Winter Soldier is definitely one of the top films, I agree with you there. Miles better anything after Endgame, with the exception of the two Spider-Man movies.
His character wasn't complex in the 1940s because he didn't need to be. Simon and Kirby created a simple but effective origin story and then let him do his job. Unfortunately, that job had a finite end date with the end of WW2. (The Cold War period was too short to count.)
Once Kirby worked with Stan Lee on the revival, Lee was able to use his strengths as a character and dialogue driven writer to expand the backstory so that he became a more relatable character and his mission more interpretable. As before, though, Kirby drew him as strong, agile and athletic, which were the trademarks of his drawing style.
The MCU version combines both of these incarnations- the origin of the first and the backstory of the second- to work its own magic.
But always, as with most secret identity superheroes, two stories are at work: Captain America the heroic figure, and Steve Rogers, the man behind the mask.
Spot on. He really was the quintessential Golden Age superhero -- a straightforward, two-fisted patriot in a colorful costume -- and it worked. And then Stan Lee built on that to develop a character who doesn't have an expiration date.
Winter Soldier is definitely one of the top films, I agree with you there. Miles better anything after Endgame, with the exception of the two Spider-Man movies.
Spider-Man is the post-Endgame MVP, for sure.
His character wasn't complex in the 1940s because he didn't need to be. Simon and Kirby created a simple but effective origin story and then let him do his job. Unfortunately, that job had a finite end date with the end of WW2. (The Cold War period was too short to count.)
Once Kirby worked with Stan Lee on the revival, Lee was able to use his strengths as a character and dialogue driven writer to expand the backstory so that he became a more relatable character and his mission more interpretable. As before, though, Kirby drew him as strong, agile and athletic, which were the trademarks of his drawing style.
The MCU version combines both of these incarnations- the origin of the first and the backstory of the second- to work its own magic.
But always, as with most secret identity superheroes, two stories are at work: Captain America the heroic figure, and Steve Rogers, the man behind the mask.
Spot on. He really was the quintessential Golden Age superhero -- a straightforward, two-fisted patriot in a colorful costume -- and it worked. And then Stan Lee built on that to develop a character who doesn't have an expiration date.