“Before we get started, does anyone want to get out?”
Get your pearl-clutching over now. Yes, this is a Marvel super-hero movie. In the ScreenAge Canon. I wouldn’t have figured such a thing either, and yet… if we’re going to have any Marvel supers film, then it had to be this one. While featuring what should arguably be the most straight-laced, whitebread, boring character in the MCU roster Captain America: The Winter Soldier manages to be a tense, well-crafted thriller, with one foot in the espionage-happy 1970’s and the other firmly planted in the modern surveillance state. It touches on themes of identity, patriotism, friendship, and security vs freedom. It has one of the greatest fight scenes ever committed to celluloid. It sympathizes and humanizes people with skills and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. And it is just a damn fine film, in addition to being part of a cinematic dynasty that – for good or ill – has dominated our movie screens for more than a decade.
What Captain America: The Winter Soldier Means to Us
I love Iron Man, but Captain America: The First Avenger might just be the best origin story Marvel Studios has ever produced for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Chris Evans shines as the Star Spangled Man With a Plan, and the supporting cast is top-notch. While The First Avenger might have been the second-lowest-grossing movie in Phase 1 of the MCU, Marvel still had faith that Captain America could find a wider audience after The Avengers.
Enter The Winter Soldier, which, in my opinion, is arguably the best MCU sequel outside of the Avengers follow-ups. Not only does it successfully act as both a Captain America sequel and MCU Entry #9, but it’s a grounded (for the superhero genre, at least) thriller that feels fresh and not like anything Marvel had previously released. While fans can discuss at length today about the “Marvel formula,” back in Phase 2, MCU projects continued to feel unique and not at all cookie-cutter. The Winter Soldier cemented Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers as one of my favorite MCU characters and I really hope that Marvel will dial back on the SFX in the future and give us something that feels more lived-in and real like this 2014 blockbuster masterpiece.
–Marmaduke Karlston
As entertaining as the MCU is (or was), there is something extraordinary about The Winter Soldier. I had enjoyed The First Avenger and was excited to see how Steve Rogers adjusted to modern-day living post-Avengers. The Winter Soldier didn’t disappoint. Pairing Steve up with Natasha was genius, given their contradictory personalities, and with the introduction of Anthony Mackie’s Falcon, we were able to see Steve’s character grow beyond just being Captain America. He has flaws, and it was about time they were put on display. Plus, Bucky returns, and Steve’s loyalty to his BFF sets a curvy, dangerous path toward Civil War and beyond. The Winter Soldier felt like the first MCU movie that wasn’t solely a superhero flick. It had suspense, intrigue, and the kind of quality that is hard to find in present-day MCU films. The Winter Soldier is arguably the best MCU movie to date, and perhaps one of the best superhero movies of all time.
–Romona Comet
Cold Warrior – Unthawing Captain America
“There’s a chance you might be in the wrong business, Rogers.”
Captain America: The First Avenger was decent movie – an Indiana Jones of the super-hero set, with a square jawed hero going up against the ultimate bad guys – Nazis. Director Joe Johnston (The Rocketeer) and writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (The Chronicles of Narnia) crafted a fun action film, but it was like the Captain himself – straightforward and almost simplistic. A rousing tale of good guys vs bad guys with the ultimate sacrifice to keep the world safe. What it mostly accomplished (for me, at least) was to make Chris Evans believable in the title role. Given I mostly knew him as smart-mouthed, obnoxious characters in films like the first two Fantastic Four movies and Push, this was no mean feat.
As an aside, it’s interesting to note that two other actors considered for the role were Jensen Ackles and Wyatt Russell – who would both go on to portray Captain America adjacent/inspired characters.
The Avengers was Cap’s next big appearance, and it fleshed him out slightly – but in a movie with such a large cast his portrayal was necessarily limited, leaving him somewhat two dimensional. The patriotic soldier from out of time, who is thrown back into the fight with only the most minor fig-leaf of therapy. This remains one of the lost chances in the Captain America films, for me. A soldier who “died” in the fulfillment of his duty is awakened, Rip-Van-Winkle-like, decades later to find all he’s known and (almost) everyone he’s loved is dead? That man has PTSD and needs years of therapy and adjustment. Not to suddenly be thrust into a fight against an alien invasion and a god while uber-tech-boy belittles him. I’d have loved to see something made of this, but we got what we got. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed The Avengers, but it was not a character defining film for Cap.
When it finally came time for Markus and McFeely to begin work on the second Captain America solo film they knew that they had to finally bring Cap fully into the modern world. For inspiration they looked to the comics – not a bad idea, since they’d been showing us Cap adjusting to the “present day” since Jack Kirby and Stan Lee had taken the character out of mothballs in 1964’s Avengers #4. In particular, they wanted to use concepts from Ed Brubaker’s The Winter Soldier storyline – which saw the return of classic Cap sidekick Bucky Barnes, reimagined as a brainwashed assassin. With that as the bones, they added elements of classic 1970’s conspiracy films like Three Days of the Condor and Marathon Man, pitting a man with a more black and white morality against a world of grays and shifting allegiances.
This is their moment of genius, to me. Cap, at his worst, can be a jingoistic, flag-waving cutout. I distinctly remember a comic book annual that teamed him up with Wolverine, a favorite character of mine at the time. There was a line Logan had in that issue, something along the lines of “I don’t have time for your self-righteous bull!” When written badly, Cap does have that self-righteous attitude to him, and it can poison your feelings towards the character.
By putting Cap into a position where he doesn’t know who he can trust, trapped in a world that he’s only now (two years later, in the movie timeline) coming to grips with, and surrounded by – at best – colleagues, rather than friends? That immediately makes him sympathetic. And by allowing him to keep that moral center in the face of all the expedient behavior of other characters makes him a figure of authority without sacrificing sympathy. When Black Widow utters the line “you might be in the wrong business, Rogers,” she’s just reflecting the world as she sees it. But she’s the one who comes off as self-righteous at that moment.
Steve’s use of the same line later is a watershed moment for Natasha and the film, as Steve’s “simplistic” morality turns out to hold a weight that Natasha – and maybe we – have forgotten about. He’s offering her real friendship, something she may have never had. And of course, this film (and the next) is about to show us just how far he’ll go to protect his friends. It’s one of my favorite moments in the film.
Brothers in Arms
Of course I’m referring to Steve and Bucky, but also to Anthony and Joseph Russo – the directing/writing/producing duo behind such diverse projects as the television show Community, Welcome to Collinwood and Avengers:Infinity War/Avengers: Endgame. While having worked on a couple of critically acclaimed sitcoms doesn’t seem like the necessary background for directing a multi-million-dollar action franchise film, Producer Kevin Fiege was impressed enough by the 2nd season finale of Community, which saw the show make references to spaghetti westerns as well as Star Wars, that he gave them the opportunity. Given that they’ve since directed some of the best installments in the MCU franchise (and produced Everything, Everywhere, All at Once) this was a gamble that paid off (lackluster Grey Man notwithstanding).
The Russo brothers worked directly with Markus and McFeely as well as Ed Brubaker to finesse the film, and lean even more into the conspiracy/intrigue aspects. They wanted to ground the film in reality as much as possible, and even the color palette reflects this dedication to a “real” feel to the movie, eschewing the primary colors of your traditional super-hero movie for an almost desaturated range of grays and blues. Of course there’s only so much reality can take when a film features a digitized Nazi scientist, flying aircraft carriers and a guy with with jetpack wings. Still, the Russos manage to pace the film perfectly, weaving character moments, spycraft and epic actions scenes into a believably enjoyable mélange that is greater than the sum of its parts.
“This Isn’t Freedom. This is fear.”
That quote right there goes to the heart of the film, and is one of the reasons why it worked so well when it was released. The post-9/11 landscape of the US and the world is one in which the expediency of “feeling safe” achieved ascendency over “doing what’s right.” While the movie was being made we got the revelations of the NSA spying on American citizens, the (continuing) controversy over drone warfare, “targeted killing” (re: assassination) and more. While the conspiracy films of the 1970’s all seemed to be reflections/meditations on the Watergate era and the fallout from the Vietnam war, Winter Soldier is definitely a modern update, reflecting the concerns of a world that was (and is) still dealing with terrorism, surveillance and the Hobson’s choice of freedom vs security.
It’s no secret what side Cap is going to come down on, really. He comes from a time where “a fair fight” was the height of masculine morality, after all. He’s unwilling to compromise, which is why he ends up on the run from SHIELD in the first place. The genius of the film, though, is that the opposing viewpoint isn’t initially presented by the bad guys, but by a friend – Nick Fury. There’s always been a part of our psyche that wishes we could figure out when horrible things were going to happen and stop them (look no further than 2002’s Minority Report, for another post-9/11 example). Fury in the film is representative of a solid chunk of the American people that wanted to KNOW who the bad guys were, where they were, and what they were doing – and were willing to give up their privacy and some of their freedoms to do so. Steve can see where this leads – how these tools in the wrong hands, or even the right hands with the wrong ideas will end in tragedy – but Fury is just as certain this is the only way forward, especially in a world with aliens, gods and monsters.
This backfoots Steve somewhat, despite his strident protestations. He is, after all, dependent on these people. SHIELD has given him a home and a purpose in world where he has no other connections (you’ll note that, other than Natasha, no other Avengers show up to help or stop Steve). With Fury’s apparent death he’s even more lost – if Nick was proposing something Steve thinks is bad, but is killed by forces thinking he’s not going far enough, then how much worse can things actually get?
Much worse, of course. Once the bad guy is revealed (in a moment both satisfying and ridiculous, as Toby Jones’ digital avatar gives us the info dump on decades of Hydra manipulations) Steve is on more solid ground. There are bad guys. They’re essentially Nazis. You just punch them until they stop. Nobody feels bad about punching Nazis.
With that nuance – what if even decent people want something you think is wrong – reduced to the classic good guys/vs bad guys equation, the emotional weight of the film then turns to the relationship between The Winter Soldier – revealed to be a brainwashed Bucky – and Cap. While the film is still solid, and some great action sequences are yet to come, the film loses some depth for me here. I wanted Cap to be right, of course, but I’ve felt that pull of safety over freedom too, and I wanted it to be acknowledged a little bit more.
Brothers in Arms 2: The Brothering
Just to touch again, briefly, on the relationship between Bucky and Steve. Steve’s dedication to Bucky and finding him, fighting for him, might be a bit of a surprise for some – but not when you think about it for any length of time. Steve is a man who has lost everything – all his friends, his life, even his own time. The one person who he knows from before the time he was frozen in ice is Peggy, and she’s suffering from dementia and he has to re-traumatize her (and himself) every time he visits. Yes he has acquaintances – and people, like Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), who might become friends – but generally he’s alone. Then he finds out his best friend, someone who knew him before he was Captain Freakin’ America is ALIVE? Yeah, he’s fighting for Bucky, and he’s willing to sacrifice himself for his friend.
That relationship really comes to the center of the story in Captain America: Civil War, of course, but that film is a little more scattered than Winter Soldier. And this is the film that makes all of the action Steve takes, against Tony and the Accords and everything else, believable. Because this is his friend – his brother “’till the end of the line.”
That Fight Scene in the Elevator
Okay, this is indulgent, but HOLY CRAP, right? The staging and choreography of this scene makes it one of the best fight scenes I’ve ever seen in a film. In theory it should be a foregone conclusion – after all, we’ve seen Cap fight mobs of Nazis, the Red Skull, aliens and even a god. But the Russos give us a Cap who’s unsure and in a moment of weakness. They pile on a ton of trained guys, ratcheting the tension up as more and more of them, including Brock Rumlow (Frank Grillo), who we’ve seen as a competent soldier already, enter the enclosed space. We know something’s up. Cap knows something’s up. Then that great line – “Before we get started, does anyone want to get out?” And it’s on.
There’s no long hallway like in The Matrix or Old Boy, there’s no mano a mano in a back alley like in They Live, or in close quarters like The Bourne Ultimatum. It’s one guy vs a ton of other guys in a closet. Or an elevator, same thing. And they almost get him – those power cuffs or whatever they are significantly reduce Cap’s fighting ability. It just serves to make things so much more satisfying when he’s the last man standing and kicks the shield up. So badass.
The Legacy of Captain America: The Winter Soldier
In the short term, Captain America: The Winter Soldier sets up the stakes for both The Avengers: Age of Ultron (with that credits stinger) and, more directly, the events of Captain America: Civil War. In a wider context, though, it showed that super-hero movies didn’t have to be one-note slugfests. That they didn’t even need to be specifically superhero movies. That they are large and contain multitudes. That tight editing, great storytelling and moments of good character development could elevate a mere genre film into something else. Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a good super-hero movie, but it’s also a great conspiracy thriller. Something worthy of including in the Canon. If only it was a lesson that had been learned better.
What’s your experience with Captain America: The Winter Soldier? Love it? Hate it? Have a comment you’d like to share? Start the conversation below!
