It's no secret that Captain America: The First Avenger is my favorite solo movie of Phase One and arguably, the best solo movie leading into Marvel's The Avengers. That being said, the obvious thing to do with Phase Two is to make the movies more personal. It's off to a pretty good start with Iron Man 3 and looks to go darker and more gritty in Thor: The Dark World. But, I feel Captain America: The Winter Soldier is going to be the best of the solo movies despite relatively unproven directors helming the movie. Warning, I do reveal a spoiler in case anyone wants to remain spoiler free. Just to be safe, ya know?
Not a typical superhero sequel
Has anyone else gotten a much different vibe from Captain America: The Winter Soldier? No, just me? The reason this is, is cause Captain America and Black Widow on the run, maybe The Falcon as well. You got the mystery of The Winter Soldier (although us comicbook fans know who he is), as well as whatever is going on with Robert Redford's character, Arnim Zola and Crossbones. Black Widow and The Falcon get taken into custody, looks like Captain America as well. This doesn't give me a superhero vibe but, It's going to benefit from it though.
Steve Rogers Story
This one seems to bug a lot of people. I don't see why. It was never Captain America's story. Captain America: The First Avenger is entirely a Steve Rogers story with Captain America action in it. Captain America: The Winter Soldier is going to be the same, more Steve Rogers than Captain America. That's exactly how I would want it. This is definitely more of a personal Steve Rogers story cause of The Winter Soldier. If delivered in the right way, the Russos will have made a more dramatic and emotional impacting movie than what we got in The First Avenger (by far most dramatic and emotional involved superhero movie I have seen).
The Cast
Captain America for whatever reason for both movies have gave me the feeling that the casts are special. Captain America: The First Avenger (especially after having watched the movie) gave me the feeling that "Wow, this is a really good, very special cast" and for whatever reason, I'm getting that feeling with Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I mean for god's sake, The First Avenger has Tommy Lee Jones and Stanley Tucci in it. The Winter Soldier has Robert Redford in it. You're obviously doing something right if you get those three in your movies. At least that's my logic. Plus, you have Frank Grillo as one of the villains in the movie. Is he obviously going to have the physically intimidated factor of Tom Hardy as Bane? Hell no, I was scared as shit of Tom Hardy when I saw The Dark Knight Rises in the theater. But, Frank Grillo isn't going to be a pushover. Emily Vancamp is pretty good. Toby Jones and Hayley Atwell are back, Anthony Mackie is in it. Obviously Sebastian Stan is back. The cast just feels right.
Focused action
Obviously we got to see the final product before we can judge for sure but, going by the Paintball episode of Community. I don't think we need to worry about the action in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The paintball episode has very kinetic but focused action that I feel the kinetic feeling is going to be transferred to Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
Unclear villain
We obviously know that: Frank Grillo, Sebastian Stan and Toby Jones are villains and that apparently, so is ******spoiler********** Robert Redford. Question is: Is S.H.I.E.L.D as a whole the villain of Captain America: The Winter Soldier? I'm not going to speculate but, I guess you can say that in a way, we aren't really sure who the main villain of the movie is. Cause, Robert Redford said he's playing a villain. Never said THE villain. The fact we don't know who the big bad guy is (the mastermind) makes it more fun to speculate until trailers come out and the movie itself is released.
Obviously there is a lot of mystery to the movie, which is a good thing but, a lot does happen it looks and sounds like. But considering the filmography of Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely include Captain America: The First Avenger and the first two Narnia films (yes, I know that the third sucked, Prince Caspian is the best of the films in my opinion) and assuming Marvel has learned from their mistakes from Iron Man 2, I don't think Captain America: The Winter Soldier is going to be a misstep and I'm still of the believe it'll be up there with super-sequels like X2, Spider-Man 2 and The Dark Knight. What are your thoughts on the film and what not? Comment below.