With a Monday afternoon off for Memorial Day, Jamie and I weighed whether we'd be seeing X-Men: Apocalypse versus anything else. Jamie, a solid fan of Cap and luke-warm on X-folk, pushed for Cap as she wanted to see it again on the big screen, and as I thoroughly enjoyed myself on the last go-round, I was more than happy to agree. We'll catch X-Men soon enough, and I have a post brewing as to 'why' when we're kinda not huge X-nerds in 2016.
There isn't much to say that I didn't already say, except that on a second viewing, when I wasn't just trying to keep up with the rocket-propelled trajectory of the movie, a lot of things that felt like bullet-point plot points as they went along suddenly felt much more organic. Cap's arguments for non-compliance not only held up better on a second-viewing, but the death of Peggy, which I took as mostly an emotional beat in the first viewing, I now could see how that scene was really about Sharon quoting Peggy and giving Steve the resolve he needed in his moment of crisis. The best person from the point in his life where he found his true self was speaking to him via her niece.
And, speaking of that niece, there's a lot more goo-goo eye stuff going on between Sharon and Steve - and, in fact, her very cooperation with Steve suddenly doesn't seem so much like a "doing a pal a solid" as her clearly breaking protocols for this guy. They just don't actually say anything before that first kiss, and so it is a bit less jarring once you catch the interplay a bit better.
But the race to save Bucky feels far more grounded on a second viewing as well. Steve's intentions felt more clear, and his insistence on saving Bucky somehow feels less like "well, because he's the good guy" and because of that shared history, even as he seems to know Bucky may actually be guilty and may actually kill him this time.
Anyway, I highly recommend catching the movie again. I watch all the Marvel movies more than once not just because - hey, sometimes I pick up things I missed before - but it's fun stuff to see again, especially in the theater. It's really amazing how well Marvel has managed these movies, film after film, finding just the right talent for each role and directors to fit the film.
More on what I'm getting out of these movies in a future post.
6 comments:
Who won this time?
The audience did, Jason. The audience did.
As a lawyer, I've always thought it would be interesting to litigate the government's ability to regulate the use of superpowers. I would start out by trying to draw a legal distinction between superpowers that are gained through the use of gadgets (which might be subject to regulation in the way that all machines and weapons are subject to regulation) and the regulation of superpowers which are inherent in and inseparable from a person's body. Personal, physical autonomy, obviously, involves a whole different set of issues, and I think is a much stickier legal and moral quandary.
I look forward to the next Avengers movie being nothing but two and a half hours of argument before the court on extremely dry legal motions.
have I got a couple of websites/ podcasts for you:
http://thelegalgeeks.com
http://lawandthemultiverse.com/
I haven't seen it a second time yet but I'm very much looking forward to seeing it. Right now I'm having a hard time placing it ahead of Winter Soldier as my favorite Marvel movie but you never know.
I hear ya. C3 has Cap in a VW Beetle with squabbling buddies, C2 has Fury in an attack SUV. Both have Sharon.
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