Short Round: Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) ****/*****

Now that we’re this deep into Marvel Studios’ ongoing efforts to create a connected and constantly growing film universe, it’s pretty clear that a pattern has started to form. The pattern being that, as their universe gets better established and these superhero movies get more of a chance to build off of what has come before them, the more successful they become. I had planned to write a bit more at length about their newest film, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but just a day into its release, doing so has already started to feel a little bit pointless. Given its box office projections and its performance at all of the review aggregation websites, it seems like everyone in the world has already seen this second go-around with a solo Captain America movie, and everyone has absolutely loved it.

Wherever you look, the reactions seem to be the same. The Winter Soldier is being called the biggest and most engaging thing Marvel has done since The Avengers. It’s being said that the film succeeds not just because it’s a great superhero movie, but because it’s also able to blend the intrigue of 70s-era political thrillers and the adrenaline of modern-day spy movies seamlessly into its formula. Much is being said about how well-cast the principal players are, and how effectively they’ve settled into their characters now that they’ve had a chance to play them a few times and to develop them a bit. Everyone seems to be talking about how surprising it is that co-directors Anthony and Joe Russo were able to make pulling off an action movie this huge in budget and scope look effortless, given that their experience lies in TV comedies. All of these observations are spot on, irrefutable, so I won’t waste anyone’s time by being the one millionth person to wax on about them.

Instead, I’ll just use this space to step back from the movie a bit, and to appreciate what it is Marvel has accomplished here. I grew up in the 80s, which was the Golden Age of genre-heavy, big budget blockbusters, and even then the best we ever hoped for was that a movie studio could keep its act together long enough to produce a classic trilogy. And though the industry back then had no qualms with making a million movies that were full of comic book elements, like monsters, aliens, ghosts, and time travel, for some reason it always stopped short at making an actual superhero movie that spent the money necessary to get things right, and that played everything with a straight face. That Marvel has now released nine movies (and counting) that not only bring superhero action to dazzling life in the way young nerds always knew it could be realized, but that also all exist in the sort of rich, expanding universe that we used to only be able to explore through comics and literature, is just a godsend to the little geek that exists inside all of us. Just imagine the kids who are growing up watching all of these Marvel movies today. Twenty years from now they’re going to think of them the same way their parents came to think about Star Wars, only with the nostalgia multiplied by about ten. And, heck, if the studio keeps up the levels of quality they’re hitting right now, we of the older generation might too. Make Mine Marvel, indeed.