Disney Countdown

Let's wrap up the Captain America trilogy with Captain America: Civil War The Movie: This film kicked off MCU's Phase 3 and is the 13th MCU film overall.  From a narrative standpoint, it is more a follow-up to The Avengers: Age of Ultron, though the character of the Winter Soldier plays a crucial part in the story and is the biggest element to come out of the last Captain America movie.  And while you won't be completely lost if you haven't seen either of those films, it definitely helps make the story more interesting. Where the last two Captain America films are prominently featured around Steve Rogers, this one at times can feel almost like an Avengers movie.  The character roster includes heroes from the Captain America films (Captain America, Winter Soldier, Falcon, Black Widow), the Iron Man films (Iron Man, War Machine, and once again Black Widow), the Avengers films (besides those already listed, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, Vision), and Ant-Man, who only ha...

For part 2 of 3, let's get going with Captain America: The Winter Soldier The Movie: The third film of the MCU's Phase 2 and the ninth overall, The Winter Soldier serves as a follow up to both the first Captain America film and The Avengers, though pretty much all of its plot points pick up from the former.  And in case you never saw the first film, this one has enough flashbacks and other narrative devices peppered in that you can get the basic idea. Now in the present day, Captain America is working with Nick Fury and Black Widow at S.H.I.E.L.D., which is based out of Washington, D.C.  However, all is not right within the agency, as an old threat returns along with a mysterious new enemy, the Winter Soldier, a dangerous assassin. Appropriately enough, especially with the Washington setting, the movie plays mostly like a political thriller.  And being that, the inclusion of Robert Redford to the cast as a leader within S.H.I.E.L.D. makes it that much better....

Today, I decided to go for a rare triple-header.  Since today is Memorial Day, it seemed fitting to watch the three Captain America movies from Marvel Studios. Now before we get into the usual rundown, I will start with my introductions to comic book movies and all things Marvel.  I didn't grow up reading comics, so my familiarity with the comic book universes mostly comes from the various movies, though I have read about a lot of the material from the comics, so I have a passing familiarity with the larger history of these characters. When it comes to the whole Marvel vs DC thing, I tend to be more of a Marvel fan.  While the quality of the MCU helps, I believe it goes back further than that.  You see, other than possibly the worst Batman movie of the bunch, my main introduction to superhero movies came with films like the X-Men franchise, Spider-man, The Fantastic Four, The Hulk, Blade, Daredevil, and Elektra, so I became more interested in the Marvel side o...