Skywalker 1

Leia Skywalker

Professor Kenobi

ENGL1301

10 November 2015

Tinker Tailor Winter Soldier

Captain America: The Winter Solider is one of my favorite films and my favorite of the Marvel films franchise by far. Marvel generally takes an interesting approach to its cinematic universe by blending superhero films with other genres to produce genre-breaking movies. Thor, for example, bears the hallmarks of a fantasy film with its sweeping vistas of other worlds, while Guardians of the Galaxy moves into the realm of science fiction, including large-scale spaceship fights like Star Wars and Star

Trek. Ant-Man revolved around planning and executing a heist, and Captain America: The First Avenger is largely a war movie. Captain America: The Winter Soldier (CATWS) follows this pattern, combining a superhero film with one of my favorite tropes, the sociopolitical spy thriller. In effect, it’s Captain

America meets Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. The film raises issues of current political threats, and while the music and plot build suspense, Captain America and Black Widow don’t know who to trust—all key hallmarks of Cold War spy films.

Although the original Cold War backstory of the Captain America comics has been largely jettisoned to make room for a modern terrorist threat in this film, the most obvious earmark remains: the

Winter Solider keeps his name. Formerly Sergeant James “Bucky” Barnes, Steve’s best friend (and supposed war casualty), the Winter Soldier was forcibly recruited for HYDRA back in World War II, when Steve mistakenly thought Bucky had been killed. HYDRA in the first Captain America movie represented the Nazis; it’s implied in CATWS that during the Cold War, they represented the USSR; and in the modern world of CATWS, they represent a terrorist threat. This political updating makes sense, however, because in a spy thriller, politics must remain relevant. Though specific dates are not given and the technology the characters use in CATWS is somewhat futuristic, it is built upon current models, Skywalker 2 suggesting that the film is taking place in or around the present day. Communism, in 2014, is not the big threat; terrorism, both foreign and domestic, is. CATWS thereby changes the Communist threat to one made relevant by the attacks of 9/11 and carried through the present day. The U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, which met resistance from its detractors for violating the Fourth Amendment, allows the F.B.I. to circumvent warrants in cases with probable cause and obtain access to financial and internet records

(search and seizure). The world that Steve Rogers awakens to is identical to ours in facing a terrorist threat so severe and pervasive that people are, in the worlds of Arnim Zola, former HYDRA scientist,

“willing to sacrifice [their] freedom to gain [their] security.” The movie makes constant reference to the ubiquity of surveillance opportunities: open source documents, social networks, traffic and security cameras, and tracking devices, which are repeatedly scanned by the intelligence apparatus S.H.I.E.L.D. and its destructive shadow organization, HYDRA. This open sourcing is used to locate Captain America when he goes on the run, and to plan the attack for HYDRA’s own weapon of mass destruction. While we do not live in a world where destructive shadow organizations feed off the NSA, the threats of terrorism and of constant surveillance are real to us. Traffic cameras surround our streets; apps scan our Facebook accounts; our Twitter feeds are open for public use, and our participation is constantly encouraged by corporations with hash tag catchphrases. In the words of HYDRA Agent Sitwell, “the 21st century is an open book.” This claim does not pertain only to the movie, though it’s a key feature of the plot and forms the entirety of the threat.

Besides its political relevance, one of CATWS’ other hallmarks of a spy thriller is its use of suspenseful elements. The music, a combination of quick drum beats and other percussion instruments during fight scenes, as well as atonal screaming and bass for appearances by the Winter Solider, reinforces feelings of fear and adrenaline present in these scenes. There is very little melody to the music, if any: it’s primarily highlighting stress and tension. The score matches the tone of the film perfectly, a necessity of the plot, which continues to build suspense by hiding the identity of Steve and Natasha’s enemies. Steve is first attacked by HYDRA within S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, a place which should have been safe to him but has been infiltrated over the course of seven decades by his enemies. When he goes Skywalker 3 on the run, he and Natasha seek answers to a riddle posed by another faceless enemy, who is eventually revealed to be Alexander Pierce, a man whom they believed to be an arbiter of peace and firmly on their side. And finally, in possibly the most climactic moment of the film, the Winter Soldier’s face and identity are exposed: he is Bucky Barnes, Steve’s oldest and closest friend. The film boxes Steve in with the constant question of knowing who to trust and keeping him on the run, classic markers of suspense films.

But the heart of the movie is, in effect, its characters. This is a Captain America story, and it successfully propels Steve’s character into evolving. He begins the movie by meeting Sam Wilson, a new friend and soon-to-be-new Avenger, and starts off trapped in his past mindset, clinging to old loves:

Peggy Carter, who is now in her 90’s and bedridden, and Bucky Barnes, whom Steve believes died because of him. Steve is out of time and out of place, closed off, wary and preoccupied. When HYDRA emerges from S.H.I.E.L.D. and Steve is forced on the run, he begins a journey of starting over—one of the film’s themes, embodied both by Steve’s form of time travel and his dismantling of S.H.I.E.L.D. at the film’s conclusion. Bucky’s return to Steve’s life as the Winter Solider represents the central theme of the film; it is where the new beginning and the fight for peace merge. Steve can’t return to the past; nothing about it exists anymore. Bucky has become a new person, forged by HYDRA, representing their agenda of absolute control at any cost. Steve wants to get him back, but this is impossible: as Peggy says, the best thing he can do is start over. The movie’s title, Captain America: the Winter Soldier, brings all these threads together: Steve’s personal growth, his loss, his determination, and his solution.

This movie is more serious than other Marvel films, and with good reason. The threat posed by

HYDRA and Project Insight represent real-world dangers, not fantastic elements like rogue gods with megalomaniacal aspirations or alien attacks from outer space. Terrorism is a threat that we live with daily and as such is deserving of more gravitas. Suspense films, also, tend to be less humorous, as they need to build tension and keep it alive. In spite of these deviations from a more lighthearted trend, CATWS remains undeniably a superhero film: it ends happily, with the terrorist threat lying broken in the river and

Captain America re-established as a leader among friends. His next mission—to find the Winter Solider Skywalker 4 and save his best and oldest friend—is all the more compelling for its personal importance, which lies at the heart of the film. After the successful engagement of this film, the next films in the franchise feel a bit thin. We’ve been waiting almost two years for the conclusion of Steve’s quest to find the Winter Soldier.

Sadly, even spaceship battles and destructive androids can’t compete. Skywalker 5

Works Cited

Captain America: The Winter Solider. Dir. Anthony and Joe Russo. Perf. Chris Evans, Scarlett Johannson, Robert Redford, Samuel L. Jackson. Marvel, 2014. DVD.