Movie · Phase 2

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

2014 · 136 min

Steve is working for S.H.I.E.L.D. and hating it, running black-bag operations for an agency that has started pre-emptively targeting people. Project Insight promises three Helicarriers that can kill…

The Infinity SagaDisney+90%Released
Captain America: The Winter Soldier poster art

The story

Steve is working for S.H.I.E.L.D. and hating it, running black-bag operations for an agency that has started pre-emptively targeting people. Project Insight promises three Helicarriers that can kill anyone on Earth from orbit, which Steve correctly identifies as the thing he fought a war to prevent.

The reveal is that HYDRA never died — it grew inside S.H.I.E.L.D. from the day Arnim Zola was recruited in 1945. The Winter Soldier hunting Steve turns out to be Bucky Barnes, and the film's climax is a man refusing to fight back so his friend will remember him.

Key facts

Release date
4 Apr 2014
Status
Released
Phase
Phase 2
Saga
The Infinity Saga
Runtime
136 min
Certificate
PG-13
Director
Anthony Russo, Joe Russo
Writers
Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely
Streaming
Disney+
Timeline placement
2014 — two years after the Battle of New York

Cast

ActorRole
Chris EvansSteve Rogers / Captain America
Scarlett JohanssonNatasha Romanoff / Black Widow
Sebastian StanBucky Barnes / Winter Soldier
Anthony MackieSam Wilson / Falcon
Robert RedfordAlexander Pierce
Samuel L. JacksonNick Fury

Characters

Easter eggs

  • Jasper Sitwell names 'Stephen Strange' on Zola's threat-assessment list, two and a half years before Doctor Strange.
  • Stan Lee cameos as a Smithsonian security guard who realises the Captain America exhibit's uniform has been stolen.
  • The mid-credits scene reveals Baron von Strucker with the Mind Stone scepter, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch in cells — the Age of Ultron setup.
  • Nick Fury's fake headstone quotes Ezekiel 25:17, the passage Samuel L. Jackson recites in Pulp Fiction, which Fury acknowledges with a look.
  • Arnim Zola survives as a 1970s room-sized computer in the Camp Lehigh bunker, complete with a face on a monitor at chest level.
  • Steve's dark blue infiltration suit is his comic 'Stealth Suit', worn during the Lemurian Star raid.
  • Sam Wilson's wings are designated EXO-7 Falcon, and his surveillance drone in a deleted beat is named Redwing after his comic pet bird.
  • Senator Stern, introduced grilling Tony in Iron Man 2, whispers 'Hail HYDRA' — retroactively poisoning that scene.

Trivia

  • Marvel hired Anthony and Joe Russo largely on the strength of their television comedy work on Arrested Development and Community.
  • Robert Redford took the part because his grandchildren wanted to see him in a Marvel film.
  • The film is explicitly modelled on 1970s paranoid thrillers, especially Three Days of the Condor — which starred Redford.
  • Sebastian Stan trained for months and built a performance around roughly two dozen lines of dialogue.
  • Chris Evans performed most of the elevator fight himself, and the sequence was shot practically on a purpose-built rig.
  • Anthony Mackie's Falcon wing rig was a mix of a practical harness and full CG, and the character's introduction was moved up from a planned later film.
  • The Russos storyboarded the D.C. freeway ambush as a single continuous chase and shot it over three weeks in Cleveland and Los Angeles.

Box office

Budget
$170 million
Worldwide
$714.4 million
Domestic
$259.8 million

Reviews

Critics

90%

Suspenseful and politically astute, Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a superior entry in the Avengers canon and is sure to thrill Marvel diehards.

The MarvelGossips verdict

Twelve years later this is still the best-directed film in the MCU and the only one with a real argument in it. Burning S.H.I.E.L.D. down cost Marvel its connective tissue and was worth every bit of the trouble it caused. Evans has never been better than in the moment he drops the shield.

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Frequently asked

Is The Winter Soldier the best MCU film?
It is consistently ranked in the top three by critics and fans, and it holds a 90% Rotten Tomatoes score. Its political-thriller structure and practical action have aged better than almost anything else in the franchise.
How did HYDRA infiltrate S.H.I.E.L.D.?
Through Operation Paperclip. Arnim Zola was recruited by the Allies after the war and spent decades growing HYDRA inside the organisation, a plan he describes to Steve and Natasha from his computer bunker at Camp Lehigh.
Does Bucky remember Steve at the end?
Partially. He saves Steve from drowning and then disappears, and the Smithsonian exhibit scene shows him beginning to reconstruct his own history — a process that continues through Civil War.
What happens to S.H.I.E.L.D. after this film?
It is publicly dismantled and its files dumped online by Natasha. Fragments continue in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Nick Fury operates off the books until Secret Invasion.
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