Anyway, as the end of the season draws near and the HYDRA element from Captain America: The Winter Soldier becomes the main focus, the quality of the show has increased considerably. But just like with Winter Soldier, I don't like the fact that they feel the need to emphasize that this is HYDRA, not SHIELD, which has totally been infiltrated and destroyed by now, and yes, this HYDRA is indeed the same puppy-kicking, mustache-twirling group that Red Skull led back in WW2, and that's how we know they're the bad guys. It almost entirely undercuts any political message they're trying to send about authoritarianism, or freedom being sacrificed in the name of security, or whatever. There's just no real parallel between HYDRA and the shenanigans that our governments have been up to in recent years. With SHIELD, there certainly is, and they might have had something good if they had just kept it at that. But no, instead we're supposed to look at these idiots yelling "Hail Hydra!" and totally see the NSA there. Right.
Okay, I'll talk about something that other people actually saw, X-Men: Days of Future Past. I thought it was good, but not quite the masterpiece that all the critics seem to think it is. For one thing, even with this whole timeline-merging thing, there are still some pretty glaring plot holes and continuity errors. Why is Xavier alive? When did the world turn into an apocalyptic wasteland, given that it was just fine when we last saw it in The Wolverine? Did it take the government forty years to create the Sentinels after Trask was killed? And didn't Trask say that the Sentinels were made out of some kind of plastic, or some other non-metal substance? But when they're revealed, they're metal.
Also, Magneto sucked. I don't mind that he's an antagonist - that kind of comes with the territory for him - but everything he did was so illogical, so myopic, and so objectively stupid that he was incredibly annoying to watch. Magneto is a radical with a very different moral code to the heroes, yes. But he's not an idiot who has no understanding of consequences. And speaking of consequences, why does Magneto keep managing to avoid them at the end of every movie? He hasn't faced any negative repercussions for his actions since the first film, and all jokes aside, this is something that's really beginning to frustrate me, maybe on a psychological level or something. Would it really ruin the franchise if we could just get to see this asshole get his comeuppance every once in a while, rather than just having him exit stage left yelling "I'll get you next time!" after every movie?
Oh, and one more thing, the movie repeats the urban legend about how JFK was apparently killed with a curving bullet, and therefore, hint hint, he must have been killed by a different shot. The way they talk about it is a very amusing take on the theory, but in reality, there was nothing unusual about the shot that killed JFK. Not really a critique of the film itself, but it's such a common misconception that I felt I had to correct it.