‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ – We’ve Seen This Movie Before, Right?

While Christopher Reeve wasn’t the original ‘Superman,’ he’ll always be Superman to so many people, and much like Hugh Jackman’s career-making performance as Wolverine, Reeve became a star overnight when he played the man of steel. Because of the ‘60’s ‘Batman’ TV show, superheroes weren’t taken seriously as movie and TV properties, but with ‘Superman,’ director Richard Donner showed the character great respect without reducing him to camp. Great soundtrack on this one too, courtesy of John Williams.

While the first ‘Spider-Man’ movie wasn’t great, it could have been completely awful, and while the movie would have made a ton of money regardless, at least Sam Raimi didn’t deliver a total embarrassment the first time around. The second time was definitely the charm, because like ‘The Dark Knight,’ ‘Spider-Man 2’ was the best of the series, and one element that helped set it apart from many superhero films was the emotional screenwriting of Alvin Sargent, the Academy Award winning scribe of ‘Ordinary People’ and ‘Paper Moon.’

While ‘The Dark Knight’ will probably always be the best Batman film, ‘Batman Begins’ finally resurrected the character from the hacky clutches of director Joel Schumacher, and relaunched the character in a big way. With the tag-team of Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale, Batman finally got the movie he’s always deserved, returning the story to its dark roots, and making his world much more realistic than the usual comic book fare.