Somewhere Different Now

I saw Captain America: The Winter Soldier last weekend.  I enjoyed it quite a lot.  Steve is a character I've come to appreciate much more after reading Marvel fanfic.  I like that Steve's chief reason for being a superhero is because he's a good person who believes in doing the right thing, not because of daddy issues or personal trauma or the need to make amends or alien paternalism. Steve's fundamental decency and idealism are among his greatest strengths, even in a world that is full of betrayals, but I am also glad that the film is also sympathetic to those with a more realpolitik outlook like Natasha and Fury.


Speaking of Fury, I was genuinely worried that they'd killed him off for a little while, which just goes to show that I'm apparently still not all that genre-savvy for comics.

I was surprised by how little of the Winter Soldier there was in this Winter Soldier film.  They saved Steve's realization that it was Bucky for late in the movie, which meant there really wasn't room for a full redemption arc or more than a brief look into his character.  I would have liked to see more, but I thought what they showed worked well provided they do more with him in a later film.  Incidentally, one of the people I was watching the film with apparently hadn't known that the Winter Soldier was Bucky, so when Steve named him, she gasped and jumped.  It was pretty entertaining to watch.

Natasha is one of my favorite Avengers, so I was glad that she had a pretty big role in this.  (I still think she NEEDS a movie of her own!)  She works nicely as a foil to Steve.  I really like them as friends.  They have very different personalities, but their skill sets complement each other and they share a certain sense of being an outsider in this place and time.  It was interesting to see some of her emotions come through in reaction to Fury's apparent death.  The film's single greatest mystery centers around Natasha:  when they were holed up at Sam's house, how the hell did her hair go from damp and curly to laser-straight in the next scene?! It sure didn't look like she arrived carrying the hair care products necessary to achieve that, and Sam wouldn't have anything of the sort on hand for himself.  I guess you can say that an ex left stuff at his house (I assume ex rather than current girlfriend because earlier he was looking for Steve to help him impress a receptionist, I think), but that really was a discontinuity that the majority of women I've talked to about the movie noticed.  (It occurs to me that I don't think I've talked about it to any men other than my dad, so I don't know if there is a strong gender correlation in how bothered one is by magic hair straightening.)

I loved Falcon.  Sam is a very fun and sympathetic character, and I thought the film utilized him well. Also, Anthony Mackie seems super jazzed about the part in all his interviews, which is really entertaining and heartwarming to see.

I liked the movie's themes about the immorality of extrajudicial, preemptive killings and the fact that safety and security shouldn't be achieved at the cost of basic rights.  I do find it hard to believe that Hydra, an organization with Nazi roots, could recruit and place quite so many people within S.H.I.E.L.D., but whatever.  One of my favorite scenes was the random S.H.I.E.L.D. tech people standing up against the Hydra goons.  Meanwhile, I'd fallen about six episodes behind in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., so this movie has given me lots of motivation to catch up and see how the show is affected.  I'm not caught up yet, so please no spoilers.

And now for something completely different!

April is National Poetry Month.  I usually try to post some poems, and I've neglected that so far.  Here's one by Simone Muench I just discovered online (link.  Bizarrely enough, it's on a tattoo blog I randomly stumbled upon that is doing a month of posting poet's tattoos along with their work.)  This poem is a cento, meaning that it's composed of fragments taken from other people's works and arranged together to make a collage of a poem. Because my response to mention of wolves is predictable, it makes me think of series 1 of Doctor Who.

The question of the wolves turns & turns.

My grand plans of posting lots of poetry have sadly fallen by the wayside.  Well, the month is scarcely over half over, and here's another poem.

Mary Oliver is probably my favorite contemporary poet.  Today's poem, "Wild Geese," is one of her better known poems.  I find it comforting when I am feeling self-critical, overwhelmed, or generally down.

Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver

( You do not have to be good [...] )