Ranking Marvel’s Phase 2
1) Captain America: The Winter Solder – This should really come as no surprise to anybody who remembered my review of the movie back in September. Captain America: The Winter Soldier was hands down last year’s best movie for me, even beating out The Avengers for my favorite Marvel movie. It boldly brought Captain America into the 21st Century and forced him to come to terms with his own legacy.
Beyond just being a good spy movie, it’s probably the most politically aggressive blockbuster that I’ve ever seen: transforming a seemingly innocent action set-piece like The Avengers‘ Battle of New York into an indicting metaphor for 9-11, and S.H.I.E.L.D.’s heavy-handed approach to terrorism a reproachful look into Bush-era policies that encroached on American freedoms. And how does the living embodiment of all that is right and just with America handle grossly immoral (and illegal) covert actions taken on behalf of the government? He dumps everything onto the Internet Snowden-style and lets the public sort it out. Say what you will about its politics, but it’s a miracle that a Disney-backed popcorn flick was allowed to flaunt them the way that it did.
Well said.
I always tell people that what put CA:TWS ahead of all of the other Marvel Movies (or even comic book movies in general) is that if you took out the super heroes and just made it about regular people, it would still stand up as a great movie. I’m not sure you could say that about any other one.