Picoreview: Winter Soldier: Still the best movie in the MCU for my money.
So, like, I’m watching these in order, right? And after First Avenger, Disney+ spins up Winter Solider and I was 15 minutes into it, dangit, before I realized Avengers came between them. So I had to stop and go back to watch Avengers, which is honestly tonally a bit of a shock in the midst of the Winter Soldier setup.
But anyway, yeah, it certainly played up how completely unexpected Winter Soldier was after Avengers and then the Thor & Iron Man sequels, which had not been super great. It’s a spy film, a war film, a serious film, dealing with real issues of security vs freedom right on the surface of a superhero punch-em-up movie, and then with the emotional heart of the Steve and Bucky relationship pulling the Righteous Soldier away from the obvious solution of how to deal with the Winter Soldier. It’s a masterpiece.
…and, of course, it has the single best fight scene in the MCU (“Before we get started…”), and the second-bravest ordinary man in it: “Captain’s orders.” ::sobs::
Did you ever see the 5th Season Paintball Episode of Community? They did a brilliant spoof of the elevator scene, which could only work because the original was so incredible.