what is the fucking point of flipping it you pulled it out of the sheath by the handle there’s no goddamn need for that
why even bother having a special spot easiy to reach in your black leather suit for knives if you’re just going to play with them when you take them out
but on the other hand
hnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng
(He’s switching grips, largely because someone like Steve ain’t gonna give you an easy target for a straight thrust, especially if he’s got his shield, which makes for a lot of over and underhand stuff. But god yess hnnnnnnnnng.)
Also he LOOKS like he’s pulling it out normally, then flips it around—if you don’t have the advantage of a specific close-up you’d easily miss the little flip and think his blade was pointing toward his thumb. Then when he pulls his arm back across his body you think he’s pointing the knife over to his left, when in reality it is pointing straight at you and he’s about to slam it in your face. The arm movement to pull it out of the sheath that other way is super awkward and telegraphs the fact that your blade’s going to be reversed from the very beginning. But the Winter Soldier is a tricksy bastard. And IIRC, it works—Steve isn’t aware until his arm comes down to strike that he’s about to get hit. Otherwise he’d find a better way to block it.
</fencer>
Now with additional commentary from a fencer. My “hnnnnnnnng” is only exponentially increased.
Tl;dr knife flips are a useful, brutal, excellent tool. When the Winter Soldier is coming after you with a knife you’d better have superhuman reflexes, because he is going to attack you from every possible avenue. If I only hold my blade like a screwdriver, there are a limited number of physical movements I can make, and they are relatively predictable. If I hold it like an icepick, the repetoire changes but is likewise limited. If I can flip it around with absolutely no notice, I’ve effectively doubled how difficult I am to defend against.
Reblogging for commentary, and also because I could watch that gif all day.
All of this, and also, even if he WAS just playing with it, fucking around with a weapon is one of the ways that you get really good with it. With knives specifically, for a guy like Bucky — in both his lives — you’d pretty much have one on you at all times, and a lot of the military life (and probably the assassin life too) involves sitting around being bored as shit waiting for the death and terror to start. You end up playing with your weapons, because they’re there, and that’s one of the primary ways you really learn that weapon inside and out. You might play around, switching your grip, flipping it over and over, learning to catch it by the handle, by the point, learning to throw it, learning the exact weight and the center of its balance and all the other things that make handling it so effortless… it’s all just repetition and asking yourself “I wonder if I can….” and doing it until yes, indeed, you can stab some guy in the face before he can even see you coming.
With its superb fight scenes and stand out performances by a
talented cast, this movie is a fan favourite and cornerstone of the Marvel
Cinematic Universe.
I don’t think you’re going to like what I have to say about
it.
So I’m going to start with the little disclaimer I have for
this series as a quick reminder.
Once again I’m rating
the depiction and use of torture, not the movie itself. I’m trying to
take into account realism (regardless of fantasy or sci fi elements), presence
of any apologist arguments, stereotypes and the narrative treatment of victims
and torturers.
The relevant plot details are, well, most of the film. I’ll
try to be as brief as I can.
Steve Roger’s (aka Captain America) boss at SHIELD (Nick
Fury) is assassinated by a mysterious man known as ‘The Winter Soldier’. Before
dying Nick tells Steve that SHIELD itself has been compromised and gives him a
usb.
On refusing to hand over the usb Steve is attacked by a
large group of his former colleges in a lift.
He escapes and teams up with Natasha Romanov aka the Black
Widow. Together they discover that SHIELD has been infiltrated by Hydra, a Nazi
organisation who are particularly interested in SHIELD’s latest weapons project
which they could use to kill millions.
The Winter Soldier, a character who is heavily coded as
mentally ill, is ordered to assassinate them by Hydra.
Steve and Natasha track down a SHIELD/Hydra agent and
threaten him with death or grievous bodily harm unless he gives them
information. They get the information they want.
They clash with the Winter Soldier and during the scuffle he
is unmasked and revealed as Steve’s long lost wartime friend Bucky Barnes.
Steve, Natasha and their friend Sam are all captured by Hydra.
The audience is told that Bucky, apparently now a super-soldier,
was captured by Hydra, tortured and brainwashed. He has been their best
assassin for decades. A scene of his memory being ‘wiped’ follows with props
that are heavily reminiscent of ECT machines.
Steve, Natasha and Sam stage an assault on SHIELD HQ in an
effort to stop the launch of the new weapons. In the process Steve takes over
the comm system and announces Hydra’s plan to the entire base.
Two sympathetic characters are shown resisting Hydra demands
when threatened with death. One of them dies for his trouble.
Steve and Bucky fight until the last weapon is disarmed.
With the threat of civilian casualties gone Steve refuses to fight Bucky and
tries instead to appeal to his humanity, asking him to remember their
friendship. Bucky beats him unconscious but stops short of killing him.
I’m giving it 0/10
The Good
And well that really is the problem: with regards to torture
I cannot think of more than one good thing about this film. Usually I’d throw
the movie at least one point for a single good scene, but in this case I think
the scene is part of a larger entirely negative trend in the narrative.
1)
The scene I’m thinking of is the attack on Steve in the
lift. About eight or nine people, all armed in various ways, attack Steve at
once. His arms are pinned by several people each while he’s repeatedly shocked
with a device a bit like a cattle prod. This basic set up is extremely true to
life for many cases of police brutality, although a Taser would have been a
more likely weapon.
The Bad
Where to begin?
1) Every major
‘good’ character in this movie engages in torture.
Our heroes Steve, Sam and Natasha
torture a Hydra agent for information by threatening to kill him, then throwing
him off a building (Sam catches him before he falls to his death).
This is not just portrayed as good and reasonable but it is played
for laughs. The scene is used to extend a joke about Steve’s dating life.
3)
The ‘bad guy’ they torture does not resist once they
have tortured him. This is extremely unlikely. The data we have at the moment
suggests that torture makes people far
more likely to resist.
4)
This stands in contrast to the way ‘good’ characters act when threatened
with death or torture. The film consistently shows ‘good’ people resisting torture and ‘bad’ (or in
Bucky’s case mentally ill) people complying
under torture. This is not only wrong; it’s frankly sickening and perpetuates
extremely harmful stereotypes about victims and torture.
5)
Brainwashing does not work and is a central, important
plot device in the film. The story simply does not work unless violence,
torture and pain can ‘force’ a victim to change sides.
6)
Torture cannot change hearts and minds. It cannot force
someone to support or work for a cause they are strongly against.
7)
Memory really
does not work in the way the film suggests. Anything that could remove old,
strongly held memories, such as those of childhood or the victim’s name, would also have removed their memory of how to
drive a car, fight hand to hand, use a gun or virtually anything else Bucky
does in the film.
8)
Even accounting for the sci-fi idea of removing specific memories, torture and pain
would not force a victim to comply with their captors. In fact it makes
resistance more likely. A Bucky Barnes
without the memory of his friends or the war would still almost certainly
resist Hydra simply because they caused him pain.
9)
There has never been a recorded case of ECT machines
being used to torture. They have been
used as a form of abuse in some hospitals but they have never been used by
military or terrorist organisations such as Hydra. This is another inaccurate
stereotype: the idea that torture is ‘scientific’ or ‘high-tech’.
10) The
film assumes that a victim of systematic abuse over decades would be physically and mentally capable of complex
assassinations. Instead the sort of damage to both physical and mental health
this would inflict means that Bucky and Natasha should both be noticeably less capable than
their colleagues. Instead they are more capable than their colleagues,
implying that abuse made them ‘better’ at committing wanton acts of violence.
11) Both
this film and other Marvel films state that Natasha has both suffered and
committed abuse, yet she shows no severe symptoms. This seems to be narratively
linked to the idea that she is ‘strong’. And I detest the notion that a basic,
bodily reaction to trauma makes victims weak.
Overview
I think the word for this movie’s use of torture is ‘dire’.
It’s not just consistently wrong.
It’s not just based around an impossible, trope laden
premise.
It’s not just running through a check list of every harmful
stereotype that regularly turns up in fiction.
The movie supports the notion that the torture of ‘bad
people’ does not ‘count’.
It shows ‘heroes’, particularly individuals that the
audience is supposed to think are morally above reproach, engaging in torture
and the plot supports and justifies
their doing so. It tells us that really ‘good’, ‘pure’ characters, such as the
titular hero, threaten ‘bad guys’ with torture and then stand back to watch
their friends do the torturing.
It shows victims (ie Bucky) as dangerous and violent and without other symptoms. It shows
torturers like Natasha as without
symptoms. It shows torture as a successful interrogation tactic and shows
torture fundamentally changing hearts and
minds.
Even accounting for sci-fi elements, the movie’s attitude to
and treatment of torture is consistently false, dangerous and fundamentally against the basic principles of human
rights.
Human rights are not for ‘good people’. They are for everyone.
Whatever their race, gender, creed, politics, or crime. Torture is never justified.
And for that reason this movie’s treatment of torture is
quite possibly the worst I’ve ever seen. It is a shining example of how much
torture apologia pervades popular culture.
Question re: Bucky (setting the “that’s not how memory works” aside) – I think the central premise was less that he was tortured into complying and switching sides, and more that there was some complex psychological mechanism that included him no longer being able to tell sides apart (possibly as a result of memory loss), some extreme form of Stockholm syndrome, PTSD and anything that is leftover from the army.
This is a harsh thing to read when I still want to pretend CAWS is the only MCU movie I enjoy without reservations… (ʘᗩʘ)
i don’t hold catws quite in the same regard so this was an interesting read.
has gotten a lot of flack, and I don’t disagree that it could and should have been handled a lot better, but even as it is, I really really like what it says, or rather, confirms about
Bucky.
So this response to the post I did on the physical issues that Bucky Barnes probably has as a result from his time with HYDRA (strictly from a massage therapist’s POV) got me wondering: how much WOULD the metal arm weigh?
But that’s comic books. What about in the movie perspective? Well, let’s look at it.
In CA: TWS, the arm is shown to deflect bullets from a handgun fired at close range with no apparent damage and when Bucky punches Steve’s shield neither is damaged. From this I think it’s safe to say that at least the outer surface of Bucky’s arm is made of vibranium.
From that we can also extrapolate that the outer vibranium plates, which were shown shifting around a lot in TWS, must be about the same thickness as Steve’s shield.
There aren’t any measurements or calculators for the weight of imaginary vibranium, but in CA: TFA, Howard Stark mentions that vibranium is one-third the weight of steel. That means that, if the shield were made out of carbon steel, it’d be 36lbs (12 x 3 = 36).
A circle of steel that’s 30" across and 36lbs would be about .18" in thickness.
Thus, Steve’s shield is .18" in thickness.
And so are the outer vibranium plates of Bucky’s arm.
That steel weight calculator doesn’t have a cylindrical option, but this one does.
Circumference of a human arm is a little difficult to figure–obviously personal fitness causes the size of one’s arm muscles to vary quite a bit. Various sites that I’ve looked at indicate that a highly-fit man could expect his biceps to be 17" in circumference at their widest and his forearms to be about 13" at their widest. (For reference, I’m a not-fit woman and my biceps are 13.5" and my forearms are 11".) Obviously that’s at their widest points, so I’m going to knock 2" off both of these measurements to make it more equal across the length of the limb.
Varioussites helped me figure out that for a 5’11" man, a normal forearm length would be about 10" and upper-arm length would be about 15". (My forearm is 9" and my upper arm is 12".)
Thus: assuming that Bucky’s forearm is 11" around (which is a conservative estimate) and 10" long, the metal plating covering that area, at a .18" thickness, would weigh in steel about 9lbs. Divide by 3 and in vibranium that’d be 3lbs.
Assuming that Bucky’s upper arm is 15" around (again, conservative) and 15" long, the metal plating covering that area, at a .18" thickness, would weigh in steel about 18lbs. Divide by 3 and in vibranium that’d be 6 lbs.
6 + 3 = 9lbs. The outer vibranium plating on Bucky’s forearm and upper arm weighs about 9lbs. (Based on conservative estimates of arm circumference.)
That’s just the outer plating on his forearm and upper arm. That doesn’t count his hand.
Looking at body segment percentage weights, we see that in terms of typical body percentages, a hand usually weighs .65% of the total body weight compared to 1.87% for the forearm. Thus, the hand usually weighs about 1/3rd of the forearm.
Assuming that holds true for the metal hand, then the vibranium plating on the hand would be about 1lb.
6 + 3 + 1 = 10lbs. The outer vibranium plating on Bucky’s whole arm weighs 10lbs.
If we bump Bucky’s height up to 5’11" (actor Sebastian Stan’s height), the ideal body weight for a 5’11" man with a large build tops out at 184lbs. Looking at the body percentage index again, we see that typically, a whole human arm is about 5.7% of a person’s bodyweight. So for a 5’11" guy with a large build at 184lbs, that’s about 10.5lbs.
The outer plating on Bucky’s whole arm already weighs about as much as his regular flesh-and-bone arm, assuming that a) it’s made of vibranium, a very light metal, b) the plating is the narrowest possible width that can deflect bullets, and c) the circumference of the arm isn’t very big. All of which would make the plating a lot heavier than what I’ve calculated.
the thing about “angry chihuahua” pre-serum steve is that on a vacuum, I get why people like it? like it’s cute, smol steve being angry and sassy, it’s funny, not everything in fandom has to be 100% serious and angst-driven etc etc, i understand that
but at the same time… it bothers me so much because it’s just. so. condescending. like… “awww look at this poor disabled man thinking he can stand up to people, haha, so adorable, thank god he has bucky around to keep him alive!111!”.
(i don’t want to get too much into how this devalues the stucky dynamic bc i don’t even go here, but bucky! respected! pre-serum steve! immensely!! he didn’t see him as a reckless idiot who needed him to survive! it’s like people take the “the little guy from brooklyn who was too dumb not to run away from a fight” quote and only remember this part and forget the rest, the most important part, “I’M FOLLOWING HIM”! bucky knows pre-serum steve was way more of a hero than some dude dressed as the american flag shooting a fake gun at movies!!! that’s the POINT!!)
it’s just so… dismissive of steve’s bravery and cleverness. people take ONE scene in the first avenger where steve gets into a fight he’s clearly not going to win, ignoring that a) the framing of the moment when the guy stands up and steve’s face makes very clear that he KNOWS he’s in trouble, he has no delusions about ACTUALLY being able to win the fight; b) the dude is being an asshole and disrespecting others in the theater and steve! gets! him! to stop!!!! The guy LEAVES to beat him up in the alley, thus accomplishing the main point of Steve’s intervention, aka to let the grieving lady watch the tribute to the troops in peace.
and that’s like… THE ONLY TIME IN THE MOVIE where pre-serum steve does something like this. right on the first enlistment scene, some dude is clearly trying to tease him with the “makes you think twice about enlisting, huh?” talk, and steve just goes “nope” and IGNORES THE GUY AND DOESN’T TAKE THE BAIT. because it doesn’t matter! it’s just some dumbass who isn’t threatening anyone! steve doesn’t need to get into a fight because someone is underestimating him – if he did, he’d fight with everyone all the time, because guess what, as a disabled man in the 40s, steve is barely considered an actual man. there’s a LEGITIMATE scientific view in this time period that argues that people like him should be murdered at birth. he KNOWS how he’s perceived. he’s aware. when he’s talking to the doctor, he’s not brattish – he asks give me a chance and is there anything you can do?. his tone in the latter line specifically is TIRED, not defiant.
and then!! the One Scene apparently everyone who thinks pre-serum steve was a moron with a macho complex didn’t watch: the training montage! where that hodge guy deliberately fucks with the barbed wire just to get in steve’s way and STEVE! DOESN’T! REACT!!!!!!!! he just grits his teeth and tries to keep going and the officer has to be like “rogers take this rifle out of the mud”. there’s no indication that steve EVER tried to fight this guy in the movie, despite the fact that he’s constantly shown laughing/bullying steve during the training. why? because it’d be a pointless fight to pick. it’d be a fight picked out of nothing but pride and steve can’t afford to do that. he stands up for what’s right, not for everything and anything that pisses him off.
it frustrates me that people don’t seem to get this because it’s like… the very core of steve’s character. he’s not a wannabe bully. he’s kind and polite to others (meeting peggy, talking to dr. eskrine. eskrine isn’t just impressed by the “i don’t like bullies” moment, he’s clearly also very pleased by the fact steve doesn’t show prejudice against him for being german). the only moment where he adopts a “fight me” posture that gets him in actual trouble, it’s to protect and help others who can’t stand up for themselves. i get that in theory the idea of smol bean steve fighting everything and everyone might sound fun, but in reality, a person who craves violence and sees it as a prime way to achieve their goals is the opposite of who steve rogers is meant to be.
(and that’s not even getting into when people write POST-serum steve with this “fight me” attitude which is like… how… do you think… that’d be ok… how do you not see a difference between a ninety-pound disabled man and a literal supersoldier trying to intimidate people physically… which part of “a weak man knows the value of strength, and knows compassion” you didn’t understand…)
so imo, this characterization weakens not only steve’s character, but his arc, and even the story of tfa as a whole? the serum works on steve because he’s already a noble, brave, good man. if he was an asshole who bites off people’s hand for looking at him wrong, none of this would make sense. by this logic, eskrine might have as well picked hodge.
i get that in theory the idea of smol bean steve fighting everything and everyone might sound fun, but in reality, a person who craves violence and sees it as a prime way to achieve their goals is the opposite of who steve rogers is meant to be
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