This is not a film review, but there may be a few mild spoilers... if you haven't seen the movie and you regularly find yourself shocked! SHOCKED in movies by simple plot twists.
How simple?
Hmm... how about, if you saw The Pacifier and you were Shocked!!! when Vin Diesel's commando was roped into caring for a bunch of kids and even, you know, took on parenting type attitudes instead of cold, military bodyguard attitudes?
If that sort of plot reveal is a twist to you, then maybe you won't want to read this post.
My last non-review post was about The Cathedral. I mention that not because Captain America is a particularly 'Cathedral' film, but because it is, in fact, not.
Shockingly not... though perhaps more as an artifact of time rather than intent. In fact it feels almost as if this movie is about 8 years 'late'. The 'message' of this movie, if it can be said to have one, is the sort of thing you'd expect to hear when republicans, circa Bush Jr, were in office, not once the liberal progs had their man in the oval office. Though, like most of the Avenger's movies, the actual governing bodies of the USA are curiously absent in favor of SHIELD and some sort of international governing council.
I can't speak to the Trailers, as I saw none, but in the first ten minutes of the movie you pretty much realize that SHIELD has become the Bad Guy. Maybe even faster than that, depending on your ability to read Hollywoodese.
Let me explain: It is a given that Hollywood is relentlessly liberal, and proudly so. A tiny minority of directors are avowedly conservative, and they mostly avoid making political films... guys like Clint Eastwood, for example. So far as I know, the Russo's are not among their ranks, which means we can pretty definitively state they vote Democrat, they think gays are fabulous and women can, and probably should, get an abortion for any reason whatsoever.
That is not judgmental, for those of you tuning in, but simply a restatement of the accepted positions of the Hollywood elite.
So, Republicans, especially George Bush style international cowboys are bad people, and when they are given enough political power they naturally turn to fascism and totalitarianism, and murder people for political reasons... the most extreme example of this position is the 9/11 truther crowd. Now, I'm not saying the people behind CA:WS believe that, but that it is a common, Cathedral style, sentiment among the liberal population.
So, I find it curious that a film that comes out during a Democratic Presidency has a sort of revolutionary (in the historical sense of American Revolution) take on government, even if only by proxy. At this moment in history, that sort of sentiment is more in line with the conservative, Tea Party types (not Republican Party types, I should be clear...).
SHIELD isn't just bad, corrupt from top to bottom, but murderously bad on a scale and with a scope that is rarely even attempted in the movies. I mean, the bad guy plot (not the same as the movie plot...) is to literally shoot in the head every single person in the world who might be inclined to disagree with them, and has the ability to articulate that in word or deed... all at once, in a single instant of murderous bloodshed. Oh, and also to keep that threat of instant death hanging over the rest of the world in the name of world peace.
Of course, the number of random people to be shot is only 20 million. I'm a pessimist when it comes to human nature and even I think that number seems a bit low by at least an order of magnitude, but then once you've crossed a few million deaths it pretty much becomes pure statistics at that point. Hell, comparing them to Stalin's purges (50 million+, including starving people to the point of cannibalism of their own children) its almost surgical and kind.
The plot is woefully transparent, but its a good movie for all that. The few shocking reveals are not shocking and are hardly reveals, but then we've matured from wanting M. Night Shamalam (no, I know that's not how its spelled) to amaze us with every ending, haven't we?
Interestingly, or most interestingly I suppose, is how very apolitical it really is. I struggle to get through the TV show because of the frequent, and blatant, political messaging in every episode... often confused or incoherent messaging, but blatant. In this day and age, apolitical films FEEL political, conservative if you will, simply because they aren't shoving a prog message down our throats, because they aren't Cathedral, and that is a sad indictment of our times.
But seriously: See the fukken movie, eh?
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