![]() In fact, Captain America himself is introduced tackling leftover plot threads from The Winter Soldier, attempting to arrest one of the villains who escaped at the climax of that film. The Marvel movies have built up a relatively intricate internal continuity, and Civil War jumps right in. It does so through the prism of the shared cinematic continuity. Civil War bites off some pretty meaty themes. The consequences of that mission ripple through the rest of the film, setting up a ticking time bomb that explodes during the third act. Civil War returns time and again to one particular mission the mission undertaken in December 1991. Bucky Barnes was killed and resurrected, trained to be a soldier and fashioned into an assassin. The Winter Soldier himself is a walking metaphor for these themes. “You kids remember The Incredible Hulk, right?” However, it also touches on the movie’s core themes of consequences and responsibility. It is a nice metaphor for the nature of comic book continuity after all, you can now digitally superimpose Mark Ruffalo into The Incredible Hulk. It allows users to replay memories and alter them, offering an opportunity to come to terms with a horrific event in their past. Tony Stark is introduced quite early in the film demonstrating a pioneering new technology – with the catchy acronym “BARF” – that helps individuals process their trauma. That is one trauma the studio’d like to erase. At one point, General Thaddeus Ross plays a highlight reel of superhero carnage that notably omits The Incredible Hulk. That is certainly the case with Captain America: Civil War, which positions itself as a response to the fictional traumas inflicted upon Marvel’s alternate twenty-first century America. Armond White argues that 9/11 trauma still resonates in films like Demolition or Louder than Bombs. Trauma and recovery bubble through cinema, perhaps as a reflection of the national psyche. “Still easier than reading the source material.” Superman might be read as an extended metaphor for coming to terms with a single catastrophic event, anchored in the particulars of the climax of the first film in a way that few sequels are. Recent years have seen blockbusters fixating upon trauma and its aftermath. Sometimes those ideas play out more subtly. ![]() Sometimes those themes and metaphors are explicit, as in The Dark Knight. There are other deeper repercussions that ripple through blockbuster cinema in the wake of those attacks. On a purely visual level, the depiction of urban destruction in mainstream cinema was forever altered by the news coverage of those attacks it is impossible to look at the climaxes of films like The Avengers or Star Trek Into Darkness or Man of Steel without being reminded of the footage of dust clouds in Manhattan or the way that particular buildings fall. Much has been written about how 9/11 and the War on Terror echo and reverberate through popular culture. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |