Wow, I haven’t done a movie review since The Desolation of Smaug? Really? What the hell have I been doing with my time? Playing Harvest Moon
Ok, I’m just going to come out and say it. I have no idea why this movie is called The Winter Soldier. I mean, the Winter Soldier is in the movie and plays a vaguely important role, but not enough to really justify calling it The Winter Soldier.
Alright. Now that that’s out of the way.
THIS MOVIE ROCKED!!!!!
For those of you who don’t know and I can’t remember if I’ve actually mentioned this anyway, I freaking LOVE Marvel movies!!! Maaaybe not as much as my sister, but pretty darn close. XD And by Marvel movies, I mean the most recent ones. Let’s just forget about the X-Men movies and the first Spider Man set . . . . yeeaaaahhh . . . .
Anyway, here I am, another review for another movie of spectacular awesomeness. Spoilers and all that.
First off, Steve Rogers.
What a perfect, perfect man. Mm. Chris Evans . . . . . *drool* OH, uh. Right. On with the review.
This movie is funny, first of all. None of that serious stuff like with those Iron Man movies, and none of that annoying lovey-dovey stuff with those Thor movies. Nope, it’s all comedy and all action, with some thrills and close calls here and there.
The movie starts in DC. Because New York is getting boring to destroy, really, and we’re gearing up to destroy it again in Godzilla, amiright?
But that’s another review for another day, because I will go see it YOU CAN’T STOP ME!!!
*ahem* Where was I? Oh yes, we were in DC. And Steve is running, not really adjusting well to being a super soldier in the 21st Century. I mean, being a regular soldier is hard enough, right? So he’s running and passing this guy and saying “On your left” every time, which is like, 12.
Now we’re introduced to the guy who’s going to become Falcon (which not being a follower of the comics I’m not sure is an actual super hero but he should be). His real name is Sam Wilson, and he’s awesome. He and Steve chat a while and you can see “new main character” written all over him. So that’s awesome. I actually thought he might die at some point, which was going to be super tragic, cause he was awesome (extra spoiler: he didn’t).
Blah blah blah, funny scene with Black Widow and Cap, transition sequence, now they’re on some kind of ship thing that’s been captured by French mercenary pirates or something. I dunno. I zoned out for a few seconds and suddenly everyone was speaking French.
The team goes out, Cap, Black Widow, and a bunch of SHIELD green beret types. They take out the pirates in a pretty awesome stealth sequence, where everyone’s running around the boat bashing dudes left and right. It’s pretty awesome. But then Black Widow isn’t where she was supposed to be and Steve finds her and they get into a little argument about how the team was relying on her and she could have screwed the whole thing up. It turns out she had her own directive (I mean, who is even surprised by that at this point?) and they accidentally let the lead pirate French mercenary guy escape! Oops.
So there might have been some character development with Steve and Sam at this point. I can’t remember when certain events happen. I just know they do.
Steve goes to the Captain America exhibit at the Air and Space Museum (which is weird, cause everyone knows he’d be at the American History Musem. Duh), Steve talks to Sam (a former soldier) about adjusting back to civilian life, Sam tells him about losing his wingman in the war, Steve tells him about Bucky (who we all know is the Winter Solider and going to fit prominently in the story), and there’s actually a pretty sad scene between Steve and Peggy from the first movie, who’s in a nursing home 😦
All these things must take place before the next series of events becuase after that, Steve is on the run. Oh, and we’re introduced to Alexander Pierce, who is the obvious bad guy pretending to be a good guy. He’s a senator or something, so you know he’s evil, amiright?
Couldn’t resist. Anyway, Nick Fury is just chillin in his SUV, bitching at his automated sass computer, when he gets attacked!!
What follows is a pretty awesome chase scene through DC, with automatic weapons, rocket launchers, and finally, BOMBS! This is where The Winter Soldier shows up for the first time, and it’s pretty epic.
(obviously this picture is from a later time in the movie when they’ve revealed his identity that is a surprise only to the characters of the movie)
*sigh* I can’t help it. Sebastian Stan is another lovely, lovely man. I doesn’t help that he also plays one of my favorite characters in a new show my CURSED SISTER! got me into recently called Once Upon a Time. I should review that . . . . . . Ha, it actually lead to a really funny joke about the Winter Soldier. So Sebastian Stan plays the Mad Hatter, who can travel through his hat, so every time he did something in the movie that was pretty vaguely impossible, we’d just be like “Hat” because that’s how he survived a fall out a window in OUAT. Hahahahahaha!!! . . . . huh. Not quite as funny without the visuals . . . . . damn. Oh well. It’s funny.
Anyway, Fury escapes to Steve’s apartment, but then is shot again by the Winter Soldier, who escapes Steve because HOLY SHIT HE CAN ONE HAND THE STEVE SHIELD!! D8 Duh duuuuuh!!!!
Then there’s some stuff with Fury, and he dies.
It’s very tragic. Agent Hill is crying, Black Widow is crying, Steve is crying, it’s a mess. And now we have ourselves a mystery. Who was trying to kill Fury? What is in the USB file thing he gave Steve? Why is everyone suddenly out to get Steve??!! (Except Black Widow and Sam)
Steve and Black Widow disguise themselves as hipsters in one of the funniest scenes in the movie while they try to track the source of the file from a Mac store in a mall. Black Widow gets to show off some of her awesome spy stuff, and really, WHERE IS OUR BUDAPEST MOVIE?????
They make it to Steve’s old army base, and here’s where a little snap of continuity happens. They say that SHIELD was started in the 1940’s after the war by Peggy, Howard Stark, and the general guy played by Tommy Lee Jones in the first movie, but I’m pretty sure Coulson said they’d JUST started a division called the Strategic Homeland Intervention whatever whatever at the end of the first Iron Man movie. Now, I could be remembering that wrong, but if I’m not, for shaaame writers! Oh well. It’s not that big of a deal.
What IS a big deal is that Hydra is still around! What! I kinda figured that it would die off with Crazy Von Red Face gone, but I guess Nazism didn’t end with Hitler, so I shouldn’t really even be surprised here. Anyway, that creepy scientist guy from the first movie, whose brain has been implanted into a 1970’s computer system (don’t think about it too hard) tells them that Hydra has infiltrated the very foundation of SHIELD and are planning on using Fury’s newest technology to take out a bunch of people and push the world to chaos so it could pull it out of it. Because then they could control it. I’d laugh if I didn’t think that was frighteningly close to what could very well happen.
Anyway, then Steve and Natasha end up at Sam’s house and they use his old technology to get some information on Hydra. Sam’s gear is awesome.
So cool! Plus, with the addition of Sam, we’ve added yet another character who is full of sass to this collection of sass heroes. It’s awesome. Because sass is awesome.
Uhmm . . . . some other stuff happens and they end up fighting the Winter Soldier, who is revealed to be a brainwashed Bucky! And then they’re captured and it is revealed that Pierce is one of the heads of Hydra. Oh, wait, that happened before the fight. Sorry.
Agent Hill saves them and they skip off to meet simply a wounded Fury! Jerks, you had us going! Not really
So now we’ve reached the third act. Steve is convinced he can get Bucky to remember him, Fury reveals that in order to shut down Hydra, they have to shut down SHIELD completely and rebuild it from scratch. It’s very dramatic. But they also have to take down the technology (three special helicarriers) before they kill anyone!
So the race is on to stop Hyrda. Natasha and Fury infiltrate SHIELD headquarters and work on putting a stop to Pierce’s evil while Hill, Falcon, and Cap rush to get the helicarriers disabled. On the way, they have to fight the SHIELD green beret team that’s been hunting them the whole movie (the team from the beginning), Hydra operatives, and Bucky. Steve tells the SHIELD agents to fight against the Hydra agents, because they joined SHIELD for the right reasons and now is the time to fight for what they believe in. It’s actually a pretty awesome scene.
So, of course, they get two of the carriers disabled no problem, but then Bucky shows up (hat). There’s a fight between him and Steve in the last helicarrier, where Steve tries desperately to get Bucky to recognize him, and Bucky keeps shooting him. Like, actually wounding him, which is really distressing. But then at the end, Bucky gets trapped beneath some debris as the helicarrier is collapsing/exploding and Steve gets him out, but then he still tries to kill him, but Steve won’t fight back and finally Bucky recognizes him and then they fall through the floor into the river and then Bucky rescues Steve, who was totally going to drown and then just walks away. The whole scene is like
On the plus side, Bucky lived, which is awesome!!! cause I was totally sure he was going to die and it was going to be even worse in the feels department. But he lived, Steve wakes up in the hospital and gets another funny line, Natasha gets to verbally bitch slap some pompous senators, they start rebuilding SHIELD, there’s a potentially significant shot of the surviving SHIELD Hydra green beret guy in a burn treatment, Fury is going somewhere vague in Europe to hunt down surviving Hydra members while still pretending to stay dead (at least, I’m pretty sure, the whole moment was a little vague), Steve and Sam are a vaguely teamed-up duo, and there’s . . . . some . . . . . thing at the end . . . . involving Loki’s scepter from the Avengers movie. Not sure what that was about, to be honest. Something about Hydra still, I think. Definitely foreshadowing either the third Captain America movie or the second Avengers movie.
So that’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier. As always, hoped you enjoyed the review. One of these days, I’ll figure out how to incorporate more GIFs I haven’t actually used before. Lol. Stay tuned next for probably Godzilla, since I think that’s the next movie that’s coming out that I’m even remotely interested in seeing XD
PEACE
Cleverly Disguised as a Responsible Adult 