Three Days of the Captain

That goofy grin you saw on your comic-book-loving friends this past weekend can be found in the dictionary under Heaven, I Just Died And Went To.  Why are they wearing it?  Because they saw Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

On the plus side, it was better than Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World, both of which felt like they needed at least one more rewrite. For the comic book aware among you, it combines the Ed Brubaker Cap run with the premise behind a couple of SHIELD story arcs.  And it actually makes a major change in the shared universe of Marvel's movies, and by major I mean quite literally something that’s been a constant since the first Iron Man movie.  You hear the phrase "This changes everything" so much in comic books that it's become about as believable as "This guy just died."  But in this case it actually does change everything, not least of which is the premise behind a certain TV show.  

On the minus side, you can clearly see the formula of these movies becoming more and more frozen, like something from a story workshop rather than an actual story: solid character stuff in the beginning, team-building and mystery-chasing in the middle, and lots of explosions in the last twenty minutes.  Followed by mid-credits teaser.  Followed by end-of-credits moment.  (That stands as (a) my fear that all things Disney eventually become formulaic and (b) my prediction for how Guardians Of The Galaxy will play out in August.)

Other pluses: Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson.  Robert Redford.  The Smithsonian exhibit. Jet Li Jenny Agutter. And the character of Steve Rogers. The writers get him, Chris Evans nails it, and the interaction between Steve/Cap and Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow is a solid mix of innocence and experience. Plus you really get a sense of Steve Rogers as a model of the right kind of patriotism, and Captain America as a kick-ass super-soldier. When he hits bad guys, they scatter like bowling pins. When he runs at a door, the door ends up in splinters. And when he goes up against a jet, it’s the technological version of Legolas and the elephant—poor jet shoulda just stayed in its hangar.  In fact, all the action scenes and the hand-to-hand fighting scenes are pretty damn cool (although in some cases way-too-much edited).  Special kudos to the shield-slinging, though, which is way cooler here than in the first Cap movie.  And hell, they even made THIS guy look cool:

The movie is also very political, as in topical political. The directors have been up-front about seeing this film as a 70’s political thriller along the lines of Three Days Of The Condor (an echo which is strengthened by the presence of Robert Redford in the cast as SHIELD honcho Alexander Pierce). And within the imposed framework of a superhero action movie, they get that thriller vibe by going to several unexpected places as we and our heroes discover the secrets behind the deployment of a weapons system called Project Insight (Incite?), which is dedicated to targeting and calling down drone strikes on potential troublemakers before they become trouble, including at least one Marvel hero who doesn't have a movie yet. As Cap says, this isn’t freedom. But it is order, and the film makes a very clear equation between that kind of order and fascism. What it also manages to do is leave that equation just ambiguous enough so that there’s some gray to the argument. As one character says when faced with the choice of saving a family member with an Insight strike, “Not with your weapon.” What the movie doesn’t tell you is whether he’s objecting to the weapon itself, or just one particular group’s use of it.

Another prediction: you are probably going to hear a lot of talk about Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow getting a movie of her own. That would be a mistake. The Black Widow as a character works best the way she does in this movie: as a contrast to somebody who is her complete opposite, like Cap. She’s Rhoda Morgenstern—if she stars in her own show, she has to have her own Rhoda, which turns her into Mary Richards. Please don’t turn Black Widow into Mary Richards, okay, Marvel?

Alexander Pierce and the Black Widow

in happier times

As I mentioned, there’s a good chance you may tune out by the end, because a lot of the specific touches get (literally) blown away by the finale, which has the now-formulaic escalating explosions, countdown to disaster, people outrunning escalating explosions, comic book physics, and a lot of cross-cutting between simultaneous climactic battles—during which the heart of the movie (Cap and Winter Soldier) almost gets lost in all that splodey. (Which is all I’m going to say about THAT plotline.)

As for me, I loved it, and will probably see it again this week, because I have no life.  And by the way—if you’re into in-jokes and you haven’t seen the film yet, pay attention to the contents of Robert Redford’s refrigerator (especially the brand of salad dressing), and the Biblical quotation on a particular tombstone. If you have seen the film and didn’t notice these, get back to me offline and I’ll fill you in on what you missed. And you can fill me in on anything that I might have missed as well.

And because I still can’t believe this movie made Batroc The Leaper cool, here’s a Jack Kirby Batroc/Cap fight page from 1967:

Captain America: As Good As It Gets

The word “good” in the title of this review describes not only the movie Captain America, but the character of its hero Steve Rogers. Believe it or not, this is a war movie about decency, and it’s playing a totally different game from not only every other comic book movie you’ve seen, but every other war movie as well. At heart, this is a clear-eyed mash note to the best of what America stands for, which in this movie is epitomized, in a quiet scene between an immigrant who lives in Queens and a kid who comes from Brooklyn, by the single line: “I don’t like bullies.” It’s America as the little guy who stands up for what’s right because that’s what you do, even if you get knocked down or kicked around because of it. A little guy who, when he gets great power, understands implicitly that the use of that power comes with great responsibility.

Remember how Christopher Reeve nailed the goodness of Superman without making him a goody-two-shoes? Chris Evans does the same with Steve Rogers.  He's morally simple and yet still compelling.  Part of it is due to the actor’s reserve, which is a word I never thought I would say about Chris Evans as an actor.  Part of it is due to the writing, which is solid and smart.  But a great deal of it, I think, is due to the stunning special effect of morphing Evans’ face onto a scrawny pre-Cap body,  which is probably the best character use of a special effect I’ve ever seen.  If you’re going to spend millions of dollars in special effects, this is how best to do it--as an investment in humanity, not robotics (I’m looking at you, Michael Bay).  Because you buy Steve Rogers as a 98-pound weakling, and because you care about what he stands for even when he’s too weak to put up a good fight for it, you’re invested in him and his concerns when he CAN fight.  And, weirdly enough, because that scrawny Brooklyn kid is so believable, it’s the bulked-up Chris Evans who looks like the special effect.

I could go on and on, but this is one of those movies you need to see for yourself, so we can talk about it afterwards.  Some high points:  it's one of the best things Tommy Lee Jones has done since Men In Black, mostly because the writers have given him Tommy Lee Jones things to say. Stanley Tucci’s Dr. Erskine is a study in quiet authority--but then all the main characters have it, even Dominic Cooper as the Howards Hughes version of Howard Stark.
 
There's a clever Gordian knot moment.  There’s a throwaway line that points to Raiders of the Lost Ark. There’s a live-action version of the cover of Captain America #1, where Cap slugs Hitler. (There’s even a cameo of the actual Captain America #1.) Plus there’s a poignant echo to the opening sequence of the Pressberger/Powell film A Matter Of Life And Death*, with the nationalities reversed, and don't you think it wasn't deliberate. 

The only misstep (in my opinion) is at the very end, where what should have been the post-trailer teaser is made part of the pre-credits film itself. That’s just a guess on my part, but I feel in my gut that Johnston’s teaser got bumped back into the actual movie to make room for the Avengers teaser that’s there now.

And speaking of mash notes, here's one to Hayley Atwell, who takes the less out of Thankless Love Interest. Her character, Peggy Carter, is another rarity in this kind of movie--a woman who is smart, capable, beautiful, and--don't all have a heart attack at once, people--she’s respected.  When was the last time you ever saw the female lead in an action movie honestly treated with respect by her peers?  Or even by the script?  Except for her opening scene, where she puts a bully in his place, nobody once questions the fact that Carter deserves to be where she is, or that she's competent at what she does.  To me, the sight of this woman advancing shoulder-to-shoulder with an infantry assault was like getting the answer to a question I never knew I was asking.  "Now THAT is how you do it," I said to myself.  I said that a lot while watching this movie, but never louder than here.


Two other things about this character.
1.  She LOOKS 1940’s. Her hair is parted off-center, and her lipstick is just that little bit too red that women thought was fashionable back then, like they were making themselves up for a black-and-white movie. 

2.  To show you how much thought went into this film, remember the trailer scene where Agent Carter tests Cap’s shield by firing a bunch of bullets at it? There’s actually a WHY to this--it’s not an action moment; it’s a character moment. The whole movie is like that. It has just as many down-time quiet scenes as every other action movie, because we all need to see a lull between explosions--but all these lulls in the action are well-written and well-acted, so they mean something. You never find yourself looking at your watch, like you did every time Hal Jordan was talking to Carol Ferris in Green Lantern.

So go see this movie. I guarantee you'll be more than pleasantly surprised at how good it is, and you might even walk out of it the way I did, feeling energized and exhilarated.


As my friend Jay said after the film, “This is exactly the movie that character deserves.”



*Also known in this country as Stairway To Heaven, and available here at Amazon.  If you have never seen it, you must.  There is nothing like it.  Talk about movies that play a different game.

The Burden of Dreams, or, Some Thoughts on Ed Brubaker's Captain America Run

I’ve re-read the entire Brubaker run from 1 to 36, and it truly is a novel, folks. You can see the whole story spinning out from that first issue’s offhand remark from Cap to the effect that “I don’t even know if I CAN die.” Everything that comes after that is just one long Miled Davis riff on death and resurrection, first with Bucky Barnes/the Winter Soldier, and then Cap himself.

(Two high points in the run for me: the Christmas special, starring Bucky, and (oddly enough) the House of M crossover, which takes its cue from another of Cap’s throwaway lines about missing the Moon Landing: “It’s what I was created for.” There's no better evidence than this issue of how a smart writer can use an imprint-wide crossover to create something touching, resonant and true with an iconic character like Steve Rogers.)

I’ve already gone into what I think Brubaker is doing plotwise. As of issue 36, elements of my prediction are starting to take shape. And yes, I’m a little nervous because Brubaker has vowed that there are no clones involved, so I may be heading for another Oscar Prediction Hell. But I still like my odds, and judging from the cover of issue 39 above, I won’t have long to wait to see how wrong right I was.

So what is Brubaker doing thematically? He’s facing head-on the question that’s been dogging the character since Steranko did his post-Kirby reboot: who is Captain America? The question got a pass while Kirby was in the driver's seat because, well, it was Kirby on Captain America, and who questions a Formula One winner like that? But once other creators and artists came into the mix (and as World War II became four, then five, then six decades distant), the questions started getting bigger and the character, paradoxically, smaller: is he a symbol of the country or the country’s values? Is he the flag or what the flag stands for? Is he (gulp) Marvel’s answer to Superman?

I’d say yes to the last question if the version of Superman we’re talking about is Grant Morrison’s All-Star version, which is (in my Batman-fan-forever opinion) the gold standard for Kal-El. The problem is, so far? With one exception (see below), the various pre-Brubaker versions of Steve Rogers haven’t come anywhere near gold, and that includes Steranko’s run (way too short) and the Marvel Knights volume (which I loved but seemingly nobody else bought or -- more importantly -- bought into).

I think Brubaker is aware of this, and he’s doing two things in order to define the character for the 21st century. He’s removed Cap from the Marvel playing field, which like Jimmy Stewart's nightmare descent into Potterville has become a horrifying vision of what Cap's friends, his allies, and his country are now, without their shield-carrying George Bailey saving them from Nazis like the Red Skull. And he’s defining the character by showing what happens when somebody tries to fill Cap’s flag-covered tunic, and how much more than just fisticuffs is required to, in a sense, bear the burden of the dream. You can see it in the current issue where Bucky tries to quell a riot and nobody believes he’s Cap. By showing you the dimensions of the hole, Brubaker is defining the size and characteristics of the missing monument. He's not crowding the field with four replacement versions; he's showing you what happens when the kid sidekick tries to take on the mantle of his adult mentor, and how impossibly hard it is to do. If there's a better way of making the statement "There is only one Captain America," I can't think of one. And what makes it work is character, specifically the character of resurrected Bucky. It sure adds a lot when the guy playing Robin to Cap’s Batman is the single most intriguing reboot to come out of either major comic company since Moore's Swamp Thing, Morrison's Doom Patrol and, well, the Stern/Byrne re-imagining of Cap from 1980 (and how in the world could I have forgotten that one? Prior to Brubaker, the best post-Kirby Cap run ever).

Part and parcel of all this: the debate about Bucky carrying a gun as Cap.2, which is really a debate about whether Captain America The Icon should be carrying and using a gun. The writer in me wants to think that Brubaker planned for this –- that he anticipated the terms of the debate and how the back and forth would in essence ask the question he’s been asking since issue #1: who is this guy? And even if it wasn't deliberate, it's evidence that Brubaker is asking the right things subconsciously, because the situations he's setting up have the deep resonance of the best drama, which is always more concerned with hard questions instead of easy answers.

If I had to guess (and you know I’m going to), the question at the heart of Cap’s identity as a man and as a symbol is going to get answered only (a) when Bucky tries to be Cap and fails, possibly at the expense of someone’s life (in a sense, we're going to watch this Cap suffer the loss of his own personal Bucky) and (b) when Cap comes back from being offstage for so long, and like a Shakespearean tragic hero shows us how his absence has changed him for the better. (Think Hamlet disappearing for all of Act IV, or post-storm Lear awakening to see his daughter. Bucky as Cordelia, anyone?)

I still think that Cap is going to come back under the direct mind control of the Red Skull. And Bucky is going to be the only one who sees it. Everyone else is going to see the monument, but Bucky will see the man. And there will definitely be a battle between them -- an all-or-nothing showdown which will mirror Cap’s fight with the Winter Soldier in issue #14, except that the roles will be reversed: Bucky will help Cap defeat the Skull's mind control and return to reality by echoing the words Cap used to him in that issue: "Remember who you are." Call that one my latest prediction.

One last question: will Bucky help Cap remember who he is by dying again, at the hands of the Red Skull? Or sacrificing himself and killing the Skull at the same time? That would make dramatic sense, wouldn’t it? (Bucky as Cordelia, anyone?) Because isn’t that who Cap is -- the one who survived when Bucky didn’t?

Captain America prediction

The Red Skull is currently inhabiting the body of Aleksandr Lukin.

Arnin Zola is working with the Red Skull.

Zola's specialty is cloning.

There's a blacked out text area in the published script for Captain America #25 when he's shot by Sharon Carter.

Here's what I think happened in that blacked-out portion: Sharon extracted Cap's DNA. Which is why the dead body of Steve Rogers ended up looking like his 98-pound-weakling pre-Super-Soldier self.

The DNA is being used by Zola to make a new Cap body.

That Cap body is going to house the mind of the Red Skull AND Steve Rogers, with the Skull in total control (for now).

Because the whole point of the Red Skull is to make Cap watch helplessly as all hell breaks loose. Whatever the Skull's plans have been, they ALWAYS involved Cap being a helpless witness to tragedy.

Which also means that at some point, this Cap clone is going to eventually face off against Bucky as the new Captain America. At the pace Brubaker is writing this? We're looking at a climactic battle in issue #50.

There. I've said it.

Comic Book Wednesday

World War Hulk #4. Hulk smash! Or actually, Hulk make everybody he hates smash each other. Personally, the high of the first two issues has slowly faded into the realization that nothing is really going to change at the end of this. Maybe it's the fact that (because of scheduling) the war is long over in the rest of Marvel continuity, and there seems to be no lingering after-effects. (No mention of the Hulk, either. Hmm.) Or maybe I'm getting bored to death with "nothing will ever be the same again" crossovers which either go nowhere or set up the next crossover. Color me jade, for jaded.

Green Arrow Black Canary Wedding Special #1. Besides asking and answering the question "Why doesn't Amanda Conner draw a regular DC title?" (because her artwork is Kevin Maguire/Adam Hughes good, and along with membership in the JLI, that's the kiss of death in today's DCVerse), this comic delivers a light-hearted wedding-crasher battle royale which is completely undone by a sucker-punch epilogue that left a sour taste in my mouth. I can just imagine the cackles of glee in DC Editorial when this one was pitched. No glee here, though.

Captain America #30. Brubaker closes out the first half of his year-long Death of Captain America arc with another bar-setting high. Tony Stark gets a clue, Sharon Carter gets a test result, The Winter Soldier gets sputniked, and Cap's letter (remember that?) gets revealed, in yet another of Brubaker's perfectly-paced can't-wait-for-the-next-one issues. The first thing I'm going to do when I get home tonight is re-read everything from #1 on up to this one, because it's building like a novel and it deserves to be read like one.

Captain America Does Green Lantern/Green Arrow

So is Cap really dead? Probably not.

Buried inside Mark Millar’s original proposal for Civil War is the following on the fate of Captain America. Millar proposes something called Doom tech which would

eliminate every superpower in the world . . . It’s right here we have Cap dropped into the situation as he heroically defends his fellow heroes, climbing inside and closing the whole thing down. Huge explosion and smoke everywhere followed by the awe on the faces of the heroes he saved as we see skinny Steve Rogers lying here stripped of his powers . . .

Cut to the epilogues and we basically set up the new Marvel Universe here with Bucky taking over as the new Cap . . . [and then] before we close the whole thing with Nick Fury talking to the 97lb Steve Rogers in the closing pages . . . as he admits that, despite everything, he’s kind of excited to get his life back again. He’s heading out to discover America and rediscover himself and Nick smiles. Steve hopes he isn’t being selfish and Nick says no way. “One Hell of a tour of duty you just had, soldier”, he tells Steve and Steve just smiles. They salute and Steve Rogers, skinny as a rake, walks off into the sunset like all the best heroes should.

THE UPSHOT: Winter Soldier as Cap for a year before Steve gets the call and gets revitalized for the movie.

Revitalized for the movie. DisgustedSigh.wav.

Meanwhile, Cap crisscrosses America driving a beat-up truck in a Neal Adams-drawn 12-issue-miniseries, battling thinly disguised caricatures of the current Vice President. Y'know, like this:

The Funeral of Captain America

So Cap gets his Arlington funeral this week, as the Associated Press reported, complete with stunning John Cassaday art:

It's not the first time Cap has died (Steranko killed him off in a memorable arc in which it was revealed that the God of Thunder is susceptible to knockout gas), and it may not be the last, but give Marvel (and Cap writer Ed Brubaker) credit for giving this death the kind of weight and significance that makes it feel like it could be the real thing.

Will Marvel bring him back? Well, they brought back Bucky. And you can make a case that Steve Rogers has done nothing but come back from the dead since he was reintroduced to the MarvelVerse in Avengers #4. When I bought that issue, I didn't know who the hell he was. But my Dad did. "Captain America? Christ Almighty!" he said, "I used to have all those comic books when I was a kid, until your grandmother threw them out." (This was about two years before my mother threw out all my comics. Some experiences truly are cross-generational.)



At the time, there was a 20-year gap between Cap's last official appearance at the end of World War II and his revival as an Avenger, which is next to nothing in comic book years, and that's probably why the man-out-of-time facet of Cap's character took another 20 years to be played with by writers like Frank Miller, who refers to Cap as "the soldier" in his Daredevil run and portrays him as a man for whom the sound of helicopters is a constant reminder of how out of place he feels in these days of modern times. He is, after all (as my father would be the first to remind me), a man who made his entry into the world by punching Adolf Hitler in the face:




Talk about your wish-fulfilment fantasies, huh? I guess something analogous would be like, oh, I don't know--maybe seeing Batman hunt down Osama Bin Laden. (Like that's ever gonna happen. Oh wait.)

What's interesting to me is that, since Cap is a child of the 40's, his death implies a critique on a set of values from that era in a way that his resurrection and survival never did. Created during a time of war, Steve (Captain America) Rogers wasn't a symbol of anything more than the national desire to kick Nazi ass. It's only after the war is over that his symbolic nature becomes confusing or questionable. So perhaps it's fitting that the week of Cap's funeral (which also occurs during a time of war) sees the reissue of one of the best, if briefest, re-envisionings of Steve Rogers, the Roger Stern/John Byrne run:

Why did I like this run so much? Because it not only dealt with Cap's history and continuity, it dealt with the idea-of-America part of his character that, to me, is what makes him interesting, inspirational, and potentially tragic. It opens up all kinds of stories revolving around the nature of patriotism, nationalism, and obedience to authority; and whatever your opinion of Civil War, putting Cap on the anti-government side feels exactly right. (My opinion of Civil War? Great concept; lousy execution. For something that was supposed to be politically relevant, it's totally ironic and fitting that it's the epilogue--Cap's death--which is resonating more with the public-at-large than the actual issues leading up to that death. Although, can I just say? Tony Stark is a dick.)



To my mind, the flag and the shield make Cap's death more (shall we say) thought-provoking and socially relevant than the death of Superman. Is it a symbol of the death of the New Deal? The death of conscience? The end of nationalism? --patriotism? --jingoism? The death of the dream? (What dream?) Or is it, like an amendment to the Constitution, part of an ongoing, on-growing experiment in government?

In the end, it's like any other life--now that it's over, we try to figure out what it all means.


So where do I stand on the "Will they bring Cap back?" question. I'd like to think that Cap will stay dead because freedom demands sacrifice--because soldiers give their lives in every age for the values of this country. But mostly, I'd like him to stay dead because that's what happens to real people. And to me, Captain America was real.