Back when the Doctor Who series was new, the scriptwriters considered an episode sufficiently suspenseful if the Doctor and three or four companions were in deadly peril. But as the TV seasons went by, and I mean well before the long hiatus and the resumption, they felt a need to up the ante. Eventually the writers were starting to think that an episode was yawning dull if it did not AT A MINIMUM threaten total destruction to a densely populated planet.
The universe of Marvel Comics movies has the same bigger-is-better syndrome, which leads to some contradiction regarding who or what is THE VERY WORST threat to the universe. "The dark energy of Svartalfheim is the supreme ultimate evil!" "No, Thanos is the supreme ultimate evil!" "You're both wrong, Dormammu is the supreme ultimate evil!"
Against this backdrop, the movie "Captain America: The Winter Soldier," which I greatly enjoyed EVEN THOUGH Steve and Natasha DIDN'T get together as they should have, is undeservedly burdened with a sense of trivialness. Its plot "only" threatened our own single world with a dictatorship, ho hum. The Captain's victory over Hydra scarcely made any
difference, because it left Svartalfheim, Thanos and Dormammu as threatening as ever; and one of those evils would soon have shouldered Hydra aside as minor-leaguers if Hydra HAD succeeded.
I like stories with a "manageable" crisis, one that my emotions can take in. Each of my own Grey Eagle novels has an action climax with, like, thirty or forty persons in immediate peril. That's quite enough potential casualties to let the heroes be heroic saving them.
(I like it that, in an alternate, animated Marvel universe, Steve and Natasha DO get together.)