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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
It was a joke about her tweets with Emily VanCamp. We don't know yet if she'll appear or not. She should, though. A flashback with her and Sharon would be fantastic.
It was also because 1. it balanced a large cast of primary characters (Steve, Natasha, Nick Fury, the Falcon, SHIELD's agents, etc.) and gave them all an arc without feeling imbalanced or disconnected. 2. It follows together tighter than The First Avenger which is awesome but has pacing problems in the third act. 3. As for the twist, it matters because the rest of the MCU is changed for it. Yes, Hydra is dealt with quickly in Age of Ultron, but SHIELD's absence is felt and makes the climax more triumphant on return. Agents of SHIELD had its premise completely flipped. And other Marvel films are following in TWS's footsteps; Thor Ragnarok is being called "The Winter Soldier of Phase 3".
It's also the first Marvel film to really focus on a political issue of our time. Previous films like the Iron Man films and The Avengers had bits of political relevance, but The Winter Soldier made it the primary issue, much like The Dark Knight. One could even argue it's an antithesis to The Dark Knight; TDK says "sometimes you have to make a morally gray decision like mass surveillance if it will put down the bad guys quickly", TWS says "No, we can't trust ourselves with even one use of it, because even just one time can lead to tons of innocent deaths."
edited 9th Jul '15 8:28:03 AM by Tuckerscreator
I guess that adds up.
I don't know how much I'd really want to defend a film with the notion of being 'politically relevant' when said film resolves the issue by sending billions of dollars in surveillance equipment to the bottom of the ocean harbor.
edited 9th Jul '15 9:43:51 AM by Soble
I'M MR. MEESEEKS, LOOK AT ME!Fishes deserve to violate privacy too
Ever think about that?
(in before Namor)
Forever liveblogging the AvengersAnd yes, I'm ignoring context, because that equipment was being used by a Neo-Nazi Fascist organization for global domination, but still. I feel like the relevancy is lost when the plot goes to such extremes.
I wouldn't hold up Dark Knight or Rises as politically or culturally relevant either because it's about a rich guy who dresses up as a bat, steals military-grade hardware from his own company, and uses it to take out his rage on street criminals instead of, I don't know, attacking terrorist organizations, seeking professional counseling, or fighting poverty, like a normal person concerned with national or personal security would do.
That just wouldn't fly outside of a comic book.
Fair enough.
edited 9th Jul '15 9:43:09 AM by Soble
I'M MR. MEESEEKS, LOOK AT ME!For that matter, I disagree with the argument that making them Neo-Fascists reduces the validity of the argument, because A) Neo-Fascists are rather commonplace B) You could take it as a "HYDRA is what we could become if we keep going down this road".
edited 9th Jul '15 9:37:09 AM by Gaon
"All you Fascists bound to lose."Iron Man 3 was all about how we spend so much money and attention on foreign threats because foreigners are scary and weird and refuse to pay attention to the fact that most foreign threats arise because we as a country supplied them with weapons and crap for stupid, petty reasons.
(For all the folks who complain that Killian is undermined by his motivation being "Tony Stark spurned me at a party"—is that really much worse than "we wanted to dick with a country that was already collapsing under its own weight by paranoidly working to snuff out its economic system and undermine its even smaller, less economically stable allies"?)
I'd hardly call Winter Soldier the first politically-relevant Marvel movie.
Also, it's probably worth pointing out that Whedon was actually pushing for Age of Ultron to be shorter than Avengers, and got his wish by a second.
edited 9th Jul '15 10:31:27 AM by Wackd
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.We do have a bit of a history when it comes to combatting today's threat by manufacturing tomorrow's.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Yeah, this is probably old news by now, but Marisa Tomei will be the MCU!Aunt May
.
Welcome to the MCU, Ms. Tomei! Hope you survive the experience!
Now how about Elle Fanning or Abigail Breslin as Gwen Stacy? ![]()
(Hears people groaning "Ugh, really? He's gonna go there?", "Is he serious?", and "Give it a rest, dude. -_-")
...I'll be quiet now.
edited 9th Jul '15 11:47:54 AM by TargetmasterJoe
Snipes is def too old IMO, but he could be worked into a cameo or something. I think Blade makes more sense in its own corner, similar to how the DC Vertigo adaptations are kept separate from the other stuff.
At the least, even if Blade is considered part of the MCU the crossover should be kept to mostly Shout Outs.
Applicability is usually better than didactic preaching.
A work of fiction can never prove a point about a real-world issue. It's all made up anyway, so being 100% accurate to a real issue isn't necessary. The point should never be to pretend that you're advancing a logical argument, but to present something that makes the audience think. No, you can't point to Winter Soldier and say "That's why we can't have surveillance! This movie proves that a sleeper agency in the government will build giant flying aircraft carriers and use them to kill millions of people!", but you can't do that with any movie, no matter how grounded it is. You can't present fiction as evidence in a debate about the real world.
Movies are still a entertainment products. Using real-world issues is more about making the movie emotionally resonant than it is about serving a cause. That's why Winter Soldier and the Dark Knight movies work. They're using a real issue to make their conflicts more engaging, and in the process maybe providing a novel viewpoint on them.
EDIT: Also, Winter Soldier was a well-made movie in general. Compare how tightly it was scripted to the disheveled mess that was Age of Ultron, how the action scenes had weight and consequence instead of Looney Toon physics, etc. Winter Solider being "relevant" is a bonus on top of it already being a very solid action movie. Even if Age of Ultron had a real message buried somewhere in it, it would still be mediocre movie.
edited 9th Jul '15 1:58:40 PM by Bloodsquirrel
I think they should give Blade his own Netflix show. I know he had a tv show before and it was awful, but after how gritty and grisly Daredevil and how goddamn amazing at it it turned out to be, I think Blade would fit just fine in the small screen.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."Vampires have become a bit passe (especially the Vampire Detective idea), but I can see it having some potential. I like characters who are much older than they look and have lived through different eras, and often in different countries.
And there aren't really a lot of long-lived characters of color that I can recall. It's kind of a corollary of No Equal-Opportunity Time Travel. So, Blade is unique in this respect. Not many vampires of color either come to think of it.

@Swan: In Ant Man's case the word of mouth seems to be better than the reviews, but we don't really have a lot of reviews to go on.
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