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Jul. 24th, 2011 07:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nilchanceWeekend notes: the heatwave has made yet another New and Interesting Symptom crop up, officially turning me into a walking episode of House. Good thing I have an appointment with my awesome arthritis doctor in a few weeks.
Also, we had dinner at a hibachi grill with the most annoying people ever, where the parents whined at their kids for whining, one dude bitched about getting too much food, and kids ran around the open fucking flame and the chefs using knives. Yep. We left our server a huge tip and I added a note to thank her for great service. I don't miss customer service at all.
Sorry, Chris Evans. You are beautiful and your eyelashes are sick and I want to smish you. I wish this had been a better movie. I miss Jake Jensen, basically.
I don't know if my lack of excitement in the movie (I ended up counting the minutes when the dude in the row in front of us checked his texts on his stupid cell phone) is a result of my cynicism about America. I don't know if it's my feelings on the false nostalgia around the 40s and 50s, which were mostly great for white Christian straight men because nobody talked about their privilege. I don't know if it's just my thoughts on Boy Scouts and why I love Batman more than Superman. I don't know why I'm qualifying my reactions like this, but I feel bad because I've seen so many squee posts and I just... didn't get that.
There were great individual scenes in the 40s portion of the film: the bootcamp, the transformation, the rescue of the troops in the Hydra base, the train battle, the scene with Steve grieving for hislost love friend Bucky (the moment when Bucky picks up the shield! the moment when Bucky uses a sniper rifle! where is the fic where Losers!Jensen is secretly Steve with a thing for snipers?), everything with Howard Stark being so closeted homosexual, omg, how did he conceive children?, and just typing this I get excited, but... wow. There was no cohesion of these scenes, no heart to it for me.
I felt like the movie wanted to get into darker territory, what with the comment about the Asian-American guy being from Fresno and the blood in the interrogation room, about how war is both fought on the battlefield by men with pure intentions like Steve who just want to protect the little guy and yet also fought in locked rooms where the blood can be rinsed off. But I also felt like the movie wanted to be a popcorn movie where you didn't think too hard about Steve being the hero or WHY he wanted to be a soldier in the field. We never really found out why, aside from the "Steve hates bullies" answer, that he didn't want to kill but had to serve with a gun instead of a wrench or a pen or a scalpel.
And yes, that's way more thinky thoughts than a movie often puts into its story, but Captain America is coming on the heels of several movies that changed the game. Inglorious Basterds showed that being against the Nazis, being the better man, doesn't make you a GOOD PERSON by default. Watchman deconstructed superheroes in war and how it doesn't necessarily make things better for the little guy, and also how fucked up you have to be to become a superhero; Kickass did the same, plus the threat of escalation when you have caped superheroes, because then you get caped supervillains. Thor, which was so recent and involved the same comic company, had the god of Thunder from the freaking battle-hungry NORSE scolded for his war-mongering against a Always Chaotic Evil foe. So on the heels of all this deconstruction and "but WHY? and what happens next? and is that good?" questioning, you get this very earnest Captain America movie that wants you to pretend none of those other movies happened.
Anyway. I loved the last few minutes with Steve and Nick Fury, and Steve's loss. I felt like that was the real core of the film, the only time I was really caught up, and then it was over. And I'm so harsh on it because I wanted the movie to be better.
I wanted two more scenes, too, that I understand why they're not in the movie:
- bittersweet scene with Steve meeting the 90+ year old Peggy and getting his last slow dance
- Steve meets Tony Stark, because after two hours I needed something funny, goddamn it
In other news, I find it funny that in the Avengers trailer, Loki is being escorted by like 10 guards and he makes it look like "oh, these bitches? they're just holding my cape."
Also, we had dinner at a hibachi grill with the most annoying people ever, where the parents whined at their kids for whining, one dude bitched about getting too much food, and kids ran around the open fucking flame and the chefs using knives. Yep. We left our server a huge tip and I added a note to thank her for great service. I don't miss customer service at all.
Sorry, Chris Evans. You are beautiful and your eyelashes are sick and I want to smish you. I wish this had been a better movie. I miss Jake Jensen, basically.
I don't know if my lack of excitement in the movie (I ended up counting the minutes when the dude in the row in front of us checked his texts on his stupid cell phone) is a result of my cynicism about America. I don't know if it's my feelings on the false nostalgia around the 40s and 50s, which were mostly great for white Christian straight men because nobody talked about their privilege. I don't know if it's just my thoughts on Boy Scouts and why I love Batman more than Superman. I don't know why I'm qualifying my reactions like this, but I feel bad because I've seen so many squee posts and I just... didn't get that.
There were great individual scenes in the 40s portion of the film: the bootcamp, the transformation, the rescue of the troops in the Hydra base, the train battle, the scene with Steve grieving for his
I felt like the movie wanted to get into darker territory, what with the comment about the Asian-American guy being from Fresno and the blood in the interrogation room, about how war is both fought on the battlefield by men with pure intentions like Steve who just want to protect the little guy and yet also fought in locked rooms where the blood can be rinsed off. But I also felt like the movie wanted to be a popcorn movie where you didn't think too hard about Steve being the hero or WHY he wanted to be a soldier in the field. We never really found out why, aside from the "Steve hates bullies" answer, that he didn't want to kill but had to serve with a gun instead of a wrench or a pen or a scalpel.
And yes, that's way more thinky thoughts than a movie often puts into its story, but Captain America is coming on the heels of several movies that changed the game. Inglorious Basterds showed that being against the Nazis, being the better man, doesn't make you a GOOD PERSON by default. Watchman deconstructed superheroes in war and how it doesn't necessarily make things better for the little guy, and also how fucked up you have to be to become a superhero; Kickass did the same, plus the threat of escalation when you have caped superheroes, because then you get caped supervillains. Thor, which was so recent and involved the same comic company, had the god of Thunder from the freaking battle-hungry NORSE scolded for his war-mongering against a Always Chaotic Evil foe. So on the heels of all this deconstruction and "but WHY? and what happens next? and is that good?" questioning, you get this very earnest Captain America movie that wants you to pretend none of those other movies happened.
Anyway. I loved the last few minutes with Steve and Nick Fury, and Steve's loss. I felt like that was the real core of the film, the only time I was really caught up, and then it was over. And I'm so harsh on it because I wanted the movie to be better.
I wanted two more scenes, too, that I understand why they're not in the movie:
- bittersweet scene with Steve meeting the 90+ year old Peggy and getting his last slow dance
- Steve meets Tony Stark, because after two hours I needed something funny, goddamn it
In other news, I find it funny that in the Avengers trailer, Loki is being escorted by like 10 guards and he makes it look like "oh, these bitches? they're just holding my cape."