Rogue One and Arrival

This isn't a contest to see which is better. Arrival is clearly a superior film. People should not be confused or considering it another way. I could conceive of having non sci-fi fans watch Arrival and get something out of it anyway. It's that good, and that understated as to the science fiction elements.

Rogue One.

Good

Action sequences are generally well laid out and create a strong sense of running battles and impending destruction.

Vader finally plays a badass again (hasn't really happened since Empire and New Hope). Good villains help these stories. There weren't quite any in this. But at least Vader showed up as Vader. I was fine with that.

There are some very gorgeous cinematographic sequences. They did really well picking up fun locations to shoot (Maldives, Jordan, Iceland, etc). They took full advantage of what they had to work with to make it crisp and chewy as scenery goes. And to blow it up.

This was generally better than Force Awakens. It also seems to have a point or a story to tell of its own. That being "war sucks, people will die". This feels more like a WWII movie with blasters and space combat than a "Star Wars" movie at points. That's a good thing. There are little moments like listening to a turncoat spy or a stormtrooper chattering about something just before they are attacked and killed to drive home even the enemies of the rebellion are people of some sort. This works better than Finn as a defector in Force Awakens to humanize the enemy as probably a lot of people who haven't had much choice in occupation.

This is also a key point sorely lacking in the Star Wars prequels, which do try (and mostly failed) to explore the politics of a gigantic bureaucratic nightmare with a veneer of democracy. There isn't really a sense that wars are bad and have terrible costs. What costs are involved are paid for reasons totally divorced from the wars themselves, and mostly involved lightsaber mishaps and insane rants about the "high ground". So from the perspective of trying to set an action movie with a lot of desperate and bad things happening within the contextual structure of the Star Wars universe and its rebellions and galactic conflicts, I was happy with that attempt. This was the biggest problem with Force Awakens was it took no risk to tell a new and engaging story, or even to spin that story that much that it wasn't obviously a mishmash of the original trilogy with some of the same key players. It was further plagued that most of its universe based elements made little or no sense even in the context of that universe (why is there even a "resistance" if there's a Republic again?), or were annoying (Finn, Kylo Ren).

The droid is funny. Probably taking up all of the film's humor, but still. Probably funnier than C3-PO. Sarcastic droid wins over whiny droid.

Mixed
While I think they did a good CGI job on Tarkin (and one other at the end of the movie), it is a little strange seeing an actor who has been dead for 20 years in a movie. This is not a trend I would look forward to.

There are a lot of Star Wars Easter eggs. Some of them are annoying. Others are fun reminders of the original films. This was a mixed bag issue with Force Awakens also. Telling a different and new story in Star Wars can be done, and can be done to use these little touches to remind us what universe we are in (like the Stan Lee cameos in Marvel films). I feel like this did a little to push the envelope, much more than Force Awakens/Abrams, but not enough. It could have been a spy thriller for example but with Jedis and a space battle, or battles and devastation happening in the background. I had thought that was kind of what it was going to be from the trailers. There are nods like that's what they will be doing when they recruit a team of saboteurs and assassins to come help them, and they start sneaking around the base. Then a lot of the stuff from the trailers don't make any appearances in the film, and a lot of things start blowing up, and a fleet shows up to attack. People can make a war-spy movie drama/thriller, something that would resemble Dirty Dozen maybe. But the film has to commit to the spy or sneaky part to pull it off. This never really does.

There are no extraneous "cute" characters to be marketed to children. This is a harsher world than Ewoks and Jawas and whatever Jar Jar was supposed to be, and as a result, no cuddly creatures appear. I would consider this a good thing, if they had taken the added time not doing this form of marketing and expended it on making the actual people in the story a little more compelling.

Bad
Jyn isn't terribly well written. She spends a lot of time giving muddled speeches about hope, making bold decisions, and not doing much action herself (a little at the end). But because she keeps taking these bold choices, it feels like an interesting character was in there that other characters had decided to follow and listen to. That isn't always a compelling view of good leadership. But it works okay here because we know what she's doing. She is going to end up going off script, so to speak, and do something very dangerous or radical within the Star Wars universe. Other than Han, nobody else has that kind of pull to play by their own rules. Jyn doesn't quite rise to that level. We're sort of supposed to assume she can be in the "tell not show" problem endemic to many films these days. This is also one of the key downgrades from Force Awakens. Rey, despite being super-capable very fast in a sometimes annoying way, is at least acted and written as an interesting or mysterious character and as a leading character. There's a brief but engaging backstory and personal charisma, and her competence and rising confidence is an infectious element of the story (and there isn't anything else in the story that is). Jyn has basically none of those things going for her. She's not shown as a great resistance fighter (one scene maybe). Or spy. Or leader. Or pilot. Or warrior. Her backstory, what we know of it, is mainly why she is picked to be on the mission in the first place; because of her connections to other key characters. As a plot device. Later on she does some fun, bold, and determined things, and a few of her speeches lines are not terrible to rile up the troops as it were (they're mostly corny and lame). But that's really late in the film to care that much about what's going on anymore.

There's very little chemistry between the various cast members. They're pretty much interchangeable and expendable characters that we aren't that attached to as they are inevitably killed off. There's a little between the quasi-Jedi and the hired gun friend he has. And that's it. Oh. Spoiler: anybody who isn't in New Hope that we meet here should be assumed to be killed off during the course of this movie. Further more obvious spoiler, go read the crawl before New Hope and you know exactly what must happen in this film. This kind of death and sacrifice, meaningful or not, should have more emotional weight. We should care that these people are dying, because each death has some resonance on the other characters. Force Awakens got a lot of cheap but effective emotional mileage out of having Han die. Because people were attached to him as a strong and interesting character (and because Harrison Ford actually bothered to do some acting). Both Jyn's mentor and her father die and we shrug and move on, because they basically shrug and move on and because neither seems that compelling. They each die because they're no longer integral to the plot and are expediently removed from it.

The overall writing struggles. I'm not sure why Forest Whitaker's character was even in the film other than a plot point to get Jyn in the movie. We spend many tedious minutes early on wandering around several planets without much happening on them to remind us I guess that Star Wars has a lot of planets with cool volcano bases and evil installations in tropic locales (I'd think Scariff would be a plum assignment for an Imperial officer?). Introductions of characters, other than Donnie Yen's blind quasi Jedi with a staff beating people up, are often weak and forgettable. I can barely remember anyone's names other than Jyn (Cassio? Che Guevara? Droid? Chinese film market tie-in? General Director British Villain/Tarkin knock-off?). Compare this to Jabba in RotJ, as a giant gangster slug who has a pretty short character arc in film time but a rather large footprint on the film and series by being a memorable character (Lucas later would destroy this by having him appear in New Hope when it was re-released later). Even the Pit of Carkoon has more of a memorable feel than these poor saps.

Note the pilot, the actual defector in Rogue, is equally badly written as Finn was, if not quite as annoying or central to the movie. The method of humanizing some of these characters being chosen by directors and writers seems to be to pick the most social inane and awkward people alive and write them into the film.

Because these characters are expendable and uninteresting, the plot is very slowly paced early on.

I'd say RotJ is around a 7 out of 10, basically like a C+ movie. Force Awakens is maybe a 6, a solid C or maybe C-, though still much better than the prequels. This is maybe a 7 at best as well, possibly lower (a C+/C movie). It's fine. But not that interesting.

Arrival

Good

There's a lot of scene economy in how this is shot. It's minimalist in the way it uses disorienting elements to build the overall story of trying to communicate and interact with aliens, and to build around the function of circles as a shape in scenes. It's subtle sometimes about when or how they've made one. And the use of shapes to frame sequences is a fun little way to design a more interesting scene, and how to draw our attention toward or away from other things. The circles the aliens draw take our attention away from the creepy looking squid things in the background for instance.

The concept is intriguing. It doesn't limit to simply using language to alter a brain either. Most of us have a propensity to alter ourselves according to roles we seek and take on. Parent. Spouse. Lover. Single parent. Divorced. Grieving. Sick. Recovering. Addict. Activist. Child. Adult. Even the jobs we do (or the fact that we have them) can define us in a new way to others. And so on. These things change our decisions, our thinking, our identity, and our comfort with the past, present, and future in a number of ways. Language does this too. But it isn't even the only thing happening within the film on this form, just the most explicit. Her transformation as a person and the roles she has is implicit. There are even little moments about this where she is resisting other transformations (the non-zero sum game conversation).

I found that overall a fascinating concept. It works more easily within science fiction structures of "hey we are aliens and we'd like to talk to you". But it is an element of distinction between different languages here on Earth. Chinese seems to be advantaged for how math is thought about for instance (where there is no "eleven" but instead "ten and one", a more direct elaboration). German was the favored language for a long time of philosophy and engineering for its vibrant economy of complex terms. And so on. There are also broader discussions about the effects of mind altering substances on the sort of identity and interactions with others we have that can tie into this. The idea that "how we think about ourselves" as the main "gift" brought by benevolent but bizarre aliens is an implied effect that creates the Star Trek universe, and it is here as well.

Amy Adams is being wasted in the Superman films, even as she's probably the only good character in them (Batfleck being a possibility as well). She's very good in this.

Mixed
Renner's character is kind of meh. Other than as a counterfoil to Adams, it's hard to see what he does. Maybe making a computer do some work toward the end of the film to provide some kind of mathematical analysis to say "see, she is not crazy". He tends to provide "Hawkeye" levels of workable production in films in that he doesn't add or take away much. That's fine if he's a role player, with some occasional elevation as in the Avengers series. Less so if he is supposedly a main character.

There's a nod to people freaking out about possibly hostile aliens, as there was in Contact (a similar kind of Sci Fi film, but not as good). Perhaps more and less appreciative of how big a problem this would be. I think it plays off reasonably well within the plot, but it doesn't ramp up any tension very much so much as feel forced in by events.

Overall I'm nitpicking here to find things I did not like. So. That's a good sign.

Random thoughts

1- Suicide Squad was pretty fucking bad. Like terrible. Possibly one of the dumbest movies I've ever seen. Non-existent plot which basically consisted of "and now things are happening, and here more things are happening that are almost entirely unrelated to the things that just happened, with no explanation". Poor script or dialogue. Mostly bad casting. Robbie and Smith were wasted on this garbage, and Leto sucks. Years of unfortunately having seen Michael Bay films did not prepare me for how stupid a movie could be.

2- Dick pics. I don't get the premise. Even as a form of sexting, I'm not aware of women who want to receive them. I have a hard time understanding what the basis of thought involved in it is. "Okay. That's my bulge in the groin area. Or the full extent of my erections. Enjoy ladies." This is rather dull as an expression of perspective or understanding what it is that women will tend to enjoy. Almost no woman I can think of is going to be suitably impressed by a photo of a penis on a tiny screen. I'm pretty sure she's going to be a little more impressed if you have any idea what good that penis may be for. Which is not for show and tell. As a hint.

I don't really understand the concept of flashing either. Male strippers, maybe makes sense (I don't really understand strip clubs either, but to each their own there). The rest does not, even as a form of exhibitionism. It's creepy and strange. And does not work even for the base purpose of attracting or enticing women for sex. It doesn't communicate desire or sensuality. It mostly communicates this is a fairly normal human male who believes women should admire his penis, but probably would not care much about the rest of him.

So. I'm a little confused as to why, besides an unfortunate last name, Anthony Weiner keeps sending them, many years after he was caught doing so and destroyed his political career by leaving a photographic trail indicating just how often he thinks only with his penis. You would think this would be a learned behavior that could be amended. "Hmm. This got me into trouble before. Perhaps I should try some other means of attracting women, one with less of a photographic trail at least."

I am really confused as to what possible attraction there is for taking a photo of one's genitals or even a bulge created thereof mostly concealed by clothing, but also having a child in the photo. This does not seem like a reasonable fetish to advertise. Or a legal one. And it should not increase one's sex appeal to have a child prop in a photo intending to demonstrate that you may indeed have a functioning penis.

Civil War

I had other thoughts on the quality of the film (it was good, but not at the level of Winter Soldier or Avengers). This isn't about that. (spoilers anyway though).

One thing that has emerged in the aftermath is people seem to have trouble understanding what Captain America/Steve Rogers basis for "rebellion" against the authorities even is. This is much more clearly spelled out in the comic, but the component parts are all present in the film itself. The problem is they aren't very clear; the movie seems very clearly to be hammering upon questions of revenge instead of the geopolitics that underlie the comic that spawned the film in the first place.

So here's what it breaks into.

1) Cap does not trust the agendas of potential oversight. He has good reason not to from the events of Winter Soldier, to be suspicious of other people telling him what they are up to and for what purpose. The comic was written at the height of the Iraq War's unpopularity. The gist both there and to an admittedly less clear but still present extent in the film is that people in charge often demand weapons and violence be pointed at the "wrong" targets, and this still results in the terrible results they are seeking to prevent by enacting rules of oversight (such as collateral damage). It is an important distinction that the agendas of "ordinary" men are going to differ, perhaps wildly, from what may be objectively found to be good or best possible alternatives. The results may not always be terribly different, but if we're looking for "extraordinary" people to set these agendas, it's possible they may do so more capably and with less damage by not attacking the wrong places deliberately. Winter Soldier sets this up pretty strongly as a concern within the series of films.

2) The film portrays the oversight as coming from the UN via a broad international agreement. But anyone familiar with the UN will be aware it is often dysfunctional and will probably prevent many actions for political reasons ("agendas" as Rogers calls them). "Movie UN" is always a really powerful and cohesive group for some reason. I suppose it wouldn't be very amusing in movie terms to see the UN deadlocking on a vote or Russia or China or the US vetoing deployment of the Avengers to go deal with a raging supermonster/supervillain somewhere on the globe. The question of whether they will be sent somewhere they don't want to go (to do something they shouldn't), or won't be allowed to go somewhere they need to, is a viable concern if what they are doing is dealing with potential threats all over the globe which potentially threaten millions of lives. This is also an argument that many neoconservatives make of course. We are seeing that the threats the Avengers deal with are usually "real"; this is not the case of the US or other nation-states and their agendas.

But. It should be pretty clear that the UN/accords governments ignore the input of the superfriends team of Avengers almost immediately (Ross ignores Stark's file of evidence on Bucky) and that they would end up likely being a huge red tape working on shutting them down rather than using them as a superfriends team to do some good.

3) He does not generally trust the methods of others; again, seeing WS, he presents a very strong civil libertarian case against what SHIELD/Hydra are up to. "This isn't freedom, this is fear". And of course, this being a movie, his fears of what is going on turned out to be quite justified. He has a good degree of trust in the abilities of people he works and trains with closely, and that they are just as concerned that they work carefully to save lives/protect people. He does not trust others to get the job done as often and as well, that there won't be more lives lost. Or that they won't turn out to be weapons that can be turned against the innocent deliberately (as in WS). There's an argument to be made that a team of superheroes with considerable abilities and being well-equipped and trained to use those abilities together will be able to limit the possibility of damage far more than anyone else. Or may be the only ones who can stop certain plots from occurring at all (say some enormous alien invasion of NYC, or cleaning up Stark's mess from creating a psychotic AI, or unraveling and stopping nefarious plots by international bad guys bent on world domination, or whatever).

This is not a great argument in real life. But in the context of the Marvel universe, it probably makes more sense not to attach too much red tape to their activities and to give them the tip of the spear/sword/shield and decide how to use it themselves instead of someone else telling them where they can and cannot go. They aren't just a band of superpowered thugs roaming around blowing things up for kicks. They have spies and computer hackers to help them pick the right targets as best as they can.

The counterargument is strengthened by Stark's screw-ups (with his company selling weapons under the table that he had to clean up, and later himself creating Ultron, but also Vision), which is why that makes a compelling argument to him, but not to Cap. The comic also strengthens this argument in that there are bands of lesser superheroes who cause problems because they are not as skilled or admired or otherwise legitimate, and ultimately this causes more collateral damage.

4) One of the major points in the comic, and which may be obscured by the more personal nature of the film, is that one of Cap's key concerns is that he will be sent after people who do not sign on the dotted line to agree to the rules. And most likely sent after them to kill them, because these are potentially very dangerous people that inspire fear (whether deserved or not). Or at best these would be people who would be imprisoned indefinitely. This point does get made, but very subtly. In the film, Cap was about to sign the accord, until Tony brought up that Wanda was still effectively imprisoned until he signed (plus obviously Falcon and himself). This does not go over well, predictably. Wanda later makes a key point that people are going to be afraid of her no matter what she does. It doesn't actually mean much that she signs a piece of paper (or that Cap signs it for her, essentially).

5) I felt the best argument that was made in the political sense was Widow's "we still will have one hand on the wheel and we have to use it earn back their trust". But, because of the plot of the film in hunting down what ultimately ends up being the wrong man, she sees this isn't going to play out in a way they would have control or influence over what they are to be doing either and bails on it.

Daredevil Season 2

Spoilers. Obviously.

1) Fight sequences remain top notch. The staircase sequence at the tail end of episode 3 should rival anything ever done to this point. It doesn't have the same resonance for me as the fight at the end of episode 2 in season 1 (the hallway fight). But it's still ridiculous. Fights with Punisher, fights alongside Elektra, fights by Punisher/Elektra, all pretty good. Several fights with the Hand are interesting/impressive.

2) Murdock as a character isn't well constructed this season. They make a very small reference to him being okay with people being killed. But unlike season 1 where there is a long-drawn out conflict over murder/vigilantism internal to being/becoming Daredevil, there's kind of a short couple of conversations where he goes from nearly getting Elektra killed in order to avoid killing to now letting Stick/Frank/Elektra kill people alongside him and him essentially trying to kill Nobu. Because he has to? Because they're all trying to kill him and there's no legal system to deal with the Hand? Because he's suddenly fighting a war against legions of katana wielding ninjas? It isn't made clear what flipped this switch other than that he now has flipped it.

He has some really vague and poorly written sequences intersecting with his legal career. The DA putting the firm on the shit list doesn't really seem like it would have any real impact. They have really weird clients anyway and Elektra gives them a cash infusion. I don't understand how they would notice a drop-off in work or a major change in the bills. The Punisher case is handled strangely throughout, clumsily used as a plot device to give Foggy something to do to distinguish himself from Matt, and eventually leave to do more important things in future seasons/other Defenders series (one could see him popping up in Luke Cage/Jessica Jones pretty easily as another crossover character like Claire). Foggy is thereby well written therein (both in the trial and in the earlier sequence with Claire at the hospital), but Matt's "questioning" of Frank is lame, the overall handling of the case makes little sense (they basically repeatedly ignore that their client won't play ball with the defenses they have planned, and then put him on the stand?), and the entire plot line involving the DA doesn't really fly either as it feels like an extremely ham-fisted attempt to cover up something throughout.

3) Karen is also written very strangely. I did not mind her poking around in the Punisher case and developing a rapport with him. I did mind the "article" she writes at the end, which wasn't a news article. It felt more like a high school speech. I did mind that they kept using her as a plot device to place someone in danger for Daredevil or Punisher to come rescue (lazy). She nearly freaked out in the first season after someone tries to frame her, and then kill her, a fairly ordinary response to danger. So how's she going to handle nearly being killed 4-5 times in a couple of days? This was setup by basically making her kind of shrug the first time it happens (after Frank nearly kills her), but it isn't much of a changeover (much like Murdock's change on killing). I do think they've set up a Born Again plot with Fisk and her past and her knowledge of who Daredevil is. But while she has good investigative instincts, she's not a reporter. That whole plot line made no sense as a result.

Claire's departure from the hospital also is handled strangely. There's clearly some kind of setup to indicate that the Hand bought off the hospital administrators to hush things up, but we don't really explore that (nobody thinks to mention this to Murdock or Elektra?). She remains one of the better characters in the show when they use her, but her reaction to setting up a special wing to care for some curious patients on DD's behalf doesn't really make much sense. Note: I would expect her to show up in Luke Cage later in the year. Even though he doesn't need much medical care/help and he seems the most balanced ethically of the four-five major characters that have been introduced (DD, Elektra, Frank, JJ), he will be around people who will/might.

4) Frank/Punisher is by contrast pretty well constructed. He has a straightforward setup as a character. And he more or less owns most of the sequences he is in, basically the first four episodes, plus two more. They left enough unanswered about the character that it will probably be a spin-off series of its own soon enough. They gave him a pretty weak send-off in the finale, as he shows up to snipe a couple of ninjas and show off his trademark armor and then go off to do other Punisher things.

5) Elektra is often not given much to work with as far as the writing/setups for her character. I wouldn't blame the actress so much as the material being sort of meh. I think Jennifer Garner did about as well with far worse material in the previous incarnation of the character, but there's going to be more time to get this right and let her flex a little more. She doesn't really have a chemistry with DD other than that she is a catalyst for everything else (she is literally a plot device a couple of times, much like Karen is). I suspect part of the problem is simply the awkward way DD and her interact at times and her sometimes playing a (weakened) love interest and then sometimes playing an aggressive and dynamic female character. The change of paces that involves don't usually make sense and often slow down too much from fight sequences or some other dramatic event (when she kills the ninja in Murdock's apartment for instance).

She's supposed to be a super-bad-ass fighting machine, then Nobu and a few ninjas nearly take her out a couple of times so she comes off almost like a damsel in distress half the time instead of being pretty resourceful and crafty as she comes off the rest of the time. She's given a sort of wild child edge most of the time which it starts out more interesting and then goes off into "ah ha, plot mcguffin territory!" instead of that being a balanced and well-defined character trait. Contrast this with the way Catwoman may be the only character in DKR that works, in large part because there's a clearer arc for how she interacts with the city/villains/heroes despite being an anti-hero of sorts throughout in her actions (there's a similar parallel to her being fine killing/using guns and Batman finally overlooking this).

As an added bonus though Elektra looks a lot cooler most of the time. DD's suit still needs some work here and there (the look in black for most of season 1 still destroys his armored costume most of the time for looking awesome. Though getting the billy club was a nice touch).

I did like the Hand fights where they figured out DD's weaknesses and exploited them, and that he learned how to compensate, but Nobu was "generic comic book villain in charge of a shadowy organisation" for most of the series once he shows up. Several of their activities weren't really well explained. What's that giant hole doing? What were those infected kids doing other than looking like a bad Halloween movie? What are they doing with the hospital? Why are their warriors previously dead guys? Why doesn't DD buy into the mystical bullshit? (he's religious, so he already buys some mystical bullshit, and he's up against some really freaky opponents who can mask their movements, heartbeats, etc). Few of these are well examined. One imagines because of how the season ended, some of these questions will be answered and examined later. But so far they're very unsatisfying.

6) Fisk's two episode cameo was very unexpected and very good. I approve. Though it also gives some suggestion of how weakly the Nobu/Hand villain plot line was handled. And the Blacksmith arc for Punisher.

Overall I'd say something like a 6 or 7/10 for this season, and maybe 8.5/10 for the first. The finale last year maybe lowers it to 8/10, but it's much more tightly constructed as a season of events where this sprawls and doesn't do quite enough running to cover all the ground while also expending a lot of time dropping leftovers for the next series/seasons. There's a couple of very good episodes (early on there are two in particular, and one of the later episodes involves some nice touches on the morality of what's going on). But they're all good largely because they're practically Punisher episodes (or involved Fisk). Which almost certainly bodes well for creating a spin-off series, but doesn't bode well for working with the DD characters/arc.

Cultural notes, spoiler-y

Jessica Jones.

Marvel's Netflix foray continues to be pretty good. It's darker, much more clearly rated R material than the Avengers work. This was better than Daredevil in most every way (except the fight choreography in Daredevil is totally badass. It has several of the best fight sequences ever shot in my opinion). Jessica is more clearly conflicted than Murdock, she doesn't need to know how to fight most people (because she can intimidate them with raw strength), has a sometime sidekick or two, etc.

The main reason it works though is that the villain's evil genius power is Professor X crossed with the Joker. Near the center of the X-Men universe is a question that's rarely examined: what happens if someone can control minds, or influence people to do whatever they want? And further, what happens if what that person wants is petty, violent, and selfish? How do we stop them? How could we protect ourselves? Who could we trust? These are questions that cycle around continuously in the first several episodes of the season. Taken away from the comic book elements of direct mind control, there are serious philosophical and psychological questions about who is really calling the shots in our behavior and how much influence others have over us when we do things "we don't really want to", or even determining what it is we really want to do in the first place. This is referred to a few times within the series as some people almost expressing a kind of relief at not being responsible for the actions and will someone else had imposed upon them (Jessica notably does not do this, not really, but she encourages everyone around her to do so).

The show has gotten a lot of "feminist" buzz and aplomb. It's feminist in so far as they took roles for men (in one case, it was a male in the comic), and flipped it to cast a woman as the main character. They did some more extensive flipping than just casting however. Men are typically the "eye candy", in some state of undress. Women not so much (usually). Jessica's main relationship dynamic isn't with a male (Luke Cage), it's with her best friend (Trish) (In my experience, men are more likely to define a "best friend", and the person with whom they have the most dynamic relationship as someone they are also romantically attached to, although this is not universal and certainly is not the only way Hollywood tells stories, ala Kirk and Spock, Batman and Robin, etc). Her main problems, flaws within her past, are what may be regarded as more typically problems women would encounter than men (psychological abuse/control and rape, plus a super-creepy stalker), they are just amplified by superhero qualities. It's also a way of saying it doesn't matter how strong someone is (and she's very strong), someone can break into your life and do terrible things. Most importantly it says: this is not your fault that you were "too weak".

Jones' character is not particularly feminine or feminist, but she is a heroine. There are few such depictions as yet in TV or film for this generation in sci-fi or fantasy roles (Black Widow, eventually Wonder Woman or Captain Marvel, depending on how Civil War goes Scarlet Witch, Leia, another which I'll get to in a minute). Progress is occurring here, again, but it is complicated. Widow doesn't have a stand-alone franchise within the Avengers for example. So the series lets a lot of that air out that somehow a female hero doesn't carry a series or couldn't carry a movie.

There's a few choppier bits, and it seems clear the show wanted to introduce another villain arc for later on that feels like it interrupts the existing arc too much in the moment (and this is, at least tacitly, acknowledged by the show itself). But there's a lot of raw power in some of the moments where our hero is being isolated and broken down by her villainous opponent who is systematically trying to break her again, and she knows it and is fighting to find ways out of the traps.


Force Awakens.

I have more mixed reactions here.

Good:. Rey was fantastic (and is another in the lineage of superheroines listed above). Almost all of the "unanswered questions" surrounding the series coming up to the next one have to do with her, on top of her being a badass. The first sequence where Finn meets her is hilarious (she gets attacked and into a fight, he starts to run over to help, and the fight is over with them on the ground and her picking her stuff back up before he can make it a few steps).

Harrison Ford seemed to have actually pushed the "actor" button that has gone unpressed for about 20 years. He did a good turn as Solo. I think he was happy to get killed off finally. (oh right, that's the main spoiler: Han shot first. And now Han dies).

Effects are much better, it did not look like a CGI mess like the prequels. Several sequences are clearly in there just to show off. The one exception is the tentacle monsters on Han's cargo ship, I could have done without that whole sequence really.

The bar owner character was solid. I liked her as a semi-Yoda-ish channeler.

Middle: I'm not sure what to make yet of the villain. Ren wasn't terribly intimidating except in terms of raw rage. His opening sequence where he stops a blaster bolt mid-air is very impressive, but he fades down the stretch, particularly at the end when Rey easily bests him in a duel despite being mostly untrained. He therefore comes off almost like a whiny teenager. This is still a miles wide improvement over the young Vader/Anakin who came off like a block of wood for reciting terrible dialogue but it doesn't give me a clear idea where he is going next or what sort of conflict is actually going on within him. Luke was much more dynamic in this sense. There are a lot of directions Ren could go that would be interesting next. But Rey is by far more compelling in this work. A weak or bland villain is fairly common lately in film (Loki maybe one of the few good ones for comic book/sci fi purposes).

Isaac's character, Po, was okay. I could have used both more and less of him.

There were some nice moments of nostalgia. Way overdone, but some were good. The plot was lifted almost whole cloth from New Hope so it gets to be too much easily.

Max von Sydow's cameo felt totally wasted, though it was nice to see/hear him.

Poor: Dialogue can be choppy. There's at least one line that was repeated verbatim from New Hope that made absolutely no sense when it was used. It's like they edited it in at the wrong time.

Rebel/Resistance plan to take out the Star Killer base is pretty lame and not built up much. New Hope it makes more sense because they have to sneak out the droid to analyze the plans and try to destroy it based on those. The sneaking out of the droid here has to do with something else. They basically luck into the ability to attack this thing.

I'm extremely tired of watching the Rebels blow up planet destroying bases anyway. This is undoubtedly the reason Empire Strikes Back is so good is it moves on from the "we have to destroy this thing or everybody dies" plot device common to sci-fi/comic book films and centers the conflict within and between the major characters. This may have been necessary nostalgically to establish that this is in fact a Star Wars film. But it wasn't very interesting.

The first Star Killer attack doesn't really make sense or have much impact because the politics of this universe don't make much sense. Universe building failure here. Alderaan being destroyed made a lot of sense. This does not. Really the main thing Abrams seems to have done is rebuild the old Star Wars pre-prequel universe without really trying to a) understand it or b) show us something new and awesome or terrible within it. It feels more like the film wiped out the "Republic" simply to start over on the board, like the way Abrams "reset" the Star Trek universe with time travel and then moved the same old pieces around in a haphazard way without understanding the universe from which they were built.

The Stormtrooper commander (Phasma) was lame.

Finn wasn't very well scripted for my tastes, or the actor wasn't very good. I'm not sure which (or both). He ought to be the other interesting internal conflict because of his status as a defector/traitor to the First Order, but he mostly spends a lot of time running around being a plot device and generally acting like a goof.

More GoT thoughts

1) The Cersei perp walk was well executed, especially the return of the smirk face at the end when she got to the Red Keep and Qyburn was there. But it was a bit more gratuitous than needed (though not that much really either). The best parts of the walk were the initial bit (it is important to know she's naked, but not so important to keep focusing on it), then the sequences of her face as people shouted and spat at her and throwing all manner of filth, food, etc, and her feet bleeding from the tiles and distance covered. One of the secrets of storytelling is less is more, letting people fill in the blanks. Same with acting I suspect. Game of Thrones has sometimes learned this lesson but this wasn't quite in that league. This season has been fairly uneven in this respect, trying to focus more on spectacles than stories. It's really unclear still how the Sparrows/Faith Militant are this powerful in King's Landing, or why nobody is that resistant.

2) The way the Dorne subplot for the season trickled out, and the way the Stannis subplot felt rushed (though good), I'm not very optimistic about future adaptations where the writers go off "script" as it were. They still have some of the same pacing problems that they've always had in adapting Martin's material (sprawling as it is). But where in Season 4 some of the off-book changes (Brienne and Sandor Cleagane fighting, Tywin's expanded role) were good, these were all rushed and felt forced.

Stannis had been built up as a devoted father, religious fanatic but pragmatic leader. People had started to finally like the character. Then they went and had him off his daughter in a human sacrifice... and then he fights a futile and losing battle, and then gets (presumably) killed in the aftermath of the rout. That's a plot that needed a couple more episodes to unfold. It doesn't feel paced out. We don't care about the outcome very much because the "wounds" from Shireen screaming in agony are still very fresh. That sacrifice feels rushed as well. Stannis has a reputation as being pretty stubborn, and it doesn't give the impression that he's that worried about the men he commands, which isn't very much like a noted field commanded that he's supposed to be either. In the books, he is very concerned because of the sellswords and possibly mutinous troops from Northern lands and this impacts his decisions in pragmatic ways. It's still likely Shireen is killed in the books (this hasn't happened yet), and that Selyse kills herself after. But for different reasons that either would "make more sense" than what appears to be a pretty incompetent command effort to retake a valuable city after Stannis has had several very competent military moves that only fail because of bad luck (Tyrells/Lannister army shows up for example).

The Dorne plot was just all around useless and terrible. The book plot had intrigue within the Dornish court as there were several plots afoot. Myrcella is attacked, then schemed to be placed as a rival queen to Tommen, there's no Bronn/Jaime around, the Sand Snakes are still arrested as being rebellious, but one of them (not in the show) is involved in trying to use Dorne's unusual gender politics within Westoros to their own advantage rather than just standing around and acting ridiculous in order to up the boob to screen time ratio. I don't get what all that fuss was about to deal with a threat to Myrcella, who then unceremoniously ends up dead. So Jaime could have 15 seconds of "dad time"? There wasn't even any hook on which Jaime could "rebel" against Cersei, such as it is (as he does in the books). The fighting, such as it was, for this plot stopped being well scripted and believable after Bronn/Jaime's fight on the beach and the entire ordeal was boring except for that one fight and Bronn's singing. If that's the productive value of future writing, then we may have a problem moving forward here.

If it's more like the Hardhome/Jon Snow sequences, then we're fine. (Though even there, it doesn't make sense for Thorne to let him in with hundreds of wildling refugees and then stab him afterward. Just kill him or leave him out there to freeze).

3) I was on board with the changes to Arya's plot line, but they've basically turned her into another psychopath with the last two episodes. Boring. She's a killer in the books and she's still "off-book" within the House of Black and White, but she's not a psycho. I'm hoping this can be repaired with more faceless assassin training. Even if it does often have the feel of "wax on, wax off" Mr Miyagi in sandals and a dirty robe telling her to sweep floors and poison people.

4) I'm unclear where the Sansa plot was supposed to go. It's great they condensed somewhat (rather than fake Arya, we get real Sansa, this is a fine choice for a TV show as you don't need to pay another actress to be a new character), but this too felt mishandled. So she escapes (or possibly kills herself, but more likely escapes), where is she heading? What allies does she think she has? Reek/Sansa as a buddy cop travel show is probably not going to go so well with Ramsay around either.

We don't know this from the books yet either based on the plot line they have borrowed. But there there's a possibility of "safety" with Stannis, or perhaps Jon.

5) Pretty much nobody believes Snow is actually dead in the books given the way it is depicted and the moving pieces available around him to keep him around as a character. I remain dubious of this in the show as well (again, moving pieces are available, though not as many). Either they think they can kill him off and have just created a major book spoiler, or they think they can keep scenes of Kit filming for Season 6 under wraps somehow. They have kept certain things secret, such as the Shireen sacrifice scene, or the White Walker reveal at the end of Hardhome (everyone who followed the show probably knew it was coming, but the way it was depicted...). But that's different than "hey here's this well recognized actor filming in a place where we have been shooting Game of Thrones episodes". *One possibility would be having a different actor play Snow in the future also. Although that could be odd. Another would be that they just decided to off one of the more popular show characters (in a divergence from Martin's plans for the character in the books?) But this isn't likely to generate the same level of interest from fans as a return they got from Ned's beheading and the Red Wedding episodes. And it writes them into a corner if so where they favored an event over the stories surrounding and driving that event.

On Game of Thrones

This will be some comments on changes from the book versions.

"Dance of Dragons", the book within a book in the last episode, isn't just about the horrible futility of choosing sides in a civil war between family members. It's about a couple of things:

a) The lengths people go to to achieve and maintain power, even sacrificing and fighting with their family members (hmm, wonder why that was in there with Shireen reading it).

b) The fallout from the civil war included a change to the gender politics of the Game of Thrones universe; namely that women were partially cut out of the line of succession, where sons would precede them as kings instead of queens. Regardless of whether they were better suited or not for ruling a kingdom.

One additional reason that matters: The Dornish subplot in the books includes, rather than an attempt on Myrcella's life (though that's implied too), an attempt to place her on the throne instead of Tommen. We've already been shown that the Dornish don't have the same sexual and gender politics as the rest of the kingdoms through the relationship between a prince of Dorn (Oberyn) and a bastard girl (Elleria), for instance. This could still manifest in the show though it doesn't appear to be about to so far. It would have made the usually tedious and ill-shot sequences in Dorn a lot more interesting (Bronn's singing is about the only viable portion of these).

We are seeing that women are just as capable of being quality rulers and just as deluded about their ability to do so. A contest between and within the Lannister family tree over proper claim to rule would be an interesting subplot. Even as their grip on power slides rapidly out of control without this, it would hasten the demise and provide more background to the "history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes" mentality of the show, or as Dany calls it, the wheel grinding through the land.

We've also already been shown Cersei's life quest for power and then how poorly and incompetently she exercises it. And we've already been shown Dany's quest for power and how inexpertly she exercises it when she has it (Tyrion's line about killing and politics not being the same thing still matters), but also how well she learns various lessons about power, and the destructive ends that people go to wield it and whether that is appropriate or not (she tends toward not so much).

The show version just showed us the destructive ends that Stannis is willing to go to, and there are hints that this was somewhere the book version will end up going too. This isn't that far-fetched. He's being told by a set of religious fanatics that he's the one true hope for mankind, and just won a decisive victory at the Wall some weeks earlier to help cement that claim. What lengths wouldn't someone in those circumstances go to? He's been burning people alive throughout the show ever since he first appears (burning people at Dragonstone). Including Mance in the first episode of this very season. It's like people forgot this fact about him that was still in the background because he was correcting grammar and appeared to be a good (but stern) father for a few episodes after playing a badass finally by winning a battle that appeared lost. He can be terribly pragmatic and logical, but he's very single minded where his ambitions and purported destiny are concerned. "Thousands (will die)" at the Blackwater, he says during that battle. It is of no concern if the ends are met.

I'm generally very confused where people end up blaming the show runners (D&D to the internet) for things that are basically what Martin intended to do with the same material. All of this was built up throughout the season as Stannis' supposed redeeming quality, and a quality that he would have to sacrifice, and was told he would sacrifice by Melisandre to claim what is his. All they did here was heighten the emotional stakes for something terrible, as happened with the Red Wedding, and the Sansa's/Ramsay marriage and the assaults involved on her (instead of some nameless character). This is more or less what we'd expect a TV show to do.

Where I think they can be faulted is by submarining some of the other plots rather than by doing things that were always hinted at or intended. They've been touching on the gender politics of this world, but often very clumsily and without the overt signals of the past world to provide hints or clues to say that they're (probably) about to be overturned once again. They also buried the rise of some of the more egalitarian groups like the Sparrows (it's not made very clear how a bunch of religious fanatics would have amassed that much power in King's Landing even with Cersei's help), or the R'hollor worshipers, like Stannis, in the wake of a lot of violent political upheaval. We saw how horrible the road was by following Arya and the Hound around, but we haven't really seen how bad it is for regular people that they'd be turning to religious fanatics to protect them. I suspect these subplots concerning the plight of the regular folk matter quite a bit to Martin's themes, which is why several characters's POV arcs mostly consist of wandering around. These are naturally condensed because they're likely boring to portray on screen (Dany's season 2 arc showed us this), but they shouldn't be totally cut out either. That balance hasn't always been well-maintained.

Second bit I'd point out is that as much positive press as last week's episode got for delivering up fan favorite chats between Tyrion and Dany, and the half hour ice zombie slaughterfest, complete with a giant smashing wights and Jon's "I guess I've got one of those swords" look with the White Walker, the episode was not a positive one throughout or in its ending. Tyrion's "advice" to Dany mostly consisted of him telling her how wise she was in one breath and then telling her it's all going to come to a poor conclusion in the next, and the battle at Hardhome, though the crucial characters escape with their lives, is a total catastrophe. This is not a show (or a set of books) that's calculated for people to come away from an episode thinking the world they are watching is about to be spinning in the right way any time soon. It's a subversive show about the problems of both governance and the fantasy genre. And that means that happy ending scenarios are going to be few and far between.

If you think something awful is about to happen, you should be preparing for it if you're going to watch this show. Book readers have experienced this throughout, knowing that not only is some awful thing about to happen, but they know more or less what it will be, and only now are getting a few major twists and surprises.

Avengers

There be some minor spoilers

Good stuff.

1) Vision. Pretty well executed, has some of the more insightful lines. Does one awesome "surprise", which most people wanting to see it will have heard about in a day or so. Ties in well with the broader plots of the MCU. The one element I liked best there is that for a universe with so much technology, it's one of the hallmarks to say "technology isn't necessarily going to kill us all". Even with Ultron around. There's a question there about how we use technology or how we allow it to evolve and what it can do for us, or to us.

2) Hawkeye, Hulk, Black Widow all seem to have good plot arcs/threads. It's basically a Hawkeye/BW movie really. This is good because those two are probably the best two actors in the franchise and seem like they actually enjoy doing it (along with RDJ), as opposed to some of the other skilled actors/actresses that don't (Hopkins/Portman seemed really bored in both Thor movies). Thor also gets to do more it seemed like.

3) A few good lines still to make for humor (Vision, Hawkeye, and Thor have some of the better ones. Iron Man isn't so much). Some weren't landing or went on too long. Stark-Ultron dynamic sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. The fact they're still trying to be funny or sarcastic or witty once in a while is a critical break from the "no jokes" world of DC. Daredevil still had some cynical/sarcastic humor despite being way darker than this was. This was also a little darker as it was, exploring the dark side of (most of) the characters. So the humor helps, but they could have played it more like Winter Soldier or the first Avengers film.

4) Scarlet Witch has some very cool moves. Ultron has a line about how she will tear them (the Avengers) apart, and she lives up on the damage she can dish out.

5) War Machine and Falcon cameos. As sidekick characters go, they've done pretty well casting some of these. I'm sort of curious if they cut some of Falcon's scenes or not.

6) Klaw's introduction was very good also. I'm more curious how Black Panther will go as a result.

Mixed/bad stuff

1) Quicksilver was much cooler in the mid-sequence in X-Men. Expectations being that high, they didn't do much with his speed and basically gave him one line (which was not "I am Groot"), and a monologue to pass that off as character development. His sister does a little more movement.

2) I'm not sure they worked out the twins' plot line that well. They went a little too smoothly to the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" logic. I realize Captain America is supposed to be really charismatic and awesome, but he's basically the only reason they do as far as I could tell. They had a pretty compelling reason to be pissed off in the beginning.

3) Doesn't really have a firm examination of the ethics of AIs. There's a nod toward the idea that they won't necessarily be evil, but that's as far as it gets it seems like. Vision is good because...? I'm not sure where they established what makes him that way. It's boldly stated, and then he does good/heroic things in the show/not tell mantra that Marvel succeeds at where DC has been failing for a couple movies. But what actually made him different than Ultron? We get a glimpse of it at the end, but it doesn't really proceed during.

3a) Ultron basically feels like they made a Dr Doom as villain movie plot line without embracing who Ultron was at times. The trailers made him out to be a pretty creepy robot (quoting Pinocchio for example while engaged as a fanatical murder robot), but he did not go much farther. There's some nods toward why he is the way he is being crucial aspects of his creation and design. This also means the villain isn't very interesting. Or at least feels like he could have been much more interesting. He really quickly goes off the rails and we don't really get why for a while other than "audience expects an intelligent computer to be homicidal". They've been struggling on the villains other than Loki so far.

4) Most of the fights were messy/choppy. The first one right off the bat was pretty smoothly executed, and did a fair amount of showing how they've worked as a team since some of the improvised cooperation in the Battle of NY in Avengers 1. Later fights felt choppier. The Hulk-Hulkbuster fight wasn't too bad, but the Cap-Ultron one was rougher, more like a Batman fight. The fights in the freighter also were meh. Daredevil and Winter Soldier may have ruined that expectation on how the fighting can go in a superhero movie.

5) Whedon has a pretty firm dialogue stamp. Which occasionally means that some of the characters feel off from previous movies (that he wasn't involved). Captain America in particular comes off much differently than he did in Winter Soldier, and also Thor.

6) I'm guessing some of the stuff on the cutting room floor would have helped unpack some of the jumbles on character development or a couple plot arcs (Thor's is kind of abbreviated at times). Supposedly the DVD release will have all this cut stuff in it.

On balance, it's still a very entertaining film. It's popcorn stuff, if you like popcorn. But it's not much more than that. Winter Soldier and to some extent Daredevil have these broader social nods to things actually going on (drone warfare, surveillance states, corruption/brutality by police, etc) that make them feel a little meatier than a standard comic book film. This doesn't so much. It's basically Guardians of the Galaxy but with less music and more Avengers.

Cultural note

Daredevil. It's pretty good on balance. Some spoilers.

Good

The fighting sequences, especially some of the earliest ones are excellent. The single shot sequence fight is on par with some of the best choreographed fighting in any film (Oldboy, the Korean version, is typically looked at as one of the standards there). It's not as long as the single shot in True Detective last year, but that didn't require as many beats in a concentrated arc either. Most of the Marvel fights revolve around a lot of CGI characters (Hulk, Iron Man, Thor) doing CGI things, which are fun, sometimes even a comic relief (Hulk smashing the puny god Loki for example) but not the same as watching actual human beings doing moderately impressive things and taking the physical and emotional punishment of trying to do so. One exception was the fights and stunts in Winter Soldier, which were a lot crisper and easier to follow as a result. This was generally better than that with the caveat that most of them took place in often poorly lit sequences involving a guy in a dark set of clothes. These were still usually much better than most of Batman's fights in the Nolan movies, by a comparison to a darkly lit and ominous detective/crime fighter. It looks very smooth and well-thought out as a demonstration of a skilled hand-to-hand fighter (occasionally using clubs and improvised throwing weapons).

The darkness itself comes off as almost like a character at times. The way lighting and shots are constructed gives a feeling of almost perpetual night to much of the scenes. Since the main character is a blind guy, I would assume this is partly deliberate as a nod to that on top of the rather grim story line being itself an oppressive variety of darkness.

There's not very much of the campy-self-referential humor of the movie (which was basically a series of set piece fights rather than a film with a plot), or the other Marvel properties. There's some, but not much. It's way darker and bloodier than almost anything comic book related anywhere Watchmen is a much closer proxy universe than Guardians of the Galaxy. Even the Nolan Batman trilogy is much closer really. That makes it distinctive from other Marvel projects so far. There are a few tie-ins to the broader Marvel universe (a couple references to Hulk/Thor/Stark), but it basically stands on its own territory and stakes it out instead.

One element that's heavily involved in the plot is that Daredevil is basically a blind guy who moves pretty well in a fight and has very evolved senses as a superpower that help him dodge or anticipate threats. He does not have a suit of armor that makes him invincible against bullets and knives, or carry a magical hammer and come from another realm. So he gets beat up and stabbed and otherwise wounded much more easily. That means there's a lot of potential consequences and risks to when he wanders into a fight. It provides a touch of realism or at least pragmatism to the story line.

The performance for Fisk feels like it draws a bit on Brando's Kurtz/Vito Corleone, but with more violence of his own. There's a reasonably interesting dichotomy between what Murdock/Daredevil sounds like and what Kingpin/Fisk sound like in their vision and even possession of the city over which they are contesting each other, and also how both seem to have these disparate parts of their grand versions of idealism internally feuding with a darker pragmatic approach. This is distinguished from the Joker-Batman dichotomy because at no point does a version of the world Batman is seeking to create resemble the version of Joker's even though their methods differ. When the cultural views of the villain and hero look not so far apart, things get blurry and dark as to whether their methods are justified (Catwoman vs Batman is more like this example).

Stick's cameo appearance was funny. In part because there's suddenly a cynical asshole (brutally cruel almost) in the show countering all these idealistic crusaders. That and a couple other bits should set up a second season nicely as well with an obvious set of new villains, on top of the enemies he'd already have made from season 1.

Mixed or bad stuff

Daredevil as a character that they're drawing on is the Frank Miller early 1980s version. When NYC was a crime-ridden hellscape essentially (that also appears heavily in the Batman universe). While aspects of the dysfunctional governance of a large city-state still fit the times today, for example the possibility of corruption or violence from police sitting on the throat of a city rather than a helpful agent guarding the city fits in nicely with stories like Cleveland or Ferguson or Miami Gardens, the idea of a city that is so distraught and downtrodden that it requires not just a vigilante, but a brutal vigilante on the scale that the Miller version of Daredevil represents is missing now as there are few places where crime is that desperate a social ill that vigilantes become automatic heroes. Bernhard Goetz was considered a hero at the time by many people for the subway shooting he committed. Now he's looked on a little differently (and apparently feuding with home squirrel care advice and requirements). The show by dint of this grimmer reality gets to embrace a much darker version of anti-hero than usual. Which is certainly interesting as a means of cultural exploration, but presents certain challenges.

Most notably he essentially tortures almost every criminal/corrupt cop he meets. Since DD can basically act as a human lie detector, this seems like a very strange way to get information is to beat it out of people (and in a couple of cases, stab it out as well). To be sure one might often need to fight people in combat when dealing with criminals as a vigilante and there's plenty of that "ordinary" violence in the series, this is different. One of the most successful elements to me of the Nolan Batman universe is that this isn't demonstrated as a very effective means of getting the information he needs. Not only does Batman show up at one point to prevent someone else from torturing a suspect, when he does so himself, he doesn't typically get what he needs (Joker deliberately lies to him, and the mob basically tells him off eventually instead of giving him anything). What he does instead is employ a lot of complicated and often high-tech detective tools in order to figure out what's going on and who is behind it, for which some these tools and methods have their own questionable ethics. There's a few nods to this with Daredevil where he uses his sensory abilities to figure things out, but not many so far. I'd be more interested in the moral or ethical complications of a man who can basically determine if anyone is lying at a whim or effectively spy on anyone they want, and so on. One of the background themes of X-Men is the morality of having someone like Charles Xavier around and basically trusting that he will use his powers ethically and instruct others to do likewise, which isn't something everyone trusts to be the case. That becomes a challenging hypothetical ethical argument to entertain. The moral juice available from watching someone somehow magically decide someone is evil and then beat them up for information purposes so they can go find someone more important to beat up instead is much less compelling. Presumably it carries a degree of emotional satisfaction to the "eye for an eye" type crowd. It doesn't do much for me. The degree of brutality in the criminals being depicted is to be somewhat expected (kidnapping children, execution via car door slams, escape from prison using rib bone shards, etc), and some degree of response makes sense. But there isn't a very long examination of whether the lengths gone to are too far. There's only a hint of a conscience to these questions despite an overtone of religious examination supposedly going on.

Foggy isn't typically very interesting as either a foil for Murdock's better half idealism or as a comic relief character. Page comes off as more interesting mostly because we never really see her back story (it's implied at several points that she has had an... interesting life). Foggy's we see, but it's basically just "here's this guy Matt hangs out with because they were college roommates". He does however seem more practically engaged in the process of fighting worthy court battles, translating this idealism into legal battles rather than fisticuffs in the dark corners of the city. Maybe that will play out better for Murdock over time, but he spent most of the season scrambling over rooftops engaging in fisticuffs, so it doesn't interact as much as it could. They also seem to have reconciled this difference rather too casually.

List of standard disclaimers that probably should not be used

1) "Support the troops" - This is typically used when someone opposes a military deployment (a war). When someone opposes a war, that person should say that no, they don't support the troops. Because the troops are doing something they oppose. They mostly, and more properly oppose the political and policy decisions that resulted in someone demanding the troops do something they felt was inappropriate, destructive, or generally foolish and not helpful to American interests and security. But basically we should not say blandly "I support the troops". Because that implies we support the mission they are deployed for.

2) "I regret offending people" style non-apology apologies. If what you said or did was what you wanted to say or do, you don't actually regret that someone was pissed off by it. What you regret if it offended people and that reaction upset you was that you said or did something stupid (and were caught doing so). In most cases, this is not actually a regret people are experiencing that others were offended. They just want people to shut up about it and move on. I appreciate that these public displays of passive aggression in response to accumulated grievances are sometimes amusing and even warranted as a way of getting back at such complaints, but if you didn't want to apologize, it may be better to just not acknowledge it at all than to make an insincere attempt to mollify some people. If you really do want to apologize, then find a way to say it that acknowledges you may have actually been striving to learn and understand the complaints of others rather than stating the mere existence that there are complaints and grievances against some statement or action. Which you apparently either don't care about or understand.

3) "If you don't have something nice to say don't say anything at all" - Almost nobody actually follows this. Our primary form of moral reinforcement as a species is dishing dirt on other people or complaining about other people. This is far, far more common than hearing about something awesome someone else did as an exemplar. We should admit this hypocrisy and instead of telling people what not to do in as far as not saying bad things, we should strive to pay more compliments to balance out our tendency to try to do violence to other people's reputations in the trading of gossip and information on the flaws and peccadilloes of others. (Our own flaws are a different variety of currency).

Addendum point to 3: This also infects superhero movies. Where it is far more common for such movies to tell us "this person is a hero" than to actually attempt to demonstrate it as an example to hold up toward. Batman in some respects may be the exception and GotG also had elements of this. Superman movies have not (at least not for a while). The most "heroic" character was typically Jor-El, and not Superman. One reason for this is that movies that involve self-sacrifice, or acts of devotion to and protection of others, probably won't involve as many explosions. Science fiction movies have struggled with this also since probably Empire Strikes Back and some of the earlier Star Trek films (since the Borg, it's been lackluster there too). What's typically portrayed instead of acts of heroism is acts of recklessness that because of the deus ex machina and plot armor effects, are pulled off. Showing exemplars in media is apparently very hard to do, and I would bet this is because we don't spend very much of our time and energy talking about and holding up exemplary behavior in others.

4) "Some of my best friends are.." First. They're not some of your best friends. Everyone knows that in most cases except the person saying it who is holding them up as a token talisman that somehow excuses something else (using another person to protect yourself is not typically viewed an act of friendship). Second, it's irrelevant as the topic is typically either some nonsensical statement Person A has made that doesn't involve or impact their "good friend" Person B or the topic is some variety of public policy position which is informed not by a random sampling of people potentially impacted by the policy but by Person B style friends who have become so by not saying anything inoffensive to which you would disagree (in your presence). Most of us do not select diverse grouping of friends so that we can say "some of my best friends are". We select actually fairly homogeneous groups of friends who affirm our pre-existing beliefs rather than challenge them. What happens when we befriend people who are often of different and distinct beliefs and views is we may adopt portions of their views or moderate some of our own more extreme views (this is typical of people who suddenly realize they have an atheist or gay friend). Most people do not however set out to meet people for the purpose of having a set of friends that includes "person from stereotypical group B", and "person from stereotypical group X, which is very different from our group C", this is an accident of our lives and is not a defence of having said anything about any other group of people.

5) "Police have a difficult job, etc". This might be partially true in the same way the "support the troops" mantra has a grain of truth to it, but there are several problems with it. First it obscures that one of the reasons police have a "difficult job" is that current laws are often expansive, covering a great deal of human activity, and as such allow a great deal of leeway for police to detain and arrest people, where if laws were not as expansive police would have less latitude in who they arrest and detain. But police also have a great deal of discretion not to arrest and detain people by that same token and are therefore choosing to arrest and detain people, or choosing which people they wish to arrest and detain and which they will ignore. Some of that exercise in prejudice will be fueled by actual biases and animus toward others. Second some of the same laws should protect police already if they do things which are appropriate in the context of their duties. Self-defence law for instance should allow for an officer to have killed someone in certain contexts, which are mostly the same contexts that would permit any ordinary citizen to do so. Police are also often further insulated by law and by contracts and training in the language of the law from penalties for making inappropriate arrests or a variety of citizen complaints about their work on top of the disturbing lack of penalties for acts of violence and brutality. Third police themselves have made their jobs much harder by accommodating some of the poor incentives to enforce some laws (vice crimes and a variety of discretionary crimes that typically issue fines) by tending to come off as an occupying force in many neighbourhoods and towns across the country in the methods and tactics they use to enforce the law. "Good officers" deserve little public sympathy if they typically try to not only protect these other officers for indecent behaviors but reward it.

Mr Williams

Now batting.

One strange part is there are a lot of Dead Poet's Society references. He was good in the film. I have no issues there, and it's even a decent to good movie (although it becomes a bad Julia Roberts movie later). I enjoy the insurgent campaign of teaching being waged as a fan of the idea of teachers more as motivators who capture interest in a subject and spread it around as an infection to students rather than as instructors who drone on about mechanical processes that we must master. As much as the form of instructing poetry as an insurgent campaign appeals to me as a writer of bad poetry (sometimes), poetry is more complicated as an art to learn to appreciate than just getting the feeling down. There's a flow and lyricism to writing, of all kinds, that doesn't come easily for everyone and is harder to do than just through being "inspiring". The alternative stuff mode of teaching it was awful of course. But art is hard and a complicated subject to portray. Writing is more so because it lacks a visual component. Poetry, because it often relies so much on allusion and imagery can get around this (and because we so rarely engage with modern poets, they're all dead anyway as far as most of us are concerned. People rarely conceive of music as poetry, for some reason, possibly just not enough high quality rap is being consumed on a popular level). Even in the film, the principal measure of artistic expression in the plot is someone wanting to act. Not someone wanting to write poetry or music. That's a curious angle for a film to draw many references back to now; the apparent futility of an entire endeavor of human artistic expression. In spite of its many extolled values, it is treated like a hobby than a passion. That bothers me a bit as a reference point for his career. Whitman should stand on his own. He doesn't need people standing on desks to remind us of that. (Williams made a lot of references to Whitman in his films, probably for that reason).

I'm a little confused why Good Will Hunting isn't getting referenced as much in popular references I see. Maybe it wasn't as drop dead funny (neither was Dead Poets). Maybe it's too close to the subject matter of loss. But it's immediately where I went to. Maybe I just had a stronger connection to this film than that. He won an Oscar, and he was very good in it, and we're probably seeing why. The best performances of many actors/actresses are when they tap their own reality a little more instead of putting on a mask (that's not the "best acting", but the best performances).

The main issue with evaluating Williams as an actor or comedian (beyond the obvious that it limits our evaluation of someone as a complete person to look only at the body of work they produced for public consumption), is this: He would be the person who was probably the funniest person in any room. But it would be hard to translate the joke later to retell it and explain why it was funny. It's like every other bit was an inside joke that spawned from the moment. It might still be funny later. It will make "you" laugh later. But you won't be able to make someone else laugh unless they were there, or shared in it. The secret to that working is that all of us, I think, want to be funny like that. To make it look like a reflex, a reaction, but actually drive the situation and conversation forward and to say something that people look back on and remember. Even if they have a hard time explaining why they do.

And the darker secret to that working is that's exactly why we would want to do it; so nobody will pay that much attention to us for a while. They will laugh, they will enjoy, they will embrace, and they won't look that much harder. Somebody funny doesn't inspire us to ask "what's wrong with them?" versus somebody morose and sullen and even cynical. And yet the funny man often feels no differently, no less alone or confused, than the sullen one. He just provides a better mask that the rest of us can enjoy.

GoG

1) Comes in about around Iron Man 1 for me. Behind Avengers and Captain America 2 among the Marvel set of films. Maybe X2 and of course the first two Nolan Batman films are ahead after that among the superhero set generally.

2) Script is a little sloppy plotwise, kind of like Thor 2 was. They made up for it by being way funnier (Thor 2 did well to have little touches of this, so they're clearly learning not to take it that seriously). Avengers had a much tighter script and Cap had a much tighter plot and for a "comic book" movie an usually serious theme (similar to Nolan's Batman work or the first two X-Men films). This has a serious theme (dealing with loss), but it isn't as cleverly pulled off as Avengers or Batman Begins, say.

3) Marvel has really poor villains outside of the X-Men set and Loki it seems like (eventually Thanos). Ronan was a badass yes, but like the Winter Soldier or Kursed we have no idea who he is really and what or where his motivations of hatred come from (comic book fans do, but sometimes it needs to be spelled out in films). At least the Dark Elves and Hydra we got a brief and solid back story. Winter Soldier they get around to it, very late in the film. Ronan they do not. It is just assumed, correctly, his intentions are to destroy people and planets.

4) Did I mention it was funny? Other than Gamora, they all have plenty of funny bits (although she gets a random Kevin Bacon reference, so there's that). Including Groot. The sociopathic raccoon (Rocket) worked very well.

5) There are a lot of easter eggs at the Collector's.

6) I don't think the stinger scene at the end of the credits was worth much. It's very funny. But I don't see it developing into a film or more than a set of cameos like the persistent Stan Lee gag.

7) Update: This point occurred to me later, and probably shouldn't have. The film spent a surprising amount of time being actually concerned that people were dying in their quest to save a planet/city. Not merely saying "lots of people are going to die", but the "this actually concerned me that some random non-canon character Y was killed". Some of the other Avengers films have had this in some measure (Avengers touched on it a few times in NYC). But not quite to this degree. Considering the blockbuster action film of the modern era typically flattens half of a city (and presumably kills or maims thousands, if not tens of thousands), this was refreshing. It stood in stark relief to the terrible Man of Steel Superman film in that it actually felt like these guys cared what they were doing and we weren't just told they are "heroes". Show, not tell.

X-Men thoughts

1) It was solid. I do not think it was on anything like Avengers level as some are saying, or Captain America 2 level which is likewise up there. It wasn't as clever of a script and wasn't as neatly tied together plot wise. It did however bring together most of the different pieces well for what it was. I'd still put X-2 as the best X-Men movie. It was cleaner and much simpler and still holds up as one of the best comic book films period. This was good, but not great.

1a) They went back to the DNA intro for the credits too. I approve.

2) X-3 appears, somewhat correctly, to be virtually ignored in canon other than one critical scene (Jean, which has come up twice now). It was rather crucial from that movie that the viewing public kind of knows coming into this one "oh yeah, uhm, Professor X, he's not dead. And Magneto still has his powers". Because they really only get that from a stinger scene at the end of a bad X-Men movie (the aforementioned third one) so the public is liable to be somewhat confused as to why these characters are alive and kicking since not everyone watched it or saw the stinger sequence.

Even with that rather important detail involved, it does seem pretty clear X-3 is just a bit of trash thrown off the side whenever possible.

3) They did do a pretty quick job introducing the new characters and had a good deal of fun with the powers. Bishop, Blink, Quicksilver in particular (plus Storm and Magneto get some fun bits). Sunspot and Warpath are basically introduced, but not even named that I remember (Blink wasn't named but seemed busier and more helpful). Which is fine really as we're mostly exploring Mystique/Magneto/X triangle with Wolverine around but the previous X1-X2 films had a lot of attention for Rogue, Storm, Jean, or Iceman as more full characters alongside the main lines. There wasn't much of that here, really zero character development occurs outside of X and Mystique.

4) Quicksilver is probably the only funny part of the movie. Which is an issue as Wolverine is usually funny and comic books (other than Batman) lend themselves to be somewhat humorous. I don't think there was much humor. The last one had some more bits of references here and there and funny routines that helped it along with the weaker characters. This has maybe a couple of funny routines involving Wolverine (not setting off a metal detector).

5) Lawrence makes a much better Mystique than Romijn. But she might just be given more to work with. Really other than the X-Magneto dynamic and Wolverine, she's the most interesting character in the films but they hadn't explored why that was until these new ones. Because she's the only character who stands in the middle pulled between the two main characters and their polar opposite views. Like a Catwoman to Batman routine. Everyone else has a pretty clear stance, even Wolverine. She has a more mysterious and mixed stance, especially in these last two films. Someone who can be anyone in the world has a very unusual role in philosophical and ethical terms and it's really only referenced once in the first films as a motivating factor (the second one when she talks to Nightcrawler). It's getting a lot more airtime now.

6) I realize Shadowcat has that power in the comic that the film is based on... but it might be nice to know when it shows up or why in the film. It's just kind of there. They explain what it is she's doing, but there's no explanation where it comes from. There's a stretch there from "a little girl who can walk through walls" to "woman who can send people's consciousness back into time".

7) They rather conveniently eliminated the bulk of the more annoying or useless characters from the last film. Which was most of them. There's a couple cameos, but Beast and Mystique are the only side characters from that group I'd prefer to keep seeing around and that they developed enough to keep around.

8) The stinger at the end is promising. I'll be curious how that plays out.

brain dump

1) Game of Thrones so far has been good. With much going on. (Spoilers hence)
a) Arya finally gets back on the scoreboard. The Hound is still a poor companion to travel with, but better than most. As he might say
b) Baelish has a rather spooky reappearance and continued ruthless pragmatism. "Gold can buy a man's silence for a time. A bolt to the heart buys it forever" is not quite as good as the chaos is a ladder speech.
c) Joffrey, in case people didn't know, dies. Commencing most of the season's whodunit routine to kick in (but immediately setting that in place with a "I did it" routine that everyone on the show must then figure out, poorly)
d) Dany continues to be a badass. Dragons are going to be a big problem soon.
e) Dorn sounds like a fun place. This might have something to with Oberyn having an orgy every other scene he is in though.
f) Tywin's use of the Socratic method to school poor Tommen was worthy of Socrates too. The Socratic method is designed to get people to arrive at what you want them to arrive at, not to reason together. "Oh you have listed a virtue, here let me find the worst possible exemplar of that virtue. Pick another" is a fun game for a self-serving power-mad man. That entire scene with Cersei's nearly silent protests is very reminiscent of the sequence in season 2 with Arya telling him anyone can be killed for how well the silence speaks.
g) I think they mangled up the Jamie-Cersei scene. Badly. I have a hard time understanding the "well she doesn't want it, but then she does" as something that isn't a rape or isn't a problem for both of their characters' arcs. This has a lot to do with how it is depicted. I do not think it was somehow intended to calculate a degree of sympathy for Cersei. The previous sequence with Tywin was. That was not (she was asking Jamie to kill their brother after all). And I do not think it was intended to calculate a degree of "oh yeah, Jamie's a bad guy" either. His arc in the book makes more sympathetic than almost anyone (Tyrion, Dany, Jon, and Sansa being the possible exceptions).


2) I do not have a strong opinion in the great ranchergate standoff or whatever it is. From what little attention I have paid it, it seems like a conflict between the power of states to tax and the power of states to create takings, both of which to be enforced by court rulings, versus the recognition of states of the rights of individuals to own property and to use that property unmolested without unwarranted government seizure. Despite this apparently libertarian-ish theme, it is not crossing my typical political radar screen and isn't so over-the-top sensationalized in what I do see that it commands unreasonable quantities of media attention like the Malaysian airliner disappearing to make it unavoidable as a story.

In truth I do not find it very interesting except as another narrow anecdotal point about armed people who don't want to pay taxes. The fact that there are apparently snippets of him making absurdly racist and ignorant statements about slavery and the welfare state does considerable violence to any contention that he should be regarded as a heroic figure in this context.

My mostly-libertarian-ish politics may find resistance to government incursions worthwhile, but I also don't think it worthwhile to oppose the precepts of the existence of property as a commodity, which in effect requires the existence of those states to protect it. Eminent domain abuse or the related concept of asset forfeiture laws are very common issues that run through libertarian threads, but they typically are ignored in coverage where they are most commonly used (eg, against poorer people or minorities). If this entire hullabaloo encourages more reporting and coverage of such things where they impact all people, and not just favored classes such as reasonably wealthy ranchers as private land owners, I would consider that a success. I do not think most of the people cheering this on would.

The culture demands a commentary

1) McCutcheon. I would place myself in the camp that says this is a refinement and potentially an improvement over Citizens United. I was in a camp that was already roughly in favor of CU though, and have not been persuaded that it negatively impacted national elections. It's possible it does violence to local and state elections by promoting more extreme candidates. But to me those were elections that were already in grave trouble from public choice theory problems as local and state politics are cheaper to influence and the solution was not going to be limiting the amounts of money involved or the sources of that money. The problem to me was never about "corporate personhood" or "corporate free speech", but rather the ability of government to limit speech by placing limits upon the sources and amounts of funds for political campaigns. I have a hard time seeing how transferring funds to organisations advocating for positions one agrees with, or ideals one would like to see promoted, is not a manner or method of speech that was being constrained. I don't care that it was a corporation or unions or advocacy non-profit corporations who are the ones paying for that promotion.

The main improvement is that money in the actual political parties is intended to be more transparent. SuperPACs are intended to be somewhat also, but in practice have become ways to obscure sources and intentions of funding for political advocacy. If Sheldon Adelson or George Soros wants to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a political goal, I would rather that we in the swelling masses of not super rich people would be able to know about it and that it be clearly connected to the fortunes of particular candidates or issues that we may decide whether those are candidates or issues we wish no longer to support, or wish more to support, on these grounds.

What I don't like is the strengthening of political parties. I'm not a fan of the two-party model. I'd rather we just have greater and greater transparency on the money used as speech that is clearer what a political entity wants to achieve by that speech. I'm somewhat less concerned about who that entity is so much as what they are saying, what policies they support, and who they support as elected officials.

2) The Mozilla-internet situation.

Speaking of people spending money on advocacy.

This I view somewhat differently and skeptically than say, Duck Dynasty. Silicon Valley has it's own sometimes conservative, sometimes ultra liberal, culture surrounding the operations of major firms there, but so far as I am aware, it does not as a whole tend to stake out an notable-anti-gay agenda in the treatment of consumers and employees either. So the idea that the CEO of one of those firms gave money to an anti-homosexual agenda some years ago is notable in that it is probably an outlier and does demand some explanation and response by that figure to a consumer and investor public.

Here's where it becomes a strange comparison to the vilification of the words and actions of social conservatives however. What has he said since then? If we consider that various states have since overturned or passed pro-gay marriage and civil union laws, that obstructions by the federal government have ended, and that various major political figures have "evolved", it would be reasonable to give some benefit of the doubt that these may or may not be currently held views, and it would be reasonable to reward any evolution, however slight, toward a more progressive or inclusive and tolerant view. It is also reasonable to presume there has been no evolution, and that these views are not recanted but rather the topic changed to the behavior of the company suggests perhaps there has not been a grand personal revelation amending his views.

It is less reasonable, but still plausible given the actions of the company, to extend a benefit of the doubt that opposition to gay marriage in a legal sense was not also including a general hostility to the treatment of homosexuals. That is to say, that our understanding of the opposition to same-sex marriages is sometimes very narrow itself and that this makes it more difficult than it needs to be to make reforms and improvements to the status quo. Even as it rapidly changes. The likelihood is indeed greater than there will be many people caught in a middle ground of their own personal views or discomforts and misgivings which may be small or slight, and willing to adapt to overcome these failings, but finding it more difficult by an environment which does not permit these misgivings to be voiced and debated that they may be reformed and advanced and overcome. These views are distinct from the great waterfowl debacle late last year, where these are current views, hardened by ancient religious textual interpretations and expressed openly and consistently.

The one we may find can be forgiven, permitted, and accepted over time. The other is not so much in a view moving toward a tolerant and egalitarian society and will ultimately, if not already, become a regressive and vilified view, unacceptable in polite society. This can be itself unfortunate, but the level of misfortune is far less significant if people disassociate themselves from current views and expressions of co-workers, family and friends, employees, corporations, and so on than if we must also disassociate ourselves from every past view and expression, and can accept or allow no progression or apology in the development and acceptance of other human beings in dealing with other human beings who are in some manner distinct from ourselves. I do not know if Mr Eich privately holds views as repugnant as those of the duck people clan, or those of the Phelps clan, if one wants to find ever more repulsive social expressions, or if he ever held such views and has realized the error of his ways. But it does not appear that he has given those views a public airing either, so it seems strange to assess that he does, or does still on the basis of actions taken some years ago, versus actions which were more supportive of same-sex couples and relationships through company policies he supported or permitted as an executive.

It does not however offend me greatly that his donation to a particular cause, and his lack of presenting some form of evolving view in contrast with them, attracted the attention of consumers and they organised in some format to protest or boycott the company on his the matter of his appointment. This seems like a use of speech that is permissible also, even if it not always wise or not always this effective.

3) Captain America 2. I'd say that other than the Avengers movie itself, this was probably the best of the Marvel movies so far. The last round of them did much better than the previous one (IM3>IM2, Thor and Cap 2 > originals). Iron Man 1 still has some competition on it but that one had a unique advantage in that there were not really other characters upon which to build a plot so it revolved entirely around the most interesting character making things up as he went essentially. This has a plot and gives people some interesting things to do instead. Spoilers ahead, some.

Good:
Lots of little touches to the comic book fan, couple of amusing easter eggs for other films (Jackson's most famous role being among them). There are some obvious lines being set up for the future run of the Captain America-Avengers films (even without the obvious X-Men-ish crossover set up in the end credits).

Fight choreography. Considering they use a UFC fighter for one of the fights, that might have something to do with it. But it's generally much crisper and longer than the slapstick insanity of Thor or Hulk running around hitting things. It's essentially a super-hero martial arts movie in parts. Nobody has the speed of a Bruce Lee (or Stratham or Li) for a fight but it also doesn't have to go all-out CGI for once to be entertaining.

Black Widow. They gave her a lot to do and made much of it more spy-like beyond running around in a war zone as in Avengers. Which finally made her more of a character. She still hits and shoots people of course.

Falcon. Mackie was very good in that role. That becomes an actual character in his work. Iron Patriot/War Machine/Rhodes still isn't quite in that role in the Iron Man movies after 3 appearances, other than "Iron Man sidekick". Falcon already is in that role in half of a movie with Captain America with a back story and motivations and abilities.

Plot was basic and predictable, but the film thematically touched on the "why is the government spying on us?" and "how do we know who to blow up" problems of many current government policies. Other than Iron Man (with the sort of war-monger set of the US selling weapons abroad or to domestic sources and in Iron Man with the government trying to seize Stark's invention), and some quips in Avengers here and there, Marvel films have been distressingly, even grossly, apolitical. Considering that many other big budget action films end up with some stupid and completely bizarre political views getting a lot of air time (anything made by Michael Bay for example), it was nice to get at something approaching a perspective in between things going boom.

This basically results in Captain America: civil libertarian. As if he would be anything else.

Funny. Not as funny as Iron Man or Avengers, but it lacked a good comic actor/foil for that without RDJ/Stark around.

There are some touches, as with IM3 on the sort of emotional toll these missions and world-saving accomplishments take. It's connected here to Rogers/Captain and Wilson/Falcon losing their friends in combat, which is undoubtedly a major part of the stress and emotional pain of fighting wars. And also the questions over who and what you are fighting for, whether it was worth it, what did it really do to make the world a better place?

Bad:
Ending felt like it tapered off rather than resolved much (Iron Man 3 felt this way too). There's some touching on Snowden vs NSA style activities, but it feels like they left that unresolved. Presumably if Captain America had leaked what Snowden did, or had what Snowden had, we in the public might think of the motives in a different or clearer way than we do about Snowden, but it's unclear to me that this should be enough to protect even him from the government reprisal.

Redford lends some old style connections to the 70s era paranoia of government activities films (3 Days of the Condor comparisons are overdone, but it is similar in some respects). But he doesn't seem all that engaged or committed to some ideology he is to be portraying. That makes the villain part more reliant on some other bit players to be the sinister or dangerous parties. Winter Soldier himself was not an actual character so much as an occasional source of explosive combat. (yet). Between those two, it lacks the punch of having Loki or Joker or Red Skull from the first film as a chaotic foil against which the hero is pitted and must stop on a philosophical grounding.