I am a big fan of the First Avenger, the first of the Captain America movies. Far from coming off like a jingoistic asshole as I feared he would, he was presented as a sort of down to earth, slightly conflicted, but quite relatable guy who you couldn’t help but like. This sense of the person remains intact in Winter Soldier, what has fallen apart though is the world the Cap inhabits. Whilst the first film depicted a charmingly silly WWII scenario, Winter Soldier has transplanted the poor old Cap to a cold, impersonal present day. The subtle, and fun satire of the Captains unwitting journey to propaganda icon, interspersed with some well shot action scenes has been replaced with ‘out of your time’ confusion, largely signaled by an inability to form heterosexual relationships, but also a list of ‘things to do’ in the future (the future being something like now). Heterosexual included there just because who says he even wants to go out with the nurse down the hall. The action scenes are still there, and they are pretty damn good, but really, aside from his ability to sling a shield at people, or even the fact that he has a shield at all, this could have been any old person. We could transplant Bond into his place without a second glance, all we have to do is take away the shield and replace the ‘not sleeping with the nurse’ storyline with a ‘sleeping with the nurse’ storyline. It is not a bad film but any stretch, it is exciting, its just lost all the originality that made the first one fun.