Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the sequel to 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger and the ensemble film The Avengers, is full of all those things you like to see in a comic book spinoff film: lots of action sequences and plenty of banter between superheroes. It’s a good addition to the Marvel Studios universe of films. But compared to past entries it begs the question of where Marvel is heading with all its Avengers-based films.
Not as viscerally compelling as The First Avenger, the story in The Winter Soldier seems disjointed, as if it is a stitched together batch of scenes instead of a clearly thought out story. We have one villain with the Winter Soldier, another with a government wonk played by Robert Redford, another with a would-be S.H.I.E.L.D. enforcer played by the who-would ever-trust-a-guy that-looks-like-that Frank Grillo, and pretty much every government lawman around, including scenes with too-many-to-count police cars destroyed and demolished by the good guys. Oh, yeah–and Hydra. Again. Is it a complex story or just too many unnecessary plot threads? The first Captain America was a complete story, showing the weak young man who wanted to fight for all that’s right as he moved along a path to become a supersoldier, working with an incredible group of comrades, and experiencing love and loss along the way–character driven, not action driven. The basic story here has been over-used lately–stop the criminals who believe destroying the world (or the city, etc.) is the only way to save it. In what world does that logic make sense?
