Saturday, April 5, 2014

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Went to the 4pm matinee Friday afternoon; the theater was about 80% filled with more adults than kids.  If you are a fan of the Marvel Comics universe of movies, you definitely want to see this one.  The writers deftly weave references to other characters and events into the dialogue, which gives an added sense of substance to the story, and the dramatic events don't interrupt the suspension of disbelief a story of this type absolutely requires.  There are a few moments that won't bear up under the strain of even a casual application of high school science class rigor, but a smooth application of handwavium in the dialogue makes it mostly go down easily enough.  Stan Lee almost slipped his trademark cameo appearance past us too.

One thing I've noticed as the Avengers storyline has developed; with the exception of 7 people (I counted), the audience stayed quietly in their seats through the closing credits.  I expect to see this technique of having an added segment of the movie being tacked onto the end of the credits spread to other production companies than Marvel Studios.  This particular viewing audience reflex/expectation has been well and truly established now.  I wonder how soon the cable film producers will adopt it for their work?

Two thumbs up and several "like" buttons for this one.

3 comments:

Ed Bonderenka said...

I remember watching the first Iron Man with my wife.
We always sit through credits.
I was amazed at the trailer.
Called my son and a best friend who'd seen the movie and asked if they'd sat through the credits.
Then I told them what I saw.
Then we went to dinner.
The waiter kid asked what we'd seen.
We told him and he asked if we'd sat through the credits.
Then we talked about the movie.

My best friend says that this Cap movie has a subtle socialist message. I've yet to see it.

Og sent me.

Will Brown said...

Interesting bit of supporting evidence on the progression of the "movie in the credits" thing; I too remember the buzz about sitting through the ending credits in the3 first Ironman film - and that the audience largely appeared not to have. In the latest Marvel film, the exact opposite was evident.

As to a "socialist message", my own take was that some of the more recent examples of extreme capitalist behavior come into question as ethical and practical issues in various pieces of dialog. This was (as I somewhat vaguely recall) mostly in a character judgement context rather than the more traditional political/economic context such conversations seem to occur in. I think the people citing this as somehow anti-american or anti-western civ are making way too much out of a very small molehill of story plot contrivance personally. It's a fun movie, go watch it and have a good time. :)

Ed Bonderenka said...

I will. Thanks.