The more I see comparison gifs like these, the more I think – you don’t carve the out the person and leave the skills – that is not what they did at all. They kept everything of the person (even gave him some more skills) and took the memories. What you have left is a being who is a hunter, who is a killer, who is loyal, who is protective, who is sassy and talks back, etc, and who is up for grabs. Without the memories to inform WHO to protect, WHO to be loyal to, WHO (and what) it is worth killing for, they can manipulate the character traits into being protective of them, of being loyal to them, of killing for them.
In some respects, that may be even worse, when he regains his memories. Because everything he did as Winter Soldier is still him. He can not look at those events and say – that was not me – because it was. He was not a robot acting on programming – he was him, acting on false information.
TOO REAL
yeah, but no. like seriously no. the winter soldier is not loyal or protective or sassy. he doesn’t talk back. (like what even, what? ??? ??????? ??) he is not bucky barnes with the serial numbers filed off. he is not bucky barnes “acting on false information”. like the entire horror of watching him onscreen in catws is the level of dehumanisation, the degree to which he is not bucky barnes but also not a person; it isn’t his memories that were just taken away, it’s his humanity. so in a way, yeah, he is a robot and he is acting on programming. saying that he was acting on false information implies that he had any free will to act, which he didn’t. the winter soldier isn’t, actually, a soldier holding a gun. he is just a gun.
bucky during catfa did what any soldier does in a war. he had ptsd and it fucked him up, but shockingly enough war tends to fuck people up and plenty of soldiers have ptsd. that doesn’t make him ~already on the way to becoming the winter soldier~, because the winter soldier is the result of (if we follow from 616 canon) amnesia, brain damage and hideous amounts of orwellian handwavey mental conditioning.
saying that the winter soldier is bucky barnes acting on false information would make him a compelling though kind of cliched villain, but it’s factually incorrect.
And focusing on Marvel and DC at the expense of the dozens of other publishers in comics, and then declaring comics a failure at San Diego Comic-Con, is incredibly myopic. It’s a mistake to think that Marvel and DC are all that mattered, that their new events or announcements dictate the future of capital-c Comics. Marvel and DC are comics, just like the other publishers, and they make some great ones when they let the creators do their own thing. But at this point? You can’t treat them like the entirety of the comics industry, or even two companies that can dictate the future of comics. They run the movies, and that’s cool, but running comics? It’s just not true any more. Image in particular outsells Marvel in the book market as far as trade paperbacks go, and that holds true in the comics market lately, too. That’s no coincidence. People enjoy Marvel and DC, but they want more than Marvel and DC.
If the announcements from the Big Two felt lackluster, but the fans still had a great time, how did comics fail? That sounds like a Marvel & DC problem. Vertical debuted Moyoco Anno’s brand new book In Clothes Called Fat at the show, a comic geared toward adult women. They sold out of Fumi Yoshinaga’s What Did You Eat Yesterday?, a romance/cooking comic. At Image, we sold out of Greg Tocchini & Rick Remender’s Low, an aquatic sci-fi tale, and Nick Dragotta & team’s Howtoons, a comic geared toward getting kids interested in the science through practical play. Boom! burned through Lumberjanes, a comic about girls at camp. These aren’t your normal comics, and people were eating them up.
“For the Winter Soldier, Legacy Effects had crafted a prosthetic arm piece to be worn by actor Sebastian Stan and stunt doubles on set, where it was covered in a few tracking dots. Both Luma (and ILM for other Winter Soldier sequences) then worked on a CG replacement arm that would articulate as slatted metal. “He moves so fast that there were so many actions,” comments Cirelli. “It was a real tech challenge to get the arm so that it was in not too many broken pieces but allowed rotation and twisting and all the things you’d expect.”
Since the arm had to be completely integrated into Stan’s body, Luma had to also establish the appropriate blend location for the CG appendage. “Sometimes that can be more complicated than just doing a full character replacement,” notes Cirelli. “Because if you have close-up shots of a character moving with cloth, and it’s rotating and twisting, well that begs the question where do you split in the CG? How far up the body? So along with the arm actually came cloth simulation and other sorts of texturing and modeling for the seamless operation of the arm.”
Despite its rigid metallic nature, Luma’s arm rig allowed for muscle bulging. “What we had,” says Cirelli, “was a rig underneath that allowed for contiguous skin and then it would deform and expand for muscle. That skin would drive the slats and how they move. It was a multi-tiered system similar to Destroyer from Thor but a little more complex because the Winter Soldier was lightning fast – jumping, rotating, twisting, moving. We found we had to have a more robust system so that when the arm twists and bends, it does so so quickly so the rig doesn’t blow up! We had lots of renders where it looked like he had two arms coming out of his elbow.”
Luma also detailed the interior of the arm, adding a layer underneath the exoskeleton of moving rods and mechanisms – elements that were more visible in a later lab sequence in which the Winter Soldier’s arm is being repaired. The studio relied on its Maya to Arnold workflow for the CG work.” (x)
Oh man. MAN. Man. Lemme tell you about Susan Ivanova.
Susan Ivanova, second in command of Babylon 5, has been through a lot of shit. First, off, Babylon 5 is a deliberate melting pot of a place where. after a really bad war, different species can come to seek peace. Earthgov is skeptical about it. The other species governments are skeptical about it. As a result, the station often stands between the universe and very bad shit going down.
Commander Ivanova is in charge of operations. All the day to day stuff. She handles it pretty well.
Her family is Russian and Jewish, and it actually comes up from time to time. She occasionally sends a shout out to god (she’s not practicing, iirc, but she still identifies as Jewish and keeps a few traditions), She commentates often on her Russian heritage.
Susan Ivanova: I know, I know. It’s a Russian thing. When we’re about to do something stupid, we like to catalog the full extent of our stupidity for future reference.
She meets up with family and friends from her past and doesn’t shy away from them:
Lt. Cmdr. Susan Ivanova: So how are things back home? Rabbi Koslov: They change, they stay the same. Russia is Russia. Your father used to say: “If regret could be harvested, Russia would be the world’s fruit basket.”
She had a rough time growing up – her mother was a telepath, and in this universe if you’re telepathic and human you have two options: join a quasi-militaristic organization called the PsiCorps that will immediately take you from your family and control your whole life (they even have a saying: the Corps is Mother. The Corps is Father. It’s as chilling as you think,); option two is to take some drugs that suppress your abilities. Ivanova’s mother chose the second option, and after a long, ugly period suffering under the effects of the drug, she took her own life.
You can imagine Susan is not thrilled with anyone associated with the Psicorps. But when a Psicorps telepath named Talia Winters comes on board, some interesting things happen.
Susan also later falls in love with a man named Marcus Cole, which means for my money she’s the first bisexual lady in space that I ever saw on TV. Possibly ever.
For all that though, for her friendships and lovely jokes and cuddly-as-a-cactus-flower appeal, they never ever forget how good she is at her job. She is shatteringly competent.
Commander Susan Ivanova, bisexual Russian Jewish space princess of my heart. Forever. Watch this show.
Always share St. Ivanova.
YEESSSS. Babylon 5 fandom, we yet live!!
And did we mention the part where she coopted part of the hydroponics bays so that she could grow coffee to prevent her from committing homicide?
Susan Ivanova is my queen. Also my rebbe.
(I refuse to call her St Ivanova because what part of “Jewish” are we forgetting, thanks for the erasure).
#another on the endless list of shows I want to get around to watching
YES. Yes, you do. It has its problems, it’s the first show to do all its SFX by computer (Amigas with Video Toaster cards) and sometimes it looks it, and it starts slow but god damn once it gets going it is fucking amazing and awesome.
Also, Ivonava and Talia’s relationship is canon and confirmed and intent, and the only reason it stopped when it did is because Talia’s actress wanted to leave the show to do other things nobody cares about.
I have never stopped wanting to be her when I grow up.
this is an EXCELLENT POINT and I’m going to talk about it. in gun safety the first thing you learn is 1: do not ever point your gun at something unless you are going to shoot it and 2: do not ever put your finger on the trigger unless you’re going to put a bullet through something.
Bucky Barnes knows the importance of trigger safety. Bucky Barnes was trained by the US Army to never put his finger on the trigger unless he was going to absolutely shoot something
The Winter Soldier is a weapon. The only time the Soldier is ever given a weapon, he is absolutely going to shoot something. It’s his mission. It’s all he does. Thaw, wipe, point, shoot, kill, freeze, repeat. It’s as natural to him as anything can be—a finger on the trigger and intent to kill on his mind
Amazing detail. The more I think about it the more this movie lives and dies on the details in every single actor’s performance. It’s good we’re getting the directors back for the next Cap movie, which WILL have Bucky, because they have to be able to move the story forward from this.
Sulagna Misra takes a look at the debate of the historicity of Captain America, and reports back on her findings.
Lots of linkages to historicallyaccuratesteve that ties pieces together. Lovely if you want to know at least one person’s take on who Steve Rogers, man born in 1918, could be like.
Joe Russo: We always said that the whole movie lives or dies on that last scene between him and Bucky. You know, this third act is a fait accompli in a way. It’s a superhero movie.
Steve McFeely: I suspect he will win.
Joe Russo: The expectation is that he will win. But the real story is will he win Bucky, will he save his friend, will his friend kill him, will he have to kill his friend? The tragedy of that moment was the most important thing to us as directors in the third act. That’s the real climax of the act.
Steve McFeely: Yeah, from jump street we always worked towards getting to: “I will sacrifice myself in order to reach my friend.” And so “end of the line” has been the line since the very beginning. And Sebastian nails it, it cracks him.
Chris Markus: Again, it’s about Steve trying to save his past.
Joe Russo: It’s the last thing he has left.
– Captain America: The Winter Soldier Blu-ray Audio Commentary
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