What is The Cursed Hero?
“As a young missionary child raised in the jungles of Papua New Guinea, Chris Patton accidentally found the evil spirit of the Sanguma lurking within a Bird of Paradise. The Sanguma used its dark magic to curse his glasses.
Now, when Chris watches movies he only sees super heroes through one of the lenses and super villains through the other. Whereas most saw a brilliant Oscar-winning performance by Nicholas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas, Chris only saw a prequel to Ghost Rider.”
Movie Review: Captain America 3: Snowpiercer (CA3:SP)
Next summer, fans will finally find out what occurs in the sequel to 2012’s The Avengers. It has already been confirmed that the Age of Ultron will dawn and threaten humanity. Captain America 3: Snowpiercer opens with the aftermath of the ladder event and gives an immediate update: the human race is nearly extinct due to an “accident” that froze Earth.
To put it into a more accurate perspective, if one were to dare step outside, then one would freeze to death in about 7 minutes. As a result, the world’s population is now isolated inside a huge, self-sufficient super train called the Snowpiercer.
Fans will be absolutely numb with excitement, as the rumored villains known as Thanos, Ultron, and Apocalypse will evidently destroy both the Avengers and most of humanity in the upcoming wave of Marvel/Disney flicks, which include Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain America 4: Winter Soldier. Hopefully they will be able to fill in the blanks created by this latest, futuristic entry. But, what exactly is the new problem that putts the plot of the CA3:SP vehicle along?
Captain America (Chris Evans) has lost his shield and armor, and he is angry, bitter, and imprisoned in the last compartment of the Snowpiercer train. Each compartment houses different social classes. The privileged people sleep in the front compartments, yet they can move about the other compartments freely. The class structure erupts when the privileged begin to regularly snatch children from the lower-class citizens in the back of the train. Furthermore, because the train’s old parts have become obsolete, the young children have their height measured to see if they can fit into small sections of the engine. If they do fit, then they manually carry out the faltering functions of its parts. Other mysterious secrets are also performed by the young victims, but we’ll say no more for now.
What does make Captain America 3: Snowpiercer the best Marsney (Marvel + Disney = Marsney) film to date is not only the bleak yet interesting dystopian future, but also the stellar cast of super heroes and villains. In addition, the gifted Korean director, Joon-Ho Bong is not afraid to cross various comic and sci-fi brands, and he doesn’t hesitate to yank and weave the strings of the DC, Jumper, and Marvel universes into a tight-knit ball of horrifying glory.
From the Jumper reality comes Billy Elliot (Jamie Bell), who had unexpectedly fallen in love with dance as a young lad. The trauma and the pressure from his dissolving family manifested the mutant ability of teleportation within him. Once he mastered his ability in 2008′s Jumper he was then hunted by Nick Fury. The timeline of Doug Liman’s Jumper showed us that Hawkeye had not yet taken Fury’s eye. Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) was still hunting mutants in a way similar to the Salem Witch Trials and had not yet assumed control of SHIELD.
(Above: Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, before Hawkeye took his eye, in 2008’s Jumper)
On the Snowpiercer train, Billy Elliot now goes by the code name Edgar. Billy “Edgar” Elliot serves as the new sidekick to Captain America. One can, therefore, assume that the Jumper will join the Avengers in one of the upcoming Marsney flicks, and mend fences with Nick Fury. As the upper-class brutes steal children, the Cap and Billy plot. The new sidekick wants to know when they will overthrow the tyrants. While grinding his teeth, still trying to bury the demons of betrayal from his last sidekick, Bucky, Captain America angrily whispers, “Wait for the moment!”
The enforcer of such inhumane treatment on the choo choo is the fallen angel, Gabriel (Tilda Swinton) from the DC Universe. We last saw her trying to reason with John Constantine (Keanu Reeves) in the 2005 interpretation of Hellblazer (entitled Constantine). Gabriel had been forsaken by both God and Satan’s son, and the film ended with her loosing her wings and becoming human.
Regardless of her past, Gabriel has done a good job of surviving. She has not only become the right-hand to a new master on the Snowpiercer, but she has also assumed the new identity of Mason. For those coming in late to the world of Marvel Comics, and because the film doesn’t explain it, Phineas Mason is a criminal genius who goes by the moniker The Tinkerer. Yes, DC’s Gabriel is now a super villain overseeing kidnappings and retribution for the creator of the Snowpiercer, Wilford.
Whereas the Marvel comics have always portrayed The Tinkerer as a flawed, boring male, Tilda Swinton’s female interpretation sprays venom and spews illogical rhetoric at the captive passengers in the back. Audiences won’t be able to help but look on wide-eyed with gaping mouths while she takes off her shoe and puts it on the head of a kneeling passenger. She barks, “You would not wear a shoe on your head. It’s not a hat. Everyone has their place!”
The gender-reversal does not end there. The creator and master of the Snowpiercer train, Wilford (played by a brilliant Ed Harris) is known as Elisabeth Wilford in the Marvel Comics. She was the ex-girlfriend of the X-Men member, Piotr Rasputin (aka Colossus). Although the film does not explain or comment on the past relationship between Ed Harris’s Wilford and Colossus (Daniel Cudmore played him in 2003’s X2), it does offer a rich metaphor about why Wilford loves his huge metal train. Colossus’s mutant ability covered his skin in metal, and Wilford is holding on to his memory, refusing to lose another metal god, no matter the cost.
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(Tilda Swinton: Before as Gabriel and After as Mason)
Then, as Captain America organizes everyone to overthrow the class system the sparks begin to fly. The dirty fights in close quarters both elevate within each compartment as well as add more suspense to the train’s eternal maintenance. The atrocities about why the lower class being treated so horribly and the climax, which pits Captain America against Wilford in a game of one-upmanship, will leave viewers shocked and seething. Seek out this movie!
The last word is that Captain America 3: Snow Piercer is one of the summer’s most fulfilling and thought-provoking films. Joon-Ho Bong throws the shield out of the hover carrier with his first English language film. Not only Marvel fans, but fans everywhere will be hungry to see more DC, Marvel, and Jumper crossovers. The gifted director has created amazingly high expectations for the upcoming Marsney films, which will hopefully fill in the blanks as carefully as Joon-Ho Bong created them!
(Chris Evans portrays the futuristic, broken and troubled Captain America)