For a very long time, there was a feeling among a certain segment of hardcore comics fans. When Jean Grey was resurrected in the lead-up to the launch of the X-Factor comic book, it started a flood of character resurrections in Marvel (and DC for that matter). Heck, even Aunt May was revived! (Thus ruining a most powerful character death in Amazing Spider-Man #400.)
To many comics fans, though, there were two people who were likely to stay all dead, rather than be mostly dead: Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben and Captain America’s sidekick Bucky Barnes. Those two deaths were too important, too formative to ever be reversed.
And then in 2005, Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting did the “Winter Soldier” storyline in Captain America Volume 5 and blew that idea all to hell.
Brubaker and Epting managed to find a way to bring Bucky back that actually worked, proving that there’s no such thing as a bad idea, only bad execution—and while bringing Bucky back was, on the face of it, a terrible idea, Brubaker and Epting managed to make it work by having Bucky be rescued from being near death in the ocean deep by Soviet soldiers, having lost an arm in the explosion that was supposed to have killed him.
He was brought to Russia, brainwashed, and trained as an assassin, used by the Soviet Union, and then by the Russian government after the U.S.S.R.’s fall in 1989, and put into suspended animation between missions, so he did not age appreciably.
Stephen McFeely & Christopher Markus were hired to write a second Captain America movie before The First Avenger was even released, and their idea all along was to adapt Brubaker’s Winter Soldier idea, and also show Cap adapting to the modern world following the end of his first film and of Avengers.
Besides introducing the MCU version of the Winter Soldier, the movie also gives us Sam Wilson, a.k.a. the Falcon. Wilson was first introduced in 1969 as a partner for Captain America, and was one of the first African-American main characters in a superhero comic (and also didn’t have the word “Black” in his superhero name). Using a set of mechanical wings to give him flight, with a falcon named Redwing as his sidekick/helper, and after some extensive training by Cap his own self, the pair fought side by side for years. Falcon also has been a member of the Avengers on and off.
In the comics, Wilson was a former hustler (with the street name “Snap”) who later became a social worker, an occupation he still has today. For the MCU, this was changed to him being former military, part of a team that used experimental tech that enabled him to fly, tech he uses again in this movie, becoming the Falcon in the MCU as well. He also runs group therapy sessions at the VA hospital, thus keeping him at least somewhat in the social-worker game.
At various points in the last twenty years, both Barnes and Wilson have taken over as Captain America when Steve Rogers was believed killed or missing or whatever.
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Anthony & Joe Russo were brought in to direct (they, along with F. Gary Gray and George Nolfi were Marvel Studios’ finalists for the job), and along with Markus & McFeely, constructed a conspiracy thriller along the lines of Three Days of the Condor, The Parallax View, Marathon Man, and the Mission Impossible movies. To that end, the movie focuses a great deal on S.H.I.E.L.D., which is also the subject of Marvel Studios’ first MCU TV series, ABC’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., a show which got a major change in direction after this film came out. (ABC would’ve been better off waiting to launch the show until one or two months before this movie instead of seven months, as the show spun its wheels for most of the first season waiting for the events of this movie to occur so the real story could kick in.)
Back from Avengers are Chris Evans as Cap (by way of a Thor: The Dark World cameo), Scarlett Johansson as the Black Widow, and Jenny Agutter as a member of the World Council. Back from appearances on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. are Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill, and Maximiliano Hernández as Jasper Sitwell. Back from The First Avenger are Toby Jones as Arnim Zola, Sebastian Stan as Barnes, and Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter (by way of the one-shot Agent Carter). Back from Iron Man 2 is Garry Shandling as Senator Stern. First appearing in this movie are Anthony Mackie as the Falcon, Frank Grillo as Brock Rumlow (the real name of Crossbones in the comics, and he’s set up to appear as a version of that character in the end), Emily VanCamp as Agent 13, George St-Pierre as Batroc, Thomas Kretschmann as Baron Strucker, Henry Goodman as Dr. List, Elizabeth Olson as the Scarlet Witch, Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Quicksilver, and most amazing of all, Robert Redford as Alexander Pierce. (I love that I live in a world where Robert Redford appears in a Captain America movie.) In addition, Agutter is joined by Chin Han, Alan Dale, and Bernard White as the rest of the World Council.
Evans, Johansson, Mackie, Kretschmann, Olson, and Taylor-Johnson will all next appear in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Jackson, Smulders, Atwell, and Goodman will next appear in episodes of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Stan will next appear in Ant-Man. VanCamp and Grillo will next appear in Captain America: Civil War.
“I do what he does, just slower”
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Written by Stephen McFeely & Christopher Markus
Directed by Anthony & Joe Russo
Produced by Kevin Feige
Original release date: April 4, 2014
Sam Wilson is going for a run around Washington, D.C., and he’s repeatedly passed by a much faster Steve Rogers, who calls out, “On your left” every time he passes him. The pair of them talk after the run, Wilson identifying himself as a former soldier who now works at the VA hospital. They talk about how Rogers is adjusting to modern life (Rogers likes the better food—”we used to boil everything“—the lack of polio, and the Internet), and Wilson recommends Marvin Gaye’s 1972 record Trouble Man. (“Everything you missed, jammed into one album.”)
Rogers’s phone buzzes with a mission, and Natasha Romanoff shows up in a nice car to pick him up. In the two years since the Battle of New York, Rogers has been working for S.H.I.E.L.D., leading the Special Tactical Reserve for International Key Emergencies, an awkward name created to fit the S.T.R.I.K.E. acronym. A pirate named Georges Batroc has taken a S.H.I.E.L.D. boat hostage. Rogers goes first, jumping out of the plane without a parachute, to the horror of one of the team, and taking out most of the people on the deck. The rest of the team ‘chutes down, and Brock Rumlow takes out the last of the pirates on deck. When Rogers thanks him, he snidely says, “Yeah, you seemed helpless without me.”
Romanoff secures the engine room while Rogers goes after Batroc and Rumlow and the others free the hostages. (Romanoff also keeps trying to talk Rogers into asking out one of the other S.H.I.E.L.D. employees. Rogers rebuffs her. “Secure the engine room, then get me a date.” “I’m multitasking!”)
Rogers fights Batroc, who’s proficient in savate, at one point taunting Rogers into fighting without the shield. However, Romanoff is late for her rendezvous, and Rogers finds her downloading data from the ship’s computer—which, it turns out, was her secondary mission, given to her and her alone by Nick Fury.
The hostages—including Agent Jasper Sitwell—are rescued. They return to the Triskelion, S.H.I.E.L.D.’s headquarters in D.C., and Rogers bitches out Fury for not telling him about Romanoff’s side mission. Fury calls it compartmentalizing, but Rogers calls it fatal for operational safety. Soldiers need to be able to trust their comrades in arms. Fury allows as how trust is hard for him to come by, as the last time he trusted someone, he lost his eye. (And I’m watching this in 2019 thinking, “Will they remember he said this in Captain Marvel?”)
Fury decides to trust Rogers with something above his clearance level, and takes him to a sub-basement of the Triskelion to show him Project: Insight. It’s three helicarriers that will orbit the globe, with repulsor technology in the VTOL engines (Tony Stark apparently had some ideas after getting an inside look at the turbines in Avengers), and linked to spy satellites, designed to take out threats before they materialize. Rogers is disgusted, wondering what happened to innocent until proven guilty, and saying this isn’t the freedom he fought for in World War II. Fury tartly points out the compromises that the so-called “greatest generation” had to make to win that war, and Rogers just as tartly says that they were fighting for something greater.
Rogers isn’t happy with this, and he wanders. First he visits the Captain America exhibit at the National Air & Space Museum, then he visits Wilson in the VA, and finally he visits the elderly Peggy Carter. Carter is bedridden, suffering from Alzheimers, though in one of her more lucid moments she tells him that they made a mess of the world after he saved it at the end of the war. Rogers also allows as how Carter’s role in founding S.H.I.E.L.D. is the only reason he’s been working with them.
Fury tries to read the information on the flash drive that Romanoff provided for him, but it’s encrypted, and he doesn’t have access. According to the computer, the person who authorized the secrecy is Fury himself, which makes no sense.
He goes to the top floor to visit with the World Council that has oversight over S.H.I.E.L.D. He meets with Secretary Alexander Pierce, who’s the one who made Fury director back in the day. Fury wants to delay the launch of Insight. It might be nothing, but in case it isn’t nothing, he wants to be sure. Pierce says he’ll try to do that, but he has to promise to have Iron Man appear at his niece’s birthday party. And not just a quick appearance—”he has to mingle.”
Fury gets into his customized fancy-shmancy S.H.I.E.L.D. SUV and contacts Maria Hill, telling her to get to D.C. as fast as she can. Fury is then assaulted by a team of commandos disguised as Metro Police, though the SUV’s on board computer alerts him that Metro has no units in the vicinity.
Despite being attacked by a dozen well-armed professionals, Fury escapes mostly intact, because he’s just that awesome, but then a masked assassin with a bionic arm blows up his SUV. He still manages to escape by blowing a hole in the bottom of his SUV and the pavement and escaping through the sewers.
He goes to Rogers’s apartment, telling him verbally that his wife threw him out, but showing him text on his phone saying the apartment is bugged and that S.H.I.E.L.D. is compromised. Fury is then shot through the wall by the same masked assassin. Before he lapses into a coma, Fury gives Rogers the flash drive and tells him not to trust anyone.
Rogers’s next-door neighbor turns out to be Agent 13, assigned by Fury to protect Rogers. She tends to Fury while Rogers goes after the assassin, but when Rogers throws his shield at the assassin, he catches it one-handed and throws it right back.
Rogers goes to the hospital where they’re working on Fury. Also there are Romanoff, Hill, Rumlow, and Sitwell. As they watch, he’s declared dead.
Hill says the ballistics on the rounds that shot him had no rifling, impossible to trace, and Romanoff immediately says, “Soviet made.” She seems to recognize the assassin, but says nothing.
Rumlow informs Rogers that Pierce wants to see him. He says he’ll be right there, and then hides the flash drive in a vending machine.
Pierce waxes rhapsodic about his long friendship with Fury, and wants to know what Fury told Rogers before he was shot. The only thing Rogers will admit to Fury saying is that he shouldn’t trust anyone. Pierce also mentions that apparently Fury himself hired Batroc to seize the boat.
Rogers gets into the elevator to leave. Several people join him on various floors, and Rogers soon realizes he’s about to be ambushed. Despite being outnumbered about a dozen or so to one, with his foes having high-tech tasers and magnetic handcuffs and other fun gadgets, Rogers still wins. Before Rogers takes him down, Rumlow insists it’s not personal, but Rogers says it sure feels personal. He then leaves by way of the elevator window, as there are more agents waiting to take him out on the next floor.
He escapes the Triskelion despite all S.H.I.E.L.D.’s efforts to stop him (which are considerable, but Rogers is Captain fucking America). Sitwell then makes capturing him priority one. Agent 13 demands to know why there’s a manhunt for Cap of all people, and Pierce enters and says that he’s withholding information about Fury. This seems an extreme response to that, but nobody questions Pierce.
Rogers returns to the hospital to retrieve the flash drive, but it’s gone. Then Romanoff shows up behind him with the flash drive (and also blowing a bubble from the pack of gum Rogers hid it behind). She reveals that she knows who the assassin is, though most people think he’s a myth: the Winter Soldier. She encountered him once, and was shot by him (she shows him the scar). He matches the description, and has a Soviet-made rifle with those clean ballistics.
Romanoff and Rogers go to an Apple Store to try to read the flash drive. They’ll have about nine minutes before S.T.R.I.K.E. traces the use of the drive, and while Romanoff can’t decrypt it, she can trace where the data originated from: Wheaton, New Jersey. Rogers recognizes the location, as it’s also where he originated. They escape the mall without S.T.R.I.K.E. finding them (in part because Romanoff has them kiss when they pass Rumlow on an escalator), and then steal a car. (Rogers insists it’s borrowing, and also allows as how he learned how to hotwire a car in Nazi Germany.) On the drive to New Jersey, Romanoff wonders if that’s his first kiss since 1945, and Rogers wonders how he can trust someone he doesn’t entirely know.
The data originated from the now-long-abandoned Camp Lehigh, where Rogers went through training for the super soldier project in The First Avenger. Romanoff detects no heat signatures or electronic emissions, but Rogers notes that the munitions building is too close to the barracks per Army regulations. Turns out not to be munitions, but a secret office, and they realize that this was the first headquarters of S.H.I.E.L.D. back in the day. There are portraits of Colonel Phillips, Howard Stark, and Peggy Carter in the main office. There’s also a secret passage to an elevator, and Rogers wonders why a secret base has a secret elevator.
They go (very far) down to find a computer lab from around 1979 or so—albeit with a single USB port. Romanoff plugs in the flash drive, and when green text shows up on the monochrome monitor, Romanoff smiles and says, “Shall we play a game?” then is surprised to learn that Rogers has actually seen War Games some time in the last two years.
And then a pixelated version of Arnim Zola’s face appears on the monitor. Zola was part of Operation Paperclip, the American program that brought Nazi scientists to the U.S. (cf. Wernher von Braun), and was assigned to the nascent S.H.I.E.L.D. However, Zola conceived an audacious plan to embed Hydra agents within the spy organization, working covertly to sow chaos and fear so that people would crave security in exchange for freedom. Project: Insight is the culmination of Hydra’s plan.
Zola only told them this much because he was stalling. S.H.I.E.L.D.—or, rather, Hydra—sends a couple of missiles to destroy Lehigh and kill Rogers and Romanoff. They survive only thanks to an underfloor and Cap’s shield.
They return to D.C. and take refuge at Wilson’s place. Rogers is convinced that Pierce is part of Hydra as well, as he’s the only one who could’ve ordered a missile strike on U.S. soil. Since Sitwell was on the boat, they want to question him. Wilson volunteers to help, and shows them his Army file. Turns out he wasn’t a pilot, as Rogers assumed, but one of two guys who used mechanical wings in combat operations. His “wingman” was killed, and Wilson’s own rig is in a secure location. Romanoff and Rogers are so confident that they can steal it that the theft happens off-camera.
Pierce meets with the Winter Soldier in his house, just as his housekeeper Renata leaves. As they talk, Renata comes back in because she forgot her phone, and sees the Soldier. Pierce shoots her dead, wishing she’d knocked before coming back in.
Sitwell is escorting Senator Stern, who whispers “Hail Hydra” to Sitwell before getting into his car. Rogers, Romanoff, and Wilson then kidnap Sitwell and question him. (His willingness to talk increases after Romanoff kicks him off a roof, with Wilson rescuing him after he’s fallen several dozen feet.) Sitwell explains that Hydra has been data mining to find threats to their eventual sovereignty. They’ve created a lengthy list of targets to kill once Insight goes online—Rogers is one, as are several politicians, a high school valedictorian, journalists, other superheroes (both Bruce Banner and Stephen Strange are name-checked).
Unfortunately, their plan to use Sitwell to get into the Triskelion fails when the Winter Soldier attacks Wilson’s car as they’re driving down the highway. Sitwell is thrown from the vehicle and killed. A vicious fight takes place on the highway, during which Romanoff gets shot, and the Winter Soldier’s bionic arm is damaged.
At one point, the Soldier’s mask comes off, and Rogers is stunned to see that it’s Bucky Barnes.
S.H.I.E.L.D./Hydra captures the three of them, putting them in the back of a truck with two agents. However, one of those agents is Hill in disguise. She tases the other one, and uses the same go-out-through-the-bottom-and-into-the-sewer trick that Fury used earlier.
They go to a cave, where Fury is alive. He faked his death with a compound that Banner created in one of his attempts to keep the Hulk in check. (“They can’t kill you if you’re already dead.”) Rogers and Romanoff inform him of what they learned from Zola, which tracks with Fury’s suspicions. He’s especially pissed about Pierce, who once turned down a Nobel Peace Prize because he said peace wasn’t an achievement, it was a responsibility. (“It’s stuff like this that gives me trust issues.”)
Fury wants to save S.H.I.E.L.D., but Rogers refuses, believing it to be beyond saving. The cancer of Hydra has been there from jump, and it all needs to come down. Hill, Romanoff, and Wilson all agree.
The Soldier wants to know why Rogers is so familiar. We see flashbacks showing that Zola’s experiments on him when he was a prisoner make him stronger and faster, and enabled him to survive the fall in the mountains where he was believed killed. Zola turned him into the Winter Soldier, and he was put in suspended animation between missions and upgrades. Pierce wants his memory wiped again.
Rogers, meanwhile, remembers Barnes walking him home after his mother’s funeral (his father had already died), and telling him that he doesn’t have to deal with it alone. “I’m with you till the end of the line.”
Fury has three computer blades that will enable them to reprogram the three helicarriers—but only if all three helicarriers have the new blades. Pierce is bringing the rest of the World Council in person to watch the launch the helicarriers. Romanoff replaces one of them, using a high-tech mask to disguise herself. Rogers, Wilson, and Hill penetrate the Triskelion—but not until after Rogers breaks into Air and Space and steals his old World War II uniform from the exhibit. (The security guard who discovers the theft, who looks just like Stan Lee, declares, “I am so fired.”)
Rogers goes over the PA and announces that Hydra has suborned S.H.I.E.L.D. from within and says that they can’t let the helicarriers launch. Several agents—including Agent 13—hesitate, as they know how brutally honest Captain America is.
This forces the Hydra moles’ hands—starting with Rumlow—as they force the launch. Firefights ensue all over the Triskelion. Romanoff removes her disguise and holds Pierce at gunpoint, helped by the other members of the Council, who are aghast at the Hydra revelation. Romanoff uploads everything about S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra to the Internet. Pierce points out that this will reveal all her secrets, and is she ready for that? She retorts, “Are you?”
Rogers and Wilson manage to put two of the blades in, but their attempt to put in the third is stopped by the Soldier, who rips off Wilson’s wings. (Luckily, he has a chute, but he’s now grounded.) Rogers and the Soldier fight, but Rogers keeps trying to remind him who he really is. (“You’re my friend.” “You’re my mission!”)
The helicarriers launch and start acquiring all of Hydra’s targets, intending to kill all of them.
Despite being shot several times, Rogers manages to get the third blade in. Hill reprograms the helicarriers, reducing their targets down to three: the three helicarriers. They all start firing on each other and crash into the Triskelion.
Fury joins Romanoff, and wants to know why Pierce made him director. Pierce says that it’s because Fury is ruthless. Besides, Hydra and S.H.I.E.L.D. want the same thing: order. Fury winds up shooting Pierce, and his dying words are, “Hail Hydra.”
Wilson intercepts Rumlow before he can get to the Council floor, but their fight is interrupted by a helicarrier crashing into the building. Wilson jumps out and is saved by Fury, Romanoff, and Hill in a helicopter. They try to rescue Rogers, but can’t find him.
In fact, Rogers fell off the helicarrier into the Potomac. His last words to the Soldier before falling were that he wasn’t going to fight him anymore, but will instead be with him till the end of the line. The Soldier dives after him and pulls him from the water.
Rogers wakes up in the hospital to the sounds of Marvin Gaye’s Trouble Man playing on Wilson’s iPod. Wilson himself is sitting in chair to the right of the bed, and Rogers lets him know he’s awake by saying, “On your left.”
Romanoff testifies before a joint Congressional and military committee about the revelations regarding S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra. Agent 13 winds up at the CIA, Hill winds up at Stark Enterprises, and Rumlow winds up in the hospital covered in burns and wounds.
Fury is still officially dead, and he burns a ton of personal stuff, and meets with Rogers, Romanoff, and Wilson at his own grave. (Which has the same Bible quote that Jules quoted in Pulp Fiction, because the filmmakers are dorks.) He plans to track down the remnants of Hydra. He invites Rogers and Wilson to join him, but they refuse. Rogers is determined to find Bucky and Wilson joins him.
In Sokovia, another Hydra leader, Baron Strucker, is philosophical about the events of the film, saying S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra are two sides of the same coin of a no-longer-existing currency. We see that he has Loki’s scepter from Avengers, and his experiments with it are bearing fruit, including a set of twins who now have powers.
At Air and Space, the Soldier, in civilian garb, stares at the part of the exhibit that discusses James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes of the Howling Commandos.
“I’m sorry, did I step on your moment?”
Just as Thor: The Dark World often lands near the bottom of most people’s rankings of the MCU films (though not mine), The Winter Soldier is often near the top, and there I can agree wholeheartedly, as it’s one of the best films in the MCU pantheon, and just a damn good film overall period.
It’s not perfect, mind you. While I am abject in my love of the character of the Falcon and of Anthony Mackie’s portrayal of same, his presence in this movie is a bit hand-wavey. Hey look, this guy Rogers met on his morning run just happens to have been a guy who flew high-tech wings in combat! What a coinky-dink! And also we see Wilson using the wings after this movie regularly despite them having been stolen by Rogers and Romanoff, and there’s no explanation as to how and why he gets to keep them. (Or, for that matter, how they got fixed.)
Also, Hydra’s been secretly inside S.H.I.E.L.D. since its earliest days being all secret and covert and stuff. Yet they also send their agents disguised as Metro Police to shoot up an entire city street and a major highway, which is the exact opposite of what a covert organization should be doing, especially since they haven’t reached their big reveal yet. (I also think it does a disservice to several of the MCU’s smartest, strongest characters—Howard Stark, Phil Coulson, Maria Hill, and especially Peggy Carter and Nick Fury—that they were this clueless to the snake in the grass.)
Still, these are minor complaints in this fantastic thrill-ride of a movie. The pacing is fantastic, the characterization is strong, the acting is amazing, the dialogue is crackling. Things never slow down enough to get boring, nor speed up enough to be exhausting. The plot unfolds nicely, with revelations coming slowly and sensibly, with only two really big “gotcha” moments—Rogers realizing who the Winter Soldier is, and Zola’s ghost-in-the-machine act under Camp Lehigh. Even those work, the former because it’s quick and brutal, the latter because it’s kind of important, and seeing a pixelated Toby Jones deliver it snidely makes it all work. And it even serves a purpose, as Zola admits that he’s stalling.
Every performance in this movie is fantastic, starting with the one you expect brilliance from, Robert fucking Redford. If you’d told adolescent Keith that he’d grow up to see Redford starring in a Captain America movie and actually say the words, “Hail Hydra” unironically, I’d have thought you were absolutely insane. No way Redford would lower himself to that! No way Marvel would ever do something so classy!
Instead, no, we live in that world, and it’s awesome. Redford is superb here, perfectly playing the politician-as-former-soldier, his easy camaraderie with both Samuel L. Jackson’s Fury and Chris Evans’s Rogers hiding an almost bland ruthlessness. When he explains to Fury why he’s done what he’s done, he’s so reasonable and sensible. It’s a great performance, because it isn’t overplayed. Even when he shoots his housekeeper, he’s reluctant, but quick to do what needs doing.
Jackson is also fantastic, and I kinda wish they’d done either done an actual S.H.I.E.L.D. movie instead of a TV show with a limited budget, or found a way for Jackson to star on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., because while I adore Clark Gregg’s Coulson, Jackson really is the badassiest badass ever, and his calm competence in the face of disaster is the glue that holds the movie together.
All the supporting roles are brilliant, from Hayley Atwell’s heartbreaking scene as a failing Carter to Mackie’s easy charm as Wilson to Maximiliano Hernández’s toadying as Sitwell to Sebastian Stan’s bland affect replaced by torment as the Soldier to Jones’s prototypical Big Villain Speech.
The stars of the movie, though, are Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson. The Black Widow continues to be one of the few grownups in the MCU, and Johansson manages a tremendous balancing act here, managing both to provide reveals about Romanoff, yet not really telling us anything. (I also love the way she keeps trying to matchmake Rogers.) Her speech to Rogers about how she thought joining S.H.I.E.L.D. meant putting the KGB behind her is devastatingly delivered.
And Evans remains a rock. He never loses sight of Rogers’s honesty, his nobility, his skill, and most of all his belief in the American dream. When he tells Fury that Project: Insight is like putting a gun to the head of the entire world, he says it with a seriousness that manages to be earnest without being corny. It’s an inspiring, inspirational performance, and you can tell that cynical old spies like Fury, Romanoff, and Hill and tired old soldiers like Wilson gravitate to him because he has a purity of purpose and of belief that they’ve long since lost and would love to get back.
Finally, this movie shows a willingness not to rely on the status quo. S.H.I.E.L.D. has been an undercurrent of the MCU since Iron Man, and it’s just been trashed. And while it will continue in various forms in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers movies (and, based on the trailer, the next Spider-Man movie, too), and it informs the backstory of the two Ant-Man movies, it’s no longer the major driving force that it was in Phase 1. I like that the MCU is willing to flip the table every once in a while. Doing it in what is a humdinger of a movie just makes it even cooler.
Next week, we get the band back together, as the Avengers take on the creation of one of their members gone horribly horribly wrong in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
Keith R.A. DeCandido‘s latest work is “The Midwinter of Our Discontent” in Release the Virgins! He’s also back to reviewing new episodes of Star Trek: Discovery as they air, and you can read his review of “Brother” on this site today as well.
I agree that this movie deserves to be at or near the top of any Best MCU Movies list.
I would have assumed that Stark had a hand in repairing/redesigning Falcon’s Wings, maybe even designing the Redwing Drone that appears in Civil War.
the last time he trusted someone, he lost his eye. (And I’m watching this in 2019 thinking, “Will they remember he said this in Captain Marvel?”)
If they do, great.
If not–what, you actually believed something Nick Fury said?
This is easily my favorite in the whole Marvel Movie Corpus. I loved so much of it, it really sells Captain America as a super badass, I loved the slick insertion of Sharon Carter, and I squeed like a fangirl when Jenny Agutter appeared! I would love to know who the character actually is, though. (I keep holding out hope that one of these days, Marvel will give us the movie version of Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. For a blip of a moment, I thought maybe Jenny Agutter was playing her. She’s such a great character,)
Also, you failed to mention how incandescently hot Chris Evans is. Tsk, tsk.
Anyone else dreaming of an alternate universe where Robert Redford played Captain America in a mid-Sixties movie (with a 2010s quality script)?
They really improved Cap’s fighting skills in this movie, as compared to First Avenger and The Avengers. He was actually pretty brutal. His kicks and punches had the actual impact you would expect from someone with super strength.
I agree with @1 – I had assumed Stark had outfitted Falcon with his new tech as seen in Ant Man (and thereafter). We don’t see Falcon (in his suit) in Ultron (when he isn’t an Avenger) until the end (when he is part of the new class of Avengers) so I think that’s a reasonable assumption.
All in all, I’d say my top 3 MCU movies are this, Civil War and Infinity War. No surprise that it’s the same directors on all three. This one was SUCH a step-up for me from the previous two Phase 2 movies that it sort of re-energized me. That it interwove with my favorite TV show in AoS only adds to my enthusiasm for this one.
This has become my favorite of the MCU movies, but I am still bugged by its name. I feel that the Winter Soldier story is a secondary story in it. I polled a bunch of friends when it came out and we came up with two amazing options for a movie title: Captain America: The Price of Freedom or Captain America: Broken Shield.
I have to agree. I’ve had this one at the top of my list for most of the run of Marvel movies, although Thor: Ragnarok and Black Panther have given it a run in the last year, and the first Avengers film was thrilling in every way. I was never much of a captain fan as a kid, but the MCU has given me a profound respect for the character, and you hit the nail on the head that Chris Evans own the part, and even makes what are horribly corny expressions of patriotism on paper ring bright and true.
While there is that hand-waving at the beginning regarding the coincidence of Sam and Cap meeting, it’s one of the most solid non-action scenes in the MCU. The instant rapport they have isn’t forced, they connect on many levels due to shared military experiences, and it’s a lovely piece of writing that gets mirrored at the end when Cap wakes in the hospital to find Sam sitting next to him, and says “On your left,” to let him know he’s there and appreciates Sam staying with him. I return to that scene time and again when I’m writing stories to try and understand all that little nuances that made it so powerful.
This movie is Exhibit A in the argument that the Oscars need to add a category for stunts. Just incredible work.
Trollbreath42: I agree completely that the friendship between Rogers and Wilson is spot-on. It’s him happening to be part of the plot-convenient Falcon program that I take issue with. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
This was instantly my favorite, and still is my favorite. Watching Cap have his ideals realistically challenged in the modern world and sticking to them anyway is about as refreshing as it gets. There’s something powerful about it. He doesn’t come across as stubborn, or blind. He sees the world as it is, but then says “I don’t have to be that way,” and silently says to everyone else around him, “You don’t have to be that way either.” Its inspiring.
And I love the way the themes of this movie flow into Ultron, and then Civil War. Its very, very evident that this was the start of something, and its impressive how the Russos and Stephen McFeely & Christopher Markus pulled everything through to Infinity War. This question of liberty vs. security is the driving force through phase 2 and 3, and it will be fascinating to see how they resolve it in Endgame.
What? No comment on how screwy Sam and Steve’s jogging route would have to be for Steve to lap Sam at the places shown? At least, I’ve been told that the locations don’t form a neat circuit someone would use to do laps while jogging.
I love the fact that the MCU has gotten big enough to hold all sorts of different movies under its tent — from epic fantasy (Dark World, whether or not you think it was a good epic fantasy) to gritty 70s political thriller (Winter Soldier).
Also, the CGI and other SPFX these days have gotten just stunningly good — seamlessly inserting the Triskelion into DC, and all of the helicarrier stuff at the end (including the hangars).
Agreed, a great movie all around — top-notch action and a really good, meaningful story. I love it that it’s as much Black Widow’s movie as Cap’s, to the extent that just putting his name in the title is a bit misleading. I also loved Anthony Mackie as Sam — tons of charisma. On the other hand, Sebastian Stan is about as charismatic as a block of wood.
“(and also didn’t have the word “Black” in his superhero name)”
I think it’s interesting how attitudes toward that have progressed. When characters like Black Panther and Black Lightning were new, it was sort of distancing to call them that, like it had to be called attention to how different they were from white heroes. So that kind of nomenclature was discredited for a while. But in recent years, I see the movie Black Panther and the TV show Black Lightning embracing the “Black” epithets as declarations of cultural pride and empowerment, a celebration of blackness as a worthy heritage. I guess the difference is that now it’s black creators using it on their own terms, rather than white creators using it to underline their characters’ difference.
“In the comics, Wilson was a former hustler (with the street name “Snap”)”
This was a retcon Steve Englehart introduced, and it was more recently re-retconned as a false history created by the Cosmic Cube. https://www.cbr.com/the-abandoned-an-forsaked-was-sam-wilson-captain-america-ever-snap-wilson-street-hustler/
” They escape the mall without S.T.R.I.K.E. finding them (in part because Romanoff has them kiss when they pass Rumlow on an escalator)”
It bugs me that stories still use that trope. By now, it’s been used so often in fiction that anyone searching for someone should make a point of looking closer at kissing couples just in case it’s their quarry trying to throw them off. Someday I’m going to write a story where someone tries that and it doesn’t work because their pursuers watch movies too. (By the same token, if security guards hear the sound of a rock hitting the ground in one direction, they should immediately begin searching in the other direction. And if the security camera feed goes fuzzy for a few seconds and then stabilizes, they should immediately go check the area on the assumption that someone is feeding in a false image or loop.)
“Next week, we get the band back together, as the Avengers take on the creation of one of their members gone horribly horribly wrong in Avengers: Age of Ultron.”
So where does the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie (released before Age of Ultron) fit in this rewatch ?
This is in my top 5 favorite MCU movies. I thought Evans finally settled into the gravity of Cap, becoming the symbol that he’s been for so long in the comics. So incredibly good.
This is – for me – easily the best MCU movie, and is neck-and-neck with the Dark Knight for best superhero movie ever. It’s a movie that realizes that it can be about something besides flash and spectacle. It can be about safety vs security and the ways in which that argument can be manipulated for nefarious ends.
The relationship between Steve and Sam is a highlight of the film because of how organically it grows. Falcon never feels like a sidekick in the same way Bucky did. Black Widow never feels like a sidekick at all.
This – for me – is the film where Cap overtakes Iron Man as the heart of the MCU. As great as Robert Downey Jr’s portrayal of Tony Stark is, there’s a reason that the next phase of Marvel films really revolves around Cap and his decisions. When we see Cap have to take a stand for what is right as opposed to what is safe, it HURTS to see the price he pays. And that’s all about the subtlety of Evans’ performance that isn’t about histrionics, but about seeing the hits land and watching him move past it sometimes in the space of a second – often wordlessly.
The fight scenes are incredibly well staged – particularly the one between Steve and Batroc at the beginning of the film.
It’s the rare sort of film that actually improves and adds layers of complexity to prior films. Suddenly that decision to nuke NYC at the end of the Avengers has a whole new set of strategic objectives attached to it. Suddenly, all the machinations around the Avengers Initiative in Iron Man take a darker turn.
Put plainly, this is the “Goldfinger” of the MCU – the moment that the formula was absolutely perfected.
Christopher: I was trying to keep things simple with the Falcon, and didn’t want to get into the retcons and re-retcons and so on. It makes my head hurt. :)
noblehunter: I used to be crankier about that sort of thing, but I’ve mellowed in my old age. I think it’s more worthwhile to say when screen productions get the geography right, as that’s rarer. I usually only point it out when it messes up the plot. (Remind me some day to tell you my rant about an episode of Castle that had a helicopter landing by the courthouse…..)
Pedro: As we progress through the MCU, I’m going in more story order than release order, so I’ll be doing Guardians of the Galaxy after Age of Ultron, followed by Ant-Man. Then we’ll take a break from the MCU to cover other things — when we come back to it in July, I’m covering them in this order: Doctor Strange, Captain America: Civil War, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Black Panther, Ant-Man & The Wasp, Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2, Thor: Ragnarok, Captain Marvel, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I love this movie! It catapulted Cap to being my clear favorite Avenger (it was a mess at the top before) and helps Black Widow shine. I feel like this film builds on the foundation Avengers gave her and really turns it up so that all the other developments they’ve given her in subsequent movies have room to breathe and grow. Plus, it makes sense that the Avenger who is a literal spy would thrive in a spy-thriller type film. So, I’m glad they stuck the landing.
I feel like they also were able to navigate the politics of it really well. I feel like people on the right and left have room to understand and agree with the “good guys” and struggle with question presented and how it fits with their ideology, and question if our chosen leaders always truly have our interests forefront. (not just who ever is the ‘national’ leader, but specific party leaders, too)
@krad: While there were some “filler” episodes the first season, I still wouldn’t trade it as I felt that each episode did still deepen my commitment to the team, and to their commitment to each other, so that the eventual twist was very powerful. More than it would have been if there were only a couple missions together before it.
@7 Gavin:
Ooh, I like the Price of Freedom title. One additional point in favor of the current title though is that it has the additional meaning in applying to Captain America. Thomas Paine wrote, “These are the times that try men’s souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” In contrast then, the Winter Soldier (specifically, I believe, referencing Valley Forge) was one who would stand tall and strong when things weren’t clear, weren’t easy, and work to make things right. Cap is truly a Winter Soldier in that regard.
One of my few complaints about this film is the waste of Batroc. In the comics, Batroc the Leaper (from what I’ve seen of him, which admittedly isn’t that much) is a fun character. He’s basically a criminal who’s in it for the kicks, pun intended, and isn’t really evil or murderous, just larcenous, flamboyant, and eager to exercise his specialized fighting style. But the movie makes him just one more interchangeable mercenary killer. Why even bother?
By the way, IIRC, Agents of SHIELD established that Leo Fitz invented the cutting device that Fury used to escape from his SUV into the sewers.
@19/whitespine: The term “Winter Soldier” actually originated in a 1971 Vietnam War investigation, and was coined in reference to that very Thomas Paine quote: https://www.themarysue.com/winter-soldier-history/
Winter Soldier is a good title in the sense that it DOES make you think he is to focus of the movie. They want the Hydra reveal to pack a punch so they don’t give you an inkling that it’s coming.
In fact, the Sam and Steve’s improbable running route was analyzed thoroughly on this very site in a article from 2016:
https://www.tor.com/2016/07/01/captain-america-didnt-accidentally-meet-sam-in-winter-soldier/
twels@17:
I would argue that this phase of the MCU revolves around the differences between Cap and Tony’s beliefs, not around Cap’s beliefs alone.
What amazes me about this phase and the next of the MCU is just how many stories were pulled from their comics counterparts in 2005-2006:
Winter Soldier, 2005
Civil War, 2006
Iron Man: Extremis, 2005
Annihilation, which brought together the 21st Century Guardians, the ones closest to the film version, 2006
Thor: Ragnarok (which didn’t match up to the movie plot very much), 2004
Planet Hulk (inspiration for the Hulk’s parts of Ragnarok), 2006
It’s like that period of Marvel storytelling was some unusual golden age. They’re too recent to be the stories the creators remembered reading as kids, and they were already a few years old when the scripts for these films were being written.
I wholeheartedly agree with @19 re: AoS’ first season. While at the time it was getting panned by critics and even I was having a bit of disappointment, when the episode post-Winter Soldier came out, it was such a great payoff. The first 18 or so episodes really let the writers make you *like* each member of the team. To have one of them turn out to be Hydra at that point was extremely compelling. If they’d only had 7 episodes or so, that gotcha moment would have been much less dramatic.
And rewatching the series, each of those episodes lays down SO much groundwork on the team – to the point that when Nick Fury shows up to save two of them in the Season 1 Finale, I got a little emotional about it.
I don’t think a half-season would have worked nearly as well. And you’d probably have just seen AoS cancelled after Season 1.
Correction: The funeral that Steve and Bucky are coming back from is for Steve’s mom – his dad died (presumably) during WWI (killed by mustard gas).
@14 “But in recent years, I see the movie Black Panther and the TV show Black Lightning embracing the “Black” epithets as declarations of cultural pride and empowerment, a celebration of blackness as a worthy heritage.”
Do you think that we’ll see a movement to retroactively add “black” to the names of characters?
Cyborg: Black Cyborg
Falcon: Black Falcon
Storm: Black Storm
Killmonger: Black Killmonger
Tombstone: Black Tombstone
@25 It’s still a bit awkward to say that a show is really good after the first 3 quarters of a season.
Winter Soldier is the best MCU of all, IMO (with Guardians of the Galaxy a close second).
@krad: That list of movies you rattled off just reinforces my feelings about the era of movies we’re in.
From March 8 to Jul 5 (4 months) I get the Kelly Sue DeConnick-inflected Captain Marvel, an Ultimate (pun intended) “Everything But Kitchen-Sink Man, and Probably Even Him” super-sized extravaganza, and then the very best Spider-Man I’ve ever seen, in his second movie.
In FOUR MONTHS I get all of that. And then, I’m certain that the MCU will find a way to put X-23 (Dafne Keen was WAY too good to waste in a one-off) in front of Bucky Barnes, and Peter will find himself visiting the Baxter Building as the First Family returns home.
And to point out what you already did, I have every expectation that result of every single piece will fall somewhere between “Very Competently Executed Entertainment” to “Beyond Amazing” in every case.
@21/John: I totally agree about the title, I remember going into the movie thinking it looked really but wondering if some of the fun would be ruined by already knowing the identity of the Winter Soldier (which I assumed would be the big dramatic plot twist of the film) and then being completely blindsided and blown away by the SHIELD/Hydra reveal. Pretty sure I audibly cursed during Zola’s monologue, didn’t see it coming at all. It was a great bit of misdirection.
Slackerspice. Blargle. Thank you. It’s fixed.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
#31/Rachel: That’s one part of the marketing that I never quite understood. As far as I could tell, Marvel never tried to hide the identity of the Winter Solider, and comics fans all knew going in, of course. But apparently some people were surprised. I heard a story about a comic creator (I want to say Peter David, but maybe I just heard the story through him) seeing it with a non-comics-reader, and the non-reader was very startled that the Winter Soldier turned out to be Bucky. The creator, in turn, was surprised that anybody had thought it was a secret at all.
It wasn’t until I read this review that I connected Three Days of the Condor and Captain America: Winter Soldier. And I made a connection that you missed (or just decided not to mention). Robert Fucking Redford is in both movies, but playing the opposite characters.
My weekend is now complete. (Maybe I’ll watch them both, put them in the same universe with RFR playing the same character, and use them as an example of how power corrupts.)
whitespine and KalvinKingsley: I disagree 100%. As noblehunter said, 3/4 of a season was too long to wait for the actual story to kick in. The show should’ve debuted in January 2014, not September 2013, and that still would’ve given them three months to accomplish what you say without boring a large chunk of the viewership. The show lost more than half its viewership by the time Winter Soldier was released, and they might have kept more of those if most of the first season wasn’t so incredibly uninteresting and stalling for time.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Sam and Cap’s swift friendship and Sam’s perfect skills for the movie are an acceptable bit of story shortcut. I’m sure Cap has met hundreds of people in his new life, many of whom are veterans. Since Cap is known to visit veterans, the ULTRON party is an example, he could have met Sam at the VA hospital which would have made more sense, but jogging on the Mall is more visual. I always tell my writing students that most stories have one gimme or plot convenience. In a cozy mystery, it’s okay for the main character to keep finding the murder vicitm at the start the story. In the case of a romance or this movie, the gimme is that two people who are perfect for each other manage to meet. More than one gimme is bad writing.
@14 The kiss to hide yourself is based on the fact that most people look away when people are kissing in public so it’s not really a trope. It’s using human nature to your character’s advantage.
@5 “Captain America is back, and he didn’t skip leg day.” — Honest Trailers.
@36/MByerly: Yes, of course I know why the kissing trope is supposed to work, but my point is that by now, people should’ve seen it used in enough movies and TV shows that they see through it. Imagine you’re a guard, cop, or evil henchman trying to hunt someone down and capture or kill them. You see a couple kissing and your first reflex is to look away. But because you’ve seen more than zero movies and TV shows in your life, you then stop and think, “Hey, maybe I should take a closer look at that kissing couple after all just to make sure it’s not the kissing trick I’ve seen a million times.” After all, that very cultural discomfort about public displays of affection is why people usually don’t make out that heavily in public, so the very fact that they’re doing it should be suspicious. I mean, if the scene is at night and they duck into a shadowed doorway or something, then it’s plausible, but too many movies and shows stage it as right out in the open in broad daylight, and I think that’s the case here.
Besides, if you’re an evil henchman, why would you respect anyone’s privacy anyway? If you’re a fascist regime’s jackbooted thug, you’d probably want to break up the kissing couple and order them to go home, or arrest them for public lewdness. So it’s not a trick that should always work in any case, even without genre-savvy pursuers.
@@@@@ 7 and 19
I was about to mention the Summer Soldier reference by Paine, but 19 beat me to it. Its one of Paine’s better pieces; he has been largely forgotten in his role in the creation of this country.
http://www.ushistory.org/paine/crisis/c-01.htm
This is my favorite comic book movie of all time, by a long margin. And one of my favorite movies of all time.
I am a long-time Captain America fan, having started following his adventures in the comics when he was thawed from ice in the 1960s. So I have a lot invested in the character. The first movie was a satisfying period piece, and I walked out happy that they had done him justice. But this movie did an even better job of serving the character. With a great story, great pacing, and a great performance by Chris Evans, they showed that a noble character doesn’t have to be a boring character. Steve is a man of principle, trying to do the right thing in a grey world. And the movie also perfectly captured the world of SHIELD that was portrayed in the comics; full of plots, counterplots and infiltration.
At first, I was horrified when Brubaker brought back Bucky in the comics, as the guilt about his death had driven Steve’s character in the comics for decades. But Brubaker made it work, and work brilliantly. So I was pleased when they made his story a centerpiece of this movie. The spy setting perfectly captured the ‘man out of time’ feel of the Captain America comics, and the camaraderie between him and Bucky gave the story real heart.
I also loved the way they brought in Falcon, a favorite character who had not always been handled well in the comics. I like the MCU backstory far better than the muddled mess of retcons in the comics. And I loved the way they handled Black Widow and Nick Fury, and Redford brought some real gravitas to a role that could have been cartoonish. There are so many rich details woven into it that serve the story and characters so well. The script and direction are superb. The only minor quibble I have (that someone else noted above), was that Batroc, another favorite of mine, was wasted as a throw-away character.
This movie is kind of like the Empire Strikes Back of the Captain America trilogy; the rare sequel that surpasses the original, and overshadows the final installment.
@39 But we haven’t had the final installment
@40 Pretty sure he meant Civil War?
I wholeheartedly agree with everything positive said about this movie. All the praise, all the superlatives – it deserves them all.
Ever since this movie, I’ve had a really soft spot for Bucky. To think what he’s been through – tortured, brainwashed, deprived of his identity, forced (by programming) to commit murders and other horrors, and then in between put back in the ice box like a common tool until it’s needed again. Sigh … I have no idea what the Endgame brings, but the man deserves some happiness when this is all over. Maybe go out drinking with Rocket or something …
But yeah, all the active by everyone, the pacing, the plot … I just love it all.
Having never read the Winter Soldier story arc, I was surprised by the return of Bucky Barnes as the Winter Soldier. And I agree that Redford was perfectly cast, but then Marvel seems to nail every casting choice.
I still think Emily Blunt would’ve been a better choice as Widow.
Don’t you mean Mackie?
@19. whitespine: I like the Paine quote. I play an MMO with world versus world game mode. Those players who show up only when their world is winning are called “fairweathers.” Summer soldier is also an apt term. When the going gets tough… call Winter Soldiers.
The Russo brothers have talked about how they tried to make this movie “Honest Trailer proof,” to not give the nitpickers any ammunition.
Russo Bros. honest reaction
And here’s the trailer itself:
Winter Soldier
As a note on the interactions with Agents of SHIELD – I was one of the people who stuck with AOS episode by episode in its first season. I didn’t get to go see Winter Soldier when it opened (and in fact not for many weeks afterwards). I was vaguely aware it had some kind of SHIELD-politics plot from commercials, but not much more. So the first I heard of HYDRA was when the AOS characters heard “Hail Hydra!” in a radio transmission as chaos is starting to break out. And it was amazing. Seeing all that for the first time from the street-level perspective of the individual agents with neither them nor me having any idea what was going on worked incredibly well. It’s too bad there hasn’t been any similar integration with the movies in either direction since.
A word about poor Jasper Sitwell. His comics incarnation, going back to the 1960s, is a very strait-laced, by-the-book SHIELD agent trying very hard to be a liaison to Stark Industries, when Stark doesn’t particularly want him around. In short, he’s the role Phil Coulson fills in the first Iron Man. Comics Sitwell would never be a Hydra mole, and I think it’s kind of a shame that MCU Sitwell is not only evil, but dies rather abruptly.
@46
Well I was really enjoying rewatching that Honest Trailer… right up until the end when epic voice guy reminded me that Robin Williams had just died.
A fascist cult working secretly inside the government? Oh how quaint 2014 seems now. They really don’t feel the need to be all that secret about it anymore…
While I wouldn’t say this is better than The Dark Knight, I’d say it’s just as good. Best of the MCU by a country mile in my opinion.
The HYDRA infiltration of SHIELD requires some suspension of disbelief (Tony found nothing when he hacked SHIELD files in the first Avengers) and Bucky really wasn’t prevalent in the First Avenger enough to make the reveal hit as hard as it could have but for the most part but it is indeed a pretty great movie and one of the best Superhero movies ever made.
I don’t think there is much doubt that this is one of the best MCU films as a standalone piece of work–probably Black Panther is better, that’s it. But in retrospect I think this movie has been a huge problem for way the MCU works.
Someone mentioned in a previous rewatch (I think, I can’t find it now) that intelligence agencies are inherently compromised and authoritarian. That is certainly an argument this film agrees with. Steve Rogers, our moral compass in the MCU, is immediately suspicious of SHIELD’s Project Insight, and his suspicions are all proven right. He and Fury actually have it out over whether SHIELD just needs to be pruned of some bad branches, or whether it was corrupt from the start–and Cap definitively wins the argument. We have it explained to us in great detail how HYDRA was curled around the roots of SHIELD from its outset. We see the corruption in its high-ranking agents, its very leaders, and United States senators.
So fine; Captain America burns it down. But this leaves a bunch of questions that can’t be answered. Nick Fury emerges from this movie not a cool superspy, but as a really dubious figure; given how deeply he is tied into SHIELD and Project Insight, it’s impossible to ignore that everything about him is tainted by HYDRA. Future movie don’t seem very interested in that; he shows up in AoU up to his old tricks with a helicarrier, and I guess all is forgiven, ho ho. We’re getting Nick Fury as a major character in Captain Marvel, but I doubt it’s going to give us much insight on how he was compromised.
This was all a disaster for Agents of SHIELD of course. Besides forcing that show to spin its wheels for most of its first season, I don’t think the show has ever really grappled with the fact that SHIELD is a bad idea and shouldn’t exist. Everyone in that show basically takes Nick Fury’s side–it’s just bad apples. But I mean, they’re wrong; there’s really no doubt about it from this movie. And of course it inherently damages Peggy Carter’s story too; fortunately I guess we never got to the point where anyone had to figure out how she could be so blind.
The film leaves the Black Widow in a strange place. She goes along with Rogers’ plan, and seems to be committed to his argument that SHIELD is compromised. The way her story is been told, it seems we are supposed to read this as a partial atonement for her own dark past as a spy and assassin. But then we last see her getting all smug while testifying before Congress that they are going to need her–this is a bit of a mixed message.
The thing is, all of this gets much closer than any other MCU Film at actually making a point about the real world–of being about something. When it came out, it certainly seemed like a shot fired at the kind of militarism and authoritarian worldviews that the Iron Man movies so casually boost. But even though Captain America and Iron Man come to blows, the Marvel movies never really explore these ideas intelligently.
Mayhem: no, Stan’s next appearance is in the post-credits scene in Ant-Man. Mackie’s next appearance is in Age of Ultron.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Actually, both Stan and Mackie appear in Ant-Man. Ant-Man fights Falcon at the upstate NY Avengers facility in the film and Stan appears in the post-credits, I do believe …
twels: yes, but Mackie’s next appearance is in Age of Ultron.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Curses! I got the films out of order … My bad
@53
Oh, so he is. Totally forgot about that scene.
@41 That’s exactly what I meant. There are three Cap films, which you can take as a trilogy: First Avenger, Winter Soldier and Civil War.
@51/spencer: “The HYDRA infiltration of SHIELD requires some suspension of disbelief (Tony found nothing when he hacked SHIELD files in the first Avengers)”
That’s not a problem. After all, the Hydra moles within SHIELD needed to conceal their existence from the rest of SHIELD, not just from the outside world, so of course SHIELD’s internal files wouldn’t have revealed the Hydra presence.
@52/Colin R: “The film leaves the Black Widow in a strange place. She goes along with Rogers’ plan, and seems to be committed to his argument that SHIELD is compromised. The way her story is been told, it seems we are supposed to read this as a partial atonement for her own dark past as a spy and assassin. But then we last see her getting all smug while testifying before Congress that they are going to need her–this is a bit of a mixed message.”
Except she’s not speaking as a SHIELD agent or spy at that point. She’s speaking as a superhero and an Avenger. It’s the lead-in to Age of Ultron, where the Avengers (who pretty much disbanded at the end of their first film) are back together on a continuing basis and essentially filling the void left by SHIELD’s collapse (as far as the movie continuity is concerned, anyway). Natasha’s arc in TWS ends with her coming out into the light, leaving the world of spies and secrets behind in favor of overt heroism, following Cap’s example.
This is a minor thing, but I really enjoyed the misdirection in the trailer involving Redford. During some montage or other, you hear his warm paternal voice saying something like “Your work has shaped the 20th century.” It’s natural to assume he’s addressing Cap. Of course he’s actually talking to Bucky about his assassination work.
One thing that I liked at the time was that Henry Jackman’s score Was almost the polar opposite of Alan Silvestri’s First Avenger score (with only a few echoes of Silvestri’s work sprinkled throughout). I particularly liked the Batroc fight theme and the burst of electronic noise that was effectively Bucky’s theme.
My favorite MCU movie to date.
I love it.
Bobby
This is my favuorite MCU movie, no contest. As you say, the pacing is perfect, the characterization is strong, and on top of that, the action is better than in any other superhero movie I’ve seen. The fights are fast, creative, and intense without being confusing, which is something many action movies struggle with. And the wole thing is a fantastic takedown of neoconservatism by pointing out just how thin the line is between it and fascism. HYDRA’s near-success with Project Insight was possible because Fury was essentially on board with their idea of wiping out anyone who might become a threat – the only difference was their i terpretation of who was a potential threat. And Cap rightly points out that that’s not a big enough difference and the whole corrupt apparatus has to come down.
In addition, I love the final fight between Cap and Bucky, because it’s such a perfect depiction of who Cap is. When the lives of other people are on the line, he’s willing to go all-out even though he hates having to hurt his friend. But as soon as it’s only his own life on the line, he stops fighting, because he’s willing to hazard his life for even the slimmest chance of helping his friend remember who he is.
Like pretty much everyone else, I love this movie. I especially love the elevator fight scene – it is one of my favorite cinematic fight scenes of all time in any movie, up there with the original Oldboy hallway fight and basically John Wick 1 and 2 :)
I like this movie but it does have a few problems. I like that it manages to be less of a superhero movie and more of a political thriller asking rather awkward questions. The villain isn’t a guy in a costume with a cool name, he’s someone who looks and acts exactly like the people running things in the real world, with the same methods and motives. Perhaps the crux of it is when Captain America, a man from a time when “fighting for freedom” actually seemed to mean something rather than being rhetoric trotted out by politicians towards whoever they want people to see as the enemy this week, gets a look at Nick Fury’s new cool project and is horrified at something which to those brought up in a world of mass surveillance and taking out “enemies of the state” with drone strikes seems commonplace. To him, even before they turn out to be a front for Hydra, SHIELD are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
But the movie isn’t quite sure what role Captain America plays in this. He’s not a hero so much as a symbol and a blunt instrument. He’s the guy that makes inspirational speeches that cause people to look for the best in themselves. And he’s the guy that does the heavy lifting at the climax, fighting his way through mooks to get all the computer drives in place. And, to be fair, he’s the guy with the emotional character arc as he discovers the person he’s been fighting is the best friend he believed lost. But really, Nick Fury is the one who brings everyone together and comes up with a plan to stop Hydra, for all his nominally surrendering leadership to Cap and letting him modify the plan. And he’s the one who has the big final confrontation with Pierce while Captain America is busy fighting Winter Soldier, who’s more of a victim than a villain. Captain America’s barely ever in the same room as the bad guy, and when he is he doesn’t even know he’s the villain. The idea that his role isn’t to find the root of the problem but to trade punches with the toughest person on the other side is something that will carry on into his next headline movie.
@CLB/14: “By the same token, if security guards hear the sound of a rock hitting the ground in one direction, they should immediately begin searching in the other direction.” I seem to remember there’s an episode of “Dark Angel” where a guard does exactly like and Max mutters something like “Great, I get a smart one.”
Bucky coming back was a shock, but was fantastically well done and has had meaning in the decade since.
On the other hand in the same year Jason Todd came back, and it was a result of Superboy punching the universe so hard it broke.
So.
It’s hard for me not to forgive Marvel for bringing Bucky back, if only in comparison.
The thing about restoring Bucky to the land of the living in the comics wasn’t just that Bucky was restored; he was also redefined in a way that didn’t totally contradict the portrayals (at least Silver Age and beyond) that came before.
Aging him up to 16 minimized (at least a little) the child endangerment angle that kid sidekicks since Robin were saddled with. So Bucky ends the war at at least 21. The whole kid assassin angle accounts for all those covers from the ‘40s where Bucky’s letting loose with a machine gun.
That whole Brubaker run on the books is one of the greatest in comics history, if you ask me. And honestly (decade-old spoilers lie ahead) …
It somehow managed to get even better when Steve died during the Civil War and Bucky took over as Cap. Brubaker managed to come up with a new riff on the man out of time angle, while also imbuing Cap with more modern sensibilities (at one point, Bucky misses a bunch of AIM agents with his shield, only to shoot them all in the legs when they’re too busy mocking him to realize he’s done it intentionally). Also, a lot of the Black Widow’s interactions with Steve in this movie remind me of the relationship between Bucky and Natasha in the comics. Unlike the replacements that had gone before in recent comics history (the Ben Reilly Spider-Man, the Jean Paul Valley/Azrael Batman and even the replacement of Cap with Sam Wilson recently), this one never feels like it’s a placeholder for when the “real” hero returns. When Steve does come back, the series does take a bit of a turn into Sci-fi territory (undoing a fatal gunshot with some weird time travel shenanigans), but the characterizations are still incredibly strong
@twels: it was still odd to see a Cap version with a gun holster at his side when Bucky took over. The MCU version has used even more high-powered weapons. So if they ever go the route of replacing Rogers with Bucky, it will still be jarring if he straps long-range weapons… and possibly kills.
Cap’s a close-up fighter and the shield makes him a tank. Which is why the elevator ambush reminded me a bit of Rorshach’s line: (paraphrasing) “I’m not trapped in here with you. You’re trapped in here with me.”
@59
‘Overt heroism’ seems to mean acting as a private paramilitary force though–something that we’ve already seen three Iron Man movies grappling with. This is what I mean by this film introducing problems that later films don’t solve. The films basically seem to come to the conclusion that private paramilitary superheroes acting without direction by rule of law is not good, but sometimes Ultron or Thanos shows up and whaddyagonna do. That’s pretty much a ‘deus ex machina’ solution to what could be an interesting story.
It doesn’t make this film less good, but they didn’t have to tell this story, and they could have developed it differently in later movies.
@63
It doesn’t really feel like much of a repudiation of neo-conservatism to me. I always felt that the moral justification for Bush2-era atrocities like toppling foreign governments, torturing prisoners, and indefinite and extrajudicial imprisonment rested on the idea of imminent danger and ‘ticking timebombs.’ They were terrible, flimsy justifications, but that was how misdeeds were sold to the public.
Which unfortunately seems to bear a strong resemblance to the way MCU superhero movies often justify themselves: Vigilantes are problems, but sometimes necessary to deal with extraordinary threats. The thing is, superhero movies don’t have to frame themselves this way. Spider-Man stories almost never get bogged down in this kind of framework. They actively chose to morally and politically compromise heroes like Captain America and Iron Man.
@68: Cap and Bucky’s lethality during World War II and beyond is definitely something that has been modified as sensibilities have changed. I recently purchased the entire run of the 1970s Invaders series on Comixology and so far, I’ve only counted maybe one or two times Cap has used lethal force against anyone. Namor and the Human Torch are a bit more lethal, flying through Nazi tanks and planes – presumably with the operators inside. The Torch also incinerates a soldier who shot Toro, his kid sidekick. And, most famously, he burns Adolf Hitler to death at the end of the war.
One thing I found amusing about that series is how often writer Roy Thomas sidelined Bucky. He clearly disliked the character as he existed before Brubaker’s revision. Hell, Toro, who was just a junior version of the Human Torch, was sidelined less .
That said, I absolutely love the series (the Battle of Berlin storyline is a high point) . Marvel has a new Invaders series out this month, and I am interested to see if the half flashback, half current day format works better than the other Invaders revivals they’ve come up with.
I’m surprised they were able to make Batroc the Leaper a legitimate threat (thanks in part to casting UFC star GSP), even if that threat was somewhat mitigated by the fact that he was hired by Fury as an excuse to get BW on the ship to steal the data.
Nitpicking: Agent Carter was not suffering from dementia; she was reminiscing. She was not confused, just emotional. Can you blame her?
We all have certain movies that are “go-to”: we can tune in at any point and leave at another without losing any sense of enjoyment. For me, Winter Soldier ranks as one of these, along with Casablanca. (That’s not to say the two are both all-time great movies overall, but they are for me.) I can even tune in just for the closing credits with incredible animation and superb music. If they still gave Oscars for credits design, Winter Soldier would have won easily.
Love this movie but wanted to bring up another “suspension of belief” issue I missed until I was re-watching with my wife and daughter. When Cap and Widow hide out in Sam’s trailer and he makes breakfast, she comes out drying her now perfectly straight hair. Both my girls said there was no way towel drying would accomplish this feat and that Sam was unlikely to have a straightener in his bathroom. So they would like it known they call bs on that scene. Thanks for this amazing re-watch series. Looking forward to the rest.
re: Agents of Shield
I agree with both sides of the argument – the show was in a holding pattern for too long and lost a lot of viewers, but we also needed to get to know the team well in order to be properly shocked when one of them turned out to be Hydra.
The obvious solution is to have multiple story arcs like the show did in later seasons. Ten episodes of a separate mission unrelated to the Hydra reveal where we got to see even more of how Shield works when it’s working “properly.” THEN have a ten episode arc handling the fallout of Winter Soldier. This way the show isn’t spinning its wheels for most of the first season
This is my favorite of the Marvel movies by a very wide margin, mostly for the reasons you cite, but also because virtually alone of big superhero movies, its resolution depends on the hero exercising non-violence–on him literally turning the other cheek when his enemy strikes him. I’m not inclined to view Cap as a Christ figure, but the allegory is there if you want it. Cap is the character Superman always should have been but so rarely is.
Compounding this is the film’s embrace of radical transparency as the most effective weapon against Hydra, implemented by the Black Widow of all people. No evil thing can withstand the light of day, and all that. This film has deep values, without the equivocation one finds in the Iron Man films.
I love this film.
@72 Agent Carter had Alzheimer’s. It was confirmed by marvel and obvious, she was talking to Steve as it was still 40s, then crying for him as he was still gone and not hearing him as he assured her that he was safe, then abruptly coming back to present and realizing what year it was and that Steve was there and still young. She was rambling on, not reminiscing.
In fact in next Captain America movie (spoilers): She dies because of it.
This is my favourite Mission Impossible film (wink wink). It would have been a lot of fun if they had the theme (or at least some other 5/4 knockoff) play when Romanoff’s mask come’s off.
One overlooked, but brilliant part of this was the red-herring of calling it the Winter Soldier, to hide the big reveal that SHIELD was the baddy (baddies?). People complain about marketing spoiling films but the MCU is a bit better at playing with this, rather than just giving it away. This was a good example.
@66 Adam
Yes, totally agree with you. Bucky Barnes is the single resurrection in comics that I think works really well, especially among the long-dead-never-to-be-revived set.
The contrast with Jason Todd is especially stark as they also made him a villain for a time (as the Red Hood) and then semi-rehabilitated him, and he also is willing to use lethal force. I think maybe the difference was the the Winter Soldier had Brubaker to guide him as a character for long enough to set a strong foundation for other creators to work from and to be consistent with, whereas Winick seemed more interested in creating a hyped event for the Bat family, and then Todd was left to the mercies of the Bat editors after that.
One semi-issue I have with the use of Barnes here is that his return should have a huge effect on Rogers, but because the MCU is made up of movies instead of TV episodes, there isn’t enough time to explore that. Post-awakening Barnes is still pretty much a cipher today because he hasn’t had enough time interacting with Rogers.
That elevator fight… while I love flashy martial arts/fight scenes, those tight close up melees are so much cooler, really give a sense of urgency and reality to them. And Cap giving them the option to back out fit the character so well.
Love this film.
One point: “In the comics, Wilson was a former hustler (with the street name “Snap”) who later became a social worker, an occupation he still has today. For the MCU, this was changed to him being former military, part of a team that used experimental tech that enabled him to fly, tech he uses again in this movie, becoming the Falcon in the MCU as well.”
I think the MCU version of the Falcon also has his roots in the comics; he’s largely based on the Ultimate universe version of the character (military background, flies around with twin SMGs, gray hi-tech visuals), as written by Warren Ellis in the Ultimate Nightmare miniseries. The Ultimate Sam Wilson was also a scientist, though, which the film version isn’t. In general, the MCU has taken a lot of cues from the Ultimate universe. I’m glad they never went too far in that direction — for instance, I’m okay with everybody on the Avengers not being a horrible person, thank you very much…
MCU Tony Stark clearly has his roots in Ultimate Tony, being a monumental egotist with the genius to back it up. Yet Robert Downey Jr. somehow makes it work. The “testifying before Congress” scene in Iron Man 2 was the one that crystallized this opinion for me — he’s acting like a complete jerk the entire time, but I’m still on his side. This worried me at the time, because I didn’t want to see the MCU based on the Ultimate Universe. I think it was because at the time the first Iron Man was conceived and written, the Ultimate Universe was the hottest thing in comics. And the joke of having Sam Jackson play Nick Fury was way too good to pass up. By the time they got around to writing the first Thor and Captain America, the Ultimate Universe had started to fall apart (due in part to the chronic lateness of The Ultimates), so those two characters are more rooted in their 616 versions, much to my relief at the time. I think the overall pattern that’s emerged has been to base the visual of the character on the Ultimate version (or simply an updated version of the visual, which is what the Ultimate versions were, so it makes sense they’d be similar), but to base the character’s persona and back-story on the best parts of their 616 history, pulling in bits from the Ultimate version if they work better in the story (Hawkeye).
@81/Mikki: Most modern screen adaptations of Marvel draw on aspects of the Ultimate Universe, and I think that’s understandable, since they’re both attempts to reinvent decades-old Marvel characters with more modern sensibilities (e.g. replacing radiation-based origins with genetic engineering and such, streamlining decades of cluttered continuity, adding more diversity, etc.). Left to their own devices, the screen adaptations might’ve made similar choices, but the Ultimate comics already did it for them.
@82/Brian: Casting Jackson as Fury was not just an in-joke — it was actually part of an informal deal between him and Marvel. When he found out the Ultimate comics were using his likeness as Fury, Jackson had his agents contact Marvel to complain, and as part of their apology, they promised him first shot at playing the role if a movie ever happened. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/how-samuel-l-jackson-became-hollywoods-bankable-star-1174613
I HATE that the comics brought Bucky back, and I look forward to the day when it’s revealed that it’s been a hoax all along. His presence really ruins this flick for me, though the first Cap movie is my second favorite Marvel Studios movie (after Dark World)
@85: I was ready to hate Brubaker bringing Bucky back, but found the execution thereof to be absolutely masterful, in that it doesn’t really mitigate the initial loss of Bucky. If anything, his fate in the subsequent decades makes it worse than if he’d just been blown up.
At one point, I remember them having an out they could’ve used regarding Cap using the Cosmic Cube to cause him to remember who he was, only to have Brubaker point out that Cap only asked him to remember – and that He’d have said “Be Bucky” if that’s what he would’ve wanted.
@86 Agree that Brubaker made it work very well. A good writer makes all the difference. Take the “Spider Island” storyline in Spider-Man, where everyone on Manhattan got spider powers. Kind of taking the much maligned cloning saga to the point of absurdity. But Dan Slott made it work, and the end result was a story that’s a lot of fun.
Winter Soldier is nearly perfect (though I still prefer Civil War). This was definitely the point where Feige and Marvel Studios had become aware of the need to expand the brand beyond superficial superhero fare. For all intents, this is a 1970’s thriller that happens to have a costumed superhero in it. There’s little more I can say that hasn’t already been said about this one.
This was also the first time that a Marvel Studios film allowed for the main protagonist to share the spotlight with another Avenger for a significant amount of time. While Iron Man 2 and the first Thor had brief introductions for Nat and Clint, in order to set up the first Avengers, it was in Winter Soldier that we finally got to spend some significant time with Nat. This is where we got to see the fruits of a shared universe. To me, this is as much her story as it is Steve’s. We get to see these two protagonists growing and changing, and we get SHIELD’s demise, directly impacting the TV show.
You didn’t get this kind of crossover consequence between film and TV before this. DS9 at best had a brief mention of the Borg attack from First Contact.
As far as Bucky is concerned, I like the casting of Sebastian Stan in the role. He’s not expressive, but he has this sadness and sense of being lost in his eyes that really convey the character’s plight. It’s that which makes Cap realize just how badly he needs to be rescued. And I for one am glad we get to see this carried over to Civil War.
Overall, a superlative first effort from the Russos. And it goes without saying that there’s a reason Marcus and McFeely got to take over screenwriting duties for subsequent Avengers films.
One of the best things about the movie honestly is it’s portrayal of the Black Widow. Initially, I had some concern that they were going to have her and Steve somehow together romantically at the end, particularly when she kisses him to distract Rumlow (and Mr. Bennett makes a good point upthread about a trained killer like him falling for that – especially since he is looking for one of comics’ most famous femme fatales, who seems to have the same reputation in the films). Later on, when Steve remarks that he’s sure she “looks terrible” in a bikini with her scar from being shot by the Winter Soldier, I definitely got the feeling that all that Agent 13/Sharon Carter stuff was a setup and that we’d see Cap and Natasha lounging on a beach somewhere at the end.
The great thing is that the movie actually allows people who have a lot of chemistry together to simply remain friends and to keep the mission a hand at the forefront.
I also like that the Widow’s guilt over serving two different corrupt enterprises carries over into her next appearance. It’s obvious that she views herself as a monster for the things she’s done. I suspect it’s part of the reason she doesn’t go farther than flirting with Steve – the idea that somehow she would corrupt him. That carries through in her relationship with Banner In Age of Ultron. He’s already a monster responsible for great destruction and loss of life – but trying – as Natasha is – to atone or do better. Regrettably, Scarlett Johansson and Mark Ruffalo have next to no chemistry. That said, when Cap teases Banner about knowing what it’s like when Natasha is flirting sort of sums up their relationship in this film in a single sentence.
The fact that it’s taken this long – and two more Cap/Avengers films – to green light a Black Widow solo film is a shame. One would hope that it isn’t a case of “boys don’t buy girl hero merchandise syndrome.” Hopefully, it was more a matter of crafting the right story for one of the MCU’s most compelling characters – male or female.
@89/twels: I gather that the resistance to a Black Widow film was due largely to the gender bias of Marvel Studios executive Ike Perlmutter, who held back Marvel from doing movies with non-white-male leads for years. Eventually there was a reorganization that shunted Perlmutter off to the TV division and divorced it from the movies (which is why we don’t see much crossover between the two anymore, and why Perlmutter’s pet project The Inhumans went from being a movie to a TV series), and eventually he left the company altogether. So his removal from the movie division freed them to be more progressive about the sex and ethnicity of their leads. At least that’s the impression I’ve gotten, though I might be remembering some specifics wrong.
Aside from that, the delay in getting a Widow movie going was probably due to the difficulty of striking a deal with a star as big and in demand as Johanssen.
Aside from that, the delay in getting a Widow movie going was probably due to the difficulty of striking a deal with a star as big and in demand as Johanssen.
@90/Christopher: I’m guessing that would be the case now. But there’s an old story about the jarring pay inequality amongst the Avengers cast members that broke back in 2012. Supposedly, Downey Jr. commanded dozens of millions per film, while Johansson barely made a six figure salary at the time.
@91:
My understanding was that the Chrises didn’t make much money on Avengers either, or their solo movies, at that time.
@91/Eduardo: Sure, but even so, ScarJo is busy and in demand, so it wouldn’t be a trivial matter to arrange what’s presumably a multi-picture contract with her, even purely from a scheduling standpoint.
This is my favorite Marvel film so far, I loved that it was basically a superhero team movie, and at the same time a spy thriller. The Russo brothers directed a practically perfect film, with awesome action and great acting. I wish they’d keep doing Marvel films.
And also, I loved seeing Falcon on screen, because a guy with wings (even if they were artificial) was kind of a turning point in the MCU. Prior to that, you had a supersoldier, a super spy, a fantasy warrior, an archer, a guy in a power armor, even a Jekyll/Hyde analogue, but a guy with a winged suit took it even further into superhero territory. I know having a freaking AVENGERS film was pretty much a full dive into the superhero pool, but still, this felt special to me. It doesn’t help that Mackie is very charismatic. Making Sam a VA therapist is great, keeping that aspect of the character from the comics.
@krad: I think along with Uncle Ben and Bucky, it was also Gwen Stay who was considered un-resurrectable. Still is, I think, even if she’s shown up as Spider-Gwen or in flashbacks with enormous retcons (like the one that had Norman Osborn having an “affair” with her).
Speaking of Steve’s list of things he’s missed, the one he has in his notepad to add to when someone recommends something: the shot of the list has different things depending on what market the movie was released in.
@19 – whitespine: Agreed on the first season of AoS.
@31 – Rachel: I love it when they stay reasonably true to the comics but still give us fans something to be surprised by.
@51 – spencer-malley: Tony hacked certain stuff, not the whole system, and HYDRA has had over 50 years to hide their trail. Plus, Bucky wasn’t as prevalent in the First Avenger as in the comics, but his friendship with Steve was well established.
88 – Eduardo: Well, effectively, out of three Captain America films, two are also team films. Civil War is basically Avengers 2.5.
@94: Agreed. To me, Infinity War is essentially the fourth film for the team.
I mean, I understand why Civil War is a Captain America film, as it’s more about him and Bucky than about the rest of the team, but still.
@93: My understanding is that Marvel lowballed everyone when it came to salary. Downey earned less than Terence Howard on the first Iron Man and part of the reason they let Howard go was that he wouldn’t take a cut to appear in the sequel. IF I recall correctly, Downey actually made a hard push for his fellow Avengers stars to earn more by playing hardball with Marvel about future appearances as Iron Man past what he’d been contracted for initially.
In general, if I remember correctly, Marvel has gotten a reputation for pinching pennies until they bleed – both on the comics side and the film side.
I’ve not read all the other comments so I’m not sure if anyone has mentioned this but…
“Atwell (by way of the Agent Carter TV series) and Stan will next appear in Ant-Man. “
Actually, Atwell next guest starred in 2 Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episodes shortly before her own series began, and fittingly, her flashbacks (featuring Neal McDonough & Kenneth Choi back as Dum Dum Dugan and Jim Morita) are set after “Captain America: The First Avenger” and before “Agent Carter”.
04-04-14 Captain America: The Winter Soldier
09-23-14 AoS 2×01 Shadows
11-18-14 AoS 2×08 The Things We Bury
01-06-15 Agent Carter 1×01 Now is Not the End
@46 Sunspear. I saw your reference to WvW and then noticed your handle. Nice. :D
As many others, I place this one at the top of my MCU list. Even more than Avengers, I think this where MCU s#!t got real. My daughter is solidly Team Tony in Civil War, but I am Team Cap and this is why. Cap has seen up close and personal that large organizations like SHIELD are vulnerable to nefarious infiltration. Despite Tony’s assertion in Avengers that everything special about Cap came from a bottle, Dr. Erskine realized that Steve Rogers was special without the bottle. The super soldier serum only enhanced what was already there.
Jason: good catch regarding Atwell. And it was wrong on another level, as her next film appearance is Age of Ultron, not Ant-Man. So I fixed the post to just add her to the others who next appear on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Thanks!
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Great review as always, Keith. I would like to add something to the Trivia section: the Hydra being infiltrated in S.H.I.E.L.D is an idea that comes from “Nick Fury vs. S.H.I.E.L.D.” fantastic miniseries back in the 80’s by Harras and Neary. And you give a deserved credit to Marcus and McFeely but not too much to Russo Brothers: all four are right now the pillars of MCU.
So I’m curious. In Captain America 1 we see the Howling Commandos in a bar, and two of them are speaking French, and Cap has to wait for the remarks to be spoken in English before he understands. But in Winter Soldier Cap fires an eavesdropping device at the boat window to spy on men speaking French, then tosses away his shield to fight hand to hand in response to a man taunting him in French!! WHEN did Cap have time to learn French after defrosting? Why would he thaw out, and instantly study French in between battling Loki and all the rest of it? I must know!!!!
@102/Inkuttner: The Winter Soldier takes place two years after The Avengers, according to the official MCU timeline. Plenty of time to learn new skills.
Thank you! And thank you for the timeline too, I’ve been floundering trying to understand what happens when. I’m very new to the MCU, and trying to catch up!
@3: LadyBelaine: “Tsk, tsk!” indeed! I doubt that KRAD would agree quite so vehemently though.
@14: Christopher.
I can’t speak for everybody, but in general, we do; or rather, we do something towards that end, though procedures and behaviours oviously vary. Same goes regarding @37. In reality, Cap and BW would have been caught (read shot) on the escalator.
I’m in the camp (like the Russo’s) that never liked comic-book Cap. I don’t like the cookie-cutter boyscouts; they’re flat and uninteresting. MCU Cap, thankfully, isn’t. He’s not some perfect boyscout, he’s a real, nuanced and flawed human and soooo much more enjoyable a character, and that’s before you take into account Chris Evans supreme job.
And I have absolutely no shame in admitting how appreciative I am in this film’s highly successful attempts to show off how Evans has definitely not skipped leg day! Or arm day! Or, indeed, any ‘day’ at the gym. Possibly ever!
MCU Cap is a great adaptation of comic book Cap, a character that has shown flaws and has evolved over the decades. The Russos didn’t create anything regarding the character’s personality, as good as their work adapting and continuing things that happened in the comics has been.
Berthulf: Your knowledge of the comic book version of Captain America is severely lacking if you believe that he’s a perfect boyscout and not a real, nuanced, and flawed human being. Read any of the runs written by J.M. DeMatteis (one of the best, and most underrated, Cap writers) or Ed Brubaker or Mark Waid.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@107: It is early on, but I would also add Ta-Nehisi Coates’ current run on the book as definitely a top notch read. He’s got a great sense of Cap’s inner monologue. I like how it hasn’t completely swept the Secret Empire storyline under the rug the way Waid’s last short run on the book did. BTW, I’d also add that Waid’s first two runs on the book are masterful, but his last is frankly awful. It seems like it was designed as filler until Marvel figured out what they really wanted to do with the character
@107 Amen. I was going to jump in and say pretty much the same thing you did.
@108 I am enjoying what Ta-Nehisi Coates is doing with Cap. His comic writing has improved since his first run on Black Panther. He was trying to pack way too much complexity into the Black Panther comic early on.
@109: I definitely agree that Coates’ writing has gotten better – and more streamlined. My initial feeling was that he was following Brubaker’s template a little too closely on Cap, but he’s really come into his own in the last few issues.
Frankly, out of the current Marvel stable of writers, right now, I think he’s the only one who can manage the combination of social commentary and whiz-bang action that Cap requires (especially in the wake of Secret Empire).
Magnus + KRAD (106+107)
Yes my knowledge of Comic Book Cap is limited. I’ve tried, but I’ve never been able to stick with his stories. That said, I haven’t read any J.M. DeMatteis, so will give him a go. Nor do I think that the Russo’s have changed him (much), but his human-ness (is that a word?) comes across better in the MCU, he’s more accessible, which is a credit to them and Evans.
Edit: Alan + twels: Ta-Nehisi Coates added to the list.
Again, you need to read more comics (I know you will :>). He’s one of the most human and accessible characters in the comics.
Maybe it’s silly of me to wade in to this now that so much time has past and so much has already been discussed, but this line: “there’s no such thing as a bad idea, only bad execution—and while bringing Bucky back was, on the face of it, a terrible idea, Brubaker and Epting managed to make it work” kind of makes me think of the decision to bring Darth Maul back in Clone Wars/Rebels. On the surface I still think it’s an awful idea that feels like fan-pandering, but they really did so some cool stuff with it so…I find myself grudigingly allowing it ;)
Anyway – love the movie, and I love Falcon (and the attention paid to their friendship/rapport), and the platonic chemistry between Cap and Black Widow, as well as the expansion on her story. The plot is really good/interesting, it brings a bunch to the table, and I love Cap’s general goodness and loyalty to his friend and desire to redeem/save him. Actually, come to think of it, I see a bit of Luke Skywalker in him which is possibly why he’s my favorite Avenger. That said, the need to reveal, for transparency and clean house/possibly raze the house hits a bit close to home right now.
Yeah, it’s similar to Maul’s resurrection.
@113. Lisamarie: Wouldn’t it be the ultimate meta moment if the current president finally looked in the camera and said “Hail Hydra!”? But he’d be more likely to pull a Mel Brooks and say “Hail Myself!”
Quoth myself in the rewatch: “Fury allows as how trust is hard for him to come by, as the last time he trusted someone, he lost his eye. (And I’m watching this in 2019 thinking, ‘Will they remember he said this in Captain Marvel?’)
And the answer is, not exactly, but the two aren’t incompatible, either. Can’t say more without really spoiling CM…….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@116 An unreliable narrator can be a writer’s best friend. Fury is a lying liar who lies. I suppose referencing “from a certain point of view” would be in bad taste in this case.
@115 – well, seeing as how Trump was actually signing Bibles on a recent trip (and yes, I admit the context probably explains it a bit, but I still can’t help rolling my eyes big time)…
Chiming in super late, but in regard to the kissing moment – at that point in the film, Rumlow and his allies don’t know that Steve has teamed up with Natasha, so they’re only looking for Steve alone. And given Steve and Nat’s banter at the beginning, which Rumlow etc. have probably heard multiple times before, the last thing they would ever expect to see is Steve kissing anyone on an escalato in the mall.
hummingrose: that is an excellent point.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I may have watched this movie way too many times… It really is one of the best MCU films.
when we come back to it in July, I’m covering them in this order: Doctor Strange, Captain America: Civil War, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Black Panther, Ant-Man & The Wasp, Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2, Thor: Ragnarok, Captain Marvel, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame.”
Spider-Man: Far From Home is now also a part of phase three (the last movie before phase four).
“there is no such thing as a bad idea, only bad execution”.
PREACH, Brutha, PREACH!!!!