Thoughts on the Winter Soldier - SPOILERS
Apr. 14th, 2014 08:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dewlineOkay...this is going to be a bit of a ramble.
First off, thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ms_danson for pointing this review out to me. Not sure how much of it - and the three essays that precede it - that I agree with, but the author at the other end put a lot of thought into those four essays. They deserve some consideration from a wider audience. Expect a fifth on world-building in that fictional world to follow.
I'm not sure that I can bring proper reviewing skill to bear on this movie. I'm too close to it, enjoyed it maybe too much. Two viewings at the cinema and I'm considering a third visit to see what more I'm still missing in terms of performance, world-building, and whatever else comes to mind.
Second: I've listened to Henry Jackman's background score. It stands on its own just as well as it supports the plot of the movie. Recommended.
I was talking with a friend at my second viewing about how many different genres you could see TWS as falling into: adventure movie, thriller, spy drama, even a horror film. (Think about the nature of the threat here before you deny me the "horror movie" argument.) My friend noted that I didn't mention "superhero" movie. I didn't see that lack of mention as an omission-as-denial, but rather omission due to assumption of that being a given.
(I am doomed to fail at semantics, I'm sure.)
The theme of consequences has been nagging at me. Consider:
Three Insight-class Helicarriers dead in the waters of the Potomac. You could argue for anywhere from fifteen to thirty thousand dead on those boats, depending on your crew level assumptions. Granted that the gunnery was intended to run largely on automatics, but those air wings carried aboard each of them meant flight crews and tech support teams for each of those Quinjets in the air wings, right? Hazmat cleanup work is going to be underway for years. If they're lucky.
The Fury/Romanov Infodump. Imagine if the head of your nation's intelligence apparatus decided that things were so far gone that the best thing to do was invoke a Snowden/Manning-style infodump themselves and let the public and the governmental hearings sort it out. If possible. This has just knocked a very large chunk of the secret history of the Marvel CinemaVerse's last seven decades into the public domain. Most of SHIELD's infrastructure's existence, operations across the planet for good and ill, and a lot of superhumans who were trying to live quiet lives either because SHIELD insisted upon it or they did (take your pick).
The scramble for control of SHIELD resources between what's left of both SHIELD and HYDRA. Resources including bases, information and hardware...from flying cars all the way up to Helicarriers. "Number 64" from Avengers can't have been the only one in active service, right?
I'm probably forgetting and ignoring other issues of interest, aren't I?
First off, thanks to
ms_danson for pointing this review out to me. Not sure how much of it - and the three essays that precede it - that I agree with, but the author at the other end put a lot of thought into those four essays. They deserve some consideration from a wider audience. Expect a fifth on world-building in that fictional world to follow.I'm not sure that I can bring proper reviewing skill to bear on this movie. I'm too close to it, enjoyed it maybe too much. Two viewings at the cinema and I'm considering a third visit to see what more I'm still missing in terms of performance, world-building, and whatever else comes to mind.
Second: I've listened to Henry Jackman's background score. It stands on its own just as well as it supports the plot of the movie. Recommended.
I was talking with a friend at my second viewing about how many different genres you could see TWS as falling into: adventure movie, thriller, spy drama, even a horror film. (Think about the nature of the threat here before you deny me the "horror movie" argument.) My friend noted that I didn't mention "superhero" movie. I didn't see that lack of mention as an omission-as-denial, but rather omission due to assumption of that being a given.
(I am doomed to fail at semantics, I'm sure.)
The theme of consequences has been nagging at me. Consider:
Three Insight-class Helicarriers dead in the waters of the Potomac. You could argue for anywhere from fifteen to thirty thousand dead on those boats, depending on your crew level assumptions. Granted that the gunnery was intended to run largely on automatics, but those air wings carried aboard each of them meant flight crews and tech support teams for each of those Quinjets in the air wings, right? Hazmat cleanup work is going to be underway for years. If they're lucky.
The Fury/Romanov Infodump. Imagine if the head of your nation's intelligence apparatus decided that things were so far gone that the best thing to do was invoke a Snowden/Manning-style infodump themselves and let the public and the governmental hearings sort it out. If possible. This has just knocked a very large chunk of the secret history of the Marvel CinemaVerse's last seven decades into the public domain. Most of SHIELD's infrastructure's existence, operations across the planet for good and ill, and a lot of superhumans who were trying to live quiet lives either because SHIELD insisted upon it or they did (take your pick).
The scramble for control of SHIELD resources between what's left of both SHIELD and HYDRA. Resources including bases, information and hardware...from flying cars all the way up to Helicarriers. "Number 64" from Avengers can't have been the only one in active service, right?
I'm probably forgetting and ignoring other issues of interest, aren't I?
