Captain America rewatch

So apparently there's a controversy over how the villains in Captain America are HYDRA instead of Nazis? Even though HYDRA has always been a Fourth Reich kinda villain, and the ones in the movie are basically Nazis that like the Red Skull more than Hitler? But okay, controversy.

So... where were all these objections when Iron Man came out? You remember. In the comics, Tony Stark was captured and injured in Vietnam by Communists. Obviously, they couldn't do that, so they updated it to modern day. And though the natural thing to do would be to replace the Vietcong with the Taliban, or insurgents, or Al Qaeda, they made up the Ten Rings and even devoted a scene to specifying that the terrorists weren't made up of any one nationality or race.

It's as if, in a comic book movie, they replaced real-world villains with comic book villains who were always meant to represent that kind of real-world villainy anyway, only with judicious application of dramatic license.

Hell, in X-Men: First Class, Erik spends all his time hunting "Nazis" who are really made-up mutant supremacists. By the same token, shouldn't someone object to him hunting down Kevin Bacon instead of Josef Mengele?

More of this Cap stuff

Okay, one more post then I'm back to work on my Femslash11 story. I think a lot of people's dissatisfaction with the Captain America movie stems from a basic disagreement with the subject matter. They got a pulpy adventure movie in the vein of Indiana Jones, kid-friendly and pretty faithful to the initial Cap comics. What I think some people wanted was Saving Private Ryan with some vague superhero action. You know, Cap spends the entire movie with a leather jacket over his super-duds, people are swearing, folks are getting their arms blown up... and okay, that would be kinda cool. But there's also a desire for Cap to be less of a "one-note" character (as if Batman and Wolverine aren't one-note in their grouchiness. Apparently straining for an ideal and occasionally falling short isn't as interesting as just wallowing in angst). I think people wanted the Ultimate Captain America, going around talking shit about African-Americans and learning a lesson about jingoism and going to internment camps.

And the thing is, that's never been what Captain America's represented. It's more metaphorical than realistic for him to have all of the good points of the Greatest Generation without any of the flaws, but superhero fiction has always traded in metaphor and allegory. That's why the Truth storyline was such a bad idea (IMHO), because it unnecessarily diluted the mythology of the character, one of those stultifying retcons that does nothing more than add more dots to be connected. Like how X-Men writers couldn't resist adding more and more moral ambiguity to Professor X, so now he's more of a villain than Magneto. "NOW YOU KNOW that Dr. Strange and Mr. Fantastic secretly got together to discuss a young Peter Parker's career as Spider-Man and in the end decided they were cool with it!"

For Cap to work in the ensemble setting of the Avengers, he has to come from a different viewpoint then the rest of the cast, and a cynicism and edginess towards the government is already covered. Iron Man and the Hulk are specifically suspicious of the US government, and even Thor is an elaborate critique of Bush foreign policy. So what would the dynamic be if Cap was like that too?

Steve: I don't trust the government!

Tony: I don't trust the government!

Bruce: I don't trust the government!

Thor: I don't trust the government!

Nick Fury: I'm so glad we assembled all you guys.

It makes me wonder if a Civil War adaptation would reverse the roles of the conflict, with Steve being naively optimistic in supporting the government and Tony being a hardline cynic in rejecting them. Then again, in the movieverse the Avengers already work for the government and so far there've been maybe a half-dozen superheroes, so...

ETA: So a first look at Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises has come out and it's not getting a great reception. Even though she's wearing goggles, the leather bodysuit, her costume isn't unzipped to her navel (that's Black Cat's look anyway), and she has apparently hijacked the goddamn Batpod.

Just remember, the last time we saw Catwoman, she looked like this.



The difference is that between finding out a loved one has cancer and finding out a loved one has baked you a cake. Are you really going to complain that the cake doesn't have sprinkles on it?