Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Captain America: Winter Soldier is the best superhero movie, period

This is so cool.  This is crazy and brilliant and fascinating:  Captain America is a libertarian.  (Hopefully the nice and moral kind, aka Christian libertarian.)

Which was a brilliant decision by the writers, producers, story editors, etc., whoever else is involved with making the plot.  Because seriously, as I have said before, a superhero named "Captain America" in this day and age is a macabre, tasteless, mirthless joke.

The movie is about so much more than just these asinine avengers, etc.  It is a mirror reflection of precisely what is going on in this dear country.  This land, once the land of opportunity, once the land of the free and home of the brave, has now deteriorated into a heap of huddled, haggard ragamuffins too deathly afraid to stand up to the IRS, to the government, or to other corporations.

I also thought it quite refreshing, calming, and progressive that, of the four main characters, two of them were black.

You must see this movie.  If you do not like the scenes of extreme violence, which is completely understandable, you can just fast-forward past them.  Haha, "fast-forward," I am such a child of the 80s.  Most kids under age 20 would be like, "fast forward?  What's that?"  Sorry, I'm just a little excited because I have not seen a movie this good and this relevant to current events in a long time.

It's not just a matter of corrupt government.  It is not a matter of crooked police, crooked local politicians, local mayors taking handouts, cash bribes [[kickbacks]]] from convicted criminals so that the criminal can go free.  It is not just a matter of police confiscating street drugs and then turning around and selling the street drugs themselves, thereby ingratiating themselves into the crime syndicate.  It is not a simple matter of corruption on a local, county-wide, state, or federal level.

No.  What has happened now is that they have created a whole entire agency that has the express purpose of spying on average citizens.  Its sole purpose is to sneak, insinuate, and ingratiate itself, into every facet of daily life to spy on, terrorize and restrict the movement of honest people.  And it says it is doing this for the honest people's own good.

This is a matter of the government doing what it thinks it is supposed to be doing.  This is a matter of the government thinking it is doing right for its citizens.  the government thinks it is protecting citizens and keeping them safe -- by imprisoning and kidnapping them before they have committed any crime, by imprisoning them in their homes, by imprisoning them in many ways preventing them from having normal decent happy family lives.

Be honest.  The corrupt cops and political branches doing bad -- they know they are doing bad.  They know they are corrupt and screwed.  They don't harbor any fantasies of doing what it takes to be in way of the greater good.  They just don't care anymore.

I noticed that the movie didn't really have one specific villain.  was it this guy?  bucky winter.  ehh, no.  we find out in the movie that Bucky is not the mastermind behind any of it.  in fact, it is readily apparent that Bucky has been tortured n essentially dehumanized during his entire stint as the "winter soldier."  ehh,, was it this guy?  Robert Redford.  Erm, I guess he is supposed to be the high-up CEO of the evil government agency.  but to be honest, Robert Redford's villain does not really have a leering, looming, domineering, threatening, truly villainous screen presence.  or maybe this guy?  frank grillo.  or these pieces-of-human-garbage cops?  Nah.  I suppose I'm comparing all villains to the gold standard that was set by heath ledger's joker.

None of them individually were the one true criminal mastermind behind the government agenda of holding a gun to every person's head and calling it "security."  They were all equally culpable and villainous.

This was precisely the point of the movie.  The movie's whole message is that no one given person is solely responsible for causing chaos and terror.  The entire system, the entire establishment is corrupt, rotten, crooked, compromised beyond all repair.

See, the heath ledger movie was about philosophy.  Our evil human natures, our primitive selfish motives, get people destitute and desperate enough and they will revert to their primitive violent natures, blah blah blah.  That can be easily enough embodied in one specific character.

This movie, however, is not about abstract philosophy.  This movie is trying to send a realistic, very urgent message to its viewers.  This movie is about current events happening in real time, transpiring as we speak.

It would make things so much easier to be able to pinpoint one specific culprit as the root of all evil.  And then in the words of Andrew Jackson, "rout [that one person] out," get rid of the evil influence, and then things could go back to being hunky-dory and happy.  but there is no one specific bad guy.  The government having grown to what it is today is a massive, colossal stupid unwitting cooperation of many subbranches numbering in the triple digits.  On local, county, state, and federal levels.

A major plot point that many others have pointed out.  The other avengers didn't show up in this movie. 

This was not a coincidence nor was it an oversight; I think there was a very good reason for this.  I think the point was to convey the feeling of being utterly alone when going up against a monstrosity goliath like the bloated, groaning, heaving US government.  the feeling of being made to feel isolated... with no one on your side, no one to turn to for comfort, for support, for aid.

The government does this on purpose to people.  For instance, imagine that an acquaintance of yours has received a letter from the irs or from the state council accusing them of something nefarious.  They owe back taxes.  Or they are being fined a hefty amount for some grievance.  Alternatively, imagine that your acquaintance's credit history is so bad that they are unable to qualify for an apartment lease.

Do you feel sympathy for that friend?  Do you feel that you should be there for them to offer a sympathetic ear or shoulder to cry on?  Or do you feel kind of uneasy being around this person now?  Perhaps you feel morally that it is no longer a good idea to be associated with this person?  It's kinda skewed now, isn't it?  Like this friend is now revealed to be a dishonest person.  You durn tax evader, you criminal, you non-patriotic troublemaker, you shirker of your responsibilities, you neglecter of your civic duty, you neglecter of credit.  And then do you choose to distance yourself from that friend.

Think of how the friend feels.  He or she is still the same decent, honest human being.  But now they feel targeted by a monstrous looming evil kraken that they cannot hope to fight evenly, such as reasonable I court.  They probably feel isolated, cold, unloved.  They know that they have now in the eyes of their friends, such as you, become a social pariah.

This is the exact feeling that the writers and producers of this movie wanted to convey to the audience.

I sing this movie's praises to anyone within a twenty-feet radius of myself.  Extoll the virtues (that's from go fug yourself re:  sandwiches; it is equally applicable here) to anyone that is interested in government abuse but wants to be entertained at the same time.

relevant memes:  what I expected:
fun avengers
superman

what I got:
9/11 false flag
edward snowden/nsa
when did this (friendly neighborhood police) become this (militarized local police)
fake police-do-gooder news articles 1984
arbitrary imprisonment without due processsssss
america bombing syria, america forcing into sovereign countries
federal reserve/irs