight shooter prove he's too good not to be True.
PS: While the movie paid Black Widow plenty of R-E-S-P-E-C-T, her depiction on the movie posters is as ridiculous as most female comic book covers. I don't even remember her in that pose anywhere in the movie. How about working on that next time, Marvel?
