So I've written a review of the first trilogy(and those are spectacular movies). And then when The Amazing Spider-Man came out, we(as a youth group) had to go see it. And so, since we(as a family) missed the sequel the first time, we thought we'd go see it at the dollar theater. Which me, Mom, Courtney and Trevor did yesterday afternoon. But first we re-watched The Amazing Spider-Man before we left. It turned out to actually be a very well-made film. True, like I've said before, the acting was overdone and the storyline was shallow, but it was an action movie more than anything else, and being so, the other aspects could be forgiven, somewhat. My favorite scenes are still the ones where Peter asks Gwen out, and then Aunt May commenting that Gwen was pretty right after Captain Stacy's funeral.
In an interview between the first and second films of the rebooted series, Emma Stone said that while Peter was the muscle of their team, Gwen was the brains. And that's a very good summary of their interaction and roles.
TASM2 opens with the same scene as the first, but from a different perspective, focusing on Richard Parker, instead of four-year-old Peter playing hide-and-seek like the first movie. (I love that trick of storytelling.) As I said about two years ago, "It's a darker, more realistic world....The dialogue feels more true-to-life, which somehow loses points, even though technically it should be better."
After dropping Peter off at Uncle Ben and Aunt May's, Richard and Mary hop onto a private jet and plan to stay as far away from Oscorp as possible. An assassin murders the pilot and an intense fight follows, including a pistol going off, someone hurtling through a window, and a massive file transfer, before the plane crashes.
Fourteen years later, Peter has been bitten by one of Richard's leftover spiders, Uncle Ben's been shot, Captain Stacy has died and Curt Connors has been incarcerated for his actions as the Lizard. And Peter's gotten used to this do-gooding Spider-Man gig. It keeps him busy, though. So busy, in fact, that he nearly misses his own high school graduation, a fact which valedictorian Gwen isn't too happy about. But there was this Russian thug named Alexei Sysetevich hijacking an Oscorp armored truck. During this chase, Spidey both delivers, well, amazing snarky commentary(sorry, I couldn't help it) to the criminal and saves the life of a pathetic Oscorp engineer named Max Dillon.
During the fight, Peter sees a vision of Captain Stacy and remembers his wishes for keeping his daughter safe. Peter is twisted between his striving to keep his promise and yearning to be with Gwen. Exasperated from this well-worn internal battle, she breaks up with him that night.
Harry Osborn comes back to New York to see his dying father Norman, who in addition to bitterly expressing his disappointment in his son, also tells Harry that he too has the hereditary retroviral hyperdisplaisia disease. Norman gives Harry a cube which apparently contains his life's work. Norman dies the next day.
A now-Spidey-obsessed Max is pitifully lacking anything close to a life, feels invisible, and is extremely, unbearably sensitive(he makes Danny Rebus from The Electric Company look normal). Especially annoyed at no one noticing (or caring) that it's his birthday, a slip while doing maintenance work becomes a massive catastrophe. It's a big headache for top people at Oscorp, given the already-shaky investor confidence following the Connors episode. Following an awkward board meeting where newly-installed CEO Harry meets the board members and an even worse reunion scene between Harry and Peter, some unnamed board member hushes up the Dillon accident, citing the already-shaky investor confidence levels after the Connors episode.
Gwen tells Peter that she might move to England for school, as she's one of the finalists for a hugely prestigious Oxford scholarship. While they're talking about it, Max, now a human power station, wanders into Times Square and inadvertently causes a blackout. The police show up, and Max defends himself animal-like, scared and with no idea what's going on, lashing out at anyone seen as a threat. Spider-Man attempts to calm him down, but those efforts fail when he doesn't remember who Max is. Enraged, Max, now calling himself Electro, attacks everything in sight, and the police fire at him, which doesn't help matters, and Spider-Man has to rescue the numerous civilians watching the scene. Electro is taken to the Ravencroft Institute for the Criminally Insane, where he's experimented on by a German named Dr. Kafka.
Harry decides that Spider-Man's blood could possibly save him, but is turned down both by Peter and Spider-Man, and the Oscorp board fires Harry after framing him of covering up Max's accident. Harry's assistant Felicia tells him about secret equipment that could save him, so he makes a deal with Electro to get inside the building. In the Special Projects hidden lab he finds a glider and flightsuit, as well as antivenom, tentacles, a rhino-like exoskeleton and mechanical wings. This all hurriedly creates the Green Goblin, and Harry races off to find Spider-Man.
Throughout the movie Peter's been trying to uncover more about his parents' disappearance(Aunt May doesn't much like this) and he discovers a hidden subway station lab where Richard hid the information about his work, knowing that Oscorp would use it as a biogenetic weapon. Gwen finds out she got the scholarship and plans to head to England immediately to get a head start on her studies. She gets stuck in traffic, which gives him time to say "I love you" dramatically, They get back together and make plans for him to come with her when they see Electro heading to the main power grid to take the entire city's power and they rush away to stop him.
With Gwen's smarts and Peter's skills, they defeat Electro by overloading his electricity charge, only to have Harry/Green Goblin come sailing in and kidnap Gwen as revenge for Spider-Man not cooperating with a blood transfusion. The following fight takes them to a clock tower, and in the melee Gwen hurtles towards the ground and Peter tries to save her, but she dies.
Months pass, and Peter is still deeply grieving her loss, he's stopped crime-fighting he's been so depressed. Harry is in Ravencroft, his condition improving, and plans are made to take out Spider-Man for good. Inspired by Gwen's graduation speech and a little boy's courage, he gets back into the superhero game by again taking on that Russian thug Sysetevich, now dressed in a heavily-weaponized rhino-themed exoskeleton. The end.
I enjoyed it(but it's hard to not like superhero movies, unless it's The Fantastic Four or X-Men), but this was a strange movie. Several times I had to stop and wonder, "Wait....what's happening?!" There were way too many undeveloped characters, and there were huge plot holes that were skipped over or extremely poorly-connected. (Like Norman's death, how Peter-Gwen-Harry knew each other, or why Peter was under surveillance.) And most of the dialogue from the previews was absolutely nowhere to be found, which is always extremely annoying. Norman dies immediately, and Harry rapidly becomes the Green Goblin and then just as quickly is in jail. It's the second movie of a planned quartet, so that obviously leaves lots of questions unanswered, but still....this story was not very well done. And it's really long....two hours and 21 minutes. I did like Max, though, his character was well-written.
There were some good bits of dialogue, though; like Peter and Aunt May arguing over whose job it is to wash his clothes. Or when Spider-Man knocks on the door of the runaway semi. Or repeatedly calling Electro "Sparkles". Gwen's graduation speech is good, and when she says that yes, he is Spider-Man, and she loves that, but she loves Peter Parker more, and that makes all the Spidey stuff worth it. Or when she accidentally screams out "PETER!" to a retreating Spider-Man and then instantly clamps a hand over her mouth, looking horrified. And I really liked the way they filmed her falling and then him standing by the grave as the season change.
Peter says at one point in this film, about Spider-Man, "I like to think he gives people hope." And he does. Andrew Garfield's portrayal is different than Tobey Maguire's, but it's a completely different take on the same character. Garfield plays a better Spider-Man, but Maguire was a better Peter Parker. But they're two different takes on the same story. So that's all right. And Spider-Man, and all superheroes generally, gives people hope, inspires them to keep going, keep fighting, trying to improve their speck of the world.
Wednesday, July 9, 2014
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a huge movie in scope. Not just because it was one of 2014's biggest hits, but in the amount of impact it had throughout the entire MCU in general.
This movie, of course, is the sequel to Captain America, and also in a sequel to The Avengers, as everything else is in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is tied back somehow. It also ties in extremely closely with the first season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which is an incredibly amazing feat of scriptwriting. In my opinion, it's one of the best MCU movies so far, right up there with Iron Man 3.
Steve Rogers is living in a Washington D.C. apartment now and working for S.H.I.E.L.D. as he struggles to adapt to the modern world of today two years after the Battle of New York. Not so much the technology; more like the societal attitudes and shifted alliances and ethics of people in general. The Internet is very helpful for things like that, and the food is much now than it was back in his day, where they boiled everything. (He mentions these in conversation.) Running is a good way to get away from thinking about problems for a bit, I've found. Steve knows this, too, and on one of his early-morning gallops he repeatedly sails by this guy and chats with him afterward. This other guy is former military, too, his name's Sam Wilson, and he's working at the VA as a PTSD counselor. They chat for a bit, until a text on Steve's phone signals it's time to get to work.
He, Natasha Romanoff and the S.H.I.E.L.D. special-forces unit(S.T.R.I.K.E., led by Agent Rumlow) head to a ship called the Lumerian Star, which has been captured by French mercenaries led by Georges Batroc. Agent Sitwell is one of the many hostages aboard this vessel needed to be freed. Cap and the S.T.R.I.K.E. team take out the mercenaries effectively, while the Black Widow has a mission of her own to complete: extracting S.H.I.E.L.D. data from the ship's computers. And, also in a self-tasked role, giving Cap a hard time about getting him to date somebody.
"You know, I bet if you asked Kristen out, from statistics, she'd probably say yes." "That's why I don't ask." "Too shy or too scared?" "Too busy!"
A pretty ticked-off Steve angrily questions Director Nick Fury at the Triskelion(S.H.I.E.L.D.'s bureaucratic headquarters) about Natasha's information retrieval, and Fury explains about Project Insight; a plan to use three upgraded and improved Helicarriers linked by satellite designed to take out threats before they ever happen. Steve's not too happy about this new method of warfare. (It seems very NSA-like. And when the movie came out in April, the NSA leak stuff had been only a few months before, so still very fresh on audience's minds.)
Once Steve leaves, Fury attempts to access the files on the memory stick, only to be told that they had been sealed - by himself. Suspicious, he asks longtime friend and member of the World Security Council Alexander Pierce to delay Insight's implementation.
On his way to a meeting with Commander Maria Hill, Fury is ambushed by a company of fake D.C. police and a mysterious man with a metal arm known as the Winter Soldier, a ghost-like assassin with over two dozen kills over the years. Fury escapes to Steve's apartment, only to be shot by the Winter Soldier. Cap's neighbor Kate the nurse turns out to actually be S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Agent 13, assigned to protect Steve. She gets Fury to the hospital, but the wounds are too bad and he dies at 1:03 a.m. Fury gave the flash drive to Cap, who hid it in a hospital vending machine.
Pierce commands Steve to divulge Fury's intentions and reasons for coming to the apartment, an order Cap refuses. Pierce declares Steve Rogers to be a fugitive and sics the S.T.R.I.K.E. force after him and Natasha. They find a clue via the flash drive and a nearby mall's Apple store that directs them to Camp Lehigh, New Jersey, which they then travel to after avoiding the hunters.
At Camp Lehigh, where Dr. Abraham Erskine's super-soldier experimental training was conducted, Steve and Natasha find the secret base of operations for S.H.I.E.L.D., and inside the bunker basement they discover a supercomputer with Dr. Armin Zola's preserved consciousness. Dr. Zola recounts the rise of HYDRA throughout the years, as they've been hidden in plain sight ever since the beginning. A missile destroys the building, and Steve and Natasha barely escape.
They go to Sam Wilson's apartment, with nowhere else really to go. "Everyone we know is trying to kill us." "Not everyone." Over breakfast the three of them devise a plan, to steal/borrow Cap's old suit from the Smithsonian and get Sam's Falcon flight suit.
Those tasks completed, the trio sets out to interrogate Agent Sitwell, who explains that Zola created an algorithm that predicts future threats to HYDRA, which is the base of Insight. The new quartet, counting the now-detained Sitwell, is ambushed on the freeway by the Winter Soldier and Rumlow's S.T.R.I.K.E. team, an intense fight follows. They escape to a safehouse with Commander Hill's help, where they discover(much to their relief) that Fury is still alive, though heavily wounded. There they come to the difficult conclusion that in order to stop this HYDRA takeover, S.H.I.E.L.D. basically has to be blown up. The first step of that plan is to bring down Project Insight through replacement of the Helicarrier's targeting chips.
Steve reveals the HYDRA plot to everyone at the Triskelion during the Helicarrier launch, and from there, everything S.H.I.E.L.D.-related is in major disarray, to say the least. (Trying not to spoilAgents of S.H.I.E.L.D. here....but if you haven't seen it, by all means, WATCH!!!!) Natasha leaksall S.H.I.E.L.D. documents and files out to the general public, which instantly starts trending. Fury shoots Pierce, and Steve and Sam manage to replace the chips of two Helicarriers before the Winter Soldier destroys the Falcon's suit and grounds him. Captain America and the Winter Soldier struggle inside the third Helicarrier before the final chip is replaced, and Hill resets the targeting so that the ships will destroy each other. As they're crashing down back to Earth, bringing the Triskelion down in the wreckage on the way, Fury and Natasha rescue Sam, and in an effort to save his old friend, Steve quits fighting the Winter Soldier and is thrown out into the Potomac River.
The unconscious Steve is pulled form the water by the Winter Soldier, who then slips away. The Black Widow is brought before a Senate subcommittee and explains her actions, both as KGB and S.H.I.E.L.D. Hill interviews for a job at the Human Resources division of Stark Industries, and Steve's neighbor starts over with the CIA. Fury creates a new disguise and burns most unneeded personal articles, intent on staying in the shadows to take out the other HYDRA cells that must surely be in Europe. Rumlow is hospitalized and well-burned following the explosion. Steve and Sam decide to go after the Winter Soldier, while the Black Widow sets off to piece together as best she can a new life and identity. "Will you do me a favor; call that nurse?" "She's not a nurse." "And you're not a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent." "What was her name again?" "Sharon. You'll like her. She's nice."
There's a lot of good quotes to think about scattered throughout this movie. Like Sitwell's commentary on the digital book that is the 21st century. Or Steve and Natasha's conversations about truth, lies and ethics. After purposely knocking herself out with her stingers, Black Widow muttering "Ow....that does sting." This is a very hard story to summarize without giving too much away; as all terrific tales are a challenge to sum up. There is too much, as Inigo Montoya said.
My three favorite superheroes are Captain America, Spider-Man and Iron Man, I think. (Does Phil Coulson count as a superhero?) Steve's just kind of easy to relate to, somehow. (I've taken a couple of those "Which Avenger are you?" personality tests and gotten Captain America.) And Dad, Courtney, Caleb and Trevor all make weekly comments about finding a girlfriend or getting married. So has Amanda, too, for the last several months, she's been Black Widow-like trying to talk me into going on a date with somebody. Guess I kind of have Steve's attitude on those types of things.
In the mid-credits scene, Baron Von Strucker is talking to someone else at a secret HYDRA base somewhere in Europe, one of many. They have Loki's scepter, and have been running experiments with deadly results. There are, also, two prisoners that survived: the crazed twins Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch(played by the Olsen twins' little sister). "HYDRA and S.H.I.E.L.D. are two sides to the same coin....one that is no longer currency. This isn't the age of spies anymore. Not even the age of heroes. It is the age of miracles....and there is nothing more horrifying that a miracle." This sets up nicely into Avengers: Age of Ultron next May, andGuardians of the Galaxy(in early August) will also set it up in some way. So that could lead to superhero discussions with other Marvel fans like Ash, Jon, Mr. DeSpain or the Perrys.
The end-credits scene features the Winter Soldier, in darker versions of almost the exact same thing Steve was wearing earlier(that seems significant in some way), visiting the Smithsonian Captain America exhibit, staring at the Bucky Barnes memorial.
This movie, of course, is the sequel to Captain America, and also in a sequel to The Avengers, as everything else is in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is tied back somehow. It also ties in extremely closely with the first season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which is an incredibly amazing feat of scriptwriting. In my opinion, it's one of the best MCU movies so far, right up there with Iron Man 3.
Steve Rogers is living in a Washington D.C. apartment now and working for S.H.I.E.L.D. as he struggles to adapt to the modern world of today two years after the Battle of New York. Not so much the technology; more like the societal attitudes and shifted alliances and ethics of people in general. The Internet is very helpful for things like that, and the food is much now than it was back in his day, where they boiled everything. (He mentions these in conversation.) Running is a good way to get away from thinking about problems for a bit, I've found. Steve knows this, too, and on one of his early-morning gallops he repeatedly sails by this guy and chats with him afterward. This other guy is former military, too, his name's Sam Wilson, and he's working at the VA as a PTSD counselor. They chat for a bit, until a text on Steve's phone signals it's time to get to work.
He, Natasha Romanoff and the S.H.I.E.L.D. special-forces unit(S.T.R.I.K.E., led by Agent Rumlow) head to a ship called the Lumerian Star, which has been captured by French mercenaries led by Georges Batroc. Agent Sitwell is one of the many hostages aboard this vessel needed to be freed. Cap and the S.T.R.I.K.E. team take out the mercenaries effectively, while the Black Widow has a mission of her own to complete: extracting S.H.I.E.L.D. data from the ship's computers. And, also in a self-tasked role, giving Cap a hard time about getting him to date somebody.
"You know, I bet if you asked Kristen out, from statistics, she'd probably say yes." "That's why I don't ask." "Too shy or too scared?" "Too busy!"
A pretty ticked-off Steve angrily questions Director Nick Fury at the Triskelion(S.H.I.E.L.D.'s bureaucratic headquarters) about Natasha's information retrieval, and Fury explains about Project Insight; a plan to use three upgraded and improved Helicarriers linked by satellite designed to take out threats before they ever happen. Steve's not too happy about this new method of warfare. (It seems very NSA-like. And when the movie came out in April, the NSA leak stuff had been only a few months before, so still very fresh on audience's minds.)
Once Steve leaves, Fury attempts to access the files on the memory stick, only to be told that they had been sealed - by himself. Suspicious, he asks longtime friend and member of the World Security Council Alexander Pierce to delay Insight's implementation.
On his way to a meeting with Commander Maria Hill, Fury is ambushed by a company of fake D.C. police and a mysterious man with a metal arm known as the Winter Soldier, a ghost-like assassin with over two dozen kills over the years. Fury escapes to Steve's apartment, only to be shot by the Winter Soldier. Cap's neighbor Kate the nurse turns out to actually be S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Agent 13, assigned to protect Steve. She gets Fury to the hospital, but the wounds are too bad and he dies at 1:03 a.m. Fury gave the flash drive to Cap, who hid it in a hospital vending machine.
Pierce commands Steve to divulge Fury's intentions and reasons for coming to the apartment, an order Cap refuses. Pierce declares Steve Rogers to be a fugitive and sics the S.T.R.I.K.E. force after him and Natasha. They find a clue via the flash drive and a nearby mall's Apple store that directs them to Camp Lehigh, New Jersey, which they then travel to after avoiding the hunters.
At Camp Lehigh, where Dr. Abraham Erskine's super-soldier experimental training was conducted, Steve and Natasha find the secret base of operations for S.H.I.E.L.D., and inside the bunker basement they discover a supercomputer with Dr. Armin Zola's preserved consciousness. Dr. Zola recounts the rise of HYDRA throughout the years, as they've been hidden in plain sight ever since the beginning. A missile destroys the building, and Steve and Natasha barely escape.
They go to Sam Wilson's apartment, with nowhere else really to go. "Everyone we know is trying to kill us." "Not everyone." Over breakfast the three of them devise a plan, to steal/borrow Cap's old suit from the Smithsonian and get Sam's Falcon flight suit.
Those tasks completed, the trio sets out to interrogate Agent Sitwell, who explains that Zola created an algorithm that predicts future threats to HYDRA, which is the base of Insight. The new quartet, counting the now-detained Sitwell, is ambushed on the freeway by the Winter Soldier and Rumlow's S.T.R.I.K.E. team, an intense fight follows. They escape to a safehouse with Commander Hill's help, where they discover(much to their relief) that Fury is still alive, though heavily wounded. There they come to the difficult conclusion that in order to stop this HYDRA takeover, S.H.I.E.L.D. basically has to be blown up. The first step of that plan is to bring down Project Insight through replacement of the Helicarrier's targeting chips.
Steve reveals the HYDRA plot to everyone at the Triskelion during the Helicarrier launch, and from there, everything S.H.I.E.L.D.-related is in major disarray, to say the least. (Trying not to spoilAgents of S.H.I.E.L.D. here....but if you haven't seen it, by all means, WATCH!!!!) Natasha leaksall S.H.I.E.L.D. documents and files out to the general public, which instantly starts trending. Fury shoots Pierce, and Steve and Sam manage to replace the chips of two Helicarriers before the Winter Soldier destroys the Falcon's suit and grounds him. Captain America and the Winter Soldier struggle inside the third Helicarrier before the final chip is replaced, and Hill resets the targeting so that the ships will destroy each other. As they're crashing down back to Earth, bringing the Triskelion down in the wreckage on the way, Fury and Natasha rescue Sam, and in an effort to save his old friend, Steve quits fighting the Winter Soldier and is thrown out into the Potomac River.
The unconscious Steve is pulled form the water by the Winter Soldier, who then slips away. The Black Widow is brought before a Senate subcommittee and explains her actions, both as KGB and S.H.I.E.L.D. Hill interviews for a job at the Human Resources division of Stark Industries, and Steve's neighbor starts over with the CIA. Fury creates a new disguise and burns most unneeded personal articles, intent on staying in the shadows to take out the other HYDRA cells that must surely be in Europe. Rumlow is hospitalized and well-burned following the explosion. Steve and Sam decide to go after the Winter Soldier, while the Black Widow sets off to piece together as best she can a new life and identity. "Will you do me a favor; call that nurse?" "She's not a nurse." "And you're not a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent." "What was her name again?" "Sharon. You'll like her. She's nice."
There's a lot of good quotes to think about scattered throughout this movie. Like Sitwell's commentary on the digital book that is the 21st century. Or Steve and Natasha's conversations about truth, lies and ethics. After purposely knocking herself out with her stingers, Black Widow muttering "Ow....that does sting." This is a very hard story to summarize without giving too much away; as all terrific tales are a challenge to sum up. There is too much, as Inigo Montoya said.
My three favorite superheroes are Captain America, Spider-Man and Iron Man, I think. (Does Phil Coulson count as a superhero?) Steve's just kind of easy to relate to, somehow. (I've taken a couple of those "Which Avenger are you?" personality tests and gotten Captain America.) And Dad, Courtney, Caleb and Trevor all make weekly comments about finding a girlfriend or getting married. So has Amanda, too, for the last several months, she's been Black Widow-like trying to talk me into going on a date with somebody. Guess I kind of have Steve's attitude on those types of things.
In the mid-credits scene, Baron Von Strucker is talking to someone else at a secret HYDRA base somewhere in Europe, one of many. They have Loki's scepter, and have been running experiments with deadly results. There are, also, two prisoners that survived: the crazed twins Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch(played by the Olsen twins' little sister). "HYDRA and S.H.I.E.L.D. are two sides to the same coin....one that is no longer currency. This isn't the age of spies anymore. Not even the age of heroes. It is the age of miracles....and there is nothing more horrifying that a miracle." This sets up nicely into Avengers: Age of Ultron next May, andGuardians of the Galaxy(in early August) will also set it up in some way. So that could lead to superhero discussions with other Marvel fans like Ash, Jon, Mr. DeSpain or the Perrys.
The end-credits scene features the Winter Soldier, in darker versions of almost the exact same thing Steve was wearing earlier(that seems significant in some way), visiting the Smithsonian Captain America exhibit, staring at the Bucky Barnes memorial.
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