Posters by Paolo Rivera and Ben Whitesell.
"This isn't freedom. This is fear."
Two of this year's movies with Marvel superheroes feature men displaced from their time, fighting against extreme preventive security systems: Captain America: The Winter Soldier (Marvel Studios) and X-Men: Days of Future Past (20th Century Fox). The former hearkens to the paranoid mood of '70's conspiracy thrillers (furthered by casting Robert Redford in a key role), while the latter actually travels between 1973 and a bleak near-future. Both adapt older comic book storylines and feature a destructive climax set right in Washington, D.C (including major occurrences in the Potomac). Though blockbusters (like all other groups of movies) vary in cinematic merit, they often respond to popular needs for escapism and hope while confronting more-or-less disguised modern fears. The conflicted mood of the American 1970's lives on in these speculative struggles for hearts and minds.
