THEN LETS FUCKING TALK FOR EIGHT YEARS ABOUT THIS ONE GIF
Not about Sam, but about Steve.
LOOK HOW RELAXED HE IS IN SAM’S HOUSE. He’s just chilling there, with Sam’s OJ, that Sam definitely drinks straight from the bottle btw) He’s leaned so far back into his chair that he has to actively sit up.
This is a man who just got chased around and nearly murdered by Nazis on several occasions, but he feels so safe and secure in Sam’s house that he can melt into his chair and sip orange juice. Yes, he’s probably bone dead tired and still thinking about the fact that what little he knew about everything is a fucking lie, but here’s Steve in a similar situation:
Bone tired, Loki has been fuckin shit up and the nice guy who made his really tight suit is ostensibly dead. But he’s sitting forward, alert and thinking.
Overall I think Steve is a pretty tense and closed off person. He’s always got this ridiculously rigid posture and doesn’t seem to let himself go around anyone, including his team. Actually I think it’s gotten more tense as time wears on.
In CA:TFA, he’s pretty relaxed, even with the new body.
In The Avengers, unless actively fighting, he stands like his suit is lined with solid steel and not Kevlar.
In TWS, it’s even stronger. He stands like a hardened marine who’s seen too much.
and also he has that JFC face that puts even my shadiest and saltiest of friends to shame:
And of course, there’s the RAEG OF STEVE, which really only apparently happens out of costume. (Interesting? Interesting.)
But around Sam, he’s super chill. He drops his shoulders and visually looks less like Captain spandex and more like a dude who wants to get to know Sam, possibly even in the biblical sense.
Shoulders dropped, open posture, smizing.
Then you see him more vulnerable than he’s been in this entire series. Even skinny! Steve walked with more aggression than the dude who shows up on Sam’s doorstep:
he maintains that vulnerability when in Sam’s presence through the entire movie, even when he’s pissed.
When he puts the suit on however, he squares right the fuck up
ANyhow i forgot what i was doing but IN CONCLUSION
Steve is super relaxed around Sam and has probably definitely been to his house before the world went to shit.
Star-struck Interviewer: “You must miss the good old days.”
Steve Rogers: “I grew up in a tenement slum. Rats, lice, bedbugs, one shared bathroom per floor with a bucket of water to flush, cast iron coal-burning stove for cooking and heat. Oh, and coal deliveries – and milk deliveries, if you could get it – were by horse-drawn cart. One summer I saw a workhorse collapse in the heat, and the driver started beating it with a stick to make it get up. We threw bricks at the guy until he ran away. Me and Bucky and our friends used to steal potatoes or apples from the shops. We’d stick them in tin cans with some hot ashes, tie the cans to some twine, and then swing ‘em around as long as we could to get the ashes really hot. Then we’d eat the potato. And there were the block fights. You don’t know what a block fight was? That’s when the Irish or German kids who lived on one block and the Jewish or Russian kids who lived on the next block would all get together into one big mob of ethnic violence and beat the crap out of each other. One time I tore a post out of a fence and used it on a Dutch kid who’d called Bucky a Mick. Smacked him in the head with the nails.”
DAMN THOUGH can we have a moment of appreciation for how different Bucky’s fighting style is compared to WS??
Credit for this absolutely goes to Sebastian Stan’s character work. In Civil War when Bucky is in a fight/in danger he’s literally so expressive, compared to the Dead Eyed Murder Glare™ we’re accustomed to from the Winter Soldier.
Like REALLY:
And it’s such a neat thing because Civil War Bucky is still super competent, he’s got the WS’s skills, but he’s also FREAKING THE HELL OUT HE DIDN’T ASK FOR ANY OF THIS
HE JUST WANTED TO BUY SOME PLUMS FFS
these wide-eyed OH FUCK facial expressions are like half the reason why the GET REKT jokes are so freaking funny, because it’s so different from how the Winter Soldier would’ve acted [[*analyzes a meme*]]
But this is IMPORTANT because one of the things I was so relieved about from this movie was that it emphasized the separation between the Winter Soldier persona and Bucky’s ACTUAL PERSONALITY when he’s not being mind-controlled and forced to kill people.
Yeah, I have my gripes/nitpicks about the movie, lots of us do – but on this particular point I’m SO pleased with the respect that was shown for Bucky’s character. Most of the fans take it for granted that ~Bucky Barnes Is Not A Villian 2k14~, but he could have been written off that way!!! Even just by making less of a distinction between the Bucky that was controlled by Hydra and one who has his own internal life & personality.
I think we should appreciate the fact that the characterization we got could not have happened without collaboration from the creatives in charge: clear direction from the Russos, the writers using a strong narrative device like Bucky being programmed by trigger words, and of course Sebastian Stan acting his face off and totally changing his body language depending on which version he was portraying.
Sebastian Stan proved his acting mettle when he stole CA: Winter Soldier with only a handful of spoken lines and only his eyes visible for like half the damn movie. In CA: CW, though, he takes it to a whole new level. The whole time, he’s viscerally aware of what Bucky’s state of mind would be. He showed us, with his face and eyes and body, whether he was Bucky or the Winter Soldier.
i’ve been rewatching the early marvel films and steve uses a gun liberally in the early days. in tfa in the warehouse fight he punches schmidt, schmidt punches back and dents his shield, and then he reaches for his pistol. he realizes he’s outmatched and would absolutely have shot that fucker given a moment to keep his grip on it, possibly in the face. in avengers (2012) he also uses a semi-automatic weapon on the SHIELD ship. it’s interesting to think of the change and why he began moving away from guns. i imagine that by tws he’d spent enough times having an existential crisis about his role in the public eye that he was very conscientious of how he appeared
or maybe he was just trying very consciously to be a better man than he was a good soldier. either way, there was an obvious change as a result of some kind of internal struggle.
Emily Vancamp as Sharon Carter in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier”
Here’s an example of what we call a “soft no”. Sharon turns down Steve’s offer in a way that’s meant not to insult him but never actually uses the word “no”.
Steve clearly gets the message, though, and importantly offers to leave her alone. Sharon’s comment afterwards gives him an opportunity to try again later, but he doesn’t press and respects her rejection of his company even though it’s probably hurt his feelings a bit.
Just in case you ever wonder “What would Captain America do?”; there you go.
never do something steve rogers wouldn’t do.
Unless it’s jumping out of a plane without a parachute, you probably shouldn’t do that
I just have to add – I’ve seen interviews with Marvel people where they say that this scene demonstrates that Cap’s awkward with women and doesn’t know how to ask women out on a date. And it drives me crazy, because – as the OP says – Steve behaved perfectly here. It was a very charming, nonthreatening offer, and he accepted her rejection with good grace. You can’t help but feel that to Hollywood, the fact that she said no means he asked badly – which is exactly how I’d expect Hollywood to think, namely, the idea that men should keep pressing and pushing women until they say yes
So the thing about that moment near the beginning of Cap 2 where Natasha pulls up in a fucking sweet Corvette–
–well, first of all, I love that Natasha likes driving ridiculous dick cars, because she is clearly having fun with it.
But anyway, I love that the running scene ends with Steve climbing into a totally overkill Corvette driven by a girl who is five foot three inches of pure don’t-underestimate-me badass, because that is Steve. That’s what Steve is. That’s why Steve repeatedly lapping Sam and lampshading it is hilarious instead of mean.
Steve Rogers is a scrappy, sickly little runt behind the wheel of the world’s most souped-up muscle car, and he’s having fun with it, but he’s always uncomfortably aware of the distinction between people complimenting him and people admiring his sweet ride.
I LOVE THE COMPARISON BETWEEN STEVE’S NEW BODY AND NAT’S CAR, THIS IS EVERYTHING I NEVER KNEW I WANTED IN CA:TWS ANALYSIS
the1timetraveller 