SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, BUILDING AND DESIGN

THE DESIGN SCHOOL

FOUNDATION IN NATURAL BUILD ENVIRONMENT

NAME: Muhammad Hasif bin Alias

STUDENT ID NO: 0316413

FILMS SELECTED: Captain America:The Winter Soldier & The Dark Knight Rises

WORD COUNT: 987

ENGLISH 2 (ENGL 0205)

WRITTEN ASSIGNMENT 1: COMPARE – CONTRAST ESSAY

LECTURER: CASSANDRA WIJESURIA

SUBMISSION DATE: 18th APRIL 2014

ESSAY

Movies have become an importance for most people. Every week, a new movie will come out and

some earn an outrageous amount of viewers while others earn only thousands of viewers. What distinguishes

these films are their genre. Movie follows those genres and each person have their very own preferred genre.

However, even if two movies belong in the same genre such as superhero films, their storyline are not exactly

the same and have their very own differences. Nowadays, superhero films like Captain America:The Winter

Soldier and The Dark Knight Rises have their own noticeable differences in their movie especially the way

the hero acts, the villainous act of villains, the genres and the interesting plots.

First, the main protagonist or the superhero of the movie itself. In Captain America:The Winter

Soldier, Captain America is an official icon hero for New York City, unlike Batman whom Gotham City’s

local authorities treated him like a villain. And so, Batman can hardly do an open public heroic entrance like

Captain America does. In the movie, Captain America always choose brute force either to chase or escape by

destroying walls, doors, and mirrors while Batman used his advance vehicles like Batpod(motorcycle) and

The Bat(Aircraft). This shows that Captain America mainly depends on his strength while Batman depends

on his gadgets. Besides that, Captain America is proven to be liked more by the viewers because of his funny

jokes and sarcasms in the movie with Black Widow, compared to Batman whom always prefer to be a

serious and sad character even if he was with Alfred. Alfred is not half as bad as Batman if the story contains

plot twists.

Next, the villainous act of the movie’s villain. The villains that I would like to compare are Winter

Soldier in Captain America:The Winter Soldier and Bane in The Dark Knight Rises. First point, expectation,

unlike Winter Soldier, no one have ever guessed the plot twist of Bane. Everyone knows that Winter Soldier

is Captain America’s old enemy, but who would have thought that Bane is not the main antagonist. Secondly,

the hero and the enemy have different powers. If villains in each movie were to be traded, it’ll be one easy

fight for Captain America but tough for Batman. Compared to Bane who has an immune system against

injuries but obvious weakness, Winter Soldier has a bionic arm on his left arm and strength equal to Captain

America which proves that he is stronger than Bane. However, in terms of villainousness, Bane wins over

Winter Soldier because in the movie, Bane committed far greater destruction and killing spree. Also, Bane

possesses the typical funny yet an evil attitude a villain should have while Winter Soldier prefers to be more

introverted.

An obvious difference of the two movies will be their genres. Captain America:The Winter Soldier is more to

adventure and sci-fi. In the movie, the audience are introduced to the adventures of Steve Rogers in his new

era as Captain America joining hand in hand with S.H.I.E.L.D in order to save the world. Later in the movie,

he discovered that S.H.I.E.L.D has actually been under the grasp of HYDRA for years, and so Captain

America and his team must face S.H.I.E.L.D and their high advance war machines called the Helicarrier that

aimed every single human. While Captain America is busy saving the world, Batman on the other hand are

busy solving his own problems. With the genres, crime and thriller, The Dark Knight Rises is more to a crime

scene investigation, Bruce Wayne finding meaning for his life and reasons for the problems that come after

one another. His love, Rachel died, his precious butler,Alfred left and his other side,Batman blamed for the

police or also known as Two-Face,Harvey Dent’s death. With a lot of stuff going inside his mind, Bane starts

to spread fear and darkness over Gotham City. As Batman, it is his duty to save Gotham City from

destruction and stop Bane’s terror.

Lastly, the movie’s interesting plots. By interesting, I am referring to the fights, flashbacks, conflicts

and endings. Most plots in Captain America:The Winter Soldier are easily expected and very cliche such as

“the villain is our old friend” and “our real enemy is the company we are working in” but the conflicts and

plot twist regarding the truth of S.H.I.E.L.D is a shock to non comic readers. However, Captain America’s

movie is not a dead serious type of movie like Batman because they put a lot of good comedy scenes in the

movie that can make viewers lose some tension. Even so, The Dark Knight Rises did something different and

put a lot of flashbacks to introduce the new character backgrounds like Bane and help recall the previous

Batman’s important scenes to relate to the movie’s current story like a real investigation show. For fighting

scenes, The Dark Knight Rises is less realistic because the final showdown between Batman and Bane is too

easy and the war between the police and criminal is ridiculous and weird. However, in Captain America:The

Winter Soldier, the fighting scene is more realistic because the enemies have more killing instinct even if

Winter Soldier did the typical “villain wait for hero to come” moment and not to forget, the war between

S.H.I.E.L.D and HYDRA resulted in more deaths of innocent people like S.H.I.E.L.D’s agents and World

Security Council compared to the funny war between criminals and police forces of Gotham City.

In conclusion, Captain America:The Winter Soldier and The Dark Knight Rises are different in many

ways, depending on the viewers opinion themselves. One genre does not describe a movie's storyline

entirely, there is always something new and different prepared by famous directors like Christopher Nolan to

entertain and surprise the viewers.

REFERENCES

1. Russo, A., & Russo, J. (Directors). (2014). Captain America : The Winter Soldier [Motion picture]. CA:

Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

2. Nolan, C. (Director). (2012). The Dark Knight Rises [Motion picture]. NY: Warner Bros. Pictures.