I read comic books years ago but not for a long time. I have watched many of the Marvel films already released but don't have that foundation that the fan-boys have. My mistake was not realizing there was a previous movie when I went to this one. So it took a little information from my twenty something son to get me up to speed. I'm sure most of you reading this know the Captain America mythos. This is a high speed, action every minute, mind bending experience. The individual characters are interesting and complex. I still need to watch the first movie to actually figure out the whole "Shield" and "Hydra" thing and how it works and what Captain America has done. However, when you have your characters being pursued by the most formidable of villains, it isn't necessary to have an encyclopedic knowledge of all this stuff. For an old fogie, I thoroughly enjoyed this film and look forward to going back and watching the first one