Tag: winter soldier

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.

Life, After (losing an arm)

An accident in February cost the TV reporter Miles O’Brien his left arm. He soon discovered that every movement, no matter how small, requires rethinking.

Amazing article from NY Magazine about life after.

A quote: But here are two things you need to know about life after an arm amputation: First, your center of gravity changes dramatically when you are suddenly eight pounds lighter on one side of your body. Second, while my arm may be missing physically, it is there, just as it always has been, in my mind’s eye. I can feel every digit. I can even feel the watch that was always strapped to my left wrist. When I tripped, I reached reflexively to break my very real fall with my completely imaginary left hand. My fall was instead broken by my nose, and my nose was broken by my fall.

Lying on that sidewalk, moaning in pain, I reached the end of Denial River and flowed into the Sea of Doubt. It finally dawned on me in that instant that I was, indeed, handicapped. That may not be the term of choice these days – “differently abled” or “physically challenged” may be de rigueur – but as I touched my bloody face, feeling embedded chips of concrete in the wounds, “handicapped” sure seemed to fit.

The woman I was passing on the sidewalk when I fell took one look at me and cried out in panic to her husband: “My God, what’s happened to his arm?” “It’s gone,” I said. “But don’t worry, that didn’t happen today.”

Life, After (losing an arm)

vylla-art:

He was the one who would always have her back, not because he thought she needed any help, but simply because it made her happy.
–
She was the one who always found him in his darkest moments and understood. She didn’t try to rationalize it, didn’t try to belittle it, she just accepted all the worst… and stood next to him anyway.
–
In the end, they’d always find their way back.

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

bisexvality:

such acts rip out the soul and make space for beasts to grow inside. armies need beasts, don’t they? pet beasts, to do their terrible work! and the worst part is, it’s almost impossible to retrieve a soul that has been ripped away. almost.

sebastian-bucky:

From Captain America #11 – Ed Brubaker

A comprehensive mental evaluation of Codename: Winter Soldier was conducted over the course of the past week. Diagnoses are varied, but most in Dept. X Science Team believe that his mental state is becoming unstable. In the three years since he was awakened from stasis, it appears his mind is seeking to fill in the holes of his memory, or possible rebelling against the implanted programming he received originally. The subject has recently begun to exhibit more than usual curiosity, even to the point of questioning orders from superiors, and once in the past month, he attacked a fellow operative, nearly killing him. On interrogation he could not explain his actions.

One theory is that just as he has reflex-memories which allow him to be such an effective operative, he may also have a deeply buried sense of who he was, or at least of what kind of person he was. As such, this deeply buried idea may be causing him mental stress and triggering turmoil in his thoughts. Another theory, which is more disturbing, is that he may actually be remembering his previous life, though in small pieces only. It is therefore our recommendation that Codename: Winter Soldier be kept in stasis between missions, and then he undergo Mental Implantation at every awakening. We believe this will correct his instability issues, so he can continue to be of use to Department X.