Captain America: The Winter Soldier

A review on Captain America: The Winter Soldier which I watched a few years ago, which I felt was better than the previous few films from the Marvel Avengers juggernaut--it didn't create more problems than it solved (Thor: The Dark World) or didn't focus on the adventures of a superhero with PTSD (Iron Man 3). Captain America: The Winter Soldier still follows the kinda-depressing post-Avengers problems with more on the personal problems of the superheroes, and stuff does happen in this film, with a large part of the plot figuring out who the real villains are and focusing on Cap and Black Widow as they drive around Cleveland (er, greater "Washington D.C." area) while evading a revived HYDRA. While not affecting the greater problems of the storyline, there's too many places where CATWS breaks the Willing Suspension of Disbelief makes it even less plausible than is acceptable for a superhero movie. OK, so Cap himself managed to get himself injected with a super serum that makes him go from a shrimp to well, Captain America, and gets frozen for over 70 years, sure let's go with that. But when you ask some insane things like:

- The Winter Soldier himself is Bucky Barnes, missing and presumed dead by everyone else. While cryogenic freezing is used on him as well, he's been active, shaping history by carrying out assassinations. You'd think that freezing/thawing wouldn't be too good on the body and aging (it certainly isn't good for food), as opposed to Captain America, who was frozen once and thawed. Try to not keep in mind that both men are in their late 90s but still fight like they're in their early 30s

- S.H.I.E.L.D. is a top-level government agency but they weren't aware that HYDRA had been infiltrating it and influencing it for decades? This is even more egregious since S.H.I.E.L.D. gets the best toys that the Armed Forces, the CIA, and the FBI never get.

- Absolutely no one at S.H.I.E.L.D., including the Avengers, Nick Fury, the late Phil Coulson before he died, and the President of the United States never really figured this out? I mean, they have to learn all this from Arnim Zola, who transferred his mind to a series of 1960s-era databanks, which presents another problem. It's clear that someone has been going down there, seeing how he's been upgraded at some point with a USB port, but those tapes deteriorate. Wouldn't it be better if someone replaced those parts? And he's apparently destroyed by HYDRA as collateral damage--wouldn't it make sense to make backups of him?

So yes, it has problems. A lot of problems. It was still fun, though!

In the meantime, I'm going to be upgrading the "non-blog" components of this site, including...

• A dedicated page for Games
• A semi-professional page for On the Road
• A collection of scans and other fun stuff, some from TWR
• A new project I'm working on