Tag: meta

cellardoortumbles:

the subtext in this scene KILLS ME Steve clearly WANTS Sam’s help but doesn’t want to be the one to ask him to do it Sam is joking at first
there’s a twinkle in his eyes as he says that ‘captain america’ needs him when he clearly means YOU you steve rogers need my help
and he’s more serious as he continues that there’s no better reason to get back in that he believes in this fight ‘I BELIEVE IN YOU SO HARD STEVE’
and Steve can’t even handle it he has to look away ‘HE BELIEVES IN ME SO HARD’ I CAN’T EVEN BOYS

I feel like this scene is an odd echo of the bar scene with Bucky where Bucky says he won’t follow Captain America but he’ll follow that kid from Brooklyn.

And you know at that point all Bucky wanted, really, was to get out.

More Winter Soldier meta thoughts

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 holes from the comics that Bucky’s job is largely sabotage and assasination. They use him as a destabilizer, a ghost. And then they take this weapon and try to use it like a BFG. It’s such an odd choice for a group that’s supposed to be that smart, that they turn around and basically use this extremely expensive and specialized tool as a blunt instrument – and it’s not stupid people that do it, it’s people that are theoretically cunning. 

It makes me want to write the backstory and fill in what tipped Pierce’s hand early enough to essentially throw away a tool like that on what was probably going to be a one time use, maybe twice if the odds end up in his favor.  [Fury wanting to delay Insight is clearly part of it but I’m wondering why after decades of planning what was so critical about that moment that he wasn’t willing to spend a few more years and get around Fury instead of what he did which is force everything forward and did it badly.] [Yes, I know villains are supposed to have Moments of Stupid™ to advance the plot but really?]

So here is my thinking that maybe backs the bad at the job they sent him to do:

1. He’s deployed out against Fury. He blows up the SUV but Fury gets away. It’s broad daylight. It’s uncontrolled space in the middle of an urban center. It’s against a high profile (media profile: you can’t tell me Fury has avoided television with SHIELD going public and that big building on the Potomac) high value target. This is not how you do business, at least not typically. Who were they going to blame it on?

[There is an implied missing scene that I haven’t seen in fic yet. WS tracking Fury to Steve’s apartment. It’s clearly the same day/evening. WS needed Steve to turn on the light (maybe?) to positively site the target because the shot comes seconds later after more talking to define the location.]

2. He’s sent out to shoot Fury and doesn’t kill him – now this one could be argued that this was some kind of plan to draw out Captain America and forward HYDRA’s plans but at least on the surface, he didn’t kill the guy. [This one is complicated because of the double blind of Fury ‘dying’ but not dying.] He almost gets caught by Cap.  This ghost assassin that is a rumor and legend in the intelligence community for 50 years. In an urban environment that is loaded with cameras [yes, we’ll ignore the inconsistency that SHIELD wants all the cameras and twitter to track down Cap in the last third of the movie but they don’t use it to get a positive ID on WS for the rest of the film *handwave*]

3. He’s sent out to stop Cap and the Black Widow on the highway overpass. He gets part of the job done and then the cops/STRIKE team come out and finish it. Again, we have another direct conflict which is such an odd choice. Dude is a sniper, and metal arm notwithstanding close combat skills and distance skills are not things that normally are found in the same person. [Yes, it’s comic books but Cap is the exception to the rule there too – he’s got the Shield for his distance weapon and he’s a brawler. It’s not common.  Extreme short range, short range, long range, extreme long range. These are your archtypes and in real world weapon design this is one of those places where you can’t cheat.] [That said, they gave WS the metal arm which is clearly for short range beat the shit out of things but who else but another ‘super’ is going to even going to be able to compete with that? He can cave in metal, an unaltered human doesn’t stand a chance but why bother getting that close if you have a sniper rifle?] 

Here is where I say that I think they did WS a bit of a disservice and didn’t show us that he’s a tactical thinker like we saw Bucky being in TFA. You can imply it if you squint with him asking for a different weapon and deploying the team a certain way in the overpass battle and if you really squint you might be able to say he planned the Fury attack, chose the sniper secondary attack but we don’t know if he has that much capability/will in the movie. It simply isn’t said in any concrete way at all.

4. He’s sent out to do a head to head battle with Cap to finish it all. To me this really is Pierce writing off WS as a tool and an asset. Even if WS wins the fight and takes Cap down and that is by no means a given, he doesn’t trust the tool not to break given how fast the conditioning was breaking down. 

Pierce is the guy who literally doesn’t care what anything costs. He shoots his housekeeper because she saw the WS. He throws away a tool that’s had hundreds of hours of work and who knows how much money and technology poured into it all to take over the world. Each of the moments with Pierce builds a picture for you about the way he dehumanizes everything around him.

tldr- they took a precision made tool and turned it into the bluntest hammer and set it loose on the highest, nastiest setting they could. It was literally such a waste of resources.

Your Mrs. Rogers and Captain Barnes fic was adorable. And AWWWWW for Steve making Bucky Bear a Corporal. Poor Colonel Phillips, though, having to deal with all the insanity surrounding him. xD

darthstitch:

Basically, Colonel Phillips kept asking himself exactly what in the name of Sweet Baby Jesus did he do to deserve the Howling Commandos.

I mean, a man’s not perfect, especially if one happens to be career army, already resigned to the knowledge that he’s not going to die in bed like an old man.

(Fun Fact:  in the Blanket Fort Headcanon ‘verse, Colonel Phillips did die of old age, surrounded by children and grandchildren.  It was a peaceful passing, as these things go and yeah, he was already a general at that point in time and a very well-respected one.)

Between trying to navigate the fall-out of all the Howling Commandos shenanigans and trying very, very hard not to think of what SNRFB actually means – they all know SNAFU, SNRFB wasn’t a hard leap to make – it’s a miracle that Phillips actually reached a ripe old age with most of his sanity intact. 

Then again, he should’ve expected this, considering that the letter addressed to next of kin, that would’ve said Sgt. James Buchanan Barnes was MIA, presumed dead, was going to be sent to Steven Grant Rogers.  That’s why Phillips knew, when he was trying to deliver the news to “Captain America” that it was going to be a useless mission to try and “rescue” him.  That’s why he also knew that Captain Rogers was going to be a stubborn cuss and attempt the rescue anyway.

He’s still not recognizing the bear as part of his goddamn army anyway, “above and beyond the call of duty” or no. 

It must be said that his youngest daughter adored Bucky Bear – she had a Bucky Bear of her own – and Colonel Phillips got her one for Christmas.  Said daughter would have a crush on Sgt. Barnes himself.  The bear and the Barnes Crush would be passed on to the later generations of Phillips’ family.  XD 

verysharpteeth:

What kills me about this is Bucky doesn’t WANT to die. That look isn’t rage or defiance or even resignation, that’s legitimate fear. The man who was broken and turned into death itself doesn’t want to die. This isn’t the reaction you expect from someone who has up to this point been a killing machine. He looks trapped and scared and YOUNG. It’s a look you didn’t even seen on Bucky when he WAS young. He thinks Steve is coming over to finish him, I mean it’s what HE would do. But for someone so intimately acquainted with death, he’s scared of it. Because all he’s known of people for the last 70 years is pain and abuse and it’s a look that expects more from Steve because that’s what people DO to him. People hurt him when he doesn’t function right and he KNOWS he’s not functioning right and if Steve doesn’t kill him, HYDRA will because he’s past his expiration date of usefulness and he’s failing…

But Bucky’s a survivor. He’s got more resilience than any other character is asked for. His drive is to live. When the machine is broken enough that a little bit of Bucky can get back through, even in the midst of an existential crisis and confused and frustrated, that bit of Bucky wants to live.

That’s what Sebastian brought to the character. He brought the humanity in the machine. The victim trapped in metal and leather who doesn’t WANT to be there. Who’s NOT a stone cold assassin. Who was kind and gentle and protective, not a death weapon. The part who has no idea why this was done to him and didn’t deserve any of it and is so confused as to why people are HURTING him.

The Winter Soldier is terrifying because Sebastian let you see the humanity in him. The part of him that we know would never be choosing to do what HYDRA made him do. They broke him and twisted him and he had no choice in the matter. Nothing that was done to him was deserved. Bucky’s tragic because he was the innocent victim who wasn’t just abused and had terrible things happen to him, but who was literally turned into his worst nightmare and who couldn’t do anything about it.

Tell me again that Bucky was the villain.

Here is the thing for me though – you can’t discount what the war did to him.  You have to go back further.  You have to go back to the kid in Brooklyn who made a choice to defend those unable to defend themselves. That kid went to war (setting aside the argument of drafted versus enlisted). He went to war well enough with his skills that he was a sergeant before he entered an active European campaign. He did well enough in Europe that he became a squad leader which means he was still that kid from Brooklyn who takes care of others and does what needs to be done.  

The US Army and the War and the Life Before twisted James Buchanan Barnes into a shape that was ripe for cracking open by HYDRA. The potential was there all along.

The Winter Soldier was always in Bucky and Bucky was always inside the Winter Soldier.

I know it’s not Monday yet, but maybe you could file this away for then? I was wondering if you knew what medals and honours Steve recieved back in WW2?

historicallyaccuratesteve:

From the archives: a list of the awards Steve wears on his uniform. Also, there’s a bit of controversy about why he’s wearing the American Defense Service Medal.

Sometimes you also wear medals or honors that belong to your unit. If he’s in the modern era wearing his uniform one of two things is happening – he’s on detached duty from his unit and still considered on active duty and part of that unit and would wear unit patches and awards that he’s required to wear as part of the unit.  [See special forces folks in particular for this.]  The other option is that he was retired out after his MIA status was resolved. In that case it’s not uncommon for vets to keep wearing the insignia and awards from the unit they were with during combat/felt most attached to. In the latter case it would be uncommon for him to wear an award he hadn’t earned. He might be asked to tho.

If you are talking about in WWII if it was a unit citation he would be expected to wear it when he’s in his dress uniform. 

So in the comics Bucky was an advance scout and did all the dirty stuff Captain America couldn’t or wouldn’t be seen doing, including sometimes wetwork operations, partly because everyone always underestimated Captain America’s sidekick. How do you think it translated to the MCU?

boopboopbi:

ink-phoenix:

I think it’s most evident in CA: TFA when we get the 2 minutes of Howling Commandos montage (and can I reiterate what a travesty it is that we’re not getting 3 hours of the HC on various missions, seriously, I couldn’t give a fuck, just, give it to me, marvel, make my HC mini series, good GOD).

Now bear with me here: I work in film, and I used to be an editor. There is nothing that makes it into a final cut of anything that is left to chance. Everything you show/not show is a constant uphill battle —with the director, with the producers, with the studio execs, with the stupid MPAA— in Avengers, they had to take out Loki’s spear going through Phil’s chest (it cuts away to his face) to keep the PG13 rating. So. Everything in that montage is there for a reason and the ~violence we see is very stylized. Yeah, they go in guns-a-blazing but you don’t actually see who they’re shooting at. Steve knocks people over with his shield, but you don’t see their skulls crack, you don’t see the whites of their eyes as they fall; they blow people up, but you don’t actually see body parts flying, blood and carnage strewn across the snow.

The only thing you actually do see? It’s when Bucky takes out the Hydra agent. You see it through Bucky’s POV — which is the only time we have a personal POV in the montage, as he looks through his rifle’s crosshair. He shoots the Hydra agent aiming for Steve, and we see the shot connect and the guy die. There’s no cutting away, there’s no ~~shoot to injure which is so typical in PG 13 movies. No. Bucky shoots that fucker in the head and he kills him specifically because he was aiming for Steve. 

That isn’t random. That is the only time we see any of the commandos actually hit a target and kill them dead. And it’s Bucky who does it. 

It’s not much, but it’s a clear choice and it’s there to tell us this is not the first time he does it, it won’t be the last time he does it, and we’re showing this to you because it’s Bucky, and that’s what he does. 

Bucky’s in the Howling Commandos because he’s following Steve. Bucky chooses to do the things he does —all of it, the bad and the worse— because he’s following Steve, not Captain America. There’s an unstable edge, there, I believe, the edge of ‘I’m doing this so you don’t have to’ because Bucky never wanted Steve in this war in the first place; he always wanted to spare Steve the horrors of war, and now that Steve’s here, the least Bucky can do is to take on the darkest side of it. He doesn’t see himself worth preserving. He’s lost his innocence a long time ago, but he’s going to fight for Steve to hold on to his as long as he lives.

This is exactly why it upsets me when Bucky and the Winter Soldier are presented as two completely separate entities when the only thing that actually separates the two (aside from a few decades of torture I mean) is the empathy Bucky shows and the motivations behind his actions.

Bucky killing for Steve and TWS killing for HYDRA are essentially the same thing but for the fact that Bucky’s motivations are powered by love and anger and a million and one other emotions, while TWS is powered by entirely the opposite.

TWS is powered by other people’s emotions.  There are definitely emotions involved, he’s just the wind-up toy weapon.

Alternate Winter Soldier & Falcon Costume Designs For CAPTAIN AMERICA 2

shawarma-after:

Conceptual illustrator, Josh Nizzi (“Iron Man 3”), has update his website with some fantastic designs for Marvel’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Hit the jump to see concept art of Falcon/Sam Wilson and the Winter Soldier/Bucky Barnes.

This is pretty damn fantastic. Click the link to check out some early concept art for Falcon and the Winter Soldier in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.”

Alternate Winter Soldier & Falcon Costume Designs For CAPTAIN AMERICA 2

comicartcorrections:

bushtitfeminist:

jadelyn:

enterprisingly:

This is the same man.

This works quite nicely at debunking the “beefcake guys in comics are objectified for women just like women in comics are for men!”, imo.  On the left: a magazine tailored for a male audience, showing him in full beefcake-type mode with headlines about how you, too, can look like this.  On the right: a magazine tailored for a female audience, which has a headline about romance and shows him looking more or less like a normal dude.

Tell me again how comic book guys are designed for female sexual enjoyment, completely equivalent to anatomically-improbable spines and giant tits with their own individual centers of gravity, and totes aren’t just male power fantasies.

COMMENTARY

This is very important. Look at the difference there – LOOK. Every time some comic-reading shitlord comes to me when I complain about how women are treated in comic art, I want them to LOOK AT THIS and then come back to me and say that shit with a straight face. Cause I’m telling you – Ripped McBullBody isn’t for us. It never, ever was.