I just returned from seeing the new Captain America. It was... entertaining, for sure. And perhaps the finest example of rightist propaganda in a film that I've seen in a while. It stuns me that conservatives et al complain about liberal Hollywood when a movie like this comes out, makes millions, and gets rave reviews.
Here be SPOILERS:
The film is an absurd fantasy about government infiltration and the (somewhat) arbitrary targeting of innocent civilians in the most literal and mind-numbing way (i.e. the actual targeting of civilians with colossal government-made advanced weapons hovering above the earth and locked in constant orbit). In fact, the most potentially interesting component of the plot - that the "algorithm" can predict the future - is left almost entirely unexplored. The majority of the film is comprised of explosions, campy dialogue, and a short-lived whodunnit mystery. All this is performed in the service of an ideology that fears government in a black-and-white, no-time-for-rational-thought fashion. The message, of course, is freedom; and that those who want freedom can be efficiently identified against those who don't, and (finally) that the binary of "want/don't want" can actually be maintained.
Long story short: the film is entertaining and hilarious (not always intentionally), but it is an immature anti-government fantasy (it actually ends with the dismantling and disintegration of the entire internal security apparatus).
Okay, I'm done.
