Captain America 2 Sucked

[HoosierCat]

Based on the glowing reviews I am in the minority, but I'm glad I saw this at an early matinee, because that meant I only wasted $5.75 instead of $11.50. So, what bugged me?

1. The movie is called "Captain America: The Winter Soldier," with the winter soldier being a villain in the piece. You would think that, since his name is in the title of the movie, the winter soldier would play a prominent role. You would be wrong. He barely gets any screen time and is basically a sub-plot that could have been cut out with little effect on the film. To top it all off, this sub-plot isn't even resolved in this movie. It's as if there was a movie named "Batman vs. Joker" and Joker only appears for about 10 minutes while Batman spends the whole movie fighting aliens from outer space or something.

2. Hey, look, it's Cap and some guy standing around the Mall in D.C. talking. Oh, now Cap and some soldiers are standing around talking. Hey, there's Nick Fury talking to a flash drive. Wow, check out Cap and Nick Fury talking. Wait, here's something different, it's Cap and Black Widow talking to a computer! Hey, it's Robert Redford! What's he doing in this film? Oh, he's talking to some holograms of world leaders! Hey, there's Cap and that guy from the Mall again, this time they are on top of a dam talking! Look, there's Cap and Black Widow talking to some guy at an Apple store (no, really). Hey, look, Robert Redford is talking to the holograms again! And on and on and on and on.

This movie never. F*cking. Shuts. Up. It's exposition hell. By the time they finally got to the big explosion-filled climax all I wanted to do was go home.

3. And speaking of the climax, without spoiling anything (or at least as little as possible), it's pretty weak. Suffice it to say that the bad guys clearly have not read the Rules for Evil Overlords. Weak with a capital W.

[skyline]

I actually thought the 1st one was pretty terrible as well.

I just didn't care about any of the characters. At all.

No intention of seeing #2, but thanks for validating my stance

[HoosierCat]

I know what you mean, sky. I think it's because that, while the characters talk a lot, they aren't really interacting. They're just reciting plot points. There's a little bit of a glimmer of something at the beginning of the film between Cap and the guy who will be Falcon. If they had paired those two for most of the movie it might have gone somewhere, but instead they stick him with Black Widow and the whole "Cap as a man out of time" theme (which would have played well with the winter soldier, one would think) is dropped.

And Redford is wasted. Completely, totally and utterly wasted.

[redsbengalsbucks]

I know what you mean, sky. I think it's because that, while the characters talk a lot, they aren't really interacting. They're just reciting plot points. There's a little bit of a glimmer of something at the beginning of the film between Cap and the guy who will be Falcon. If they had paired those two for most of the movie it might have gone somewhere, but instead they stick him with Black Widow and the whole "Cap as a man out of time" theme (which would have played well with the winter soldier, one would think) is dropped.

And Redford is wasted. Completely, totally and utterly wasted.

Redford has been wasted since he turned 100 about 10 years ago. Never understood why they picked the Captain America movie to make a sequel out of anyway, the first one was far from good.

[HoosierCat]

Same reason the did Thor2, red: it's all part of the Great Marvel Universe Steamroller designed to flatten the wallets of comic fanboys nationwide. Make no mistake, comic geekdom is spazzing out on this film because it "changes the Marvel Universe forever" (not sure if there's an Oscar category for that) and sets up all sorts of storylines for the upcoming Avengers sequel and next Iron Man movie. And that's another thing that bugged me about Cap2, that it was mostly a trailer for two or three other movies.

Re Cap1, I actually like that flick, though I think it was horribly rushed. You spend the first half of the movie setting up Cap vs. Hydra, then Hydra gets defeated in a three-minute montage sequence? Lame. (I do hope they bring back Weaving as the Red Skull at some point, I could watch him chew scenery all day.)

[redsbengalsbucks]

I liked Thor. Have not seen Thor 2. Did not think they did a good job with Cap 1, but the Avengers was very good. IM 3 was just horrible and I am a big IM fan.

[HoosierCat]

I was really surprised I liked Thor because I was never a fan of the comic. I just rented Thor2 a couple weeks ago and it was likeable enough. Hiddleston's Loki continues to steal the show.

[skyline]

Thor2 was alright. Nothing groundbreaking, but an enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours.

[ArmyBengal]

Thor was a passable use of time in regards to movie watching, but I never had a desire to see Capt. America 1 or 2.

[COB]

Hollywood's lack of creativity is startling when compared to the good stuff they infrequently crank out.

It seems like they want a pre-interested audience. Marketing is too much trouble or too ineffective, so any comic book character, any old wive's tale, practically anything that is already part of the culture, and thus will have a leg up in the marketplace, gets green lighted. Middling old tv shows - make a movie. (Green Lantern, etc.). Old literature we all read in 9th grade - make a movie. (Sleepy Hollow, Red Badge of Courage, etc.) Comic books - make a movie. (Too many examples) Saturday morning cartoons from the 3 network era - make a movie. (Peabody and Sherman, which I liked, etc.)

But when they get the right writer, then the right director, all that other stuff gets put in its place. Cohen brothers movies are generally original and really good. Silver Linings Playbook was great. Even some tv is better than a lot of "blockbuster" movies. They just cost too much to make, so the producers will do anything to guarantee some type of audience. My daugher makes good movies on her ipad. Latest scene filmed live as it happened last night. She's 14, walks in the room, asks her 10-year-old brother, "On a scale of one to five, how hot does this dress mom bought me make me look?" 10-year-old brother, (without taking eyes off tv screen), "Negative five hundred."

[HoosierCat]

Lol...I've missed you COB. Hope all is well.

[COB]

All is well. I took some time off to regain perspective. Also to write my 7 volume opus, "Descent Into Madness: Watching Andy Dalton Play Football."

My new-found perspective lasted two sentences.

[COB]

Just doing some quick reading about Hunter S. Thompson. He titled his suicide note, "Football Season is Over."

"I wrote for a professional wrestling newsletter. The Air Force got very angry about it." HST, "Paris Review" interview, 2000.

[COB]

While stationed at Elgin Air Force Base, Thompson wrote for the base newspaper. He covered and got to know the players on the base football team, a team made up of NFL types doing their compulsory military service. They had a great team that could beat college teams. The quarterback Thompson covered and got to know? Zeke Bratkowski of the Green Bay Packers, father of Bob Bratkowski, offensive mad scientist and husband of Mike Brown's wife's best friend.

[HoosierCat]

HST is one of my favorite authors. I have most of his books as well as Ralph Steadman's tribute, The Joke is Over, and Oscar Zeta Acosta's Revolt of the Cockroach People and Diary of the Brown Buffalo. (Acosta is the unnamed Samoan Attorney in Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas.) His book about the 72 election, Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail, is as relevant as ever.

Requiescat in pace.

[COB]

One of my favorites as well. When I was a freshman in high school I was completely into reading. A buddy and I read the same books and he worked in the school library. One day he tells me "check this book out, I snagged it after it got here, but before the librarian had a chance to inventory it and put it into circulation." It was the first printing of The Great Shark Hunt. Reading that book blew our little 13 year-old minds. Then we went back and read his previous stuff as well and his writing and his outsized persona remain a topic of conversation between us to this day.

Odd note: My high school had a very large open area in the middle of the school. The center of this area served as the library. On 3 sides were huge bookshelves, probably 8 or 9 feet high. The other side of those bookshelves were the back walls of classrooms. So in several classrooms there was about a foot or two opening between the top of the back wall and the ceiling, and on the other side was the library. My freshman year I had a class in there, and about once every couple weeks we'd be sitting in class and a book would come flying over the wall and land on the floor or on some kid's head. Our teacher Mrs. Davis would haul ass out of there over to the library to catch whoever did it, but she never could find the guilty party. I knew it was my friend working over in the library doing it, but of course I adhered to a mafia-like code of silence and kept my mouth shut.

Further irrelevant memory that has nothing to do with the Bengals or Captain America: That class was a senior composition class that the school put me in because they had mad respect for my composition skills, apparently. So as you can imagine, I was a freshman in a senior class not exactly welcomed by the much older kids. Also, the old lady teaching it was basically cranky and not happy to have a freshman with about an 11 second attention span in her class. One day, I can't remember what I was doing wrong, but it was something that drew the ire of old Mrs. Davis. She started to unload on me, and one of the seniors spoke up in my defense, saying something like, "Just give him a break". Mrs. Davis said, "Gwilym, why don't you just mind your own business." He then said, and this is the one line I remember perfectly, "Why don't you quit being such a bitch?" I expected some major blowup, Gwilym to the office, paddling (this was 1976), suspension, something big. Instead, she just blew it off and told him to close his mouth, like she didn't even hear it.

[ArmyBengal]

"Why don't you quit being such a bitch?" !!! Classic.

Yeah, out of all of that, that's the humor I found.

I don't think i'll ever grow up, I swear.

[HoosierCat]

In all seriousness army, if you ever do one thing I suggest, pick up a copy of HST's Hell's Angels at the library. I think you will enjoy it.

[COB]

Further expounding on my irrelevant story. The senior that called Mrs. Davis a bitch - I didn't really know that guy, he had a little sister in my grade though. Anyway he moved to Nashville and became a musician after college. His band, The Thieves, made one album but was not successful. Then in the course of writing and performing solo, a song he co-wrote got into a movie called "The Horse Whisperer" in 1999 and it got nominated for an Academy Award. That's all I know about him, and I had to look that up. The song was called "A Soft Place to Fall."

The other half of the story - Mrs. Davis. She was old when she taught me. She had already retired from The Columbus School for Girls when she was working at my high school. Probably 5 or 6 years after high school, I'm reading the local paper and there is an aerial photo of an automobile accident. The top was cut off the smashed up car, and the driver was gone. The passenger was still in the passenger seat, already with a neck brace on. Sure enough, I look at the little old lady in the passenger seat, and it was Mrs. Davis. Her husband had been the driver and had been killed in the crash. According to the story she was transported to the hospital and survived.

[COB]

In the thread's first post, Hoosier complained about current Captain America flick having Robert Redford talking to holograms.

The scene in the Horse Whisperer when the song my classmate wrote was playing? - Robert Redford dancing with some actress in a saloon.

[ArmyBengal]

This might be my favorite current thread !!!

[HoosierCat]

So I went back to the Marvel Comics Universe (pat. pending, copyright, TM, all right reserved, abandon all cash ye fanboys who enter here) last night and took in Guardians of the Galaxy.

Run, do not walk, to see this movie. It's a blast. Everything that was wrong with Winter Soldier is right with this flick. It's almost nonstop action, which makes the exposition easier to move through (as opposed to WS having people stand around yapping while nothing happens). The plot is a standard enough railroad: good guys must Come Together As A Team and Recover The Maguffin before the Evil Overlord Destroys The Universe. But that actually helps you focus on the characters and sets and action. No hidden cabals or dead/not dead people or set-ups for other movies. Just a...well, comic book. With d*ck jokes. And an awesome soundtrack!

I haven't enjoyed a MCU movie this much since Avengers.

[redsbengalsbucks]

Cool I'm itching to see this movie, but it has to wait for two more weekends. Planning on seeing it over a vacation, is it somewhat kid friendly? Dick jokes are OK for my heathens.

[HoosierCat]

Totally fine for kids. I saw it at the drive-in and there were tons of families with kids.

If your kids like movies like Star Wars they'll love this.

[HoosierCat]

Guardians pulls in $94 million for opening weekend, sets new all time record for August.

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