roseanne’s 1k celebration ♡ @generalokoiye requested: the winter soldier
most of the intelligence community doesn’t believe he exists. the ones that do call him the winter soldier. he’s credited for over two dozen assassinations in the last 50 years.
Thank the Russo brothers for a) shooting outside in a real setting with practical effects not CGI, for going with a shaky cam that actually added to the sense of immediacy and wasn’t annoying as fuck.
Let me tell u what makes this scene so great. It’s the fact that Steve has a match, an equal. He mows down the goons on the Lemurian Star, escapes SHIELD HQ by fighting 15 people in closed quaters, jumps off a buliding and blows up a plane, then within hours he meets up with Natasha and survives a missle strike. He has no match, no equal in this world. That’s what happens when Batroc challenges him – this scene shows us that men think they can go toe to toe with Steve but they simply can’t.
And then this scene is a rare beast. It’s an action scene that is actually a character building scene. We saw the WS blow up Fury’s car and shoot him, but that could have been any common soldier. Sam could have deployed the mine. Natasha could have taken the shot a Fury. None of them could survive in no holding back fight with Steve.
Within seconds, Bucky has Steve off of him (usually if Steve is close enough to hit you, it’s game over for you), then disarms him and uses his weapon against him. Bucky dictates the speed and the path of the fight, and while Steve tries to attack, most of the time he is dodging. This tells us the audience, several things: a. Steve is in actual danger, b. Steve, judging by his face, is scared (remember what beatings he has taken up unitl now) and therefore c. for the first time in 3 movies, Steven Grant Rogers, Captain America, is not safe. The stakes are real. You are feeling the adrenaline Steve is feeling, even if you are not sure why. That’s what makes this scene a masterpiece.
As much as I agree this is the greatest fight of all time, part of me is still disappointed each time I see “goat fight” on my dash and it’s not accompanied by a gif of two goats having a tiff.
me every time i watch captain america: the winter soldier (2014) dir. anthony & joe russo: 🎥👀🎥👀🎥👀🎥👀🎥👀 good shot go౦ԁ sHot🎬 thats 🎬 a good🎥🎥shot right🎬📼 th 📷 ere🎥🎥 right 🎬 there 📼🎥 if i do ƽaү so my selｆ 📼 i say so 🎬 thats what im talking about right there right there (chorus: ʳᶦᵍʰᵗ ᵗʰᵉʳᵉ) mMMMMᎷМ🎬 📷📹📼НO0ОଠＯOOＯOОଠଠOoooᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒ 🎥🎥🎥 🎬 🎬 👀👀Good shot
“We don’t trade lives”– Captain Steven Grant Rogers
That’s the thing about him. After Civil War, a lot of people argued that Steve’s actions were selfish because he acted simply out of love for his best friend rather than doing what’s right and honestly now? When someone says something like this I wonder if they know Steven Grant Rogers at all because let me tell you, he would do the same for a complete stranger who was in a tough spot and needed his help. I mean, Vision even fought against him in Civil War, and look at him.
I would actually propose that Steve’s decisions are always based on what he believes is right—even if it means standing up against the very people he loves.
I keep seeing people argue that he’s blindingly selfish when it comes to Bucky; people also seem to conveniently forget that henearly died fighting against Bucky during Winter Soldier, because even his love for Bucky couldn’t stand in the way of saving millions of lives and keeping HYDRA from taking over the world.
What’s amazing and admirable about Steve is that he somehow manages to balance his beliefs about what is right with his unconditional loyalty to all of his friends. It’s especially apparent in Civil War:
He didn’t shy away from sharing or even completely owning up to the blame for what happened in Lagos, refusing to let Wanda carry that burden on herself.
After hearing about the UN bombing, his first instinct was to call Natashato ask if she’s okay, because he didn’t take it against her that she took Tony’s side. He respected her decision and just wanted to see if she was okay.
He took Bucky’s side this time instead of fighting him not because he was his best friend—although of course that’s part of the consideration—but because Bucky just revealed that there were five more Winter Soldiers just like him, and Steve’s initial understanding of what Zemo meant by toppling an empire was taking control of these Winter Soldiers to take down a country, and that is what he couldn’t allow to happen. He didn’t even stop to consider what country it was, because his loyalty wasn’t confined to just America; he just knew that he couldn’t let any country fall if he could help it.
He owned up responsibility to what happened to his friends when Secretary Ross incarcerated them, and took the risk of breaking them out, because he could never leave behind his friends, especially not Sam, who had been completely supportive of him despite voicing his own apprehensions; but also Scott, whom he was open to about the risks from the very beginning; Clint, whom he knew had a family to protect; and Wanda.
And most of all, he owned up to the blame on the pain he caused Tony, apologised to him while respecting Tony’s anger at him—even giving back his shield when Tony asked him to, despite his shield being such a integral part of who he is, the way Mjolnir was to Thor—and willingly gave Tony the space and time away that he needed; but also—and this is the most important part—promising Tony that no matter what happened between them, no matter what will happen between them, no matter what Tony feels towards him, he will always be there for Tony. He gave Tony that phone because he wanted to give Tony the choice to contact him, wanted to let Tony have that initiative, and he wouldn’t impose himself on Tony if Tony didn’t want him to. He respected Tony’s choice to cut him off, but—this should be stressed—he made it clear that he wasn’t cutting Tony off from his life.
And on a related matter, it should also be noted that the Steve Rogers of Civil War is also the Steve Rogers who had been betrayed by both SHIELD and HYDRA in Winter Soldier, who found out that the very organization he was working for was in fact using him covertly in their mission to take over the world.
This is why he said:
“[The Sokovia Accords] just shifts the blame. [Organizations] are run by people with agendas, and agendas change. If we sign this, we surrender our right to choose. What if this panel sends us somewhere we don’t think we should go? What if there’s somewhere we need to go and they won’t let us?”
It’s simply because he doesn’t want any of his friends to be betrayed by the government the way it happened to him; which is exactly what happened by the end of the movie anyway. The point I’m trying to make is not that he’s right—the politics here is tricky and there’s no one way to do it right—but simply that he didn’t make his point out of selfish reasons and he sure as hell didn’t do it just for Bucky; he did it because he wanted to protect his friends from the agendas of organizations who might end up using them like they did to him.
And most of all, he didn’t want to undermine the safety of anyone or any country just because of the ever-changing politics and agendas of people.
Fast forward to Infinity War, and people are criticizing his choice to save Vision instead of destroying the Mind Stone immediately (and killing Vision in the process). Barring the fact that I find it highly disturbing that people are even suggesting murdering a friend(yes, I consider Vision as someone with life—but that’s a whole other issue that I’m willing to discuss another time), I also want to point out that Vision can also be considered as Tony’s son, in a much truer way than even Peter Parker.
Bruce even said it directly: there is so much of himself and Tony in Vision, making them more like family—especially because there is so much of JARVIS and Ultron in Vision, both of whom are alsoTony’s creations. In choosing to protect Vision, Steve in essence did the best he could to protect not only a friend and comrade, not only the person Wanda loves, but also Tony’s son, when Tony couldn’t be there to protect Vision himself, regardless of whether or not Tony has already forgiven Steve.
Steve did his very best to do the right thing for Vision, for Wanda, for Tony, because he unconditionally loves them all, regardless of how they felt about him.
And that moment in the Avengers compound when Steve was watching Wanda’s face crumple when Vision himself was suggesting that he should sacrifice himself, that moment was incredibly poignant too; because seeing the empathy flicker across Steve’s face, he must have been reminded of his own missed chance of a love and life with Peggy, and he didn’t want Wanda to experience that—precisely because he knew what the heartbreak felt like.
“We don’t trade lives,” Steve declared. And to the very best of his ability, he would always, always mean all of them.
You can trace this all the way back to The First Avenger, too – when Colonel Phillips told him Bucky was most likely dead, Steve still went behind enemy lines BY HIMSELF to rescue the 107th
Because Phillips and the US Army may have been written off the 107th as a lost cause, but Steve would have never been able to live with himself if he didn’t at least try to save as many men as he could, even if Bucky was already gone.
The best example of the gulf between Nat and Steve that neither of them see is that Steve would absolutely not read Nat’s file that she shared with the world post-SHIELD, to prove that his friendship with her, and Nat would absolutely assume that Steve had read her file, to prove his friendship with her.
And both of them would assume that the other understood exactly the right choice and acted accordingly, and never even think to discuss it.
Because friendship.
I just really love the idea a lot that Steve and Nat have such wildly differing ideas of how to show the other person they trust them and that these differences are based entirely in the way their relationship turns in CATWS.
there’s something so fantastic to me in the idea that Steve, who spends half the movie distrusting Nat because she’s not telling him everything, deciding that he’s fine not knowing everything because she’s earned his trust, and that Nat, who has spent the whole movie showing him the best of herself, decides that she can trust that he can see the worst of her and like her anyway.
lemme talk about how much i love the Winter Soldier theme again.
first: i think its basically what Buckys head sounds like. screaming, metallic sounds. that bit in the beginning – ever been somewhere dead silent and get that loud hum in your ears? it sounds like that to me. its a great way to represent how completely alone and isolated he is. the radio-static with the distorted talking, maybe its memories being completely distorted to the point he cant tell what they’re saying.
BUT this is the gorgeous part of it:
so, its been theorized that the metallic sounding scream is actually Bucky screaming as he falls from the train, but slowed down and stretched out with heavy filtering.
lemme tell you why thats got to be true. first, how beyond perfect?? its taking something thats *Bucky*, something he did while he was still himself. a very human sound, full of fear and shit. its taking that -just like Bucky- and turning it into something inhuman and metallic.
also, that even though he’s been turned into a cold, calculating killing machine, the machine is still screaming.
when you get your first look at Bucky, when he pulls the goggles off, what do you hear? the scream. you see his face a bit on the rooftop scene, but good enough as to tell its Bucky. but there we get a closeup of his eyes, and its sort of like the last time we saw him and the first since then are being tied together.
and ok, holy shit, i tried listening to it on my headphones, closed my eyes to focus…and had to open them because its just such a fucking terrifying song i got freaked xD
but think about that. you’re not suppose to know its Bucky yet. you’re suppose to be afraid of this dude, and the music seriously adds to that. but, in reality, its not the Winter Soldier thats scary, its what was done to him. the thing thats freaking you out is his terrified screams
now, ok, maybe its not that i could be wrong.
…except im not.
listen, listen! play the song. listen very carefully at the tail end of the first scream. you can hear Steve yell “Bucky!”.
and what is so bleeding brilliant is that, even though its heavily filtered too, its much less filtered than the rest. its the only thing that sounds remotely organic and human in the whole thing. basically, the one thing still human in Buckys mind is Steve.
on that note: does anyone think they know what the static/radio sounding voices are saying? i need fresh ears
anyways here the song xD (the thing im sure is Steve is about 0:25 seconds in. verrry faint gotta turn that bitch up)
Update
oh my god.
all this time, i never thought of the most obvious thing: the most distorted, unrecognizable words in Buckys mind…would be his.
@kaleenjackson figured it out. the first bit of speech around 1:20, listen a few times, and im pretty sure the words will click too “im with you till the end of the line”
of course thats in his head, if this is Bucky’s mind, and we know he recognizes it when Steve says it….what if he’s spent years trying to figure out what its saying, and then Steve says it and it clicks. The Russo’s said in the beginning of CW he doesn’t remember much, what if he doesn’t remember saying it, he realizes thats what the words he’d been trying to figure out have been.
look at his reaction with this in mind: distorted words in his head that are messed up and he cant understand what therye saying, probably getting more distorted as time went on, but always there. he knows its this on, huge important thing that he’s been trying to figure out for decades…and Steve just says it, and he’s realizing thats what the words in his head have been
this guy knows what they mean. Bucky might not remember saying them, but its this one, deep personal thing he’s been able to hold onto but never understand. if this guy knows them, he has to be telling the truth.
ily @kaleenjackson, i honestly do. this is just fantastic. i need to lay down ive worn myself out. and should go explain to my roommate why she just heard robot screaming and a bunch other terrifying shit and then ‘HOLY FUCK!!!! HO. LY. FUCK”
also on that note, i think the second bit of speech is “Sargent James Barnes”
Because there’s a human element to the Winter Soldier that gets revealed toward the end of the film, the Winter Soldier starts off unrelenting and brutal and mechanized and almost Terminator like but the difference between The Winter Soldier and Terminator is that somewhere behind the wires and all the mechanization is a character that we know and we care about and that more importantly, Cap knows about and it’s very painful to him.
So one of the things I ended up doing with the Winter Soldier was I spent literally ten days just on production with vocals because I wanted to get the sensation of a human trapped inside machinery. SoI did a lot of vocal recordings and then processed the living hell out of them to get these tortured, time-stretched human cries of someone who has been so processed that it’s become mechanized at the same time but you can still hear the human in there.
the1timetraveller 