When it arrived in theaters ten years ago Captain America: The Winter Soldier Marvel Studios was already Marvel Studios. The Avengers, two years earlier, had done what you know to the cinema. It is customary to pass on, in a rather sensible way, that it was true Joss Whedon’s film to reveal the true scope of the project orchestrated by Kevin Feige. The phase one chapters were good (except for a couple of really bad ones), but nothing we hadn’t seen before. The crossover with all the heroes united against a common threat was something that before that moment was not thought to work so well in cinema. Teams, especially with six (!) characters capable of carrying a film on their own, tended to generate cheap stories. The mix between comic humor and a truly adrenaline-filled third act created that formula that has made many fall in love with it for years.
Forgive me who was in the theater to see these films, if I write obvious things, but time has passed. We need to brush up on some context. To be clear: children who were too young to be at the cinema alone are today struggling with maturity. Back to us: The Avengers it was the revelation, but it was The Winter Soldier to show how far Marvel Studios could go with their characters.
Unlike Whedon, the Russo brothers didn’t just make a superhero film, but also a spy thriller. There is a lot of The three days of the Condorincluding Robert Redford himself, but also a sequence taken directly from the comic Civil War, written by Mark Millar. The plot then betrayed what was Ed. Brubaker’s run that had brought Bucky Barnes back to life. Except then using painstaking care in adapting the winter soldier faithfully. In and out of fidelity, a continuous leap from a cinematic and comics perspective.
Starting from comics, to always change
It wasn’t very clear before. Iron Man 2 was supposed to adapt The Demon in the Bottle (famous story in which Tony Stark fights his alcoholism), but there was very little of what was seen in the comics. Much less for atmosphere. When Marvel Studios started put titles instead of numbers, for the second and third chapters, everything has changed. The sequel is no longer a simple continuation of a character’s story. Seen from the perspective of the title instead of the number it becomes above all a new way of understanding that superhero. A different perspective that can be in continuity with the previous management or radically different. Just like it happens in comics when it changes hands from author to author, when periods change. Among the first Captain America And The Winter SoldierSteve Rogers’ arc is consistent, but the films couldn’t be more different.
Declining the usual cinecomic structure into different genres, finding new narrative frames with which to analyze the characters. As long as Marvel Studios was faithful to this formula, even with some failures, there was none for anyone. The Winter Soldier demonstrated that it could vary greatly, while remaining consistent. The best position to avoid getting bored.
The greatness of The Winter Soldier can be understood from Arnim Zola
There’s very little that’s wrong with it Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Perhaps the third act is less innovative than the first two, but it is still quite engaging. It is a film in which even the smallest details provided emotions in the long run. Steve’s list of things to catch up on, the brilliant way of showing the difference in strength with the line “to your left”, SHIELD collapsing, Fury in trouble for the first time (after a big chase) and the consequences of the his fake death.
A rigorous prologue does a good job of resetting expectations about the action. No longer an epic blockbuster with gods and aliens, but a more realistic and tangible battle (within limits).. Already in 2014 it was difficult to admit that Marvel, when it wants, does great action. Sam Hargrave (now director of Tyler Rake) as Steve Rogers during the crazy stunt of the first fistfight against The Winter Soldier. The blows are tangiblecarry consequences, there’s a narrative weight to each truly delightful shot.
But the diversity of the film is understood when it manages to adapt what was unfilmable: Arnim Zola. Today when MODOK comes to the cinema, you want MODOK like in the comics. And it’s not the best… Arnim Zola is just like the flying head seen in Ant-Man: very ugly and ridiculous. A robot with a face at its chest. Markus and McFeely’s idea of transporting his consciousness into a World War II supercomputer is simple, effective, disturbing. Not a literal translation, but the right one. Adapt, for real, with respect for both the source and the rules of cinema.
The Winter Soldier is not a revolutionary film…
… and for this reason it always remains a bit overwhelmed when it comes to thinking of it as a stage in such a development. The next one Guardians of the Galaxy it appears to be a much clearer step forward, both for the completely different setting and for the fact of being a first chapter.
However The Winter Soldier does something different: perfect. It brought to the peak what were the technical possibilities of ten years ago for Marvel Studios, and it expanded the studio’s thinking about what it could do with its stories. Today, without having any multiverse, it is one of the most innervated films in the MCU. Both creatively and narratively the film was at the center of the plot branches that followed.
Today we know how much that film was a fundamental event. No one promoted it as such. Indeed, it arrived in the theater without excessive hype and without knowing exactly what to expect. This, however, is a revolutionary thing.
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