Fanboys Anonymous

Marvel's next heavy-hitter, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, can't smash its way onto the big screen soon enough for fans, but it's nice to see that they're confident enough not to need a new teaser or some freshly unfolded drama every week. For a movie so big, that's a good sign!

I wonder if it's because they're still singing, "WE GOT ROBERT REDFORD, WE GOT ROBERT REDFORD, SUCK IT WARNER BROTHERS!" or similar. I'd have liked that song in the pop charts. Those are some catchy lyrics, don't you think?

"I always wanted to shake hands with a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle!"

Last year was full of some surprising casting announcements. Redford dropped his pipe and slippers for a superhero movie, and Harrison Ford dropped his Wookie for Expendables 3. These are two particular old-school actors who can do no wrong. If you love Harrison Ford and you don't like The Expendables, you're still going to learn to love Expendables 3, or at least watch it three times just to make sure you still hate it.

It's safe to say that with Redford, Captain America: The Winter Soldier will not only be as epic and immensely smart as it would have been without him, but now it will be ten times more credible and competent on top of that. On top of that dead cert, it's very likely that Redford has just bumped up future sales at the box office and broadened the target audience.

For those who may have uttered things such as, or similar to, "Robert who?" or "Who's that old fogey?" or "Never heard of him," Robert Redford isn't just a national treasure when it comes to cinematic history; he's globally recognized as one of the greatest and most loved actors of the last century.

Many fans of cinema, regardless of time, can love Robert De Niro, Jack Nicholson, and Al Pacino. I don't know anybody who doesn't. But before their time were actors like Redford, Dustin Hoffman, and Paul Newman—a class of actors who have seemingly not been able to do wrong by their audiences since the 1960s.

"Ha! You're an amateur next to me. From now on, your name is Samateur!"

I've no doubt that the cast of this movie will have a lot to learn from the wrinkly acting master and that he'll lend it a hell of a lot of anchorage in the stormy seas of such high anticipation. Recently he spoke of his desire to work on Captain America, saying:

"One of the reasons that I did it was I wanted to experience this new form of filmmaking that's taken over where you have kind of cartoon characters brought to life through high technology. The Avengers series is a product of high technology playing a major role in the new order of filmmaking, so I wanted to experience that. I just wanted to know what that was like, and I had that opportunity, so for me it was like stepping into new terrain just to experience what it was like!"

That sounds ever so slightly like the story about Samuel L. Jackson sneaking onto the set of Breaking Bad, trying to get himself a cameo while dressed as Nick Fury, only with a happier ending. It's also, otherwise, very true in regard to how much cinema has changed lately. Folks like Redford relied on gripping drama to captivate their audiences before technology revolutionized cinema. So, if anything, this just backs up my theory as to why Captain America: The Winter Soldier is going to be massive.


Sound off, Fanboys! Do you need to be any more excited? Do you need any more assurance that this sequel is going to make the wait for Avengers: Age of Ultron so very much worth it? Thank you for reading, once again, and feel free to leave your comments below.