A Watershed for the Larger Universe — Captain America: The Winter Soldier [Review]

[Image Source: Mashable.com]

At first watch, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Marvel Studio's latest installment in their larger Marvel Cinematic Universe, may seem like a filler movie that one needs to get through—you know, to get the full effect of the larger Universe. The fact that the movie drags in some places only reinforce that line of thought. It does not help matters that Marvel seems intent on throwing in every Easter egg [1][2][3] that did not make it into the previous eight films or the 16 Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. television episodes to date. Overall, the action sequences (and there's a whole lot of them) seem to take a back seat to slower moments of expositions and treatises. But, at first what appears to be weaknesses might actually be the foundations on which Marvel Studios can build a stronger mega-verse.

{WARNING: SPOILERS AFTER THE JUMP!!!!}

The Hunger Games...and Fan Racism? Part 2

[Image Source: Racialicious.com]

Update: 2017-12-22 to remove a direct name mention of a Twitter user.


Part II: Fan Racism

Any decent literary venture is bound to challenge the conventions of the society in which the work was created and/or consumed. Michael Moore forced us to examine news media's objectivity towards the Bush Administration, 9/11 and the lead-up to the Iraq Invasion. Hustler Magazine asked us (and the Supreme Court) to define protected speech. Over a hundred years ago, Upton Sinclair went up against wage slavery and the influential meatpacking barons in his novel The Jungle.

More recently Suzanne Collins' young adult series, The Hunger Games, added itself to that list. There are a myriad of things in the trilogy that could be considered controversial, the movie only added a visual dynamic to the mix and expanded the discussion outside the fan base to those who will only know the series from the movie. But amid the discussions into the "inanity" of the MPAA's rating system [1] and whether actress Jennifer Lawrence's healthy figure took away from the film [2], the most glaring and disturbing controversy to come to light has to do with racist reactions some fans had over the casting of black actors for the beloved parts of Rue (Amandla Stenberg), Thresh (Dayo Okeniyi), and Cinna (Lenny Kravitz). The Twitter-sphere exploded with commentary like the one featured above. These tweets went beyond fans bemoaning loose re-imagining of established lore, they were full of vitriol and were peppered with racial epithets. [3].

Movie Review: The Hunger Games...and Fan Racism? Part 1

[Image Source: KatnipOnFire]

PART 1: THE MOVIE

 * * * This Review May Contain Spoilers * * *

It is rare for the spousal unit and I to see a movie at the theaters on opening weekend. I have a fear of being in the middle of a crowd when the zombie apocalypse happen to strike and Brooke vehemently dislikes fighting for good seats (and in the case of The Hunger Games, a place in the holdout line) against teenyboppers and kids too young to appreciate the movie going experience. But, it's my firm belief that certain movies are guaranteed to be the subject of many water-cooler discussion come Monday morning and I did not want people spoiling the experience for me.

I will say this: if you have the willpower to wait out the crowds then do so. I'm not saying that the movie was bad—in fact, I would give this movie a 4 out of 5—but if you think the crowds will ruin the experience for you, this movie would definitely be worth the wait. Brooke and I actually lucked out that we got to the theater early and planned our concessions/seats strategies well enough to get excellent seats long before the crowds poured in.

The movie itself stayed pretty faithful to the book. I think it is hard to find movies that stays true to the source material, so I was really glad that Gary Ross and Suzanne Collins took the time to get the story right. That is not to say that somethings weren't omitted or changed to fit the needs of the film, somethings were. However those change did not greatly alter the story as a whole.  In fact, I would venture that the things added to the film had more of an affect (for the better) than what was left out. Scene such as Haymitch's negotiations with potential sponsors and the districts' reactions to watching their children die added a dimension to the story that the novel's first-person-limited perspective could never achieve. (For a list of items left out of the film check out Meredith Woerner's article at io9.)