Tag: Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Okay so seeing this gif makes me want to give major props to the set dressers as well as the cinematographer. The meta – let me show you it.

In the background between Sam and Steve we have a very modern style generic veteran poster. The words you can just make out ‘You Fought For Us, We Fight For You.” Appropriate for Sam on several levels, especially as we go into the second half of the movie where Sam chooses to fight for Cap. They give him that specific dialog ‘Hey, Captain America needs my help’.

Behind Steve we literally have his past. We have an old school (this style of illustration became popular during WW2 and except when you want to hit the nostalgia hard, stopped being used in the 1970s) illustration of an eagle in flight carrying a flag in its talons. So it not only echoes the propaganda that Steve himself would be used to seeing but they literally put it right behind his head, he’s stepping out of the past and into the future.

The spacing of the shot is very deliberate too. You have Sam in open space, moving back and forth a bit as he speaks (yes, this is also Mackie’s style but they gave him room to move). He’s backlit by the open door. Steve is, from this angle, very grounded against the door frame, the dark wooden column. He’s also standing very still. We do get a nod and a head tilt but his movements are slower and smaller than Sam’s. [I could do a whole other meta on body language in this movie but if you just look at the gif you can infer tons of stuff.]

But Bucky undergoes transformation in each of his two appearances; The First Avenger is worth re-watching just to observe how well Stan fleshes out Bucky with relatively little material to work with. He starts the movie as a grinning ladies’ man and ends it as a sniper who can barely smile, and by The Winter Soldier his ability to smile is long gone. That the filmmakers chose to end the movie on Bucky’s visage is all you need to know that it’s his story we’re really concerned with. Cap is Cap is Cap. But Bucky is fluid, an evolving character whose struggle is not with the world in which he lives but with the man that world has forced him to become. Bucky Barnes is the one undergoing the Hero’s Journey, not Captain America.

Captain America Ruined Superman for Me (via neuermanuels)

More Winter Soldier meta thoughts

jamie-sf:

Okay, here is another thing. Based on CA:TWS – The Winter Soldier largely sucks at the job they gave him. The job that HYDRA threw him at. No, wait hear me out.

It’s not discussed much in the MCU except in very elided terms (yay, movies and narrative) but it’s pretty clear if you fill in the…

So after more thought (and a few fan fic stories that point it out) I’ve come to realize that Pierce is still monumentally wasteful but for slightly different reasons.

He clearly thinks/feels he can throw away the Winter Soldier (Asset) after this mission because once Project Insight goes live he won’t need a high maintenance, low return rate to do the dirty work. Why would he need someone that travels when he can push a button in DC to make it happen?

And here is where I still think that’s probably stupid. We don’t as an audience know how effective Project Insight will be. If there are any possible counter measures that can stop it. Based on the immediate targets we know that they were looking on taking out Tony Stark in the first wave – and he’s our most likely candidate in the MCU to be able to come up with an effective response to it which means they are either being smart or they were nervous or both about his capabilities.

It’s Pierce putting all of his evil empire eggs in one basket. I mean, it does make the Death Star look like good planning – it was very clear in the movies that the giant black space station was meant as a propaganda tool – and the helicarriers aren’t. That thought may fall apart with more reflection but we’ll see.

Anyway, I think Pierce is believing in his own press and that of the people around him way too much, fortunately for Cap and his merry band.

More Winter Soldier meta thoughts

Insert meta here

So I have read quite a bit of Winter Soldier fic since the movie came out and I’ve got a problem with some aspects of it. Let me preface this by saying all viewpoints are valid, especially for something like fan fiction – that’s the point of the thing, to bring your own perspective to it.  But I’m gonna rant anyway.

Bucky Barnes (and Steve Rogers) were soldiers in WWII. They were active duty commandos for something like two years depending on the timeline you choose to follow. Bucky was a sniper. I’ve known snipers, both in my time in the service and afterwards and there is a mindset there about it. While it is happening, it is a job. There isn’t guilt involved or you don’t stay a front line soldier for long. It kills you or gets beaten out of you by the situation. 

And don’t take my word for it. Dig up a copy of the Band of Brothers mini-series. The last episode in particular has some stuff in it that is relevant to this particular point (Bastogne is a great ep if you want to learn more about Bucky being platoon sergeant but that’s a different rant.). 

It is very much a ‘you or them’ situation when you’re out there with a weapon in your hand. Now. Does Bucky have the right to be a vengeful bastard because of HYDRA? Yes. No question. Loss of autonomy is a horrible thing. Is he going to be torn up about the deaths he caused? Maybe. I think he treasures life that any non psychotic person but I suspect he also knows that he can’t change the past and can only go forward from here. There is no doubt in my mind that the Bucky that fell from the train was a soldier and knew what his job was. There was a Winter Soldier in him or they couldn’t have drawn him out and I suspect he is the type of man that will own that.

I don’t think that Bucky is a woobie that thinks his death count means he isn’t worthy of breathing the same air as normal people. And the Steve Rogers we see in Winter Soldier wouldn’t think so either. Steve is a bit of an idealistic idiot but he’s not naive and he wanted all of HYDRA dead at the end of TFA. He had no compuction about killing aliens that were clearly sentient in Avengers and the ‘being Nick Fury’s garbage man’ certainly implies black or at least gray ops to me.

copperbadge:

Sad hobos need your help today

Last seen in DC at the Smithsonian but didn’t go to the information desk and ask for his family. Calling out ‘Winter Soldier’ in dark corners could work. So could showing Captain America’s shield – but be prepared for sad eyes. Have a kitten ready.