It’s so frustrating that with the quantity of useless garbage that made it onto the screen in AoU, Whedon decided this scene was expendable. In a few seconds, it illustrates how the influence of SHIELD/Hydra has shaped the Sokovians, and by extension, the Maximoff twins. It also plays into Steve’s growing unease with the role of Captain America and how it may conflict with his personal values, a development which culminates in his decision to drop the shield at the end of CW. Instead we get endless iterations of that stupid, out of character language joke.
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.
I have realized that Steve Rogers would have gone into the ice after The Hobbit was printed but before The Lord of the Rings was released and now all I want is him finding out about The Lord of the Rings and being so excited because “Wait, you mean there’s a sequel?!”
please please please just imagine the following:
Steve reads The Hobbit in the 30s/40s. Maybe Bucky saves up and buys it for him one year for his birthday. Maybe he picks up a copy while on the USO tour. Maybe Peggy lends it to him.
He reads it. He loves it. He goes into the ice.
He wakes up and rereading it crosses his mind but “It’s an old book now, no one’s probably heard of it.” and there are so many new things to read that it gets pushed aside.
(Or maybe he knows that they’re making The Hobbit into a movie and he’s so happy about that but he doesn’t really read into it, you know? It’s going to be a movie, that’s good enough for him. He doesn’t watch interviews, he doesn’t read articles- he hears about The Lord of the Rings, of course, but no one ever makes the connection for him.)
(“I’ll reread The Hobbit before the movies come out,” but there’s still so many new things that it still gets pushed aside.)
Someone (Nat or Sam, in a hotel somewhere while they’re looking for Bucky, or Bruce in the Tower, or whoever) flips through channels and puts on The Lord of the Rings movies and Steve is only half paying attention. Maybe he’s sketching. Maybe he’s reading reports. Who knows.
Then he hears “hobbits” and it catches his attention because wait, is that…? But this isn’t The Hobbit, he doesn’t know this story, but he’s invested now and he’s watching a little bit more.
Gandalf appears, and Bilbo, and wait he definitely knows these characters what’s going on, what’s happening here, what story is this?
“Well, yeah, it’s The Lord of the Rings, it’s the sequel to The Hobbit-”
“He wrote a sequel? There’s a sequel!?”
“…there’s technically a prequel too, mostly put together by his son, but-”
“HOW MANY MORE BOOKS ARE THERE?”
“…three in The Lord of the Rings, plus the Silmarillion, and a lot of history/meta stuff too…”
“I WANT TO READ THEM ALL.”
Steve does read them all.
(There’s a moment of loud indignation when he reads about the riddle game because “It didn’t happen like that!” He has to have the changes explained, and then it’s the funniest thing in the world to him.)
Please just imagine Steve Rogers in his office at the compound with a tiny book shelf that’s just full of copies of all of Tolkien’s works. And tucked in a corner is a first-edition copy of The Hobbit that Tony bought for him, and Steve knows that it has to be ridiculously expensive but he dosen’t care, because it’s almost exactly like the copy he used to have. And even though he knows he probably shouldn’t handle it too much, sometimes he picks it up and rereads the riddle game scene. (The original is still better, in his opinion.)
But please also imagine Steve reading, specifically, The Return of the King.
Steve reading about Frodo and Sam nearly dying on the slopes of Mount Doom, saving the world by the skin of their teeth, and it’s exactly the epic fantasy ending he was expecting. Aragorn marries Arwen, and the hobbits are heroes, and everything is right in the world.
And then they go back to the Shire.
They go through literal war, and they try to go home… but it’s not home. It’s been ravaged by the war, by technology, and “in your heart you begin to understand: there is no going back.”
And Frodo sails. Frodo sails, and even though you know that Sam still has Merry and Pippin, look at what he’s lost. He lost Frodo, he lost Gandalf, he lost the innocence of the Shire. And Sam is left behind, left to return home to his wife and family alone, and its an awful, terrible moment, that moment when you’re confronted with the reality that “We set out to save the Shire, Sam. And it has been saved, but not for me,” that winning the war can mean losing in other ways, that sometimes you don’t get your happy ending-
But that’s not the ending you’re left with. Because the last line of the book is “Well, I’m back.” and Steve, sitting in his apartment, surrounding by a future that never expected to see, that he understands and embraces but still sometimes doesn’t feel like his own world- Steve sits back, and sets the book down, and innately understands Sam’s feeling of pushing forward and finding happiness even in the light of a great personal loss. Steve has literally lived through his own Scouring of the Shire, has tried to go home only to realize that there is no going back, Steve would have every reason in the world to be Frodo and to decide to step back and find his own peace because damnit, he deserves that.
But Steve isn’t Frodo, Steve is Sam, Steve is the stouthearted and steadfast and he keeps moving forward, because he gets home and doesn’t just see the broken edges of the world- he also sees the pieces that got put back together. He sees everything he survived, and everything that the people around him survived, and when he finishes reading that book and sets it down he looks around his apartment and realizes for the first time that he’s finally managed to come home again.
Headcanon accepted
Guys, this is pretty much canon!! There’s an old comics panel (I’m pretty sure @jayleeg has posted it) that shows Steve reading Lord of the Rings!!! And saying he loves Tolkien.
Yup, that was Avengers #46 by
Roy Thomas…
And to add more food to the fodder, from Cap #255 by Roger Stern…
Steve Rogers is a big ol’ geek, just like the rest of us. 😉
*deep menacing accent* “How did you take down Captain America?” *matter of fact European accent replies* “We shot him in the legs because his shield is the size of a dinner plate and he is an idiot”
the1timetraveller 