REASON: Captain American Exceptionalism

My latest for Reason is online: "Captain American Exceptionalism".

Culture Shock 04.10.14: 'Captain America' pits patriotism vs. the government

Since he defrosted 50 years ago in "The Avengers" Vol. 1, No. 4, Captain America has been at odds with his government almost as often as he's been on its payroll.

The world of Vietnam and Watergate into which Steve Rogers awoke is nowhere near as black and white as the world of Hitler and Tojo he left behind. In a 1974 "Captain America" storyline, Rogers becomes so disillusioned he abandons his Captain America alter ego, taking on a new costume and a new name: Nomad. He becomes a patriot without a country.

His Nomad persona was short-lived, but not so the idea behind it. Ever since, Captain America, the iconic symbol of freedom and patriotism, has drawn a bright line between serving America's ideals and serving its government. That's the Captain America we get in the ninth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, "Captain America: The Winter Soldier." And it's one of the franchise's best.

Picking up where "The Avengers" left off, Captain America (Chris Evans) is still working for the global spy agency SHIELD and still catching up on everything he missed since going into deep freeze in 1945. (He still hasn't crossed "Star Wars" off his to-do list.)

Cap's latest mission teams him with an elite SHIELD strike force and Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow to rescue a ship hijacked by pirates. From the start things aren't all they seem. The ship isn't just any ship. It's crewed by SHIELD personnel on a classified mission, and Rogers is already getting tired of cleaning up SHIELD's little accidents.

Back at headquarters, Director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) decides it's time to bring Cap in on the big secret. SHIELD is about to launch Project Insight. Three specially designed SHIELD helicarriers will stay airborne at all times, identifying and eliminating threats before they happen.

Project Insight is preemptive war meets the National Security Agency, and Rogers is far from convinced. "This isn't freedom," he says in a trailer-worthy summation. "This is fear."

Like the underrated "Iron Man 3," this is a superhero movie with more going on than the surface pyrotechnics. This is the comic book equivalent of a post-Watergate thriller. It's no coincidence that Fury's immediate superior in the SHIELD hierarchy is played by Robert Redford ("Three Days of the Condor," "All the President's Men"). Redford brings more than gravitas; he brings a direct link to 1970s paranoia. But like they say, are you paranoid if they're really out to get you?

When an attempt is made on Fury's life, all signs point to an inside job. SHIELD has been compromised, and Cap isn't sure he can trust anyone. Even the Black Widow, who helped Cap save the world during the Battle of New York, isn't above suspicion.

The only person to whom Cap can turn is a fellow Army vet, Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), and even Sam has a secret, although one that's not a secret to readers of the "Captain America" comic.

All the while, threats from Cap's past keep cropping up, from Hydra, the formerly Nazi-backed super-science cult, to mad scientist Arnim Zola (Toby Jones) to the mysterious assassin known only as the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan).

While that may seem like too much for one movie, directors Anthony and Joe Russo skillfully juggle all the balls screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely throw at them. And they still find time to stage some of the best action sequences in any of the Marvel films to date.

In her third supporting outing as the Black Widow, Johansson proves it's past time the Widow got her own movie. And Mackie is instantly likable in his sidekick role. But it's Evans who must and does carry the film, giving Cap a humanity other iconic characters often lack. (I'm thinking of Henry Cavill's Superman in "Man of Steel," who always seems to be faking it.)

By the time "The Winter Soldier" reaches its climax, Captain America stands ready to reveal everyone's dirty secrets. He has become Marvel's Edward Snowden, which is only appropriate, given Snowden has become the real world's Nomad.

Culture Shock 05.10.12: 'The Avengers' is assembled with care

Fair or not, the comparisons to Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight" are inevitable, especially with his forthcoming sequel "The Dark Knight Rises" waiting in the (bat) wings.

But while Nolan tried to pry Batman free from the genre conventions of superheroics by placing him in a more-or-less realistic setting — not always successfully — Joss Whedon has turned "The Avengers" into the ultimate superhero film, one that embraces its conventions with unapologetic glee.

While "The Dark Knight" is a great film, and obviously a showcase for the late Heath Ledger, it's not necessarily a great Batman film. But "The Avengers" is a great superhero film — one that reminds us why the superhero genre has been so resilient.

Whedon's accomplishment is even more impressive given the logistics involved, taking the pieces of a superhero universe established across five previous films — "Iron Man," "The Incredible Hulk," "Iron Man 2," "Thor" and "Captain America: The First Avenger" — and forging a seamless whole.

The result is much like the Marvel comics on which "The Avengers" is based. It's a fully realized superhero world, where it makes perfect sense for a demigod out of Norse mythology to interact with a man in an American flag costume and an egotistical billionaire with an invincible suit of armor.

The story begins with Thor's power-hungry brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston), who has been cast out of Asgard, forming an alliance with a mysterious alien race to take over the Earth. But to do so, he needs an Asgardian relic called the Tesseract, which can open a portal through which the alien army can invade. The Tesseract, however, was lost centuries earlier, eventually falling into the hands of the Red Skull during World War II before being lost again and recovered by Howard Stark, the father of Tony Stark, aka Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.). Now it belongs to the global security/spy agency SHIELD, led by Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), which has its own plans for it.

But before SHIELD's plans are complete, Loki steals the Tesseract, forcing Fury to call on an unlikely group of heroes to save the day, if they ever stop fighting amongst themselves.

Apart from Iron Man, there's Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), alter ego of the Hulk; Steve Rogers, aka Captain America (Chris Evans); the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson); Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner); and Thor (Chris Hemsworth).

It's a lot for Whedon to juggle, but almost everyone gets a chance to shine. (Sorry, Hawkeye. Better luck in the sequel.) As usual, Downey's Stark owns every scene he's in, and Ruffalo brings both a warmth and a simmering intensity to Banner. But the real surprise here is Johansson, who gets the meatiest part and makes the most of it, from her hilarious first scene to her emotional showdowns with Loki and the Hulk. Whedon, creator of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," is known for his strong, butt-kicking heroines, and he delivers again here, while also peppering the script with the snappy dialogue that's become his other calling card.

"The Avengers" also features yet another indispensable supporting performance from Clark Gregg as SHIELD Agent Phil Coulson, who has been a fan favorite since he first appeared in "Iron Man." For this outing, Whedon casts him in the part of the Everyman, who is more than a little starstruck when confronted with his childhood hero, Captain America.

It's Coulson who sums up why movies like "The Avengers," with their old-fashioned battles between good and evil, are still important. When Steve Rogers wonders if his star-spangled Captain America costume isn't too old fashioned, it's Coulson who says the world sometimes needs a little old fashioned.

Maybe now is one of those times.

'We're not a team. We're a time bomb'

Your inner fanboy will hulk out.

Avengers assemble.

5.4.12

Looking back at the first year of shocking culture

After writing this column for one year, it’s time to look back and see where some of the past year’s stories stand.

Dec. 7, 2006: I wrote about the newfound respect some science fiction writers, Philip K. Dick in particular, are receiving from traditional literary circles. That trend continued in 2007, when Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Lessing, 88, is the oldest person ever to win the award. Her long career includes two notable transitions. She went from communist to anti-communist and from “serious” fiction to science fiction.

The latter move upset some critics, among them Harold Bloom, who said, “Although Ms. Lessing at the beginning of her writing career had a few admirable qualities, I find her work for the past 15 years quite unreadable ... fourth-rate science fiction.”

But Lessing is unapologetic. “What (critics) didn't realize was that in science fiction is some of the best social fiction of our time,” she said in an interview.

Good for her.

Jan. 4, 2007: I wrote about the new comic strip “Lio” by Mark Tatulli. Since then, “Lio” has increased its following. It now appears in about 275 newspapers worldwide, including The Daily. And that was enough to get Hollywood’s attention.

A live-action film based on the strip is in development.

Jan. 11: Time magazine named “You” its Person of the Year in recognition of ordinary people flooding the Internet with blogs and videos.

The flood continues, and it may be making its biggest impact in politics, where citizens are bypassing the “old media” to spread the word about their preferred presidential candidates. You get a sense of how revolutionary that is when a “second-tier” candidate like Ron Paul raises more than $4 million in one day when his online supporters stage a fundraising drive.

Feb. 1: I continue to receive e-mail about my column on self-proclaimed psychic Sylvia Brown, who still hasn’t demonstrated anything that looks like real psychic ability. Perhaps that is why she has moved on to write, with the help of “her spirit guide Francine,” an absurd book titled “Secret Societies ... and How They Affect Our Lives Today.”

March 15: Marvel Comics killed off one of its most recognizable heroes, Captain America. He is still dead, but someone else is set to don an updated version of Cap’s red, white and blue costume. I still say the original Cap will return — eventually.

July 12: A cryptic marketing campaign for an upcoming sci-fi/horror film by producer J.J. Abrams (“Alias”) had fans scouring the Internet for clues. As it turned out, the Web sites www.ethanhaaswasright.com and ethanhaaswaswrong.blogspot.com, which many thought were promoting the then-untitled movie, were for an unrelated role-playing game.

At any rate, the film now has a name, “Cloverfield,” and it opens in theaters Jan. 18.

July 19: “Harry Potter” fans were eagerly awaiting the final book in the saga while trying to avoid spoilers that had leaked online.

By now, everyone who cares knows who lives and who dies. Also, Dumbledore is gay, but we didn’t learn that until months later.

Sept. 6: I wrote about a study published in Nature magazine, which found that the online encyclopedia Wikipedia is almost as accurate as Encyclopaedia Britannica. A spokesman for Britannica then e-mailed me a rebuttal, which included links to stories critical of Nature’s findings.

“Dozens of the so-called inaccuracies they attributed to us were nothing of the kind; they were the result of reviewers expressing opinions that differed from ours about what should be included in an encyclopedia article. In these cases Britannica’s coverage was actually sound,” Britannica responded.

After reading up on the controversy, I’m siding with Britannica, although I still think Wikipedia is an amazingly successful experiment.

Culture Shock 03.15.07: Captain America is just resting

Captain America is dead. Long live Captain America!

There is a temptation to view Cap's demise as a kind of metaphor. Is it the death of patriotism? The death of the American dream? The death of the nation's innocence in a post-9/11 world?

Oh, sure, I could join in the chorus of commentators searching for meaning in the demise of a fictional character. But how could I sleep at night?

For those of you just coming in, Captain America died last week in issue No. 25 of either the fifth or sixth volume — depending on how you count them — of his self-titled comic book. He was shot while being escorted into a federal courthouse to be arraigned on charges of some sort.

Wait a minute. Captain America under arrest? How can this be?

It was the fallout from Marvel Comics' most recent "nothing will ever be the same again" miniseries, "Civil War," in which, instead of fighting villains, superheroes fought each other over the issue of whether they should have to register with the government.

Of course, when superheroes fight, things, like entire cities, get broken. And when Cap's side — the anti-registration heroes — lost, Captain America was hauled in to stand trial.

The bottom line is that Cap's death was simply the dramatic payoff to a months-long story line of interest to only the most obsessive fans of superhero comics. Ultimately, it is meaningless, except as a way for Marvel Comics to grab some headlines and sell a few more books. "Captain America" No. 25 is already sold out at most retailers and going for about $25 on eBay. A second printing is due in stores later this month.

If all of this seems familiar, it's because we've been through it before.

Superman died in 1993. He got better. But not before his death became big news and DC Comics milked it for a year, during which four pretenders to the Man of Steel's legacy reigned.

Expect pretty much the same for Captain America.

He'll be back within a year or two, if not sooner. In the meantime, someone else will put on Cap's red, white and blue costume to fight the forces of evil.

A good candidate for Cap's fill in is his former sidekick, Bucky, who, for reasons too complicated to relate here, now goes by the name Winter Soldier. And that would be ironic, seeing as how Bucky himself came back from the dead just two years ago, after having been officially dead since either 1964 (our time) or 1945 (comic-book time).

For most superheroes, death isn't much of a problem. Off the top of my head, I can think of lots of heroes who have died and come back: Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), Green Arrow, Wonder Man, Wonder Woman, Robin (Jason Todd), Nick Fury, Mr. Fantastic and Hawkman, just for starters. It's not much of an exaggeration to note that every member of the X-Men has died and come back at least twice. Thor is still dead but is scheduled for resurrection later this year.

You only really have to worry if you're a C-list hero. DC Comics has declared open season on its lesser-known characters. Within the past couple of years, Firestorm, Blue Beetle and The Question, have met untimely ends. But DC has replaced all of them with new characters using the same names.

So, don't shed any tears for Cap. He's beaten the Red Skull, and he'll beat death, too.

Old superheroes never die. They don't even fade away.