Before I made my way to the 1:55 showing of Captain America: The Winter Soldier on Saturday afternoon, I was bombarded with the praise the movie was getting.
“The best Marvel movie yet!” read tweets and headlines throughout the week and even before that. Even one of my Facebook friends said that it was better than The Dark Knight and The Avengers. Granted, though, the latter claim (despite how many fans The Avengers has) is not an impossible task.
After you follow the film media for a while, you find that these types of accolades are a bit too common, especially with superhero movies. Nothing can ever be just OK; everything is either amazing or terrible. No wiggle room in between.
With that in mind, I didn’t keep my expectations too high for Marvel’s latest film, but even I can’t help but get a little jazzed up after hearing this news. Is this movie really better than The Dark Knight? Is it possible that this is the next great superhero movie? I mean, the ads looked pretty good, but it is really this amazing?
Well, as soon as I walked out of the theater, the answer to these questions became pretty definitive: No, this is not the next great superhero movie. And it is nowhere near the greatness that was Christopher Nolan’s film. But, with that said, this is still a good movie. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it is the best movie Marvel has had in its “phase 2,” post-Avengers output.
Though, its only competition thus far was the decidedly average Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World. So, perhaps this is not the best way for me to flatter the latest Captain America.
Criticism of past Marvel movies aside, this is still a genuinely good superhero movie. The stakes are high, but the characters are always in balance. The performances (all around, really) are strong, and the movie moves at a brisk clip, even as it gets past the two-hour mark.
But I have to ask: What is it about this movie that everyone is falling over for? It is competently made, sure, but much like the past couple Marvel movies, there is something so disposable about it. As a studio, Marvel knows that its films have to have stakes. Yet each film it produces is unable to shake the burden of figuring out how to make what is happening on screen seem genuine.
I think this is where the Marvel movies fail and the DC movies succeed. No matter how many people complain about problems they had with The Dark Knight Rises and Man of Steel, both movies were able to make their audiences feel like something real was in danger for these characters. As a result, tension is mounted and drama is created. We, the audience, want to know what is going to happen to Batman and Superman, even though we already know that everything is going to be OK.
But with Marvel movies, there is never this sense of urgency. Sure, they say there is in the script, and the actors keep talking about what’s at stake before each action scene. But the audience generally doesn’t feel it. We know that everything is going to end up well, because they are shooting The Avengers 2 as we speak.
So, with that, Marvel has mastered the art of fast-food filmmaking. It is satisfying enough, and it does the job, but it doesn’t quite fill you up in the way you would ultimately like. And with DC giving us steaks once a year, it doesn’t seem so greedy to demand that Marvel step up from producing its second-rate meals.
As I say this, I wait eagerly for the day I get to buy my ticket for Guardians of the Galaxy. Perhaps, then, I am just as much to blame.
Will Ashton is a junior studying journalism and a writer for ThePost. Talk superhero movies with him at wa054010@ohiou.edu
