Captain America: the Winter Soldier or “WARNING! Gush levels will be at maximum!”

Hey everybody. Sorry it took until now for the post.

I don’t know if anyone has read my “Utopia Defined” post. If you haven’t, the previous post has a link. Go check it out. If me posting on Medium.com isn’t working for you, please let me know. 

Subtitle exists because of all the MCU films, this is one of my favorites, definitely in the top three. So if I sound more enthusiastic then usual, that’s why. It’s also why this post will be hella long because again, I go all in on my obsessions. In fact, I had a hard time writing this one, because I couldn't stop thinking of things I wanted to say. At some point, I had to basically hamstring myself, be like, "Yeah, I know you want to talk about every minute of this movie, but you can't. Deal with it." 

I will also continue to document Captain America’s shameful anti-Americanism.

My two favorite fictional characters are Captain America and Samwise Gamgee. I think my standards are so high, no person stands a chance of satisfying me.

Like with Phase One, when Captain America: the First Avenger injected new life into the franchise following the mediocre Iron Man 2 and Thor, Winter Soldier does the same for Phase Two, injecting new life following mediocre Iron Man and Thor sequels. 

While each film of the MCU can be enjoyed by itself, there are certain films that serve as key films. Iron Man, having served as the cause of the Cambrian explosion of the MCU, is one of them. The Avengers, the first team up, is another one. And this film marks another turning point, forever casting a shadow over subsequent plotlines. 

Because up to this point, we had a fairly good idea as to who were the good guys and who were the bad guys when it came to the MCU. We also probably hadn’t given much thought to SHIELD beyond “oh yeah, that's the government Men in Black like organization.” This film would forever change that, prove that the definition we had, was murkier than we thought.

Though before we get into the film proper, I have one gripe: what exactly are Steve’s superpowers supposed to be? Because I thought the super-soldier serum merely put him at the peak of human condition/performance, yet several times in this movie, I’m like, “Okay does he have a Wolverine-style healing factor?” Don’t get me wrong—I’m well aware that humans are much more durable in action movies than in real life—but even by those standards, I have to protest. I generally like to have some parameters regarding a superhero's powers. 

So what’s our boy Steve Rogers been up to following the Battle of New York? Well, here’s a day in the life of Steve.

The total stranger in question is Sam Wilson aka the Falcon who makes his debut in this movie. Sam also works as a VA counselor, and I have to give him credit in that in his interactions with Steve, he seems to be the only one who recognizes that "Hey Steve's actually going through some shit." Steve is a twentysomething who survived a war and somehow wound up in the future, having to deal with the fact that everyone he knew either has one foot in the grave or is in the grave. That's some pretty heavy shit, and combined with the fact that with the exception of his intro film, Captain's story is one of constant disillusionment (i.e. Steve is constantly being betrayed by or letdown by someone), I have to give the stink-eye to just about everyone in Steve's life, because it feels like he’s received little, if any, help with this.

Then again, Tony’s PTSD is much more visible, and he doesn’t get much help with it either, just everyone hating on him for it. So the people of the MCU just generally suck when it comes to mental health. 

Though I do like his conversation with Sam where they discuss his list. 

This is the American version of his list. The MCU proceeded to create several different versions of the list depending on what country you're watching this movie in. 

Again, the "Man Out of Time" plot point has become a key part of Steve's background, and any writer worth its salt, has the sense to plow this fertile ground silly. 

I imagine Steve would probably pleased with most of the changes in the modern-era, even as he might struggle to parse out this new world. I imagine he very quickly becomes annoyed with the way people romanticize WWII. He was there; there was nothing romantic about it. And again, I will continue to say that while superhero films are inherently a romanticization, I still think that leaning on some of the more unsavory aspects of the WWII era would go a long way towards fleshing out Steve Rogers. Once you understand things like Eugenics, how Steve would have grown-up his entire life hearing about how the world would be a better place without him in it, and how it was pretty much held to be true by just about every educated person of the time and undergird Nazi ideology, you understand why he's such a rule-breaking little mothereffer. He knows from personal experience that the best and brightest can be horribly horribly wrong. 

I also use this justification as to Steve's more enlightened views on race; basically, at some point, he was like, "If I can't believe what they say about me, can I believe what they say about the Blacks and the Jews?" Hence his more enlightened views.

Though at the same time, Steve was still raised within a very toxic stew of a culture when it comes to race. And while many would like to reduce racism and make it the product of individual assholes, the trouble is that all beliefs and prejudices are interwoven into the culture. Meaning that racism is less about the individual attitudes of people and more about systems of power and control under which ordinary people seldom stand much of a chance. No matter how well-meaning a person may be, we will invariably repeat toxic messages given to us. 

So like it or not, Steve probably has his own issues to deal with regarding race. He would have grown up with the Civil War being taught about as the Lost Cause. But basically once Steve wound up in the new era, he realizes he's wrong and sets about educating himself, which is pretty much what every member of the dominant group needs to do. Steve may slip up and occasionally use the word "negro" or "colored" because those were appropriate terminology of his time, but he promptly apologizes afterwards because Steve Rogers is a lot of things, but an asshole isn't one of them. 

Okay, I suppose I should probably stop with all the headcanons and get back to the movie. I realize not everyone has my obsessive nature where I take one off-hand line, scene, or something I read and go all galaxy-brain with my headcanons. I apologize. I still have no idea how normal people consume pop culture; the idea of just sitting there and taking in what is given me and not trying to explore mysteries in my head (i.e. go "Okay, so what did he mean by X?"), writing scripts, or theorizing just seems completely alien to me. 

But Steve unfortunately can't just spend all his time hanging out with Sam, no matter how good an influence he may be. He's got work to do.

The movie makes an interesting choice in choosing to have Steve and Natasha partner up. I know as a general rule that the people who set up the MCU planned much of what would happen but given some of the continuity hiccups that show up every now and then, it obviously wasn't planned down to the dot and tittle. I often wonder how much freedom the directors have when it came to the plan. 

This film is directed by the Russo Brothers, Joe and Anthony, who would eventually go onto become some of Marvel's go-to directors, giving us Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame, but at the time of this movie, Marvel was taking a chance in letting them have a turn. If you look over their IMDB resume, up to that point, the Russos had mostly done sitcom work, the most notable of their credits being the second paintball war on Community. Hardly, the first thought you'd have when you're like, "Okay, I need to get someone to direct the next big-budget installment of a major blockbuster franchise."

Anyway, back to my original point, I wonder if the Russos were the ones who made the decision to have Natasha and Steve share a close partnership, or if it was some other person's idea. Whoever it was, it's a smart move when we look at what the characters represent. 

Steve is the product of the WWII era, an era which has been much romanticized, upheld as "The Good War" and given a wholesomeness that is completely out of sorts with the reality of any war. As said before, however just the cause of WWII may be, the Allied Forces still plunged deep into a sea of grey, morality-wise. Then again, war is inherently a murky action, only appearing straightforward in hindsight. As said before, a good example of this grey morality is that at the beginning of the war, one of the things the Allied Forces took offense at the Axis Powers for doing, was their bombing of civilian targets. Yet by the end of the war, the Allied Forces are also bombing civilian targets. 

This conversation between Steve and Nick gives the briefest of touches when it comes to the moral compromises of WWII, but doesn’t go much further than that, unfortunately. 

Natasha, meanwhile, has, throughout her history, been a product of the Cold War, a conflict much murkier and much harder to romanticize. It technically never turned, well, hot, and technically the US came out on top, but we still haven't fully reckoned with the decisions made during the conflict. For good or for ill, we are still being shaped by these decisions, yet if you were to mention the words "Operation Ajax," most people would have no idea what you're talking about, even though said event forever defined the Middle East. The Conservatives have managed to mostly rebrand Vietnam as a war which we totally could have won, were it not for all those hippies harshing everyone's mellow what with their pointing out the massive civilian casualties. 

I don't know if I'm breaking my rule about leaping ahead--I probably am--but I like the fact that Natasha and Steve's friendship stays a friendship and never, at any point, turns into a romance. I want more male-female friendships that stay friendships, thank you. 

What’s interesting about this movie is how little in its earlier stages it resembles a superhero film in terms of tone. As many have pointed out, early on this film more resembles a political thriller from the 60s or 70s where you have your good guy hero uncover a massive conspiracy, forcing the hero to go on the run, and try to piece together what’s going on. The Russo Brothers have cited the 1975 thriller Three Days of the Condor as their inspiration saying that this film could almost be referred to as “Three Days of Captain America.”

For the record, as part of my preparations for this review, I did watch Three Days of the Condor. It was okay. Don’t really have much to say about it.

And however good this movie is, it does lose some of its paranoid, almost claustrophobic nature on the rewatch, once you know the big twist.

The big twist I've been tiptoeing around throughout this post? I'll let one of the characters explain it for you.

Basically, the organization Steve spent WWII grinding into the dust, never really went away and massively infiltrated the US government and possibly many other ones and has spent the past seventy years orchestrating events from the shadows. With the help of the helicarriers mentioned in the conversation between Steve and Nick, they'll soon be able to kill anyone who stands in their way, unless Our Hero stops the launch. 

The film uses Operation Paperclip to explain how and why Hydra scientists were brought over to the US to work for the government. Operation Paperclip was a very real phenomenon and is further proof as to the ambiguities of WWII and the Cold War. Because the popular meme regarding WWII posits it as a righteous crusade against the Nazis, people who used to be painted as unequivocal villains, yet after the war, the US government is colluding with Nazi scientists, so we can get the jump on the USSR, even though the Soviets had been our allies in the war.

Again, I hope no one gets the wrong idea regarding my views of WWII. I am totally on Team Nazi Punks Fuck Off! I believe in the cause of stopping fascism and spend my days eyerolling over all these centrist concern trolls who hem and haw over the appropriateness of punching Nazis. Decades of media has continually depicted Nazis as the bad guys, yet now that they’re making a comeback*, now, our discourse is filled with obsessions with a false civility. :deep breath:

What I am opposed to, is the way WWII is overly romanticized to the point where people have forgotten just how the Nazis rose into power in the first place, how Hitler’s regime functioned, how he was aided and abetted by so many of the governments which would later oppose him. 

Though I’m wondering if I’m contradicting myself when it comes to my views on romanticization. For all the hate it gets, I do feel it has some value. It’s why I started my Utopia Defined project, because I felt our political horizons had become constrained. My views are just complicated. Do I contradict myself? Well, then I contradict myself. I am large; I contain multitudes.

Oh and like Linkara, I feel no shame in using the terms “Nazis” and “Hydra” interchangeably for most of the same reasons. While Hydra and the Nazis broke off from each other, Hydra has always been painted as a fascist organization with trappings very similar to the Nazis and beliefs very similar to those of Nazis. I, myself, am a champion hair-splitter, but even I have my limits. If they look like Nazis and sound like Nazis, call them fucking Nazis.

Hydra’s Project Insight also has eerie reverberations in our era of drone warfare. It started with George W. Bush, but Barack Obama expanded it, and there’s a scary lack of oversight to the program. Basically, the War on Terror has expanded to just about every country in the Middle East and we have no way of knowing which names are on the list and why. And since cases like Anwar al-Awlaki** prove that not even an American citizenship will protect you from drone strikes, we have to face the fact that the President of the United States can straight-up execute its own citizens for whatever reason they deem appropriate. And well, as the rule of Foucault’s Boomerang states that weapons/tactics used to suppress uprisings on its enemies abroad will eventually come to be used against its own people, we can probably assume that drone warfare will eventually be used on American soil. Even though given that the police can all but execute you for whatever reason they feel like, maybe we don't need drones to do the job. 

So Cap has discovered that the organization he's working for, is full to the brim with Nazis. And if that isn't enough, it turns out that the titular Winter Soldier who has been trying to kill him, is his tortured best friend who he thought had died after falling from a speeding train into the Alps. 

 Looking back, this whole movie is about the art of misdirection. Because again, going in, we thought we had an idea as to how the Marvel Cinematic Universe worked, thought we knew who the good guys and the bad guys were, only for it to turn out to be brutally wrong, forcing us to now look at everything that had happened prior in a new light. 

Like remember how the SHIELD council wanted to nuke New York to save the Earth from an alien invasion? Well, what if Hydra had all kinds of plans to use that to push forth their agenda on an even greater skill, which would work because the death of 8 million people? Everyone would be scared and willing to go along with anything and everything. It'd be 9/11 on steroids. 

Oh and the following is totally canon: Phil Coulson saved Steve’s life by being a fanboy. 

I imagine Steve being like, “Uh, thanks?” in response to this.

And with Senator Stern being revealed to be Hydra? Well, that gives new insight into how in Iron Man 2 he wanted badly to get his hands on Tony's technology. 

Of course, the existence of this movie proves that Tony's not as great a hacker as he claims to be, but hey, maybe after eating all that shawarma, he just forgot to get around to checking any of the other stuff he'd gotten from SHIELD.

Even the subtitle of this film is kind of an exercise in misdirection. After all it, along with the promotional materials, positions the Winter Soldier as the film's Big Bad, only for it to be revealed that he's basically a tortured POW who lacks the one freedom afforded to any POW: the ability to hate the people who are horribly abusing him. The so-called Big Bad is actually entirely lacking in agency of his own, a tool used by others. 

Though when it comes to the actual villain of the film, Alexander Pierce? For those of you wondering, he's a solid one on the 1 to 5 villain scale. He's not completely lacking in any memorable qualities ala Malekith, but Pierce is kind of the embodiment of so many of the MCU's villain problems in Phase One and Two. He's basically an old man in a business suit, interesting for the organization he represents, but he could easily be replaced by another character, say, Senator Stern, without the movie being affected by it at all. 

Anyway, Steve is understandably shaken and pissed off by everything that's happened. Like I've said before, with the exception of his intro film, nearly every appearance has Cap being betrayed or letdown by somebody. This film represents the biggest of that moment and probably the most impactful on his character. And while I can't go too in depth with this without breaking my rule about skipping ahead, much of Cap's actions in Civil War really make sense in light of this movie. :clamps mouth shut so I won't lecture any further:

Those of you know that I ship Bucky and Steve, believe that their friendship clearly goes far beyond a brotherly one. I just find the idea of a relationship between the two to be fascinating. Bucky is one of the few people who knew Steve back when he was a 95 lb. asthmatic, the one person who always believed in him and thought he was worth something, even before he was shot up full of super-soldier serum. Growing up in a culture which, like I said, constantly told him the world would be better off without him in it, you better believe that having someone like Bucky on his side meant the world to Steve. 

The repeated phrase between the two of them "I'm with you til' the end of the line" has connotations that go far beyond mere brotherly love. Though to the extent that bisexuality or homosexuality was talked about back then, well, I'm afraid I only have a laymen's/surface-level understanding of it, but probably to the extent that it was talked about, it was considered a deviancy that could be fixed via a proper heterosexual marriage. Supposedly, the Brooklyn neighborhood where Steve and Bucky would have lived, had a thriving LGBT scene, but the essay where I read this, has disappeared into the ether that is the worldwide web. 

But what I keep coming back to, regarding my Steve/Bucky ship, is the lengths they go to for one another. To leap ahead briefly, Civil War forever clenched it for me because, well, when it comes to a fight, they are willing to take their own knocks; they don't enjoy getting beat up, but they can take it. However, the surest way to really get them to go into "Oh Fuck You!" mode is to go for the other one. Twitter thread with further proof to drive the point home.

I do wonder if that was one way that Erskine's serum served as a relief for Steve, not just that he no longer has his myriad of health problems, but...well, remember the story said that the serum basically fixed what was wrong with him, so the fact that his feelings for Bucky remained even afterwards, proved to him once and for all that there wasn't anything wrong with these feelings; he wasn’t broken. 

It may be one of the greatest treats for him of the new world; he and Bucky can openly be together. 

I've also heard it theorized that the MCU version of Bucky Barnes is kind of a melding of two supporting characters from the life of Steve Rogers: Bucky Barnes and Arnie Roth. For those who don't know, Arnie Roth was basically a lot like the MCU depiction of Bucky in that he was a friend of preserum Steve Rogers who regularly rescued him from bullies and always thought he was worth something, even before Steve underwent the procedure. Roth is Jewish and is later revealed to be Gay, traits which many Steve/Bucky fans have incorporated into their headcanons regarding Bucky. 

Did I mention that the comic from which this panel was taken from, came out during the height of the AIDS epidemic during the 80s? So Cap is making a radical statement here. I wonder if I should add this to my list of exhibits in my "Captain America is an America-Hating Bastard" exhibit. 

FYI, the Bernie Cap is referring to is this woman, a Jewish Bisexual artist.

Though just as I shouldn't use the fact that one of them is named after a a president widely suspected to be Gay as support for my ship, I also shouldn't use the fact that one of the actors involved has a history of playing tortured Gay Boys either. 

Oh, all right, enough slash headcanons, back to the movie. 

I suppose we should talk about this scene which has to rank as one of the most heart-breaking and disturbing in the MCU. 

The Russo Brothers summed up their planning for this scene as thus:

The shirt-removing innovation works not just from a pervy “Sebastian Stan is hot" perspective, but also because it adds another note of vulnerability to the scene. The whole scene illustrates the paradoxical nature of the Winter Soldier's role in Hydra. The thing is, he could take out all the soldiers in the room if he wanted to, but he can't, because again, he lacks the one freedom afforded to any POW. His shirtlessness serves as a visual symbol of the power disparity involved between him and the men he serves: he's half-naked while being surrounded by soldiers in head-to-toe SWAT gear. 

The scene is even more heartbreaking than the Empire Strikes Back one, because Han didn’t completely have what little sense of self he possessed, destroyed. Whereas poor Bucky…basically he doesn’t have enough context to put together the few slivers he remembers, but for the first time in a long time, there’s something there. For the first time in ages, he knows he is being lied to. So as the machine warms up, he is begging himself to hold onto this name, this face; this is important and he cannot afford to lose this.

Though the line in Pierce’s monologue where he says, “And I need you to do it one more time…” well, it doesn’t take long to make some connotations about what this means. My personal headcanon is that Hydra had decided that once the helicarriers launched, they would no longer need the Winter Soldier. Why go to the trouble of keeping him, when you can program coordinates into a computer and have them scratched off with no muss, no fuss? 

That’s why, well, if you’ve watched any of the fight scenes with the Winter Soldier in this movie and have been like, “Y’know he seems to be the opposite of a stealthy assassin,” now you know it’s basically because Hydra no longer gave a fuck.

Though Natasha said that the Winter Soldier had been linked to dozens of assassinations over the past 50 years, but Bucky wound up Hydra’s custody back in 1945, 70 years ago. So did Bucky hold out and resist for 20 damn years or are there actions Natasha doesn’t know about?

One last nitpick regarding this scene: if you watched First Avenger, you’d recall that Zola was arrested on the train very shortly after Bucky fell. But I’m willing to accept that after falling hundreds of feet from a speeding train, Bucky’s recall might not be what you’d call a 100% accurate.

So everything’s in place for the big action climax. While it is generally a satisfying one with plenty of tension, I do feel the movie isn’t as strong without the “who can I trust?” paranoia tone of earlier. Don’t get me wrong; there are still some great fight scenes, especially the final fight between Steve and Bucky. But none of them are as creative or nail-biting as the elevator fight from earlier. 

The elevator fight frequently makes the list of best MCU fight scenes, which is completely understandable. The creativity and tension, along with its use of such a small space, makes it well worth watching.

I could easily go on and on with this movie, create headcanons within headcanons until the end of time, but I’ve already made it so that no one will ever go to a movie with me, so let’s wrap this up.

The day is saved. In the wake of the helicarrier crash, all of Hydra’s files are dumped onto the web for the world to see. Regrettably, this will only receive a scant mention in future films. 

For those interested, here are the two credit scenes. Wanda and Pietro make a cameo, but I’ve decided not to link to their origin story. Let’s save that for Age of Ultron when they play a bigger part. 

Next on the roster is Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1. See you until then.

*The future was supposed to be space travel, dammit, not Nazis making a comeback!

**If you want to read more about the assassination of al-Awlaki and generally all the secret wars we're fighting all over the Middle East and Africa, Jeremy Scahill's book Dirty Wars is both fascinating and terrifying. There's also a documentary based on said book for those of you who don't like reading. 

The whole think with Anwar al-Awlaki is particularly fascinating in that in the wake of 9/11, he was often profiled as an example of a moderate Muslim who decried the terrorists' actions as antithetical to Islam. What turned him radical was being repeatedly harassed by law enforcement/intelligence organizations.

Though the real sad/scary part is the death of Abdulrahaman, his son, who was killed a few weeks after his father. Whatever your issues with his dad, Abdulrahaman was a minor and was guilty of nothing more than having a terrorist recruiter for a father. 

Captain America: The First Avenger or “The Star-Spangled Man with the Plan”

 Okay, I’m afraid there’s going to be a lot of disclaimers regarding this post. And I’m aware that I just did a disclaimer for disclaimers. You’re welcome.

Anyway, I don’t know if you’ve guessed it or if I’ve already said it, but I am on the spectrum. This means that when it comes to obsessions, I go all in. I develop the kind of obsessive fixations that it’s a miracle no fictional characters have filed restraining orders against me. Though even if this does happen, I see no drawbacks. They’ll have to appear in court to file the restraining order, so I’ll get conclusive proof that said character exists and get something with their signature on it. Of course, I’ll also have conclusive proof that this is not only the worst timeline but also the stupidest one, so now I’m conflicted. 

Point is that Captain America is one of these obsessions, so any review of his movies will probably be longer and more insanely detailed than the others. I am trying to liven up the wall of text effect with some pictures, lots and lots of them. And as always, I'll try to throw in some dick jokes. 

First up, the origin. And I’m sorry, but I have to totally put this in the main post.

This is the debut cover for Captain America. Said issue proceeds to be page after page of Nazi-punching action, Nazis getting their rear ends handed to them, Nazis being depicted as the repugnant monsters they are, all this months before the US had entered the war. 

And the Nazis had a scary amount of support in the USA; a lot people were more sympathetic to their cause than they were towards any of the other Axis Powers. The people involved with this comic faced numerous death and bomb threats. The mayor of New York assigned the NYPD to protect them, basically saying, “We got your back. Keep up the good work.”

Oh and Jack Kirby and Joe Simon? Both men were Jewish, both had friends and family in Europe who would lose their lives in the Holocaust, and when the US finally entered the war, both men enlisted and did their part in the war. 

Captain America was an intensely personal creation for Simon and Kirby, and it’s one of the reasons the infamous Hydra!Cap rubbed so many the wrong way. Because taking a character created by two Jewish men as a neverending Take That against fascism and having it turn out that he has been part of a fascist organization all along?! Did I mention this is also during a year (2016) in which fascism and Nazis are making a comeback? Yeah, have yourself a lengthy and thorough takedown of Secret Empire: Part One, Part Two, & Part Three

If you want to see a story that did everything Secret Empire did but better and managed to do so in only one issue, read What if Captain America was Revived Today? It’s part of Marvel’s What if? series and despite coming out in 1984, it’s rather eerily prescient.

It must never be forgotten that Captain America actually hates America. Bah,  how dare he wear the red, white, and blue when he clearly only has love for one of those colors?

So yeah, my Captain America love runs deep. It’s why though it pains me to admit this, but I feel that ultimately the MCU failed his character. Don’t get me wrong: they did do some great work with his character. I’ll give you a quick heads-up: there’s going to be major gushing on Captain America 2: the Winter Soldier and Captain America 3: Civil War. Sorry, but I don’t make the rules and...okay, well, I do make the rules but still #sorrynotsorry

Though I’m wondering if in much of this review, I’m going to be in violation of my rule where each movie will be discussed based on the movies that had already been released. Like I said, the viewers of the current movie couldn’t have known X would be fleshed out in Movie Y, so to be fair, we are going to approach these films based on what the average movie-goer would have seen at the time. Well I have already broken this rule before and will likely do it again in the future. It seems to be something with rules, where laying one down all but guarantees it will be broken at some point, especially when it comes to discussion/debate.

Still, I feel that the MCU ultimately messed up when it comes to Cap and over the course of this series, I will make my case for it. It’s a damn shame, especially since they did do great things with the character, but they got scared and tanked everything.

And for the record, my unhappiness isn’t just because my ship didn’t become canon. I don’t deny that I am hardcore Bucky/Steve shipper, but I wasn’t really expecting my ship to become canon. I figured the people involved would be too wussy, but... :clamps hand over mouth:

Let’s just say I have fanfics to fulfill my needs and as always, I take refuge in Discontinuity. I recognize that canon has made its decision, but given that it is a stupid-ass decision, I’ve elected to ignore it. In fandom, you can reject reality and substitute your own without the negative consequences that come with trying to do this in the real world. It’s a privilege I intend to use to my advantage. Hence why I have my collection of fanfics. And I’ve also written a few of my own. There I said it. Whether I'll point you towards any of my fanfics remains to be seen. 

Anyway, I probably shouldn’t use the fact that one half of my pet pairing is named after a president* widely suspected of being Gay to bolster my ship, but I will. Sometimes I wonder what the in canon explanation is for his name. Why would anyone name their child after a president whose main accomplishments, aside from being Gay, were putting away an insanely impressive amount of alcohol and being a complete and absolute wuss at a time when the country is most in need of strong leadership? Oh well, it could be worse. He could have been named after Millard Fillmore and can you think of a single nickname for Millard Fillmore that isn’t completely embarrassing?

As the film unfolds, no doubt you’ve quickly noticed one of the ways the film breaks with comic book continuity. If The First Avenger was accurate, then Bucky would be like twelve years old. Instead, his character has been cast as being a year older than Steve. This does make it easier for me to ship them. While some comic fans can probably pull up material of them being all shippy together, my personal opinion is that Steve would have a hard time thinking of someone he knew when they were, um, statutory, in that light.

From what I’ve heard, the reason DC Comics overflows with Robins and Superboys, whereas Marvel has almost no child sidekicks, is that Stan Lee, by all accounts, hated the child sidekick trope. And since he ruled the roost for so long, he continued to cast a long shadow even after he left. 

But I also think it adds a nice dynamic to the relationship. Because as it’s shown, Bucky has spent his life saving Steve, so it’s kind of interesting when things are reversed: Steve no longer needs someone to save him, Steve is the one the girls are flirting with, that sort of thing. Plus, I get the feeling that Bucky has long waited for Steve to become famous just so he can publish a memoir called: “He Was Always a Stubborn Pain in the Ass: a memoir by Bucky Barnes.”

But I am getting ahead of myself just a little. 

As I'm rewatching the Phase One films, I find myself noticing the shaky quality with many of them. The first Iron Man movie was a solid launching point for the MCU, but then it is followed by The Incredible Hulk which was all but completely unmemorable. Iron Man 2, while fun, was mostly a retread of the previous film. Thor was a bit more of a solid film, but as said before, the Thor movies don't quite fit in the MCU as well as the other characters; they have an insular quality, where few of the events feel like they spill into the larger universe. The Thor movies are generally considered the weakest films in the MCU and it kind of shows. 

Captain America: First Avenger is a much-needed step up in quality, easily possessing the best aesthetic of the Phase One films. Good call, getting the guy who gave us The Rocketeer** to do this movie. Joe Johnston clearly knows how to do 40s pulp like few others. First Avenger is a visual delight the way none of the other Phase One films are. But I wonder if that may be part of the problem. 

First Avenger is a very much romanticized view of the WWII era, falling in line with the general romanticized view people have of that era. Here's the thing: no one was calling WWII "the good war" while it was actually being fought. During that era, peoples' thoughts were the same as in any other war: "Can we win this?" "Are our boys going to come home?" Only when Vietnam went to hell, did we start referring to WWII as "the good war," fantasizing about an era of clear, unambiguous good guys and bad guys. 

At the same time, though, I am a little conflicted. Superhero films are inherently about romanticization, the modern-day version of stories about the knight-errant. We all know reality would be much more complicated. The kind of person who would feel a need to put on a mask and beat the shit out of anyone they've deemed deserving, is much closer to the bully who would beat you up in gym class and take your lunch money than any noble do-gooders. The same is true of medieval knights where the romanticization masked a much grimmer reality. 

However, while romanticization is often painted as a bad thing, to say that there's no value in it is very simplistic. Superhero stories, just like the knight-errant tales, are a way of exploring the nature of power, what it is and how it should be used. And the general moral of these stories is "that those who have power should use it to help other people, rather than abuse it and set themselves up as despots." That's generally a good moral that more people should be taught. 

And more and more, I've come to believe that realism is overrated. We seem to live in a stunted reality, where we've lost the ability to dream of anything better. Try to suggest any advancement in the course of human rights, try to advocate for a brighter future for everyone, advocate for the government to provide services outside of fellating the rich and killing brown people, and you'll inevitably be greeted with choruses of "Be realistic." And I could go further with this, point out that the loudest voices for realism, tend to also be profoundly unrealistic in their own way, but I feel I'd be moving too far away from the subject of this post. So let's get back on track. 

Anyway, I'm not sure to what extent things should have been depicted differently in this film. Like I already said, superheroes are an inherent romanticization, but I think leaning more in on some of the less noble features of the WWII era could have really added some flavor. Whether it would have really changed the ultimate approach to the character, I'm not sure. 

And for the record, I'm not one of those people who are willing to accept any amount of insane tech, but throw fits over Steve Rogers not being racist and sexist. 

Yes, the era he grew up in, was profoundly racist/sexist. But here’s the thing: there were people back then who knew it was wrong. It’s entirely possible for someone to come of age in that era, realize bigotry is wrong, and work to combat that attitude until they die. For example, Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of the Girl Scouts of America, came of age in the Deep South and grew up on tales about the Lost Cause. As a result, she had some regressive views of Black people. But at some point, she realized her views were wrong and spent the rest of her life trying to do better. When a troop of Black Girl Scouts weren’t allowed to march in a parade, even though the White troops were, Low pitched a fit and got them in.

In fact as a general rule, while the pervasive bigotry of the past is something that needs to be taken into account when discussing it, at the same time, it cannot and should not be used as an excuse to completely exonerate people. Just because a lot of people believed that something that is wrong was right, does not, in fact, make it right. And throughout history, there were always a handful of people who swam against the tide, your John Browns or Victoria Woodhulls, to give a few names. 
It also kind of goes in line with Steve Rogers’s “I don’t like bullies. It doesn’t matter where they came from.” attitude. But I freely admit that my view of Steve Rogers is colored in part by the delightful Steve Rogers vs. the Media series  (and yes, I do love the entry titled “Bucky Barnes is a Goddamn Menace”) and Steve Rogers is Historically Accurate. 

Anyway, I have my own reasons regarding Steve's views on race and gender. But first, I should probably talk about the damn movie, before you people contemplate coming to my house and beating lengthy Morse Code messages into my skull with a tire iron. 

The movie establishes a key fact right off the back: Steve Rogers is and always will be, a rule-breaking little mothereffer. Basically, he's been trying repeatedly to enlist in the US Army by lying on his enlistment forms. This is, for those not in the know, a felony. So yeah, not too surprising that a character whose first appearance has him committing multiple felonies will proceed to continue to treat rules as more like guidelines, really.

But Steve's not having much luck and looking over his list of ailments, you kind of understand why. 

The first list is the one seen in the movie, but the second is one seen in Disney promotional materials. Thought I ought to provide both just because. 

I've heard people say that Steve Rogers's list of ailments points to him having survived a very bad Scarlet Fever episode. Me, not having a medical degree, I can't give too much information on this. I do know that treatment for Asthma back then was mostly "Pray that it stops." There were treatments, but generally ineffective ones. Those handy-dandy little steroid inhalers are a post-war invention. I have heard that Asthma was also regarded as something of a somatoform illnesses, the wheezes supposedly representing the stifled cry of the inner child crying for its mother. 

Steve Rogers is Historically Accurate has a post discussing what these ailments would have meant for Steve and the kind of treatments, such as they were, that would have been used to treat them, but I think there is a more important issue to bring to the fore: Eugenics

Yeah, this is a fun post, but I do feel it's something that should have been brought up in discussion of Steve Rogers's character. 

Because y'see, all of Steve's various ailments would have been seen as proof of his inherent inferiority. He would have grown up being called a burden on society, hearing from an early age about how his mother and the world would be better off without him in it. And Eugenics wasn't a fringe science, but one believed by just about every educated person growing up in the era, including the doctors Steve likely went to when he was sick. So yeah, the very people who are entrusted with his care, also believe he shouldn't, y'know, exist. In fact, there's ample evidence that the Nazis drew inspiration from America's campaigns against the Indians and programs related to forced sterilization of so-called undesirables. 

So if you're wondering why Steve's such a rebellious little mothereffer, it's because he knows from personal experience that the best and brightest can be horribly horribly wrong. And basically my headcanon is at some point, Steve was like, "If I can't believe what is said about me, can I believe what they say about the Blacks and Jews?" Hence his more enlightened views. 

All right, less historical discourse, more movie. 

Well, you gotta feel for Bucky Barnes. He's had to spend his life dealing with someone like Steve, saving him from fights he starts because he feels like it's up to his ninety-five pound self to save the world, and he's trying to have a nice night before getting shipped out, only for his friend to go behind his back and try to commit another felony.

Yeah, my personal headcanon is that everyone at that recruitment office basically sees Steve coming and is like, "Oh God, it's that guy," and immediately start have to arguing amongst themselves about who has to deal with that stubborn pain-in-the-ass. Because yeah, communication wasn't as instantaneous as the Internet makes it nowadays, but people did talk to each other. There was this marvelous invention called the telephone that while nowhere near as portable as a cell phone, it did make it so people could communicate over long distances.  

I know I am an obsessive weirdo who reads entire volumes out of random gestures. But I just can't help but get that vibe from the way the nurse whispers in the doctor's ear and how that guard makes a point of coming back into the room at the sound of the scale. And yes, I do believe that Steve was probably planning to futz around with the scale, because a guy willing to commit multiple felonies probably wouldn't feel too guilty about rigging the scale. In any case, Dr. Erskine had to have gotten Steve’s faked reports from somewhere. My guess is that the stations have started passing information around, warning about Steve.

Luckily though, he makes the acquaintance of Dr. Erskine who is willing to give him a chance, and it's off to boot camp he goes. And he immediately proceeds to make the acquaintance of Peggy Carter, aka another character who causes me to question my commitment to heterosexuality. Then again, between all the time I spent drooling over Jennifer Connelly in The Rocketeer and Peggy, I wonder if I just have a weakness for 40s cheesecake. Though I've also long had a weakness for British accents, so there's that added benefit.

Yeah, as far as I'm concerned, the above photo is totally canon. Peggy was totally going to eat that boy alive. So is the next photo...

All right, all right, I'll stop with the Peggy Carter pins and fangirling. Though, here's one more for the road: She is awesome and deserved better.

As you can imagine, boot camp for Steve goes about as well as you'd expect for a guy suffering from multiple ailments. 

Tommy Lee Jones understandably has his doubts about all this. And I know his character has a name--Colonel Chester Philips--but I refer to him as Tommy Lee Jones, because Tommy Lee Jones plays the same character in just about every one of his movies: the hard-bitten military man or the hard-bitten lawman. It's generally a good character, so you don't mind it too much. From the looks of things, Tommy Lee Jones is one of those people who was just born old. 

A few things: One, I really hope that Steve doesn't believe that the US military regularly throws live grenades at its candidates. Though I kind of figure that he is well aware that he's not likely to last long in combat, so he's like, "If I'm going to go out, I'm going to go out as the hero." Who knows how differently the MCU might have played out if someone had said to Steve, "Maybe you're the plucky young comic relief."

In all seriousness, Steve probably knows he won't last long in combat, but if in dying, he can protect at least one person, then as far as he's concerned, it's worth it. 

Though yeah, Bucky, this is why you need a backpack leash for Steve. Because first he goes behind your back and enlists in the US military and before you know it, he's volunteering to be experimented on by a German scientist for his country.

Steve comes out of Mr. Stark’s machine a big slab of roast beefcake, but long story short, a Hydra assassin kills the doctor and rather than getting a whole squad of super soldiers, they’re just left with one. And what do they decide to do with him?

I’m probably cheating, but this will be presented mostly without comment. Because there is nothing I could possibly say that would add to this.

Yeah, this movie probably gives you a questionable view of the US military. First of all, it was entirely too easy to assassinate Dr. Erskine. But the biggest problem is that you get one kickass super soldier and the only things you can think to do with him is to either keep him in a lab or have him sell war bonds? It’s stuff like this that makes me question Tommy Lee Jones’s bonafides as a military man.

The tour ends rather abruptly when Steve hears that Bucky’s unit has been captured and the army has no intention of planning a rescue. And Steve, being the sensible thinker that he is, decides that the smartest thing to do is to single-handedly plunge himself behind enemy lines armed with the tin shield he uses in his act along with a chorus girl’s helmet. Steve Rogers: Master of Well Thought-out Decisions.

It’s why in the second episode of Falcon & Winter Soldier, when Bucky said, “Steve would have a plan,” I was like, “Bitch, do you know who you’re talking about?!” Because Steve’s plans often consist of “Step One: Throw Myself Into A Fight, Literally Or Figuratively.” SOB regularly throws himself out of planes without a parachute. You, of all people, should know better.

For the record, regarding the Disney+ series,  I enjoyed WandaVision and so far, I’ve liked Falcon & Winter Soldier. But again, for the most part, the television series are off-limits, so this will be the extent of my reviews of the shows.

Well, it turns out that it is remarkably easy to creep around a German military base with an American flag on your back. So we’re also probably getting a questionable view of the German military as well. Though in my defense, that’s technically Hydra, not the German government. 

And finally our hero and villain meet.

Ah, I always found it to be one of the delightfully weird moments of the MCU, when Hugo Weaving takes off a Hugo Weaving mask to reveal Hugo Weaving wearing a mask...

Though Erskine, I kind of feel like this is something you should have brought up with Steve in your conversation. Even if it is really Schmidt’s fault for trying out something still in the beta version, this seems like important information, the fact that it might give you the body of a Greek god or it could melt your face and turn you into a nightmarish horror. Though that further calls into the question the original plan behind the super soldier serum. If the side effects run the gamut between “Oh God yes!” to “Dear God No!” why would you go through with the original plan to create whole squads of super soldiers? It just seems like too much potential for things to go horribly wrong. Granted Erskine had concluded that the serum did what it was supposed to, by enhancing what was there, so that good becomes great and bad becomes...well, the outside just matches the inside a little better.

But I suppose this is an opportunity to mention another area where this movie shines: the villain. The Red Skull is nowhere near as charismatic as Loki, but he is memorable in the way most of the other villains of Phase One aren’t; he isn’t just a man in a business suit. So he’s definitely not the villain I’ve dubbed as Zero. Feel free to keep debating who Zero is. Because Zero is completely lacking in any memorable traits and say what you will about the Red Skull, but he is memorable.

I’d give him a three. While he is much more memorable than a good chunk of Phase One and Two villains, while he does show some vestiges of his grand, operatic self, at times, the Red Skull comes across just as a jerk, rather than the over-the-top supervillain he is in the comic books.

FYI, the difference between a mere villain and a supervillain is one of grandeur and scale. Like Nigel Tufnel, supervillains go to eleven. If someone keys your car and your idea of revenge is to track down the guy who did it and key his car, you’re merely a villain. If someone keys your car and your idea of revenge is to track down the guy who did it, so you can drop a several ton piece of metal shaped like a key on his car, that’s super-villainy.

Following the rescue, well, before we get to the montage, we have to talk about this scene.

One of the beauties of the worldwide web is that I am no longer confined to ranting about things to family members; I can inflict them on complete strangers as well. So sit back as I lay out just why I hate scenes like these.

The idea behind these scenes is that the female character in question is supposed to be doing a spunky “Girl Power! Don’t-take crap-from-no-man!” bit. But the problem with these kinds of scenes is that the heroine comes across less as a BAMF girl and more as an unhinged psycho. Because let’s look at it this way. 

One, do you really think that Steve is the type of guy who would cheat on you? Two, even if he is, I’m fairly certain that he has enough sense to not do it when you’re only a few feet away from him. Steve may not be inventing things like perpetual energy, but he’s not rock-stupid. And finally, what if the shield hadn’t stopped the bullets? Then congratulations, you just killed your one super soldier all because you were in a jealous snit and couldn’t be assed to talk to him, like a normal person!

:deep breath: 

Don’t get me wrong—Agent Carter forever sealed my girlcrush on her—but I still really hate this scene. We already got some good scenes showing off what a badass she was. This, like I said, just serves to make her seem like an unhinged psycho.

Anyway, the promised montage ensues. 

And once again, I find myself debating to what extent this movie should have been, regarding the less than savory aspects of the 1940s. Because for those not in the know, the US military was segregated until 1948. There were Black soldiers and Japanese-American soldiers serving in WWII, but they were in separate units from the White soldiers. 

So yeah, a unit like the Howling Commandos wouldn’t have been a thing. Frankly, I think could have made for an interesting element if there had been some nod made about the unusual nature of this unit. I mean, two of them are fighting for a country that doesn’t see them as fully human and since one of them (Jim) is of Japanese ancestry, at the time he’s off fighting for his country, his country has imprisoned his family in concentration camps.

No doubt, there's someone out there who will be "um, actually, they weren't technically concentration camp," and well, I have a few things to say regarding that. One, if a society finds itself in a position where it has to debate whether or not something qualifies as a concentration camp, chances are pretty good that regardless of the answer, things have gone appallingly wrong. And two, it's a rule I have: if you ever say anything like, "Technically it's not," then chances are pretty good that it'll turn out to be exactly what someone says it isn't. Oh and "they're not concentration camps because the prisoners are dying from disease and neglect rather than being actively murdered," is not the sterling defense Conservatives seem to believe it is. 

Yeah, I should stop interjecting recent politics into all this. Even if I stubbornly believe that all art is political, I should still try to stay on track. 

Unfortunately, all good montages must come to an end, and arrive at a the scene that will serve to set the tone for most of the final act. 

This film is still very much a romanticization, but after train scene, it's never quite as triumphant as before. The death of Bucky just casts too much of a shadow for it to go back to before. Looking back on Steve's arc as shown in both the solo pics and the other films of the MCU, I am struck by the constant theme of disillusionment that keeps showing up. The First Avenger is relatively uncomplicated and straightforward, but in the rest of the MCU, Steve is constantly being betrayed or let down by someone or something. I would go into detail about this, but I've already violated that rule I've made and I should try not to push it further. Plus, this early on in the franchise, my analysis wouldn't make as much sense or have the same impact. 

Though the conversation Bucky and Steve have about Coney Island before they get on the train, well, I do believe that Bucky does, at times, serve as 2/3 of Steve's impulse control, but I do like how it points out that Bucky isn't a complete nursemaid like the fandom has a tendency to paint him as. My guess is Steve spent his life dealing with people either treating him like he has the plague or like he is made of spun-glass and is tetched in the head. 

Bucky was the one person who treated him like he was normal, because even though, he didn't want Steve to enlist and worried about him dying (not an unfounded fear between his "Come at me, bro!" attitude and numerous ailments), he did want Steve to have a life. So he didn't completely molly-coddle him. 

Though I've heard it pointed out in the fandom that Bucky's serial number as given in the movie, points to someone who was drafted into the war, rather than someone who enlisted of his own volition. I don't know how true this is--not sure how to check on NY serial numbers for an enlisted man vs. a drafted one--but it could be used for some dramatic weight in later materials if the people involved so choose.  Think of the character turmoil born of how Steve is so desperate to fight as to repeatedly commit felonies in an effort to do so, but meanwhile, Bucky is only going because he is being forced to and wants desperately to get out of it. Oh the dramatic fanfics that could be written!

FYI, my collection of Steve/Bucky encompasses just about all the fanfic genres: fluff, angst, high school AUs, etc. I have to admit in the past, I had been annoyed by the phenomenon of shipping in fandom, but now...like I said, I'm hardcore Steve/Bucky.  

Slightly tasteless joke: Is it just me or did everyone else wonder if Steve's inability to get drunk would play a role in Civil War? Kept wondering if something like this would play out. 

Character A: We need someone to drink Tony Stark under the table. 

Character B: That's impossible! No man's liver could handle that amount of alcohol!

Steve: *ahem*

But you know final fights have to happen and long story short, Steve crashes in Antarctica and winds up frozen for seventy years. 

This key plot element to Cap where he's "the man out of time" as he's often called, came about because for those of you unfamiliar with your comic book history, the Golden Age of Comics, which started with the release of Action Comics #1, ended with WWII. After the war, what followed was a precipitous drop in the readership of comic books, including superheroes. The Axis Powers made for great villains for the heroes to beat up, but once Germany and Japan have surrendered, bye-bye to using them as your Big Bad/Mooks. 

So a lot of heroes who had dominated the era, were swept into the dustbin of history and for a while, Cap looked like he would be one of them. His title was discontinued and for years, he didn't appear in the comics. 

Then Silver Age happens and at some point, someone involved at Marvel was like, "Let's bring him back." But you need to come up with an explanation as to where the hell he's been all this time. So they retconned it as to while he was presumed dead after a mission in the Arctic, in reality, he was just frozen in an iceberg. Storytelling-wise, from there, all you have to do is come up with some way for the characters to discover him and thaw him out and you're done. 

And it worked. Cap quickly became a major fan favorite and just about every incarnation of The Avengers has him involved in some capacity, often as the leader. He is kind of the moral center of the Marvel Universe, the one character that all the heroes, regardless of their hangups/backstories, respect, which is probably why he winds up in the position of leader so often. When dealing with clashing egos and all the headaches which come with organizing, it helps to build around the one person everyone can respect. 

The "Man Out of Time" angle also adds an interesting wrinkle to his character, putting him in a perpetual Fish Out of Water situation. The Fish Out of Water trope is, at times, overused to the point of becoming a cliché, but there's a reason it endures: like all tropes, when done right, it works. People relate to feeling alienated, where you thought you had some idea as to how the world works, only to be hit in the face with reality. Cap wakes up, only to have to face a new reality with a new history he needs to parse out, while dealing with the fact that everyone he knew best, either has one foot in the grave or is, well, in the grave. There's a shitton of dramatic potential and any writer worth their salt has the sense to plow this fertile ground silly. 

Of course, this plot element might become trickier because initially, it wasn't too unrealistic for there to still be some of his former WWII buddies around, but as decades have piled up...it's not like Steve can't still be the "Man Out of Time" but some of the best aspects of this story element comes from when he interacts with people he knew back then, talks to Peggy Carter after she has had seventy years to move on and create a new life without him becoming a senior citizen with a completely different history, whereas for him, she is still the hot twentysomething agent he fought alongside. 

There's no denying that the Internet is, at times, a dark and scary place. Gene Roddenberry believed that better technology would lead to better communication and thus, soothe over longstanding religious/ethnic hatreds, but unfortunately, he didn't realize that all the worst people would have just as much access to the tech as the good people. But more often than not, I am grateful for this amazing place for stuff like the picture below. 

Because god knows where else would I get this kind of analysis. I suppose I could dig up textbooks about 40s fashion and learn on my own all the inconsistencies with the woman's wardrobe, but it would take longer and probably be nowhere near as succinct. 

And I have no problem accepting this as canon, the idea that Nick was testing Steve, rather than it turning out that his costuming department really sucks. 

And that's The First Avenger. I hope I didn't get too didactic or boring with all the history lectures. Next on the slate marks the end of Phase One, the movie that all these intro films were building towards: The Avengers.

Credit Scene is just a promo for the upcoming Avengers film. 

Stan Lee Cameo: he's in the audience, waiting to see Captain America.

None of the deleted scenes really added anything. The commentary was mostly talk about how they made the props and sets, which may be interesting to some, but I prefer hearing more about the storytelling, why they made the decisions they did.

*When it comes to the debate, I’m on Team Buchanan Is Gay As Fuck. I believe that there is enough convincing circumstantial evidence pointing to it. Yeah, I know there’s no absolute solid proof, but short of inventing time travel, there really isn’t any way of getting absolute solid proof. Even if we did get solid proof, like filmed him and William Rufus King (the two men lived together for ten years and King is also widely suspected to have been Gay) getting it on, there would still be people who will try to dismiss said evidence, given how desperately people seem to want to rewrite LGBT people out of history. I can just picture them going, “Yeah, they’re just wrestling, just doing some totally manly heterosexual naked wrestling.” 

Because it can get kind of ridiculous how people will try to write LGBT people out of history. I cannot track down the article, but I remember it talking about letters James I wrote to another man. The article gave the usual “the close friendship between the two men” line, even though the same article admits that James I referred to this man as his husband and built a secret passageway so he could visit him more often. That’s something completely heterosexual best bros do, refer to each other as their spouse and go to the trouble of building secret passageways to see each other. 

Especially since if this article was referring to George Villiers, James I was pretty damn shameless about it, giving him just about every royal title he could, and regularly showed up to court functions with him on his arm. I wonder how the fundies would feel if they knew that the guy behind their favorite translation of the Bible was likely Gay or Bisexual. And of course, it couldn’t be possible that the translators had grievances against King James and some of that worked its way into their work.

tl;dr LGBT people have always been a part of history and didn’t spring into being with the passage of Roe v. Wade.

**There are movies that are just a pure joy to watch, that just serve to remind you why you love movies. The Rocketeer is one of them. There’s something so beautiful and charming about how warm-hearted and idealistic the film is, its complete sincerity a refreshing break from the ironic detachment that so many of our entertainment trafficks in. It is “Rah, rah, hooray for the USA!” and is unabashedly patriotic, but it does so in a way that isn’t jingoistic hateful towards anyone. Well, okay it is hateful towards Nazis, but it used to be that was considered a good thing.

Again, which is more depressing: the way “torture is wrong” was transformed into a radical statement or the way “Nazis are bad” was transformed into a radical statement?

I realize that not everyone has the same headcanons I do and generally, I try to respect other’s opinions, but as far as I’m concerned, you’re not allowed to make Cap a fascist or an antivaxxer. The fascist part has already been explained, but as for the antivaxxer thing, the mothereffer has likely had most of the illnesses vaccines can prevent. These aren’t abstract horrors to him. He’s had them and may have lost classmates to them. 

And in the unlikely event that any antivaxxers are reading this, as one of those Autistic people you hate and fear so much, I have this to say: Get bent. To live in a society, you have to pay your dues and vaccines are one of your dues. If you’re not willing to pay said dues, you can go off-grid, live in a cave and eat roots and berries, while the rest of us enjoy the perks of being a part of a society. 

Iron Man or "The Saga Begins"

Sorry to take so long with this. It turned out trickier than I thought to write this. Some of it was perfectionism, a trait I have long struggled with, where I get so bogged down by trying to work out every possible contingency/flaw that I end up paralyzed and unable to get going, period.

However, some of it is due to, well, unlike many, I wasn’t completely off the clock during the massive quarantine. I work part time at a library, so we just worked on inventory while we were closed to the public. But working requires a different mindset than my everyday one and combined with the anxiety of a major pandemic while being governed by the worst (as in both awful and stupidest) people, my creativity dried up.

So here we are at the beginning with the first movie.

The MCU has pretty much settled into a nice, consistent groove, where the filmgoer generally knows what they're in for. Hollywood also takes comfort in knowing that said movie will safely recoup the money spent to make it and then some. But this steady success almost makes everyone forget just what a stunning accomplishment the whole MCU project was to begin with.

Basically, nothing like this had every been attempted. We had had superhero franchise films--Superman, Batman,X-Men, Spider-Man--but each franchise existed in its own little world. In each franchise, the title characters were the only ones who existed, so while in the comics, crossovers are as common as table salt, with heroes constantly dropping in to help each other out, this wasn't the case with the movies.

And you can kind of see why this wouldn't happen. There’s the obvious storytelling problem that come with being in a world with multiple superheroes. To be fair, this is something of a problem in comic books as well, where you often find yourself wondering why Superman or some other hero doesn’t pop in on another’s domain, just to see how things are going or be like, “You need some help? Looks like Headless Hookhands Pete has you on the ropes.” No, usually unless the character has a specific reason to be in City X, they generally leave each other alone. Like in the DCAU’s take on Batman fighting Superman, which is much much better than Zack Snyder’s version, the reason the titular heroes cross paths is because Bruce Wayne has some kind of business deal to work out in Metropolis. Then again, maybe superheroes are fiercely territorial like dogs, and it’s just not worth getting mixed up in these fights if you don’t have to. Though this territorialism is kind of needed, otherwise Superman would just fly into every place in the DC-verse and just solve everything, leaving the other costumed heroes with nothing to do.

There's just too much coordination involved, having to explain who Character X is and why they battle evil, so the audience knows what the heck is going on. Because while comic book movies are popular, the truth is that comic books themselves, remain something of a niche entertainment, read, collected, and discussed by a devoted cadre of hardcore fans. The trouble is superhero films demand a considerable amount money to produce, so the bar is raised much higher when it comes to getting bodies in seats. The cadre of hardcore fans is nowhere near large enough for this, so the movie-makers have to find a way to draw in the casual reader (aka someone who maybe read a few series a while back, but fell out of the habit for whatever reason) along with those who generally haven't followed the heroes for whatever reasons.

So the people involved need to introduce the hero, so the audience know who they are and why they're doing the stuff they do, but have to in a way that doesn't require the viewer to have encyclopedic knowledge of several decades-worth of canon. By the time people started making superhero movies, most of the characters had been around for decades, giving the writers involved a vast sea of stories and plots to choose from. The problem is that this sea is almost too vast. Unlike movies, comic books don't have to worry about runtime or special effects budget. Comic books can swing for the fences and do whatever they want, without having to consider "Okay, so how are we going to demonstrate this massive brawl," because even with CGI, special effects still cost a whole lot to make happen. Comic books don't have to consider real-world realities of physics and other limitations, which is probably for the best. Real-world science hasn't managed to get us the futuristic tech of Back to the Future II, never mind intergalactic space travel.

With movies, the producers know that an audience is only willing to sit through so long a movie. If you're going to make them sit through something three hours+ in length, then they better have served up something to justify all that time. The Lord of the Rings films manage this by being massive, sprawling fantasy epics with dense mythos and worlds that need to be explored. People read and watch fantasy films, because they want to escape the real world and explore another. As such, LOTR does what it can to immerse us in the lavish, wondrous beauty of Middle Earth, while also having some of the best battle scenes put to film and truly great characters. I acknowledge the flaws of the movies (still salty about how they handled Lord Denethor), but on the whole, the films managed to find a nice balance between honoring the book while dealing with the limitations of film.

There's also the problem in that for the most part, superheroes have been regarded as silly, trifling material that most adults are far too mature to consume. And really, all superheroes, no matter how hard anyone tries to "ground them," are really kind of silly. There's nothing realistic about a nigh-invulnerable humanoid alien who has just about every superpower under the sun who battles evil, while wearing a costume his adopted mother made him.

It's this attitude that explains why so many superhero films of the past were so dire in terms of quality. It took Hollywood a long time to accept that while these characters are silly, there's a reason people love them so much. It took Hollywood an embarrassingly long time to acknowledge this love and realize that superhero films succeed more, when the film play the hero fairly straight: not turning the hero into a buffoonish caricature or stripping away so many comic book elements in the name of realism, as the render to character unrecognizable. While the fan freak-outs over costume designs or the casting of superhero movies, is a bit tiresome, at the same time, it's a little understandable. The history of superhero films is often a dark and scary one. Fans had to endure a lot before finally arriving in the era of today, the golden age of superhero movies. Bah, kids these days...they'll never have to know the agony of Superman III, Superman IV, Steel, or Batman and Robin, etc.

And the history of superhero films is even more dire when it comes to Marvel characters. The first feature-length theatrical adaptation of one of their characters was :shudders: Howard the Duck. And before that, what we had were mostly TV movies, failed pilots to series that never came to be, and looking at them, you understand exactly why they never came to be. Obvious dirt-cheap production budgets, combined with some of the worst acting around, along with scripts clearly written by people who maybe read one or two comics and considered the material beneath them, while also being so 70s in look and tone that you can't look at screencaps without hearing "Do the Hustle" in your head. Link for those interested in entertainment history

The first Marvel hero to really succeed on the silver screen was Blade, played in all three films by Wesley Snipes. But Blade was more of an action-horror film than a superhero one and probably even fans of the films, didn't know about his comic book history.

At the time, Marvel embarked on this project, they also had to contend with the problem that they didn't own the film/tv rights to most of their characters. Spider-Man and X-Men were all in the hands of others. Since these characters were the most well-known in Marvel's stable they were already starting this project at a disadvantage, unable to use this cultural knowledge as a foundation to build on. While most of these characters weren't completely unknown to the general non-comic book reading public, with so many, the extent of the public's knowledge was that they knew the characters existed with a vague knowledge as to their shtick.

According to director, Jon Favreau, Marvel had used their characters as collateral when they asked for and received a $525 million, seven year deal, called a non-recourse debt facility, to get the funding needed to make films based on their properties. Basically if the MCU hadn't succeeded, they would have lost all the intellectual property rights to their library. Since they were already operating without their most well-known characters, if Iron Man failed, it would have been a real crushing blow financially.

And as if they felt they hadn't set the difficulty bar high enough for themselves, rather than start with a character people had more than a vague knowledge of, like Captain America or the Hulk, Marvel decided to begin their franchise with Iron Man, a character for whom most of the public's knowledge extended to "Yeah, isn't he that guy who flies around in metal armor?" if even that. The people of Marvel freely admit that the decision to start with Iron Man as opposed to one of the better known characters in their stable, was more because the character had greater toy/merchandise potential than many of the others they owned. Film may be an artform, but it's also a business as well.

Beginning your franchise with Iron Man aka Tony Stark was also a risky endeavor because, like I've said before, his creators, Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, Don Heck, Jack Kirby respectively, deliberately set out to basically create an unlikeable character then make the readers like said character, which is no easy feat.

To use Stan Lee's words:

I think I gave myself a dare. It was the height of the Cold War. The readers, the young readers, if there was one thing they hated, it was war, it was the military ... So I got a hero who represented that to the hundredth degree. He was a weapons manufacturer, he was providing weapons for the Army, he was rich, he was an industrialist ... I thought it would be fun to take the kind of character that nobody would like, none of our readers would like, and shove him down their throats and make them like him ... And he became very popular.

Even Robert Downey, Jr., who played our titular lead, admitted that his portrayal of Stark was "a challenge of making a wealthy, establishmentarian, weapons-manufacturing, hard-drinking, womanizing prick, into a character who is likeable, and a hero."

As the character premiered, the 60s counter-culture was beginning to take flight and through that perspective, it's easy to see why Tony would be a tough sale. Comic book fans always have tended to be the weird kids, those who were never in danger of being popular in high school. Heck, the superhero genre was practically created by nerds and dorks (ex. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster who set everything in motion when they created Superman). As such, the readers tend to lean more towards the scruffy rebels*, side with the underdogs, over the classic clean, well-polished jock-types. So in the Silver Age 60s, that meant the readers were more on the side of the hippies, more apt to shout, "Hey hey LBJ how many kids did you kill today!" then sign up at their nearest ROTC. Granted, at the time of publication, the Gulf of Tonkin incident hadn't taken place, but my point remains.

Through this lens, it's easy to see why they would hate Tony Stark. Tony, to use the terminology of the time, is The Man. He's a filthy rich industrialist who made the bulk of his fortune selling weapons to the US military. With just those few lines alone, it's easy to the bar his creators had set for themselves.

Initially, Tony was in favor of the Vietnam War, but did eventually turn against it, like many of the other characters in Marvel's stable, and for the most part, Tony has long been depicted as the more conservative voice of Marvel's characters, though more Libertarian "Keep the Government Out of My Business"-kind of Conservatism, rather today's festering fucktangle of Neo-Nazis, child molesters, and war criminal fanboys.

Since often seeing the character's debut appearance goes a long way towards understand how they started and why they caught on, here's a link to Linkara's review of it. The debut is a fairly solid one, giving our hero a compelling origin. Unfortunately, it does have some Yellow Peril-esque traits that have not aged well and by tying Tony's origin to the Vietnam War, the creators are put in the position where his origin has to be constantly reupdated. Right now, the story is he was injured in Afghanistan in the War on Terror, but again, they will have to update it eventually. Then again, given how long the War on Terror has gone on, making it so that kids who weren't even born when 9/11 happened, are old enough to die in the military quagmires started in response to 9/11, yeah I might want to rethink that.

Anyway my point is that with Tony Stark, there was just so much potential for things to go awry and the MCU to wind up dying in the cradle as a result. Yet as the several years-worth of films that followed prove, it did not. Marvel opted to build a franchise on a character whose footing was already fairly shaky, and it succeeded like crazy. Tony Stark is, at times, a maddening character. There were so many moments where I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him while shouting, "What the hell were you thinking?! What part of any of this sounded like a good idea?!" Yet despite how frustrating he could be, Tony still remained compelling: I still wanted to follow him and see what happened to him. Though honestly, most of my frustration about him was more towards the people around him, but I am getting ahead of myself.

So okay, how did Marvel manage to win us over to Tony?

Well, first of all, they hired Robert Downey, Jr. to play him, which is probably one of the smartest decisions they've made with the films. The success of the films has come to mask this, but hiring Robert Downey, Jr. was a gamble in itself. Robert Downey, Jr. is a gifted, charismatic as fuck actor, but at the time of the first Iron Man movie, he was persona non grata in Hollywood; it was hard to convince higher-ups involved in the picture to take a chance on him. As this short documentary shows, one of the key reasons Downey plays the part so well, is because he basically was Tony Stark for a while: gifted and talented, but nearly done in by his own demons.

During the 90s, it was something of a running joke about how Downey was constantly in and out of rehab, having brushes with the law, and doing stints in jail. At first all this seemed merely part of the excess inherent among the twenty-something set of 90s Hollywood; back in the early to mid 90s, making a wild, crazy, drunken spectacle of yourself was practically part of the job description of a twenty-something celebrity. But as the 90s wore on and Downey racked up arrest after arrest, it soon became apparent that something darker and sadder was at work with him.

After a while, his arrests and his stints in rehab became a routine part of Hollywood gossip. Downey seemed destined to become another sadly common statistic in Hollywood: the talented, young actor done in by his own demons. Downey himself seemed to see the writing on the wall, at one point saying, "It's like I have a loaded gun in my mouth, and I like the taste of metal."

Downey luckily managed to escape becoming another River Phoenix, but after spending a decade getting into trouble with the law and burning bridges, it's understandable that Hollywood wouldn't want to take a chance on him. Hollywood is willing to tolerate some excess and craziness from its talent, but it will only tolerate so much. Jon Favreau was inspired to cast him after seeing his performance in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and faced opposition from Marvel regarding the casting, but he held his ground and Downey received the part. Jon Favreau has openly admitted that he wanted Robert for the part because of his past.

"The best and worst moments of Robert's life have been in the public eye. He had to find an inner balance to overcome obstacles that went far beyond his career. That's Tony Stark. Robert brings a depth that goes beyond a comic book character having trouble in high school, or can't get the girl."

It's a testament to how far Robert Downey, Jr.'s star had fallen in that he was paid $500,000 for his part in Iron Man. I know, I know, to us, $500,000 is a massive windfall, but not so much in Hollywood. Terrance Howard, who played Rhodey in this movie, was the highest paid member of the main cast.

So okay, we’ve got ourselves a charismatic-as-fuck actor in the part. How else does the film make us like Tony Stark?

Well, you can’t ignore the wish fulfillment aspects. Probably plenty of us, guys, gals, and our nonbinary peeps, fantasize about the life of the idle rich, being able to buy whatever you want, spending your days partying with all the vices that come with it—-gambling, drugs, sex, all that Jazz—-rather than toiling at some job that feels more pointless with each passing day.

Don’t knock the appeal of this kind of fantasy. The world at times is so bleak and dull that it’s nice to disappear into a world where problems can be solved with punching. The world is so much more colorful and prettier on the silver screen. Most movies, even bad ones, have a kind of internal logic they have to follow and are still more colorful and interesting than real life. It’s shallow, but TV and movies are inherently visual mediums, so the aesthetic is part of the job. It’s one of many many reasons why I hate that one movie so much, because as if they didn't completely botch the character**, all the shaky cam, zooming, and how the director seems morally opposed to light and color, made it so gorram unpleasant in addition to being bad. If I can’t enjoy the basic act of looking at your movie, you have majorly majorly failed.

But a movie character needs to be about more than wish fulfillment and charisma. So what else?

Anyone who has ever read any writing advice, will invariably hear talk about the importance of likeable characters or just likeability in general, when it comes to crafting a protagonist/hero. And while there is some good advice in there, too often, it is interpreted in an overly simplistic way, along with Ernest Hemingway’s infamous dictum: “Write what you know.”

Because while it’s true that if you’re expected to follow a character over several pages, episodes, or two-hour long films, that there needs to be something that compels you to stick around, this reason doesn’t necessarily need to be a heroic one. I am fascinated with Cersei Lannister in A Song of Ice and Fire. Does that mean I like her and want to be friends with her? Hell no! I will be more than happy when she loses the game, so to speak. But I also understand how Cersei wound up where she did, why she made the choices she does, even if they are incredibly bone-headed. And really she’s kind of a Dark Mirror to one of the more moral characters in the story, Catelyn Stark. Both women are mothers driven by a desire to protect their children, but Cersei is willing to go to lengths that Catelyn is not. Though ASOIAF is helped by its multiple protagonists.

For the record, just assume unless stated otherwise that when I talk about A Song of Ice and Fire or Game of Thrones, I'm talking about the books, unless stated otherwise.

Ultimately the reason why I kept coming back to Tony is that while he is, at times, an ass (a charming one, but still an ass), despite the mess of character flaws, despite how frustrating he could be at times, I never doubted that his actions were undergirded by a genuine desire to save the world and be remembered as something other than a merchant of death. He screwed up massively, but even when he did, no matter how much he made me facepalm and go, "What part of this sounded like a good idea?!", I still understood why he made the choices he did. His actions felt driven by a flawed moral compass, rather than the Idiot Ball.

While it was chancy to build the franchise on Iron Man, the decision worked so well that it's hard to picture it going any other way. And really, I'm not sure how it would have gone if they had opted to begin with any other character. Heck, one of the major defining traits of the MCU came about as a result of an adlib by Robert Downey, Jr.

Anyway, we got our hero. So let’s get this show on the road.

Meet Tony Stark

Well, that’s the gist. Tony Stark as the male power fantasy.

Unfortunately, things currently aren’t going so well for Tony.

As the astute comment below points out, you know you're screwed, when a bomb lands next to you and it literally has your name on it.



But perhaps we should back up just a little.

After the attack, Tony Stark wakes up to find himself injured and the prisoner of a terrorist cell called The Ten Rings.

tl;dr, the terrorists want Tony and his fellow hostage, Yinsen, to build them the weapon he had demonstrated earlier: the Jericho

I could question about two guys building all this in a cave, but that's the least of the unrealistic science in the MCU. The MCU, like most action franchises, has something of an uneasy relationship with science, regarding the laws of physics more as guidelines, really. In any case, there is a line later on that makes a nod at the ridiculousness of it.

Generally, when it comes to movie science, I don't care too much about how close it is to real-world science. I don't have much of a scientific background and chances are, neither do the fellow moviegoers. If a movie tries to explain it, chances are pretty good that they'll get something wrong (because Hollywood people generally aren't scientists, either), and thus lose credibility with those who DO know something, or bore the audience to tears. Just say some sciencey-sounding gobbledygook and get on with the story. So long as a movie's science isn't based super-obvious bullshit ala Lucy, I'm willing to play along.

So Tony is currently going through some shit. He’s got a heart full of shrapnel which forces him to invent the kind of insane science that only exists in movies. But most importantly, Tony is learning that he has spent his career being a merchant of death. Or as Raza the lead terrorist puts it, in the grandiose style only movie and film villains possess:

The bow and arrow once was the pinnacle of weapons technology. It was used by Genghis Khan to forge an empire that stretched across Asia, from the wintry woods of Ukraine to the Eastern shores of Korea. Now, whoever holds the weapons manufactured by Stark Industries rules the world... and soon, it will be MY turn.

That's the painful reality Tony is learning. Many have written far more in depth about this problem, but the tl;dr is that weapons flow like water when it comes to the global trade. In fact, they may flow even more easily than water. Because the truth is while the Cold War technically never turned, well, hot, it really was more of an umbrella term for a series of proxy-wars fought between the US and the Soviet Union across a wide variety of fronts. Sometimes the USA was directly involved ala Korea or Vietnam, but more often than not, we fought wars by organizing and arming all kinds of insurgent groups.

The Soviet Union operated much in the same way, secretly arming their own factions to fight the US by proxy. Given on the scale of which both the USA and the Soviet Union operated, that means a lot of high-quality well-crafted military arms were scattered all over the world, and here's the thing: weapons don't disappear once the war is over. Even after both the US and the Soviet Union ended their war, these weapons remained. And since towards the end the Soviet Union was pretty much hemorrhaging money, they sold off their weaponry right and left, not caring too much about whom they sold them to. The people they sold the weapons to, then proceeded to use them to settle grudges.

To add to the mess, did I mention large portions of Africa and the Middle East were carved up and shaped by European powers who knew little about the culture/history of the area and generally were more concerned about access to resources than the people living there? As a result, ethnic/religious groups that had long hated and mistrust each other, are now being forced to share a country, and a group that had been a majority in an area, now get to be the minority in country X, and so on and so on.

It's probably due to this sort of "planning" that the Kurds, despite being a distinct ethnic group made up of some 3 million people, still has no real nation to call their own, and exists in a perpetual statelessness, despite their numbers. The Kurds ally themselves with the US and other western powers with the hope of someday being given their own land, but at this point, the Kurds probably know they can't count on said countries to keep their word, but these ties provide them with some protections from the various dickheads looking to kill them all. It's not a lot, but some hope and some protection is better than none.

As a result, decades-worth of conflict ensue with all sides having plenty of fancy toys with which to kill en masse. And don't even forget all the fun side effects of US's repeated interventions.

US Foreign Policy in the Middle East from the 1953 Iranian Coup Onwards:

1. Throw lit matches onto regional powderkeg, making no plans what to do when the powderkeg explodes.
2. Be shocked when the powderkeg explodes.
3. Repeat

Though this happened all over the world, not just the Middle, including in South and Central America where most of the US's asylum seekers are coming from, usually fleeing catastrophic environmental conditions making it impossible for them to make a living or narco/gang wars. MS-13 is one of the GOP's go-to political bogeyman, but here's the thing: MS-13 actually originated in the good ol' US of A, not one of those scary countries south of the border.

Initially, MS-13 was started in Los Angeles by Salvadoran immigrants so they could protect themselves from other gangs in the area. It quickly turned into a more traditional criminal organization. In fact, it began to turn into a more traditional, well-organized criminal operation when Ernesto Deras assumed leadership of the group. Deras, FYI, had been a part of Salvadoran special forces and had been trained in Panama by United States Green Berets, probably for the same reason the US propped up and trained so many other awful people in Central and South America: we were scared of communism. So we fought proxy wars in Central and South America by arming death squads. On gaining leadership of MS-13, he uses his military training and know-how to discipline the gang and improve its operations.

Eventually most of MS-13 was deported back to El Salvador, where they proceeded to take the training they had received in the US, both on the streets and in our prisons, and start recruiting citizens of the country. And carnage ensues.

Because here's the thing: until MS-13 started getting deported back into the country en masse, gang activity in El Salvador was pretty low. These deportations took place in the wake of the end of the Salvadoran Civil War in 1992. As part of peace treaties signed, the Salvadoran government was basically forced to disband their army/police forces and to curry favor with military allies, El Salvador delayed re-establishing said police forces.

As a result, when MS-13 arrived, there was virtually no armed forces to stop their takeover and given that El Salvador's Civil War spanned decades (1979-1992), there were almost infinite numbers of weapons ripe for the taking. Needless to say, carnage ensues, leaving many citizens in a situation where their choices are Stay and Die or Flee and Possibly Have a Chance. So they flee to the US, which paints MS-13 as just some bizarre organization which sprang up out of nowhere, born from the inherent criminality of "certain people," and absolutely has nothing to do with decades of US anti-communist interventions in Latin America.

And let us not forget stuff like the ATF Gunwalking Scandal, which the ATF authorized legal gun dealers to sell weapons to illegal straw buyers with the hope that in doing so, they would be able to track the guns to Mexican cartel leaders and arrest them. Spoiler alert, what wound up happening is that a whole lotta high-powered, military-grade weaponry wound up in the hands of the worst people.

Anyway, enough depressing real world stuff, back to the movie.

Tony Stark, naturally isn’t going to take this lying down and after building an infinite energy source in a cave with a box of scraps, decides to bust out. And most when faced with this kind of task, would, I dunno, secretly build a gun and make a move when someone’s back is turned or something, but we are not Tony Stark. For him, clearly the most sensible thing to do is build a high-powered suit of armor and unleash hell. Because God bless the over-the-top grandiosity that only shows up in so-called genre films.

Even if you hadn’t watched the video about Tony Stark’s debut issue in the comics, you probably already knew that his assistant/fellow hostage, Yinsen, was doomed. Yinsen is the classic character who exists to motivate the hero with his noble sacrifice. It is a bit of a cliched part, but I feel the actor playing him does enough with the material given to him that we can understand why his death would have meaning to Tony and serve as a further reiteration of Tony’s desire to be remembered as something besides a merchant of death.

Besides, just because a storytelling trope is a well-used one, that doesn’t necessarily make it a bad one. If it is used badly, then yes, but sometimes characters like Yinsen don’t need complexity. It’s perfectly okay sometimes to just have a character be little more than a bit player needed to move the story along, and not be developed that much. They shouldn’t be too textbook in terms of archetype, but a story needs a focus point and that means not every character gets fleshed out. While I adore TV Tropes like so many other scarily pop culture obsessives on the Internet, it is too often used for sloppy reasoning. Like they say, the terms “trope” and “cliché” are not synonyms. A trope can become a cliché if overused or used badly, but at their core, a trope is simply a convention or building block, akin to how music notes make up a symphony. All stories, regardless of their medium or their quality, utilize tropes, the way all music has notes or beats. Maybe if you typed “purple monkey dishwasher” for three hundred pages, you can claim to have not utilized any tropes, but would it still qualify as art?

Though given how crazy-extensive TV Tropes is, they probably have a trope page for the equivalent of a creative product that’s just typing “purple monkey dishwasher” over and over. There’s no escaping tropes, my pretties. :cackles:

It seems akin to what happened with classical music in the 20th century. The 20th century was basically about screwing long-standing rules regarding composition and just going nuts. But in screwing the rules, so they can do their own thing, composers inadvertently wind up creating new rules for other composers to break.

Then again, I personally don’t care much for the avant-garde composers of the 20th century. Too many of them, I’m like, “Okay is this supposed to be actual music or is the pianist just bashing his head on the keys over and over?” Bah, call me a philistine if you must, but give me Aaron Copeland and the guys who compose film scores any day.

After being rescued, Tony Stark wants a few things: a Burger King cheeseburger and a press conference.

The cheeseburger bit is a creative touch that comes courtesy of Robert Downey, Jr. In other interviews, he has said that the moment that convinced him to turn his life around happened in 2003. He had a carful of drugs and he decided to get a cheeseburger. He got one from Burger King that was just so disgusting, it made him question all his life choices. He wound up dumping the drugs in the ocean and going clean.

A really bizarre note regarding this little anecdote is Burger King actually did the promotional toys for this movie and its sequel, a fact which amuses me to no end.

So Tony holds a press conference. And what a conference it is.

And regarding the fallout that follows, hell yeah, it’s realistic. Tony Stark just threw a massive wrench into everything and that’s probably sent everyone below him scrambling. Probably even the janitorial staff are freaking out a little. It’s the reason why in the real world, CEOs seldom have that level of power. Yeah, they can try to take the company in a new direction, but it’d be more of a case of “phasing out something over a period of months” rather than shutting things down overnight. I’m fairly certain however grotesquely monstrous corporations may be, there are checks on this. I don’t claim to be an expert on corporate law, but all those scenes in movies where a character is like, “I own fifty-one percent of the shares in this company, y’all my bitches now!” wouldn’t happen. There are laws in place that protect minority shareholders. Since this is like a more massive version of the shareholder scenario, yeah it wouldn’t happen.

Which is probably for the best. When you confer that kind of power onto an egomaniac, you wind up with scenarios akin to the time Elon Musk tanked his company’s value with one stupid tweet. And yes, I provided that link, so I’d have an excuse to do my “Elon Musk is not the real-life Tony Stark” rant. You’re welcome.

To start off the rant, Elon Musk didn’t actually found Tesla Motors. He bought the company and in doing so, bought the right to call himself the founder. The guys who actually founded the company, are legally forbidden from referring to themselves as the founders. Elon Musk is, for all intents and purposes, a marketer who has unfortunately come to believe his own bullshit. Because yeah, he has talked big, but how much of this stuff has he actually done? How much of anything he’s done has actually gone anywhere beyond talk?

And oy vey, his stupid-ass publicity stunts. If he had really cared about the kids trapped inside the cave, then he would have just been grateful that they were rescued, even without his stupid-ass submarine. When he did that space car launch, he forgot to sterilize it before launching it, so if the car had followed its intended trajectory and made it to Mars, it would have forever contaminated the planet’s surface and ruined any searches for life.

Plus (and I freely admit that I am leaping ahead to be petty), say what you will about Tony Stark, but he gave his kid an actual name. Even by the low standards of celebrity baby names, X AE A-XII sucks. Poor kid already has it hard enough, being the son of a thinned-skinned egomaniacal douchecanoe.

Plus, however much I enjoy fantasies like Tony Stark, the truth is science seldom works that way. Real-world innovations are the product of years of mind-numbing hard work done by many many people. If we ever go to Mars, it will likely resemble how we got to the moon, via a government-funded agency with a veritable army of people working behind the scenes to make sure every “i” is dotted and every “t” is crossed, not because of the son of an Apartheid-era emerald mine owner.

Because despite memes painting governments as being stodgy and inefficient, most of society’s greatest innovations came about because of government-funded research. I cite as an example the smartphone where just about every part came about from decades of government-funded research not massive corporations. Corporations, in general, are bad at innovation, because they exist to make money and as such, they must immediately start turning a profit. They don’t have the capacity to go down the rabbit hole and follow an idea that might take decades to come to fruition.

Why the overly long lecture? I am a firm believer in “All art is political,” a message which will come up a lot in these things. The truth is for good and ill, the messages we receive from any medium, have an impact and get interwoven into both the internal and wider culture at large. From there, important decisions that greatly affect the world as a whole are made.

For example, ScriptTorture created her tumblr on the subject of torture, because most people get their “knowledge” on the subject from fictionalized portrayals like “24,” whereas the massive amount of evidence proving that torture doesn’t fucking work, tends to be found in ponderous academic papers that are usually shut behind paywalls. So she created the tumblr to make this information more accessible to the public at large, because both writers and consumers will, without given knowledge of the subject, base their stories/actions on what they’ve seen in other mediums.

And hey, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying escapist, unrealistic fantasies. The reason I am so obsessed with pop culture and fiction in general (I’m basically Abed from Community), is the escapist aspects, how the world makes so much more sense and is so much prettier in art than it ever is in real life. But we are receiving messages from these stories that need to be acknowledged.

Quick poll: which is more depressing, Bush II making “torture is wrong” into a radical statement or the dumpster fire-in-chief managing to turn “Nazis are bad” into a radical statement?

All right, all right, back to the movie.

After delivering that bomb of a conference, Tony decides to do the most sensible of activities: build an even better version of his cybernetic armor. Hijinks and montages ensue.

Along the way, we have this scene between Pepper and Tony.

I chose to point out this scene because the subtlety of the special effects involved, but also because it demonstrates another key reason Tony Stark works as a character: the fact he keeps people like Pepper and Rhodey around. It demonstrates that for all his ego, deep down, Tony knows he needs people to keep him in check, people unafraid to tell him, “Tony, you’re being an idiot.” That seems to be a key flaw that winds up doing a lot of rich people in: they surround themselves yes men and from there, their egos become massively inflated. Things usually go south from there.

But Tony soon receives some bad news: the board has filed an injunction against him and someone has gone behind his back and started selling weapons again.

On a note that is surely unrelated, it’s a nice little subtle touch, having Obadiah Stane play a piece by Salieri, when he shows up at Tony’s house to tell him about the injunction.

Clearly, only one option remains for Tony: fly halfway across the world in his newly-made armor and blow shit up.

After the shit has been blown up, there is this scene between Pepper and Tony.

Looking back after over ten years of films, after knowing how things work out for Tony, this scene acquired a certain resonance. Over the course of the MCU, Tony proceeds to become more and more riddled with PTSD to the point where it becomes increasingly obvious that being Iron Man has become an elaborate act of penance, a super-powered hair shirt. For all his ego, Tony feels a desperate desire for atonement, a sense that he must be punished physically and psychologically for all his sins, for every weapon that wound up in wrong hands, for every innocent life taken.

Since this is just the first movie, being Iron Man is still something of a thrill, but the exchange shows seeds of the penance motif to come.

Many times in the MCU, you’ll be forced to ask several times, “How many of this reality’s problems could be solved by getting Tony into therapy?”

Though that is another strength of the MCU: how the writers factor PTSD into the story. Tony’s case is the most obvious as he becomes more of a quivering mess with each subsequent film he appears in, but I think all the others have varying degrees of it, which manifests themselves in a wide variety of ways. The changes can at times be subtle, but if you pay attention, you can tell Hero Character isn’t quite the same character he was in his intro film.

There is stuff I think could have been done better and I’ll rant about it when we get there, but the fact that they attempted this, is quite impressive in itself. Usually with superhero films, too often the angst can be summed up as, ”I smolder with generic rage!” There are probably a lot of factors behind this screw-up in storytelling, but I primarily blame toxic masculinity.

The director or writer behind the project is aware that good characters have flaws, so naturally, they pile on the angst as a means of giving them flaws. But toxic masculinity opposes any real physical or emotional weakness. So the hero’s angst is expresssed by having them be a little unshaven, have them drink a little too much, or yell at people. Those are considered manly, masculine ways of expressing feelings. No one suffers panic attacks or chokes at the worst possible moment or breaks down sobbing, because all those are considered unmanly; the hero needs to be vulnerable, but not really, because that is all feminine and weak, and it might actually interfere with the hero’s chances at winning, forcing the people involved to put in extra effort to make the hero triumph.

Hence why we wind up with “I smolder with generic rage!” rather than anything truly compelling.

As if Tony didn’t have enough problems, he receives a Betrayal Five from his dear mentor, Obadiah Stane. And from there, the massive all-out climatic battle ensues.

Since it goes without saying who the victor is, I’ll take the opportunity to discuss one of the major problems with the MCU: the villains. One oft-heard complaint about these films is that the villains tend to be bland, and I agree with these criticisms. With the exception of Loki, it isn’t until Phase Three before we start getting colorful, memorable villains. Since a hero is only as good as his villain, that does hamstring the films a bit.

The MCU manages to overcome this deficit by making the heroes interesting, making them well-written and compelling. Even if the villains just seem to kind of be there, we still want to follow the heroes.

Ideally, when it comes to action movies, you manage to make both the heroes and the villains interesting. This is something that isn’t easily pulled off, but you have to at least make one side interesting.

You can have the villains be all colorful and dramatic with style and charisma out the wazoo, and have your uninteresting heroes react to them; in reacting, the setup forces the heroes to become interesting. This setup is often used when it comes to children’s TV and you can see why it works. The heroes are stuck being bland do-gooders, lest they be accused of corrupting the next generation, but the villains are under no obligation to be role models. As a result, the villains are better able to access the full spectrum of human emotion and have actual flaws, which winds up making them so much more interesting than the heroes. By reacting to them, the heroes are forced to develop and become a little more interesting.

Or you could do as the MCU opts to, have the heroes be colorful and interesting, so we’re invested in them, which forces us to care about the fight.

It’s one of the problems that has hampered the DC Extended Universe: neither the heroes nor the villains are interesting, thus rendering the movies bland messes. The DCEU seems to be finding its legs, but there’s no denying that those past cinematic farts of films still loom over the franchise.

Anyway, now let’s do some ranking. Ranking will be done on a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being represented by Loki because for a while, he was the only interesting villain of the MCU. Feel free to debate in the comments where everyone falls on the scale. For the record, there is one villain whom I’ve chosen to classify as a zero as in there is nothing remotely interesting or memorable about him as a villain. Feel free to debate the identity of Zero.

Anyway, grading is done based on plan (complexity, scope, and intention), personality, presentation (basically, style), factoring in possible wild card elements. Sorry, couldn't figure out how to keep up the alliteration with the last element. If anyone in the comments has any suggestions, feel free.

Obadiah Stane's plan is really simple: he wants control of Stark Industries. Tony stands in the way of that. Hence why he tries to get rid of Tony, first by having him abducted and murdered by a terrorist cell, then by doing the job himself via mech suit.

Simple motives aren't always bad ones; massive ones like "Rule the World!" can be so big as to be too abstract to envision. In fact, an example of this can be found in a later MCU film, Spider-Man: Homecoming. The villain of the movie, the Vulture, does not envision reshaping the world or ruling a massive empire; his motivation is more that for years now, he's been turning a steady, illegal profit and would like to keep this venture going, thank you very much.

But the script and Michael Keaton's performance adds layers to the character (how he is both a warm, friendly father figure-type and a gangster who has no problem with effing people up, and can switch between these modes fairly quick), which makes him considerable more interesting than Stane.

About the only interesting aspect of Stane is the role he has played for Tony as a mentor/father figure, but that emotional connection isn't properly mined in this film. I suppose you can make the case that it is explored in later films with Tony's repeated daddy issues, but again, when I do these reviews, I'm talking about the MCU as it currently existed at the time of the film's premiere. I may leap ahead a little, but again, we will generally stick to what the average moviegoer's knowledge would have been, because even though the MCU is a massive over-arching series, a good movie stands on its own.

If you need a bunch of supplemental materials to understand and appreciate a film, then it is a bad film. It's one of the reasons why in discussions about the Star Wars prequels, I don't consider the oft-heard defense of "Oh yeah, but that was all explained in the Clone Wars shorts," regarding the issues with character of General Grievous in Revenge of the Sith, his underdevelopment and blandness, to be a good one. Supplemental materials are supposed to be like a spice adding a little extra that makes the story a bit more enjoyable, not a rickety scaffold trying desperately to hold together a nonsensical mess. If your main material is good enough, it may make the consumer willing to seek out these supplemental materials and become a rabid fan, but you got to make the main material compelling and worth their time, be they a hardcore fan or a relative newbie. Both should be able to understand and follow the plot.

Basically, outside the father figure/mentor aspect, Stane really doesn't have much going for him personality-wise. His presentation isn't much either. He's basically just a corporate suit. In the big climax, when he faces down Our Hero, his plan is basically "Just like the hero, but more!" which isn't that interesting. Now if he had, to borrow from Nigel Tufnel, gone to eleven, then it might be more interesting. Like if Stane had really tricked out his mech, made it way huger than Tony's, added some really interesting elements (a better paintjob than the dull steel-grey color, different weaponry, etc.), this could have been way more interesting.

I will say that I love this moment of Stane's where he makes a nod at the sheer ridiculousness of Tony Stark's tech, something of what Turkey City Lexicon calls A Signal From Fred.

But other than that, there aren't really any memorable moments/aspects to Obadiah Stane. Hence why I would give him a 1 on the scale. Those who disagree, may make their case in the comments.

After the big fight, comes the big clean up. Luckily, Agent Phil Coulson from SHIELD is here to help.

And yes, I am among those who are Phil Coulson fans. Suit-wearing government agent who is also a superhero fanboy and has dry sense of snark? I'm swooning. Like Harley Quinn from the DC Universe, Phil Coulson is a character that was created for a media adaptation that has ascended to become a part of the comics-verse, which is a big sign of his popularity. And the thing is, no one involved intended for him to become anywhere near as huge. Phil Coulson was created as a bit character; his role was to introduce Tony to the organization affectionately known as SHIELD, try to do cleanup for his big catastrophe, and shuffle off stage. But he touched a nerve and as a result, achieved Ascended Extra status.

The alibi Coulson has given for Tony to read to the press is that Iron Man is his personal bodyguard, Tony was partying at his yacht when the big climatic battle happened, and had nothing to do with all this. Every hero has an alibi to protect their secret identity and that was the one used in the comics: Iron Man is merely Tony Stark's personal bodyguard, even though he is never ever seen with Tony and that kind of makes him a shit bodyguard. Well, okay, it is admittedly a better alibi/disguise than wearing a pair of glasses, but not by too much.

And now we can talk briefly about the secret identity trope. This is an old, long-standing superhero trope going back to the Golden Age, but nowadays, if it comes into play, it is usually with some nods at the ridiculousness of it (for all the flaws of that movie, Green Lantern has a good example of it). Most heroes usually have a small cadre of people who know their identity and serve to provide backup, but the audience isn’t quite as welcoming to the trope as they used to be, leaving many writers spinning their heels, trying to use this trope because it is a traditional part of the lore, but times have changed and it doesn't really work anymore.

Robot Hugs does a concise job of laying out the problematic aspects of the secret identity trope with pictures to make the learning go down easier.

The secret identity bit is one of the reasons I struggled to get into The Flash tv show. My brother convinced me to stick with it, saying it had fun comic book action, but lordy, the first season was at times excruciating. For some reason, Barry couldn't tell Iris, his closest companion since childhood, whose house he grew up in, for REASONS! Watching Barry and his cadre repeatedly gaslight Iris was just awful. They did finally let her learn Barry's identity, but she took this constant secret-keeping entirely too well. She should have at least shivved one of them. What really made it cruel, was how for some reason, Barry was willing to let everyone EXCEPT Iris know his identity. In one episode, he reveals his secret identity just so he can lord it over a guy who bullied him in high school, but while Iris's father knows as well as most of her friends, FOR SOME DAMN REASON, HE COULDN'T JUST TELL IRIS! SHIV 'EM IN THE EYE, IRIS!

The movie is clearly familiar with the trope and how it was used in previous films like Sam Raimi's Spider-Man with this exchange before Tony goes to the press conference:

If I were Iron Man, I'd have this girlfriend who knew my true identity. She'd be a wreck. She'd always be worrying I was going to die, yet so proud of the man I've become. She'd be wildly conflicted, which would only make her more crazy about me...

But keeping with Tony Stark's "Don't tell me what to do!" personality, he proceeds to ditch the alibi entirely, go to the press conference, and just go, "I am Iron Man."

And it is for this reason that while Tony Stark was a rather interesting choice to begin the franchise with, really it is now impossible to imagine the series going any other way, or anyone but Robert Downey Jr. playing the part. Because this is yet another one of Robert's ad libs.
In doing so, Downey established what became one of the MCU's primary traits: with a few exceptions, the films mostly ditch the idea of secret identities.

Marvel Studios president, Kevin Feige says he chose to do this because he felt just ditching the cue card and going with it, was exactly the kind of thing Tony would do. He explained the impact of the adlib and how it affected the writing of the MCU this way:

"That success inspired us to go further in trusting ourselves to find the balance of staying true to the comics and the spirit of the comics but not being afraid to adapt and evolve and to change things," Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige told Deadline in 2018.

This change would mark the first of many changes, big and small, carried out in the MCU, but it also served as the foundation for one of the defining characteristics of the franchise in general: the MCU would choose to focus primarily on the main characters, not as their superhero alter-egos, but as people as they struggle to carry the weight of the world on their broad shoulders. Another example of this can be seen in the ensemble films, where even the characters themselves seldom refer to each other by their superhero monikers. You're more likely to hear something along the lines of, "Steve, can you help us out here?" rather than him being called Captain America. Thor is just Thor and doesn't even bother with the Donald Henry Blake identity. And Natasha and Clint are generally referred to as Natasha and Clint, rather than being Black Widow and Hawkeye.

One adlib and Robert Downey, Jr. forever altered the course of the franchise.

And that's Iron Man. Sorry again for taking so long with this, but a confluence of factors (crippling anxiety, world events, shitty executive functioning) just came together. Hand of God, I will try not to put my faithful readers through this again. Feel free to give advice/comments.

Stan Lee Cameo: "Hef" at Tony's party

Post-Credit Scene: Nick Fury is here to talk about the Avengers Initiative

*Of course, now the scruffy rebels are somehow Rich White Men, because it's not enough for them to have everything, if they can't have the tears of losers as well. Hence why they have to act like that when it comes to suffering, they've got Jesus beat. But really, we mustn't overlook the horrific plight White Men experience. Maybe someday, God willing, 44 out of 45 US presidents will be White Dudes and they will make up most of the board of directors/CEOs of massive corporations, and basically control the world of entertainment, getting labeled the default, while everyone else is some bizarre special interest group. But until that day comes, they can only sob and sing, "We Shall Overcome."

**I really need to undergo that procedure in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind when it comes to that movie, because I am in serious danger of alienating everyone in my life with my frothing "I will have your head on a platter of gold, Zack Snyder" rants.

But seriously, the DCEU's employment of Snyder is one of the things where I question if DC really wants their universe to succeed or if this is some elaborate The Producers-style scam.

Because first, they decide to hire a raging Objectivist who openly expresses contempt for idealistic superheroes, to direct a film about the most idealistic superhero of them all. But okay, that movie does have its defenders. I'm not one of them, obviously, but still.

And then after he screwed the pooch so spectacularly in Batman v. Superman, managing to so badly screw up such an inherently cool concept that it crosses the line into "How?! How did you manage to screw up this badly?!" Credit where credit is due: this massive a screw-up is proof that Zack Snyder does has some talent, because a screw-up on this level takes more than mere incompetence to happen. Have to admit, I didn't see the film because I hated that one movie so much, but I know the reception it received and the overall gist of it. And it makes me be all hipster "Posers. I hated Zack Snyder before it was cool to hate him."

But even after Snyder screwed up that badly, DC was like, "Y'know why don't we have him direct our big ensemble film."

For the record, even if the Snyder cut exists, it probably wouldn't save that wet fart of a movie, and I'm not sure why people think it would. I'm like, "You saw how badly he managed to screw up Batman v. Superman, right?