Captain America: The Winter Soldier taps into current fears about surveillance and data-mining.
Every generation carries with it a heavy payload of shared anxiety.
A fear of nuclear annihilation permeated the Cold War era.
The comedyHorrible Bosses(2011) saw down-trodden workers get their own back on their tyrannical paymasters.
Nowhere is this better exemplified than in MarvelsCaptain America: The Winter Soldier.
WhatThe Winter Soldierdoes, however, is take the 70s conspiracy thriller and bring it straight into the present.
Steve Rogers, however, is less sure.
This isnt freedom, he tells Nick Fury, its fear.
And thats what adds to the characters paranoia and the audiences experience of that paranoia.
That stuff was already in the zeitgeist.
The question is, where do you stop?
Russo asked in an Aprilinterview.
If there are 100 people we can kill to make us safer, do we do it?
What if we find out theres 1,000?
What if we find out theres 10,000?
What if its a million?
At what point do you stop?
The best way to articulate our concerns about the future, it seems, is in science fiction.
Beneath the explosions and heroism, Marvels blockbuster raises some relevant questions about privacy and freedom.
