This can’t be happening…
I trusted you, Captain.
I trusted you. I would have
thought that if there was one hero I could trust, and one movie I could depend
on, it was yours. I didn’t name your
last solo outing as one of my favorite movies ever just for laughs. It was because you earned it. And I thought you’d earn it again. But then you, and all your Marvel Studio cohorts,
decided to put out this…this…this thing. I can’t believe it. But I have no choice.
You put out a movie
worse than the RoboCop remake. And for that, you will NEVER be forgiven.
…Nah, just
kidding. This movie’s freaking great.
I’m not even going to
try and act like The Winter Soldier is
the best thing ever. Frankly, I’m still
contemplating whether or not it’s better than The First Avenger -- because if it is, it would demand a
reshuffling of the list. But for what it’s
worth, I am PLENTY satisfied with the end result of Cap’s latest
adventure. It’s at a point where, if you’re
expecting me to do a post with paragraphs of listed flaws (set to Groose’s
theme, natch), you’re going to be disappointed.
It’s true that there are some flaws, but A) they’re negligible in the
long run, B) the movie’s entertaining enough to make you get caught up in its pace,
and C) the moments of jaw-dropping hype
put my logic organs out to pasture.
What I find supremely
interesting about TWS is that it’s at
once simple and complex. It’s definitely
a superhero movie, but it takes on a harsher edge by way of the story and the
ideas in it -- but there’s a solid balance of both, matching that
now-commonplace jovial spirit with the suspense and paranoia of a political thriller. And while there are cracks in both by design,
in this movie the execution is top-notch.
Things work. Things happen, and
happen well. And get this: it actually
does its damnedest in (and largely succeeds at) taking controversies and
real-world topics, and making them more than just “DURR, ME GOOD, YOU EVIL”
terms. Suck that down, RoboCop. And this, while you're at it.
If this post seems a
bit short on details, then that’s because I just saw the movie, and I want to
take some time to digest it before nose-diving into some ramble and puking all
over my keys. Ideally, you can look
forward to something in the next few days (let’s shoot for Thursday, but given
the sheer number of interruptions I’ve
had recently, who knows what’ll happen).
That post will get in deep with the movie, and I’ll use that as a point
of discussion -- a way to see what went right, and what lessons we can take
away from it. So if you haven’t seen the
movie yet, this is your chance. If you
HAVE, and you can’t wait to start talking about it, then just leave a comment
or something. Just be courteous to other
readers, and mark any spoilers.
But there’s more to it than
that in this instance. I will be the
VERY first to admit that I’m biased, and I’m the most uninformed Captain
America fanboy you ever did see. All
told, it’s probably safe to assume that I like the movie as much as I do
because, holy hell, Cap totally does a
bunch of Charging Stars! But I’d
like to think there’s a reason why a character like Cap works (for me, at
least). So I’m thinking that I might do
another post to try and dissect Cap. At
the moment, it feels like I’m going to end up repeating things I’ve said a
million billion crogtillion things I’ve said here already -- but even if that’s
the case, I think it’ll be all right.
You can just think of it as a nexus.
All my ideas, and concepts displayed elsewhere, gathered into one
handy-dandy focal point of a post.
Something like that, I’m hoping, will be good for my blood pressure.
I might need it. My brother’s been bugging me to play and do a
blog post on this.
I just puked from my
eyeballs.
So that’s about where I
stand, I guess. I’m hoping I can get TWS stuff out soon, because -- once
again -- some of the other posts I have planned, not to mention
already-written, look like they’re getting pushed back. For the record (assuming there aren’t any
more interruptions or post-hijackings), the next game on the docket is going to
be Infamous: Second Son. That’ll go up…someday…but if you’re starved for a second opinion, I’ll give you a
short one: it’s an awful PS4 game. It’s
a pretty good PS3 game, though -- even if nearly every good thing it does gets
counterbalanced by something bad.
But that’s a topic for
another day. Right now I’m still riding
high on TWS -- as I should be. That’s just proof that the movie did
something right, and I’d like to relish this feeling for as long as I can before
it’s time to go back to zombies, grit, and the
increasingly-frequent-but-simultaneously-depressing-and-borderline-parodic
missteps of the modern games industry.
I ain’t even mad,
though. Because guess who's back?
Awwwwwwwwwwww yeah!
You know what it’s time for!
Damn. The scars are still fresh.