Nerdlings! Hello. It's 9:15 and I am watching baseball and there's all kinds of nerd stuff happening during this game. There was an exclusive Hunger Games trailer, which I wasn't super interested in because...I haven't read them. I haven't read the books because I'm not sure why. The game may also be sponsored by the new Thor movie? I might have heard that? Or I may have been imagining it because I've got Avengers on my mind? No, seriously, I am super late writing this column because I was being productive earlier and also couldn't really think of anything I wanted to write about more than the Captain America: The Winter Soldier trailer but didn't want to write about the Marvel Cinematic Universe twice in, like, three weeks. I mean, you know I'm going to have some thoughts on Thor: The Dark World. So I pondered it all day but then decided that I didn't care and you'd forgive me. I mean, you'll forgive me, right?

 

Anyway. Have you seen the trailer? HAVE YOU?

 

Well, if you haven't, go watch it. Here's a link, seriously, go right now if you haven't. In fact, go take another looksee if you haven't watched it yet today.

 

Cool, are you back? Dude, are you just horrified for poor Cap or what? Black Widow is trying to set him up with some girl in Statistics and S.H.I.E.L.D. is being ridiculously vague and menacing and where the hell is Coulson? Relegated to network forever? And, really, speaking of Ms. Romanoff, this seems like a total copout on Marvel's part, just putting Black Widow in everyone else's movies. I know there's lots of very quiet chatter about how a lady superhero can't carry a movie but, shit, it'd be better than Green Lantern was. 

 

But whatever. Obviously, I’m a total afterthought for the MCU and that’s fine. FINE.  We’re here to talk about how Captain Rogers is adjusting. Me, I’d go ahead and say fairly poorly. I mean, he’s snarking at his teammate about his barbershop quartet, which makes me giggle to myself every time I watch it again and then I feel terrible because, gosh, that’s a dark little moment there, isn’t it? Of course he’s isolated – everyone, everything, he knew was in another era. He missed the Sixties, for Thor’s sake. And he’s kind of thrown into a way more ambiguous world and seems to be asked to be slightly shadowy, which seems rough for a straight shooter like Captain Rogers. He’s the one who ripped the door off the weapons vault instead of waiting for a virus to do the dirty work for him.

 

Despite his apparently emotional shakiness, though, the trailer seems to indicate that it’s still the same old Steve Rogers under there, though, as evidenced by the fact that he gives everyone a shot to get off the elevator and still seems interested in due process. He’s still saving the world, just not the one he knew. And if he’s the same old Steve Rogers who walked away from Peggy Carter 70 years ago/two months ago, it seems a little unfair to ask him to be dating girls in Statistics. Of course, we don’t know the timeframe for Captain America: The Winter Soldier but give a dude a second, Agent Romanoff.

 

And, speaking of Agent Romanoff…well, spoilers, nerdlings, but I suspect she’s about to have a pretty rough go of it herself, poor duck. In fact, I would go so far as to say that I think this movie will be the feelsing-est of all the MCU offerings we’ve seen so far. Mind you, I haven’t seen Thor: The Dark World and I’ll be fascinated to see what Jane Foster does on Asgard and of course we’ll have a chat about that in a few weeks but, call it a hunch, I think that this is the one that’s gonna make our hearts hurt. Poor Cap. Poor Black Widow. Poor us, having to wait until April to see if I’m right. | Erin Jameson