At this point, you have come to expect brutally honest film reviews from Glenn, and on radio this morning Glenn shared his thoughts on the new Captain America movie. What did Glenn think of Captain America: The Winter Soldier?
“I loved it,” Glenn said. “This should teach Hollywood… Here's a movie that not only is good but tells a pro-American story. This one even has a political point to it. Even the director is coming out and saying, ‘Yeah, I'm trying to make a point here that killing people with drones, with some committee or the president saying yeah, we can just kill those people because they're a problem, spying on them, collecting their data is wrong.’ That's what Captain America is about.”
In an interview with Mother Jones, Captain America’s directors, John and Anthony Russo explain the political nature of the film:
"[Marvel] said they wanted to make a political thriller," Joe Russo, who directed the film with his brother Anthony, tells Mother Jones. "So we said if you want to make a political thriller, all the great political thrillers have very current issues in them that reflect the anxiety of the audience...That gives it an immediacy, it makes it relevant. So [Anthony] and I just looked at the issues that were causing anxiety for us, because we read a lot and are politically inclined. And a lot of that stuff had to do with civil liberties issues, drone strikes, the president's kill list, preemptive technology"—all themes they worked into the film, working closely with screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely.
In The Winter Soldier, Captain America and the rest of the heroes… confront the government program Project Insight, which involves three Helicarriers (gigantic autonomous killer drones, basically) that are fed large amounts of data and intel. The Helicarriers process the data to identify and preemptively eliminate potential threats to national and global security. And though the film's topical parts were all crafted prior to the NSA revelations, the directors say it's no accident that data mining is a key element of the plot: "It was all leading up to Snowden," Joe says. "It was all in the ether [already], it was all part of the zeitgeist. The Snowden stuff actually happened while we were shooting."
Read the entire Mother Jones interview HERE.
The film enjoyed monstrous box office success in its opening weekend, setting an April record with $96.2 million domestically. That raises the film’s worldwide total to over $300 million.
“It's really good. I'm telling you, there's something happening. And it is strange bedfellows. It is coming together with people you think you disagree with, but you really don't,” Glenn concluded. “Thanks, Hollywood. You have made up for Noah.”
Watch the trailer for the film below:
