You can see he looks apprehensive, stressed right here. And it’s because he hears a siren, presumably police. He’s on high alert because he’s just waiting for the day that those sirens come for him.
And here he is after the (police) car with the siren passes by him. He’s relieved, a little shaken. He swallows, breathes, and gathers himself a little.
ANNNDDD then he spots the guy across the street who’s staring at him, and you can see his stomach drop and he visibly tenses again. It’s a nightmare come to life. And I’m saying “a nightmare” because sadly, this probably isn’t his worst nightmare.
And his breathing picks up, and he looks so afraid, his tiny bit of peace, whatever peace he can get, is shattered. He always knew this day would come, but he had hoped he’d have more time. And it breaks my fucking heart.
And I have to say biiiiiggg KUDOS to Sebastian Stan for acting out all the minutiae of Bucky’s facial expressions and body language. Because HOLY SHIT there was a lot of stuff going on in Bucky’s internal monologue.
Something that had already caught my attention when I first watched Captain America: Civil War, and that now receives my full love, is the scene at the end of the movie when Steve says “I can do this all day” once Tony tells him to surrender. While it is cool in itself that it mirrors skinny Steve from the 1940s, it is cooler to me for another reason.
As soon as Steve says “I can do this all day”, a heavily beaten Bucky lying on the floor, and devoid of his metal arm reaches for Tony’s leg, to stop him from hitting Steve. This mirrors the real Bucky, the guy who befriended Steve when both were children, the guy who always got Steve’s back, who didn’t care about Captain America but for the little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb to run from a fight.
To me that’s the crucial Bucky moment of the whole movie. That’s the moment when you know why Steve is fighting for Bucky. Inside of that broken, pretty dehumanised man, is still that kid from Brooklyn who couldn’t bare to see his best friend hurting.
The follow up of the “I can do this all day” scene in Captain America: the First Avenger is this:
They did go to the future. Yes, things changed and both of them changed, but at the same time they are still the same. The tiny, skinny, sickly kid who would never run from a fight, and his best friend, who would be with him till the end of the line.
Some time ago there was a post on my dashboard saying that the Captain America trilogy is beautifully symmetric, for Steve Rogers picked up the shield for Bucky and gave the shield up for Bucky, becoming Captain America and retiring from that position because of his friend. But to me that’s not it.
To me this trilogy is beautifully symmetric because of those two mirroring scenes I talked about above. Because Steve Rogers can expend his whole day, not to say his whole life, fighting for what he believes is right, and Bucky Barnes will always get his back, till the end of the line. Be it in the 1940s or the 21st century.
Captain America is Steve Rogers. A shield doesn’t make him. Being able to “do this all day” is what makes Captain America, be it in the past or in the future. From beginning to end Steve Rogers is not a perfect soldier, but a good man. At the same time, Bucky Barnes is not what Hydra made of him, what it made him do. He isn’t just a perfect soldier. Inside the perfect soldier “ready to comply” has always been trapped a good man.
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