Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to my next post in the MCU blog series. This time, we are covering “Captain America: The Winter Soldier”. Directed by the duo of Joe and Anthony Russo (and written by the duo of Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely), this movie covers Captain America/Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) trying to adjust to the modern world after the events of “The Avengers”. Along the way, he has to deal with a new enemy nicknamed “The Winter Soldier”, who has a super robotic arm. This movie also features Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, and Robert Redford as Director Alexander Pierce. It also introduces Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson/Falcon. With this introduction out of the way, let’s get into detail on how this movie went down.
The first thing we see after the Marvel Studios logo is Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson running in Washington DC. Steve keeps passing Sam while saying “On your left.” After their run, they have a conversation with each other. Steve puts some stuff in a notebook for him to catch up on, including Marvin Gaye and Star Wars. Steve then leaves with Natasha as they go on a mission. Brock Rumlow (played by Frank Grillo) talk to them about some of the S.H.I.E.L.D. people being held hostage. Steve then jumps out of the plane without a parachute and dives right into the water. After he swims to the ship and climbs onto it, he has no problem beating up the guards with hand to hand combat and his shield. Rumlow and Natasha arrive on the ship to help him take care of the bad guys. The other guys in the STRIKE team help save the hostages from being killed. One of the bad guys on the ship is played by MMA fighter Georges St. Pierre. Steve fights that guy and wins against him, even without his shield. Natasha then takes some data from a computer onto a hard drive before they escape a bomb trap. Back in DC, we see Rogers at the Triskelian (SHIELD HQ) talking with Nick Fury about the mission. Nick Fury said that he lost an eye the last time he trusted someone. They then go on an elevator down to the underground level where Nick shows Steve the improved Helicarriers, which are part of Project: Insight. The Helicarriers are able to kill thousands of threats in a minute. Steve disagrees with this project before he leaves for the Smithsonian Museum. While at the museum, he goes to an exhibit celebrating himself and his team. A boy sees that Steve is there before he is signaled to stay quiet. Steve then looks at a picture of his old buddy Bucky Barnes, who was last seen falling to his death. He then watches a video of Peggy Carter (played by Hayley Atwell) remembering Steve. He then sees an older Peggy Carter while she is in bed rest. It is a bit of an emotional moment with these two. After that scene, we see Nick Fury trying to see data from a hard drive, but the attempt fails as Nick goes to talk with Director Pierce (after Pierce talks to some people via holograms). Nick tells him that Project: Insight needs to be put to a vote to be delayed. Pierce then reminds Fury about having Tony Stark at his niece's birthday party.
We then cut to Steve meeting Sam after a class that Sam was teaching was done. Steve tells Sam that he is not sure what makes him happy. Nick calls Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) from his van to meet him in DC before he gets hit by a few cop cars. The cops then shoot at and ram the van that Nick is in before the van eventually drives away. Fury gets on the wheel and drives a bit before the van gets in a traffic jam. He escapes the jam and a couple of more cop cars before the van gets blown up by the Winter Soldier. Fury is able to get away from him via an underground tunnel. Later, at night, Steve arrives at his apartment complex and walks past a neighbor (played by Emily VanCamp). Steve enters his home to discover that Fury is in there with the record player on. Fury is then shot through the wall after he shows Steve that SHIELD has been compromised. Before Steve leaves, Fury tells him to not trust anyone. Steve then runs after the shooter and throws his shield at him. The Winter Soldier catches the shield and throws it back at Steve before leaving. At the hospital, Fury is presumed dead by the staff after operating on him for a bit. Steve is then told by Rumlow that he is needed back at S.H.I.E.L.D. immediately. Before he leaves, he hides the hard drive in a vending machine. He then meets with Pierce and they talk about Fury. Steve doesn’t reveal everything about Fury and is deemed a fugitive. He then enters an elevator, which gets extremely full. He says this before a fight gets underway: “Before we get started, does anyone want to get out?” What follows is a very intense fight scene where Steve takes care of everyone in the elevator. After the fight, he jumps out of the elevator and uses his shield to break the fall to the lobby. He is able to escape HQ and destroys a plane with his shield. Agent 13 is suspicious of everything that SHIELD is doing. Steve then goes back to the hospital wearing a hoodie. He then interrogates Natasha about the hard drive. During this talk, Natasha tells him that the Winter Soldier shot Fury before showing him a wound near her belly button. We then cut to Pierce talking with the hologram SHIELD executives, who then reactivate Project: Insight. We then see Steve and Natasha at an Apple Store in a nearby mall. She uses one of the MacBook Pros to analyze the data. They find out that the location that they need to go to is Steve’s old army base in Wheaton, New Jersey. They are able to get away via pretending to be a loving couple (including kissing each other). After they leave the mall, they drive in a truck to New Jersey. Steve is able to see visions of his skinny self before focusing back on the mission. He uses his shield to open the door and they walk downstairs to where S.H.I.E.L.D. started. They see pictures of young Peggy Carter and young Howard Stark as they make their way to a secret room. They go down an elevator to an underground room where the hard drive is inserted into the computer, which turns everything on. They hear a version of Arnim Zola (Toby Jones) talk about how Hydra infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. after Zola was recruited to it. The monitors show footage of the Winter Soldier and tells them about Project: Insight before Steve and Natasha are trapped. A missile is fired at them, but they survive the explosion and get out of the rubble before fleeing from potential custody. We see a brief scene with Pierce and the Winter Soldier at Pierce’s home. Pierce then shoots a lady before we cut to Steve and Natasha arriving at Sam’s home to hide. They then talk about how S.H.I.E.L.D. was compromised and that Pierce is behind it all, with help from Zola and the Winter Soldier. Sam offers to help Steve and Natasha with their mission.
They capture Jasper Sitwell and interrogate him about Zola and his algorithm. Natasha kicks him off the roof, but he is saved by Sam in his Falcon suit. After they got all of the information from him about the project, they drive briefly before Sitwell is killed. The Winter Soldier arrives on the Highway and attack Steve, Natasha, and Sam. They escape from the car before Steve is shot at and thrown into a bus. Meanwhile, Natasha gets away from the Winter Soldier and off the bridge. She runs some more after some shooting before the Winter Soldier jumps off the plane. Steve is still in the bus, but escapes the gunfire with the help of his shield. Some cars are destroyed by the Winter Soldier during this scene. Steve saves Natasha from the Winter Soldier before fighting him. After an intense fight, Steve takes off the mask and sees that it is Bucky. Bucky then says “Who the hell is Bucky” and points a gun at him. Sam arrives and kicks Bucky to the ground before he, Steve, and Natasha get arrested by Rumlow and his team and sent into a truck to be shot and killed under a tunnel. However, Maria Hill helps them out of the truck and into a secret room underground where Nick Fury is seen alive (a cameo by one of the directors is in this scene). Bucky is then slapped by Pierce before being brainwashed again by the bad guys. The good people then figure out a plan to disrupt Project: Insight. Basically, they have to put three little computer chips in the same spot on all three Helicarriers (one in each) before many people die. A flashback scene shows Bucky saying that he is with Steve “till the end of the line”. Before they start their mission, Steve steals an old Captain America outfit from the museum, where Stan Lee as a security guard says “Oh man. I am so fired.” With the outfit on, they get started. Natasha is disguised as one of the World Security Council members as they go to the big office. Meanwhile, Steve, Sam, and Maria get into the control panel where Steve talks to everyone about S.H.I.E.L.D. being taken over by Hydra and that Pierce is the leader. After the speech, the Helicarriers are brought up by Rumlow after a shooting bonanza. Rumlow escapes the gunfire to somewhere. Cap and Falcon get into beating up some bad guys with Falcon flying and Cap being on the ground. Meanwhile, Natasha beats up some people and takes off her disguise mask while pointing a gun at Pierce. Falcon is able to fly past gunfire and gets on the Helicarrier. Elsewhere, Cap beats up more guys as Hill reminds him of the time remaining. Natasha decrypts the data about Hydra and SHIELD while Pierce warns her about the danger of doing so. Falcon gets past more gunfire and then flies in the glass dome under the Helicarrier to put the chip in. Cap already put his in, so that leaves one to go. But then, evil Bucky blows up some stuff on another Helicarrier.
We then cut to Fury arriving to meet Pierce. Fury opens up his eyepatch to get into the data. Hill shoots a couple of guys before Cap gets shot off the Helicarrier. Luckily, Falcon gets Cap back on it before Cap gets hit again and Falcon struggles with Bucky. Sam loses one of his wings and safely falls onto a building. Sam then struggles with Rumlow for a bit. Meanwhile, Cap fights evil Bucky again in the glass dome under the third and final Helicarrier. During this fight, Cap gets interrupted by Bucky from putting in the last computer chip in and they both fall to the bottom of the dome. Elsewhere, Pierce gets the upper hand on Natasha and Fury by threatening to burn a hole into her sternum with an app connected to his phone. Steve gets Bucky in a stranglehold and makes him drop the chip. Steve tries to get up and put the chip in, but is shot at by Bucky. He gets the chip in with only a couple of seconds to spare. The Helicarriers then shoot at each other and they all blow up. Fury and Natasha are able to get past Pierce (via Natasha shocking herself) and Fury shoots him dead. Sam is able to escape via helicopter after his struggle with Rumlow. Rumlow gets badly burned, but is still alive. On the Helicarrier, Steve saves Bucky from the trap. Steve drops his shield and tries to convince Bucky that he is a friend, but is punched nearly to death. At the last moment, Steve says to Bucky that he is with him “till the end of the line” before both go into the water. Bucky drags Cap out of the water before walking away. At the hospital, Steve wakes up and says “on your left” to Sam while Marvin Gaye’s “Trouble Man” plays. We then see a montage of Agent 13 training for the CIA, Maria Hill working for Stark Industries, and some S.H.I.E.L.D./Hydra guys being arrested for their involvement with the project. Natasha talks with the senate defending her and Steve’s actions while Fury burns his eyepatch and some other stuff before putting sunglasses and walking away. Fury then sees Sam and Steve at his gravestone, which has a bible verse. The verse is the 17th verse in chapter 25 of the book of Ezekiel, which Samuel L. Jackson quotes before shooting a guy in “Pulp Fiction”. After a brief chat, Fury heads to Europe for a mission. The heroes then go their separate ways as Steve is planning to get to Bucky at some point. After the credit montage, we see Baron Wolfgang von Strucker in a Hydra lab as he oversees two superhuman people: one with fast running abilities, and the other with telekinetic powers (they are mutants named Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch and the kids of Magneto, though Marvel Studios couldn’t use that word or X-Men at the time). After the credits, we see Bucky at the museum exhibit as he discovers who he was before he was brainwashed. The movie concludes with the reminder that Captain America will return in “Avengers: Age of Ultron”.
“Captain America: The Winter Soldier” remains a fantastic movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to this day. All of the actors played their parts well, including Chris Evans as Captain America/Steve Rogers, Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanov/Black Widow, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, and Robert Redford as Alexander Pierce. Anthony Mackie was great as well in this movie while playing Sam Wilson/Falcon. The action/fight scenes were intense as heck and choreographed well, including the fight scene in the elevator and the confrontations between Cap and evil Bucky (who is played well by Sebastion Stan). There are a few moments of humor, but most of this movie is serious, which helps it stand out above many of the movies in the MCU. I really thought that Cap was going to die after basically sacrificing himself trying to convince Bucky to be a good guy. I was relieved when he got out of that situation alive. The score by Henry Jackman was good in this movie, especially during the action scenes and the emotional scenes. Most importantly, the movie was directed well by Joe and Anthony Russo thanks to a great script by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. That team of directors and writers would go on to be involved in the next Captain America sequel: “Civil War” plus “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame”. But those movies are still a bit away.
To conclude, “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” is highly recommended by me to watch on either Blu-Ray or on Disney+. You won’t regret it. Before we see how Cap and the rest of the Avengers are doing, we are going to go into Space for the next movie: “Guardians of the Galaxy.” I’ll get that post done soon. In the meantime, I wish you all a great day.
(The video on this movie from How It Should Have Ended remains one of my favorite MCU-related videos on their channel.)
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