Captain America: The Winter Soldier

If any franchise can be described as rivaling Star Wars’ world-dominating ubiquity, it’s probably Marvel. Beginning with a film charting a billionaire’s efforts to essentially make himself a terminator suit powered by a miraculous new energy source in a cave with nothing but scraps (a premise that, despite Jeff Bridges’ incredulity, comes off as hard-core realism compared to the more . . . imaginative plots of the later films), the MCU currently churns out content at a rate even Call of Duty finds excessive. Whatever your opinion on them, however, Marvel movies are extremely profitable and popular with critics and audiences alike, and despite much tilting from a small but vocal sect of YouTube reviewers, the Marvel windmill is set to spin on until rapture. Or so it seems. Because now a new challenger approaches, fleet of foot and loose of limb, and ready to flail about before the windmill like a breakdancer having a seizure until their voices are heard. That’s right, MCU, Magellans at the Movies have thrown down the gauntlet and are ready to take on one of your most beloved episodes, Captain America: the Winter Soldier! This 2014 film directed by Anthony and Joe Russo may have all the Marvel standards (musclebound men looking pensive, grandiose plots with insane stakes, and at least one lingering shot of an attractive woman’s backside), it may have made hundreds of millions of dollars, it may have won the hearts and minds of millions of fans, but that’s only because they haven’t heard two college students from Iowa whine about it yet! Don’t even bother begging for mercy, once we’ve had our say, I guarantee that all three of our listeners will never give you a red cent again, a financial blow from which you will never recover. Let the destruction of the MCU begin now!