Captain America: the Winter Soldier or “WARNING! Gush levels will be at maximum!”

Hey everybody. Sorry it took until now for the post.

I don’t know if anyone has read my “Utopia Defined” post. If you haven’t, the previous post has a link. Go check it out. If me posting on Medium.com isn’t working for you, please let me know. 

Subtitle exists because of all the MCU films, this is one of my favorites, definitely in the top three. So if I sound more enthusiastic then usual, that’s why. It’s also why this post will be hella long because again, I go all in on my obsessions. In fact, I had a hard time writing this one, because I couldn't stop thinking of things I wanted to say. At some point, I had to basically hamstring myself, be like, "Yeah, I know you want to talk about every minute of this movie, but you can't. Deal with it." 

I will also continue to document Captain America’s shameful anti-Americanism.

My two favorite fictional characters are Captain America and Samwise Gamgee. I think my standards are so high, no person stands a chance of satisfying me.

Like with Phase One, when Captain America: the First Avenger injected new life into the franchise following the mediocre Iron Man 2 and Thor, Winter Soldier does the same for Phase Two, injecting new life following mediocre Iron Man and Thor sequels. 

While each film of the MCU can be enjoyed by itself, there are certain films that serve as key films. Iron Man, having served as the cause of the Cambrian explosion of the MCU, is one of them. The Avengers, the first team up, is another one. And this film marks another turning point, forever casting a shadow over subsequent plotlines. 

Because up to this point, we had a fairly good idea as to who were the good guys and who were the bad guys when it came to the MCU. We also probably hadn’t given much thought to SHIELD beyond “oh yeah, that's the government Men in Black like organization.” This film would forever change that, prove that the definition we had, was murkier than we thought.

Though before we get into the film proper, I have one gripe: what exactly are Steve’s superpowers supposed to be? Because I thought the super-soldier serum merely put him at the peak of human condition/performance, yet several times in this movie, I’m like, “Okay does he have a Wolverine-style healing factor?” Don’t get me wrong—I’m well aware that humans are much more durable in action movies than in real life—but even by those standards, I have to protest. I generally like to have some parameters regarding a superhero's powers. 

So what’s our boy Steve Rogers been up to following the Battle of New York? Well, here’s a day in the life of Steve.

The total stranger in question is Sam Wilson aka the Falcon who makes his debut in this movie. Sam also works as a VA counselor, and I have to give him credit in that in his interactions with Steve, he seems to be the only one who recognizes that "Hey Steve's actually going through some shit." Steve is a twentysomething who survived a war and somehow wound up in the future, having to deal with the fact that everyone he knew either has one foot in the grave or is in the grave. That's some pretty heavy shit, and combined with the fact that with the exception of his intro film, Captain's story is one of constant disillusionment (i.e. Steve is constantly being betrayed by or letdown by someone), I have to give the stink-eye to just about everyone in Steve's life, because it feels like he’s received little, if any, help with this.

Then again, Tony’s PTSD is much more visible, and he doesn’t get much help with it either, just everyone hating on him for it. So the people of the MCU just generally suck when it comes to mental health. 

Though I do like his conversation with Sam where they discuss his list. 

This is the American version of his list. The MCU proceeded to create several different versions of the list depending on what country you're watching this movie in. 

Again, the "Man Out of Time" plot point has become a key part of Steve's background, and any writer worth its salt, has the sense to plow this fertile ground silly. 

I imagine Steve would probably pleased with most of the changes in the modern-era, even as he might struggle to parse out this new world. I imagine he very quickly becomes annoyed with the way people romanticize WWII. He was there; there was nothing romantic about it. And again, I will continue to say that while superhero films are inherently a romanticization, I still think that leaning on some of the more unsavory aspects of the WWII era would go a long way towards fleshing out Steve Rogers. Once you understand things like Eugenics, how Steve would have grown-up his entire life hearing about how the world would be a better place without him in it, and how it was pretty much held to be true by just about every educated person of the time and undergird Nazi ideology, you understand why he's such a rule-breaking little mothereffer. He knows from personal experience that the best and brightest can be horribly horribly wrong. 

I also use this justification as to Steve's more enlightened views on race; basically, at some point, he was like, "If I can't believe what they say about me, can I believe what they say about the Blacks and the Jews?" Hence his more enlightened views.

Though at the same time, Steve was still raised within a very toxic stew of a culture when it comes to race. And while many would like to reduce racism and make it the product of individual assholes, the trouble is that all beliefs and prejudices are interwoven into the culture. Meaning that racism is less about the individual attitudes of people and more about systems of power and control under which ordinary people seldom stand much of a chance. No matter how well-meaning a person may be, we will invariably repeat toxic messages given to us. 

So like it or not, Steve probably has his own issues to deal with regarding race. He would have grown up with the Civil War being taught about as the Lost Cause. But basically once Steve wound up in the new era, he realizes he's wrong and sets about educating himself, which is pretty much what every member of the dominant group needs to do. Steve may slip up and occasionally use the word "negro" or "colored" because those were appropriate terminology of his time, but he promptly apologizes afterwards because Steve Rogers is a lot of things, but an asshole isn't one of them. 

Okay, I suppose I should probably stop with all the headcanons and get back to the movie. I realize not everyone has my obsessive nature where I take one off-hand line, scene, or something I read and go all galaxy-brain with my headcanons. I apologize. I still have no idea how normal people consume pop culture; the idea of just sitting there and taking in what is given me and not trying to explore mysteries in my head (i.e. go "Okay, so what did he mean by X?"), writing scripts, or theorizing just seems completely alien to me. 

But Steve unfortunately can't just spend all his time hanging out with Sam, no matter how good an influence he may be. He's got work to do.

The movie makes an interesting choice in choosing to have Steve and Natasha partner up. I know as a general rule that the people who set up the MCU planned much of what would happen but given some of the continuity hiccups that show up every now and then, it obviously wasn't planned down to the dot and tittle. I often wonder how much freedom the directors have when it came to the plan. 

This film is directed by the Russo Brothers, Joe and Anthony, who would eventually go onto become some of Marvel's go-to directors, giving us Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame, but at the time of this movie, Marvel was taking a chance in letting them have a turn. If you look over their IMDB resume, up to that point, the Russos had mostly done sitcom work, the most notable of their credits being the second paintball war on Community. Hardly, the first thought you'd have when you're like, "Okay, I need to get someone to direct the next big-budget installment of a major blockbuster franchise."

Anyway, back to my original point, I wonder if the Russos were the ones who made the decision to have Natasha and Steve share a close partnership, or if it was some other person's idea. Whoever it was, it's a smart move when we look at what the characters represent. 

Steve is the product of the WWII era, an era which has been much romanticized, upheld as "The Good War" and given a wholesomeness that is completely out of sorts with the reality of any war. As said before, however just the cause of WWII may be, the Allied Forces still plunged deep into a sea of grey, morality-wise. Then again, war is inherently a murky action, only appearing straightforward in hindsight. As said before, a good example of this grey morality is that at the beginning of the war, one of the things the Allied Forces took offense at the Axis Powers for doing, was their bombing of civilian targets. Yet by the end of the war, the Allied Forces are also bombing civilian targets. 

This conversation between Steve and Nick gives the briefest of touches when it comes to the moral compromises of WWII, but doesn’t go much further than that, unfortunately. 

Natasha, meanwhile, has, throughout her history, been a product of the Cold War, a conflict much murkier and much harder to romanticize. It technically never turned, well, hot, and technically the US came out on top, but we still haven't fully reckoned with the decisions made during the conflict. For good or for ill, we are still being shaped by these decisions, yet if you were to mention the words "Operation Ajax," most people would have no idea what you're talking about, even though said event forever defined the Middle East. The Conservatives have managed to mostly rebrand Vietnam as a war which we totally could have won, were it not for all those hippies harshing everyone's mellow what with their pointing out the massive civilian casualties. 

I don't know if I'm breaking my rule about leaping ahead--I probably am--but I like the fact that Natasha and Steve's friendship stays a friendship and never, at any point, turns into a romance. I want more male-female friendships that stay friendships, thank you. 

What’s interesting about this movie is how little in its earlier stages it resembles a superhero film in terms of tone. As many have pointed out, early on this film more resembles a political thriller from the 60s or 70s where you have your good guy hero uncover a massive conspiracy, forcing the hero to go on the run, and try to piece together what’s going on. The Russo Brothers have cited the 1975 thriller Three Days of the Condor as their inspiration saying that this film could almost be referred to as “Three Days of Captain America.”

For the record, as part of my preparations for this review, I did watch Three Days of the Condor. It was okay. Don’t really have much to say about it.

And however good this movie is, it does lose some of its paranoid, almost claustrophobic nature on the rewatch, once you know the big twist.

The big twist I've been tiptoeing around throughout this post? I'll let one of the characters explain it for you.

Basically, the organization Steve spent WWII grinding into the dust, never really went away and massively infiltrated the US government and possibly many other ones and has spent the past seventy years orchestrating events from the shadows. With the help of the helicarriers mentioned in the conversation between Steve and Nick, they'll soon be able to kill anyone who stands in their way, unless Our Hero stops the launch. 

The film uses Operation Paperclip to explain how and why Hydra scientists were brought over to the US to work for the government. Operation Paperclip was a very real phenomenon and is further proof as to the ambiguities of WWII and the Cold War. Because the popular meme regarding WWII posits it as a righteous crusade against the Nazis, people who used to be painted as unequivocal villains, yet after the war, the US government is colluding with Nazi scientists, so we can get the jump on the USSR, even though the Soviets had been our allies in the war.

Again, I hope no one gets the wrong idea regarding my views of WWII. I am totally on Team Nazi Punks Fuck Off! I believe in the cause of stopping fascism and spend my days eyerolling over all these centrist concern trolls who hem and haw over the appropriateness of punching Nazis. Decades of media has continually depicted Nazis as the bad guys, yet now that they’re making a comeback*, now, our discourse is filled with obsessions with a false civility. :deep breath:

What I am opposed to, is the way WWII is overly romanticized to the point where people have forgotten just how the Nazis rose into power in the first place, how Hitler’s regime functioned, how he was aided and abetted by so many of the governments which would later oppose him. 

Though I’m wondering if I’m contradicting myself when it comes to my views on romanticization. For all the hate it gets, I do feel it has some value. It’s why I started my Utopia Defined project, because I felt our political horizons had become constrained. My views are just complicated. Do I contradict myself? Well, then I contradict myself. I am large; I contain multitudes.

Oh and like Linkara, I feel no shame in using the terms “Nazis” and “Hydra” interchangeably for most of the same reasons. While Hydra and the Nazis broke off from each other, Hydra has always been painted as a fascist organization with trappings very similar to the Nazis and beliefs very similar to those of Nazis. I, myself, am a champion hair-splitter, but even I have my limits. If they look like Nazis and sound like Nazis, call them fucking Nazis.

Hydra’s Project Insight also has eerie reverberations in our era of drone warfare. It started with George W. Bush, but Barack Obama expanded it, and there’s a scary lack of oversight to the program. Basically, the War on Terror has expanded to just about every country in the Middle East and we have no way of knowing which names are on the list and why. And since cases like Anwar al-Awlaki** prove that not even an American citizenship will protect you from drone strikes, we have to face the fact that the President of the United States can straight-up execute its own citizens for whatever reason they deem appropriate. And well, as the rule of Foucault’s Boomerang states that weapons/tactics used to suppress uprisings on its enemies abroad will eventually come to be used against its own people, we can probably assume that drone warfare will eventually be used on American soil. Even though given that the police can all but execute you for whatever reason they feel like, maybe we don't need drones to do the job. 

So Cap has discovered that the organization he's working for, is full to the brim with Nazis. And if that isn't enough, it turns out that the titular Winter Soldier who has been trying to kill him, is his tortured best friend who he thought had died after falling from a speeding train into the Alps. 

 Looking back, this whole movie is about the art of misdirection. Because again, going in, we thought we had an idea as to how the Marvel Cinematic Universe worked, thought we knew who the good guys and the bad guys were, only for it to turn out to be brutally wrong, forcing us to now look at everything that had happened prior in a new light. 

Like remember how the SHIELD council wanted to nuke New York to save the Earth from an alien invasion? Well, what if Hydra had all kinds of plans to use that to push forth their agenda on an even greater skill, which would work because the death of 8 million people? Everyone would be scared and willing to go along with anything and everything. It'd be 9/11 on steroids. 

Oh and the following is totally canon: Phil Coulson saved Steve’s life by being a fanboy. 

I imagine Steve being like, “Uh, thanks?” in response to this.

And with Senator Stern being revealed to be Hydra? Well, that gives new insight into how in Iron Man 2 he wanted badly to get his hands on Tony's technology. 

Of course, the existence of this movie proves that Tony's not as great a hacker as he claims to be, but hey, maybe after eating all that shawarma, he just forgot to get around to checking any of the other stuff he'd gotten from SHIELD.

Even the subtitle of this film is kind of an exercise in misdirection. After all it, along with the promotional materials, positions the Winter Soldier as the film's Big Bad, only for it to be revealed that he's basically a tortured POW who lacks the one freedom afforded to any POW: the ability to hate the people who are horribly abusing him. The so-called Big Bad is actually entirely lacking in agency of his own, a tool used by others. 

Though when it comes to the actual villain of the film, Alexander Pierce? For those of you wondering, he's a solid one on the 1 to 5 villain scale. He's not completely lacking in any memorable qualities ala Malekith, but Pierce is kind of the embodiment of so many of the MCU's villain problems in Phase One and Two. He's basically an old man in a business suit, interesting for the organization he represents, but he could easily be replaced by another character, say, Senator Stern, without the movie being affected by it at all. 

Anyway, Steve is understandably shaken and pissed off by everything that's happened. Like I've said before, with the exception of his intro film, nearly every appearance has Cap being betrayed or letdown by somebody. This film represents the biggest of that moment and probably the most impactful on his character. And while I can't go too in depth with this without breaking my rule about skipping ahead, much of Cap's actions in Civil War really make sense in light of this movie. :clamps mouth shut so I won't lecture any further:

Those of you know that I ship Bucky and Steve, believe that their friendship clearly goes far beyond a brotherly one. I just find the idea of a relationship between the two to be fascinating. Bucky is one of the few people who knew Steve back when he was a 95 lb. asthmatic, the one person who always believed in him and thought he was worth something, even before he was shot up full of super-soldier serum. Growing up in a culture which, like I said, constantly told him the world would be better off without him in it, you better believe that having someone like Bucky on his side meant the world to Steve. 

The repeated phrase between the two of them "I'm with you til' the end of the line" has connotations that go far beyond mere brotherly love. Though to the extent that bisexuality or homosexuality was talked about back then, well, I'm afraid I only have a laymen's/surface-level understanding of it, but probably to the extent that it was talked about, it was considered a deviancy that could be fixed via a proper heterosexual marriage. Supposedly, the Brooklyn neighborhood where Steve and Bucky would have lived, had a thriving LGBT scene, but the essay where I read this, has disappeared into the ether that is the worldwide web. 

But what I keep coming back to, regarding my Steve/Bucky ship, is the lengths they go to for one another. To leap ahead briefly, Civil War forever clenched it for me because, well, when it comes to a fight, they are willing to take their own knocks; they don't enjoy getting beat up, but they can take it. However, the surest way to really get them to go into "Oh Fuck You!" mode is to go for the other one. Twitter thread with further proof to drive the point home.

I do wonder if that was one way that Erskine's serum served as a relief for Steve, not just that he no longer has his myriad of health problems, but...well, remember the story said that the serum basically fixed what was wrong with him, so the fact that his feelings for Bucky remained even afterwards, proved to him once and for all that there wasn't anything wrong with these feelings; he wasn’t broken. 

It may be one of the greatest treats for him of the new world; he and Bucky can openly be together. 

I've also heard it theorized that the MCU version of Bucky Barnes is kind of a melding of two supporting characters from the life of Steve Rogers: Bucky Barnes and Arnie Roth. For those who don't know, Arnie Roth was basically a lot like the MCU depiction of Bucky in that he was a friend of preserum Steve Rogers who regularly rescued him from bullies and always thought he was worth something, even before Steve underwent the procedure. Roth is Jewish and is later revealed to be Gay, traits which many Steve/Bucky fans have incorporated into their headcanons regarding Bucky. 

Did I mention that the comic from which this panel was taken from, came out during the height of the AIDS epidemic during the 80s? So Cap is making a radical statement here. I wonder if I should add this to my list of exhibits in my "Captain America is an America-Hating Bastard" exhibit. 

FYI, the Bernie Cap is referring to is this woman, a Jewish Bisexual artist.

Though just as I shouldn't use the fact that one of them is named after a a president widely suspected to be Gay as support for my ship, I also shouldn't use the fact that one of the actors involved has a history of playing tortured Gay Boys either. 

Oh, all right, enough slash headcanons, back to the movie. 

I suppose we should talk about this scene which has to rank as one of the most heart-breaking and disturbing in the MCU. 

The Russo Brothers summed up their planning for this scene as thus:

The shirt-removing innovation works not just from a pervy “Sebastian Stan is hot" perspective, but also because it adds another note of vulnerability to the scene. The whole scene illustrates the paradoxical nature of the Winter Soldier's role in Hydra. The thing is, he could take out all the soldiers in the room if he wanted to, but he can't, because again, he lacks the one freedom afforded to any POW. His shirtlessness serves as a visual symbol of the power disparity involved between him and the men he serves: he's half-naked while being surrounded by soldiers in head-to-toe SWAT gear. 

The scene is even more heartbreaking than the Empire Strikes Back one, because Han didn’t completely have what little sense of self he possessed, destroyed. Whereas poor Bucky…basically he doesn’t have enough context to put together the few slivers he remembers, but for the first time in a long time, there’s something there. For the first time in ages, he knows he is being lied to. So as the machine warms up, he is begging himself to hold onto this name, this face; this is important and he cannot afford to lose this.

Though the line in Pierce’s monologue where he says, “And I need you to do it one more time…” well, it doesn’t take long to make some connotations about what this means. My personal headcanon is that Hydra had decided that once the helicarriers launched, they would no longer need the Winter Soldier. Why go to the trouble of keeping him, when you can program coordinates into a computer and have them scratched off with no muss, no fuss? 

That’s why, well, if you’ve watched any of the fight scenes with the Winter Soldier in this movie and have been like, “Y’know he seems to be the opposite of a stealthy assassin,” now you know it’s basically because Hydra no longer gave a fuck.

Though Natasha said that the Winter Soldier had been linked to dozens of assassinations over the past 50 years, but Bucky wound up Hydra’s custody back in 1945, 70 years ago. So did Bucky hold out and resist for 20 damn years or are there actions Natasha doesn’t know about?

One last nitpick regarding this scene: if you watched First Avenger, you’d recall that Zola was arrested on the train very shortly after Bucky fell. But I’m willing to accept that after falling hundreds of feet from a speeding train, Bucky’s recall might not be what you’d call a 100% accurate.

So everything’s in place for the big action climax. While it is generally a satisfying one with plenty of tension, I do feel the movie isn’t as strong without the “who can I trust?” paranoia tone of earlier. Don’t get me wrong; there are still some great fight scenes, especially the final fight between Steve and Bucky. But none of them are as creative or nail-biting as the elevator fight from earlier. 

The elevator fight frequently makes the list of best MCU fight scenes, which is completely understandable. The creativity and tension, along with its use of such a small space, makes it well worth watching.

I could easily go on and on with this movie, create headcanons within headcanons until the end of time, but I’ve already made it so that no one will ever go to a movie with me, so let’s wrap this up.

The day is saved. In the wake of the helicarrier crash, all of Hydra’s files are dumped onto the web for the world to see. Regrettably, this will only receive a scant mention in future films. 

For those interested, here are the two credit scenes. Wanda and Pietro make a cameo, but I’ve decided not to link to their origin story. Let’s save that for Age of Ultron when they play a bigger part. 

Next on the roster is Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1. See you until then.

*The future was supposed to be space travel, dammit, not Nazis making a comeback!

**If you want to read more about the assassination of al-Awlaki and generally all the secret wars we're fighting all over the Middle East and Africa, Jeremy Scahill's book Dirty Wars is both fascinating and terrifying. There's also a documentary based on said book for those of you who don't like reading. 

The whole think with Anwar al-Awlaki is particularly fascinating in that in the wake of 9/11, he was often profiled as an example of a moderate Muslim who decried the terrorists' actions as antithetical to Islam. What turned him radical was being repeatedly harassed by law enforcement/intelligence organizations.

Though the real sad/scary part is the death of Abdulrahaman, his son, who was killed a few weeks after his father. Whatever your issues with his dad, Abdulrahaman was a minor and was guilty of nothing more than having a terrorist recruiter for a father.