Hey youtubers it’s Charlie and this will be my Winter Soldier Review.
A lot of you had been asking about it for a while, but we just got it in the United
States.
Because reasons.
Since I this is also my bonus Marvel video for the week I’ll also talk about how this
movie impacts what’s going on in the larger marvel verse.
In case you didn’t know too, Agents of SHIELD next week will directly follow up on the events
of this movie, so be sure to subscribe to get my video.
And feel free to leave me suggestions for future bonus marvel movie videos.
Time to speechify some Winter Soldier.
I’m going to do top 5 moments, my review and then the interactions with the other movies.
Careful for spoilers if you haven’t seen it yet.
I’ll wait just a sec.
Here we go, Number 5 - The Arnim Zola Reveal
Anyone who’s read the Winter Soldier comic wasn’t surprised by any of this, but there’s
a couple reasons why this was awesome and why it’s really important for what’s going
to happen next year in Age of Ultron.
Toby Stevens is always so much fun to watch, but it was so funny watching Captain America
react to him after punching the monitor.
That’s one of the things that gets overlooked when you talk about these kinds of movies.
The humor.
It’s a continuation of the jokes from the first Avengers movie, Captain America reacting
to things.
That would make an excellent Fine Brothers youtube video.
Captain America Reacts to the internet.
Of all the things he reacted to, him reacting to Arnim Zola was one of the best.
The other big thing to take away from this is the concept of AI in the marvel universe.
I’m talking about Ultron next year.
Arnim Zola basically uploaded his consciousness into those databanks.
Don’t get me started on the plot holes and why he didn’t jump from system to system,
but think about his algorithm too and how it relates to Ultron’s core operating mission.
Get rid of all humans.
I’ll talk more about that after my review.
Number 4 - All of the Captain American Winter Soldier Fight Scenes
If it wasn’t clear, the Winter Soldier is also juiced up on super soldier serum.
Not the exact same one Captain America got, but Bucky is for all intents and purposes,
just as quick and strong.
Watching two super fast super strong people fight is really hard to pull off without looking
ridiculous, and they did an amazing job.
Think about if from another angle, what if you and the person you were fighting never
got tired and were almost indestructible.
Like the Hulk fighting Thor.
It could totally look like comedy if your not careful.
In Avengers they made those two fight and it was supposed to be funny, like when Hulk
tried to pick up his hammer.
But in Winter Soldier it’s so much more personal.
So it’s almost like they’re rolling all over each other in a wave of steel punches
and shield bashes.
I thought that those fight scenes were way better than the big CG action scenes at the
end with the helicarriers and Falcon flying around.
Number 3 - Black Widow Character Development
In case you didn’t know, Black Widow is probably going to be the first female standalone
movie they’re going to do.
No release date announced.
But after this movie, she’ll have had more time baking in the oven than any other female
Marvel character.
As much as I want to see her get a phase 3 movie it feels like Doctor Strange and Black
Panther are the best candidates.
But it was really the task of this movie to make her character feel like a real person.
In Avengers she had to share screen time with the Dream Team.
So with exception to her Hulk and Loki scenes, she was pretty forgettable along with Hawkeye.
But Winter Soldier felt like a Black Widow slam dunk.
Scarlett Johansson is a great actress and I think she got a chance in this movie to
just be a person as opposed to window dressing.
I’ll talk more about her future in the marvelverse and potential future stories after my review
too.
Number 2 - Age of Ultron post credits scene.
The age of miracles.
I loved that Baron Von Strucker line.
He’s treating Hydra the same way Red Skull treated Hitler and the Nazis.
It’s like he’s playing on a whole other level.
When he talked about SHIELD and HYDRA being two sides of a coin that’s no longer currency
he was foreshadowing the galactic conflict that the infinity gems are going to bring.
It was also kind of timely in that we have the first Galactic Marvel movie coming in
the fall.
Consider the bar for super hero wow factor officially raised.
As for the special effects for Quickslilver and Scarlet Witch, I thought they were interesting.
There have already been a ton of pictures of them on the set of Age of Ultron.
I’m going to withhold judgement on those till I see them with completed special effects
and color grading.
That’s just when they make everything look all shiny like.
Because Marvel can’t use the word mutant or Magneto, they’ll be changing their backstories,
which is a little strange but I’ll wait to pass judgement till I see the movie.
and my Number 1 - Captain America Destroys SHIELD
Well he had a little help, but with Nick Fury going after HYDRA survivors guerilla style
and everyone kind of going their separate ways it seems like SHIELD will be in rebuilding
mode for a long time.
Which is the explanation for why they weren’t in Thor The Dark World or Iron Man 3.
They kind of blew up the Triskelion too, so I think what’s going to happen is Maria
Hill will kind of take over the home base day to day while Nick Fury is off the grid.
But there’s still all those other SHIELD agents like Sharon Carter and everyone on
Agents of SHIELD.
I’ll talk more about the blowback from this as it effects other movie and tv plots, but
this was such a huge deal I’ll be kind of pissed if SHIELD is back to normal by Age
of Ultron next year.
Marvel does a great job with continuity, so I don’t think that will be the case.
Now it’s your turn though.
Let me know what your favorite moments were and how long you think it will be before SHIELD
completely repairs itself.
So here’s my review and then I’ll talk sequels and marvelverse overlapping
I gave the movie a solid A as a follow up to to Avengers.
It’s really the most direct sequel to an Avengers movie there’s been.
Iron Man and Thor always had very little interaction with SHIELD at an organizational level.
But Captain America has basically been working for SHIELD ever since the Avengers.
I loved how they paired him with Black Widow in this movie.
It’s funny to see how the tone of the story changes based on which Avengers are together.
This movie was all about identity but it didn’t completely answer the biggest question it
asked.
Who Am I?
Which is why we’ll all go see that next movie with those characters, which is Age
of Ultron.
I didn’t feel they crammed in too much expositional bits for all those other movies, which was
great.
And how about that Doctor Strange name drop from Sitwell.
May he rest in pieces.
One of the best things about it was how different it was from Thor or Iron Man or even the last
Captain America movie.
The first movie was a period War Drama.
This was a political thriller, that had amazing action.
I think them doing it as a thriller also made them work that much harder at the dialogue
and it paid off brilliantly.
Punching and kicking stuff is a lot of fun to watch, but I’m not 10 years old anymore,
I need interesting characters to keep me watching.
And just like in my top moments, Black Widow, the cap and Anthony Mackie were all great.
Nick Fury had about as many lines as he usually gets, Samuel L. Jackson can do a lot with
just a look.
He doesn’t need long speeches.
The only thing I thought could have been better would have been cutting out Larry Sanders,
I don’t know why, of all things to call back to in old movies, they used him.
There was also the bit with Arnim Zola.
Logically, if he was AI and was affecting all of SHIELD’s systems, why didn’t he
move his consciousness to the cloud.
Back in the 70s pre internet yes, he would have been stuck in that basement, but now
in the age of information and distributed processing, why didn’t he live on servers
all over the globe?
I think the answer is, because they want to save something that big for Ultron in Avengers
2.
But let me know what your final thoughts on the movie were, love it or hate it.
What we really need to talk about now is how everything that happened affects what’s
coming next.
Namely Age of Ultron, Agents of SHIELD season 2 and Captain America 3.
So right off the bat, let’s talk about Arnim Zola’s algorithm as it applies to Ultron.
The algorithm was designed to evaluate the sum total of everyone’s lives on the planet
and assess them as threats.
Ultron in the comics decides that humans in general are too big of a threat to be allowed
to live, thus his kill all humans mission begins.
Does this mean that Arnim Zola’s Algorithm is going to evolve into Ultron?
No, at least not completely.
The rumor is that Ultron will be an AI created for the military that just becomes self aware
and does what machines do, create the most efficient system possible.
And humans, being fundamentally flawed, aren’t part of that equation.
But the idea of the algorithm and the way it evaluated humans as threats was a spiritual
not literal prequel to Ultron.
Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch too, look like they had the same type of brainwashing treatment
Bucky got.
They actually be fighting the Avengers the first time they meet, but eventually they’ll
get folded into the roster and hopefully go on to appear in Avengers 3.
I loved how Von Strucker said he was basically going to throw other Hydra teams under the
bus to throw SHIELD off his scent.
Captain America 3 though has a lot of interesting directions it can take.
There have been a lot of rumors that they’ll do a version of the death of Captain America
story and a now rehabilitated Bucky will take his place temporarily.
I already did a video for potential stories that I’ll post a link to at the end of this
video.
Of all the other Marvel things happening, Agents of SHIELD is in the weirdest place.
After season 1, SHIELD will basically not exist for a while.
So does that mean if the show gets a season 2, they’ll be on the hunt for HYDRA remnants
or helping to rebuild SHIELD?
Now that Cobie Smulders is done with How I Met Your Mother, I’m hoping she joins the
cast of SHIELD.
She’s like one movie behind Black Widow in terms of character development.
You start as window dressing, then you get a background part, then you get center stage.
Let me know if you want to see Maria Hill become part of Agents of SHIELD full time.
So in other news, more SHIELD Winter Soldier crossover next week.
Be sure to subscribe to get my video.
I’ll also be posting my Arrow Deathstroke Q&A later today.
In the meantime click here to learn more about Avengers 2 and click here for my top 5 stories
for Captain America 3.
Thanks for watching, see you guys tonight.
High Fives!