Let’s get some of the basics out of the way for this movie. Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a very good movie. Not just a comic book movie, but a good movie. Unfortunately, I have to emphasize that it is a good movie because the notion of a comic book movie being good isn’t something many people would agree with.

The thing that helps Winter Soldier work as a good movie stems from Captain America not being a superhero. Ah, but you say he has super soldier serum which makes him a mean fighting machine. That’s true, but in a universe of men in iron suits, aliens posing as gods and guys turning green with envy, fast reflexes and a flinging shield is cool but not super. What that means is in crafting a Captain America story you can’t go with a pyrotechnic, swarm of aliens, end of the world storyline. He’s Captain America not Captain Marvel (take your pick on which one). Just look at the trailers for the second Spider-Man movie. You have a whole lot of villains with a whole lot of costumes flying through that thing. Yes, it’s fun but writing something like that, thinking in terms of a comic book movie, the idea is to put as many villains as possible in the face of the hero. Since he has super powers they have to have super powers and in the end you have a super soup of destruction.

Another thing that helps Winter Solider work as a movie is Captain America, even with the super soldier serum, is thought of as us. The reason why Batman films work so well is people can relate to Bruce Wayne. OK, he’s an insanely rich guy but many people can see themselves as Batman. I would argue a lot of people can see themselves as Captain America. He doesn’t fly, he doesn’t lift cars and he doesn’t leap tall buildings in a single bound. There is a scene in a museum, I believe it was the Smithsonian, where there is a display of the Captain America story. It was a reminder that for all his abilities Captain America was one of many people who helped end the war in Europe. With all his abilities, he had the Howling Commandos by his side. He is an accessible character for the majority of the public.

Black Widow and Falcon are two characters that keep the realism in the film. What I like the most about the introduction of The Falcon is we meet the man before we meet the costume. They did a smart move tying him to the recovery of vets because in a way Steve Rogers hasn’t had time to deal with his own reality. He is literally a man out of time dealing with a world different than is old life. If you think of it from the film universe he was living in the 1940s, when he wakes up in 2012 he barely has time to deal with a world of smartphone and reality TV before he is teamed up with the Avengers to defend the Earth from aliens. That’s a lot to deal with in a short amount of time.

Black Widow has a good role in this film. I first thought of her as the big sister but I think she’s more of a saucy aunt. She’s got a bit of a mouth, has been in the game far too long to take a lot of crap, and yes, she really knows all Cap needs is a roll in the hay to loosen up. Thank goodness the writers and the actors didn’t try and do a love jones thing between them. That’s why I say I like to think of her as the older aunt. There doesn’t need to be sexual tension between them but she cares for him. In a way she wants to protect Cap from the bad stuff in the world.

As comic book formula movies go, we do get a lot of elements in the plot that are so comic bookish. I would, however, like to point out that a lot of the comic book plot was treated in a non-traditional comic book way. Iron Man 3 had what could be argued was a similar main plot and played it, in my eyes, like a comic book. In that movie you had an ending scene with a woman becoming super powered, another guy being super powered and 20 or so Iron Man suits flying about smashing stuff. Where this movie did things right with the plot is having the motivation for the ‘evil’ not being so evil. When the plot was being explained, was I the only one who thought of George Bush’s speech soon after 9/11? The plot made sense because we have lived it and that’s what made it so acceptable.

I have to admit when I heard about some of the Marvel characters that would be in the film, I was weary that this would turn into a costume Easter egg hunt. It was and it wasn’t. You didn’t need to be a Marvel expert to get all the references in the film. It was actually a plus because instead of referencing linking stuff with bright lights and arrows pointing at them, the introduction of characters were handled naturally.

A little side note. A few weeks ago I watched Agents of SHIELD and was surprised when a certain Doctor was mentioned yet there was no huge excitement in the twitterverse about it. I had almost convinced myself I may have heard it wrong but this movie confirmed that this Doctor is definitely in the SHIELD rolodex.

Wow, speaking of SHIELD, I have to give the writers, and the Marvel executives, a hands up for having the balls for doing what they did to SHIELD. I wanted to wait on this review for a bit because the ending had questions about what would happen to the SHIELD TV show. An article was printed this morning in USA Today and man what a beautiful hole they have dug for themselves. I mean that as sincere gratitude because there are many ways the movie could have played the ending safe considering there is a TV show about the same organization, but the movie did what had to be done for the movie and the TV show will deal with the repercussions in a logical way.

I want to go back to the movie/superhero movie idea from earlier. A lot of critics have said the movie is similar to a political thriller. I get having Robert Redford in the movie allows for the comparison, but this was a comic book movie, a comic book property done the way it should be done. Without having anyone with super powers the script had to be realistic. (OK as realistic as you can in a Marvel movie) Anyone who is familiar with the Captain America comics knows a lot of the good stories in the series had to do with the out of time Steve Rogers, he of the black and white greatest generation, dealing with the grey area of the Cold War and a surveillance state.

This is by far the most adult movie in the Marvel batch of movies. I would say I hope this will be a template for other movies to come but we do have Guardians of the Galaxy coming out in August and that is such a wild card.