I saw this movie yesterday right before SHIELD on ABC (good timing, I have to say) and it was freaking fantastic!
[/thread]
Okay, no, I should go into more detail. I think this was the best Marvel movie in phase II so far, if not the best one in general. And that's a real impressive feat because coming out of the Avengers, I agreed with the sentiment that none of the solo movies should try to beat it in terms of spectacle, but do everything that each individual Avenger can do on their own that they can't do in a group. This just knocks it out of the park and I'm not the biggest Captain America fan either. I never read any of the comics, I didn't watch the first movie, but none of it was that hard to follow for me and it was still immensely enjoyable. The message is simple, everyone in this movie is on top of their game and the problems it did have seem so minor that it doesn't take away from the overall enjoyment of the movie. The Winter Soldier was cool, Falcon was cool, of course the returning characters go without saying. Hell, Robin was cool in this movie. That said... *is suddenly held at gunpoint* Sorry, the critic in me must speak. Don't read the below spoilers if you haven't seen the movie yet:
(SPOILER)The Nick Fury death thing kept me on edge to the point where I legitimately thought they were going to have the balls to keep him dead which would have affected more than just SHIELD but the second Avengers movie. But no. It was a faux death. And that pissed me off because I thought it was so well done, too. I'm not too disappointed he isn't dead because Nick Fury is awesome, but I'm just really getting tired of all these close calls and "not really dead" I see in movies and TV.
The Senator as a villain was something you could see coming a mile away. My dad guessed he'd be a bad guy several minutes before he was revealed as a bad guy. He served his role well, though. I definitely gave him the finger and cheered when Nick shot him, but again, this has been done how many times? "I'm definitely not a villain!" Can we make these things less obvious?
I already knew who the Winter Soldier was going in because while I haven't read Captain America comics I have enough general knowledge of some things to where it wasn't really a secret. Hell, you can find out who the Winter Soldier is if you look at the cast list on IMDb. They didn't really do a good job of keeping that secret. Even if you knew nothing about the comics and avoided the internet, the scene where they mention Bucky's death is kind of a giveaway, otherwise why mention it? The thing with Hydra, though? That was a pretty damn clever plot twist.
So yeah, apart from certain parts of the plot being easy to guess and some backpedaling going on this is easily the best movie I've seen all year.
btw, who else screamed like a fangirl when they saw Abed?
Discuss.