“I don’t like bullies.” – The Captain America trilogy

by J.D. Lafrance

The popular comic book superhero Captain America had his debut in March 1941 courtesy of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby; created as a patriotic symbol in response to the actions of Nazi Germany in the years leading up to the United States’ involvement in World War II. Like any enduring comic book icon, Cap has undergone all kinds of changes over the years, but adapting him for modern movie-going audiences was considered difficult as his beliefs came across as old-fashioned. The dilemma Marvel Studios faced when making Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) was how do you make him relevant today? Made early on in the development of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it and subsequent sequels are among the studio’s best as they managed to make Cap’s personal dilemmas compelling while not losing sight of his place in the larger mosaic of the MCU.

Instead of modernizing the character right away, the filmmakers wisely stayed true to his origin story and made The First Avenger a period movie. These kinds of retro comic book movies rarely do well (case in point: The Shadow and The Phantom) and part of the problem is the talent attached to them. Getting the right director and cast that understand the characters and the worlds they inhabit is crucial. Joe Johnston was wisely hired to direct. Since it was decided that the movie would be set during World War II who better to recapture that old school action/adventure vibe then the man that helmed The Rocketeer (1991) and Hidalgo (2004)? For the pivotal role of Captain America, Chris Evans was cast. He already had experience with superhero movies playing the Human Torch in the awful Fantastic Four movies, but Marvel believed that they could reinvent the public’s perception of him. The question remained, how would such an earnest, idealistic character translate in our cynical times?

Steve Rogers (Evans) is a skinny weakling that just wants to do his part for his country during wartime but he’s wracked with too many health problems to join the army. He volunteers for a risky top-secret experimental program known as Project Rebirth run by Colonel Chester Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones at his crusty, ornery best) and Peggy Carter (charmingly played by Hayley Atwell). Rogers may not be physically strong but he’s brave, determined and willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good. Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci) and playboy inventor Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper) conduct the actual procedure that transforms Rogers into the perfect physical specimen, a Super Soldier complete with superior strength and agility.

Instead of putting him on the front lines where he wants to be, Rogers dons a corny costume (that pokes fun at previous cinematic incarnations), dubbed Captain America, and ordered to sell war bonds to the American public in a lame dog and pony show. While entertaining American troops in Italy, he hears that his best friend Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) has been captured by Hydra, a research wing of the Nazis who are so ambitious that they split from the Germans for playing it too safe. With Peggy and Stark’s help, Rogers disobeys orders and rescues his friend and 400 prisoners of war. Meanwhile, Hydra leaders Dr. Arnim Zola (Toby Jones) and Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving) have discovered the Tesseract, a cosmic cube endowed with powerful magical energy that they harness so that it can be used to not only win the war but also take over the world. Schmidt was the first recipient of the Super Soldier formula and it transformed him into the Red Skull, a hideous-looking evil genius.

Hayley Atwell is downright delightful as the brassy dame Peggy Carter who is more than capable of taking care of herself. The chemistry between her character and Rogers is nicely realized with snappy, slyly flirty dialogue reminiscent of a Howard Hawks film. The screenplay, written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, does an excellent job of developing their relationship over time, keeping their romance simmering just under the surface for most of the movie until its tragic conclusion that carries a surprising emotional resonance as we’ve become invested in them. After all kinds of supporting roles over the years, Evans finally proved that he has the chops to carry a big budget blockbuster. He brings a no-nonsense charisma to the role and conveys Cap’s idealism without coming across as forced or phony.

Director Johnston brings the same old school Classic Hollywood vibe he brought to The Rocketeer complete with a refreshing lack of cynicism and irony as he delivers a straightforward action/adventure tale. As with that previous film, he includes all sorts of wonderful comic book touches, like the introduction of the Howling Commandos, a ragtag group of soldiers that fought alongside Nick Fury in the comics, and fight with Cap in the movie, beautifully brought to life in all their colorful glory. Johnston understands that the movie’s style should service the story – anything else is a distraction. The First Avenger may not reinvent wheel in terms of the comic book superhero genre but it doesn’t have to. It is a crowd-pleasing popcorn movie that tells an entertaining story.

It does more than that, however, it also introduces the two most important people in Cap’s life – Bucky and Peggy – and establishes his relationship to them, which will carry over to future movies. They serve as important, motivating factors for decisions he makes later on. The movie also does an excellent job establishing Cap’s character with two key lines of dialogue. Early on, while getting beat up by a larger guy, a then-scrawny Steve keeps getting up after being knocked down, saying, “I could do this all day.” This demonstrates Cap’s resilience and willingness to go the distance and dogged determination to stand up to a larger, more powerful opponent. The second line of dialogue comes when Cap is asked about his problem with the Nazis. He simply says, “I don’t like bullies.” This is the character in a nutshell. Why does he do what he does? He doesn’t like to see weaker people taken of advantage of by more powerful ones, like when he was before given the Super Soldier formula. This could be a large guy in an alley, a mad, Asgardian trickster or an insane sentient robot.

The sequel, The Winter Soldier (2014), takes place two years after the events depicted in The Avengers (2012) and sees Cap working as an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., a top-secret spy organization that, among other things, deals with the fallout from the adventures of superheroes like Iron Man and Thor. However, there is something rotten at the core of the spy organization and Cap soon finds himself not only embroiled in a vast conspiracy, but also confronting someone from his past he thought had died in the war. The result is a fantastic fusion of the super hero movie with the conspiracy thriller.

S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) shows Cap three helicarriers, massive flying aircraft carriers armed with state-of-the-art jet fighters that are linked to spy satellites created to anticipate global threats in a program known as Project Insight. Cap is not at all comfortable with Fury’s secret project and the notion of creating a climate of fear that potentially robs people of their basic freedoms. However, when Fury suspects something is wrong with Project Insight he voices concern to senior S.H.I.E.L.D. official Alexander Pierce (Robert Redford). Immediately afterwards, Fury is attacked on the streets of Washington, D.C. by S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives and an enigmatic figure known as the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan). Fury barely escapes and finds Cap before being gravely injured. It’s up to Cap and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), along with the help of Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), a war veteran and post-traumatic stress disorder counselor that Cap befriends early on, to uncover the corruption rampant in S.H.I.E.L.D. and stop it.

Evans does an excellent job reprising his role of Captain America and providing layers to a character that is essentially a super strong boy scout that comes from a simpler time. He is now immersed in a convoluted conspiracy where he doesn’t know who to trust. As a result, he has to do a bit of soul-searching, which Evans handles well.

A movie like this, which intentionally raises the stakes in comparison to the first one, needs a credible threat that makes us feel like Cap and his allies are in real danger and the Winter Soldier does that. He rarely speaks, but looks cool and is extremely dangerous so that we anticipate the inevitable showdown between him and Cap. He isn’t some anonymous bad guy, but something of a tortured soul and the screenplay by Markus and McFeely (returning from the first film) offers some tantalizing details of his backstory and how it ties in with Cap’s past.

They crafted a solid script that is well executed by directors Anthony and Joe Russo. They establish just the right rhythm and tone with well-timed lulls between action sequences that are used wisely to move the plot along and offer little moments of character development that keep us invested in the characters and their story. For example, there is a well-done scene where Cap goes to an exhibit dedicated to his World War II exploits at the Smithsonian, which succinctly recaps his origin story in a rather poignant way that reminds us of his internal conflict of being stuck in the past while living in the present. He’s just starting to get a foothold in the modern world only to lose his footing once he discovers that the institution he trusted – S.H.I.E.L.D. – is rotten at the core.

The action sequences are exciting and expertly choreographed with nods to classics that came before it. There is an intense car chase involving an injured Fury in an increasingly bullet-ridden SUV that has the feel of the exciting car chase in William Friedkin’s To Love and Die in L.A. (1985) and the gunplay in Michael Mann’s Heat (1995). A little later, Cap takes out an elevator full of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents intent on neutralizing him that echoes an elevator scene in Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill (1980). The fights between Cap and the Winter Soldier are fast and frenetic, but never confusing as they convey the frighteningly deadly speed of the latter’s moves, so much so that it feels like Cap was in serious danger.

Drawing elements from writer Ed Brubaker and illustrator Steven Epting’s 2005 “Winter Soldier” storyline in the comic book, this movie has a decidedly darker tone than The First Avenger as our hero is nearly killed on several occasions and his world is shaken to the very core as he uncovers all sorts of ugly secrets. In this respect, The Winter Soldier is reminiscent of paranoid conspiracy thrillers from the 1970s and this is acknowledged with the casting of Robert Redford who starred in two of the best films from that era – Three Days of the Condor (1975) and All the President’s Men (1976).

It is refreshing to see a sequel that isn’t merely content to rehash the first film. Where The First Avenger was essentially a mash-up of a super hero movie and war movie, The Winter Soldier is super hero movie and a political thriller with events that are a major game changer for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Most importantly, it shakes up Cap’s relationships with two of the most important people in his life. He is reunited with Peggy who has obviously aged over the years, bed-ridden and suffering from what looks like some kind of dementia while he looks the same as when they were last together. She is lucid enough to give him this important piece of advice: “The world has changed, none of us can go back. All we can do is our best, and sometimes the best we can do is start over.” This is a heartbreaking scene as Peggy is no longer the vibrant person we saw in The First Avenger.

The second, and most stunning change is the big reveal that Cap’s best friend Bucky not only survived his apparent death in The First Avenger but has been reborn as the Winter Soldier, a Hydra-controlled assassin that has killed key political figures over the years. He has no memory of his friendship with Cap, much to the latter’s horror. He makes it his goal to reach the man he used to know through all the brainwashing, but, of course, they have to fight it out. This results in an emotionally charged scene as the two former best friends battle it out while one of the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarriers comes apart around them.

Captain America: Civil War (2016) features iconic superheroes in conflict with each other while also addressing the effect they have on the world. How does the general populace react to them and, more importantly, how do those in positions of authority react to them? Should superheroes be governed and if so by whom? Should they be held accountable for the massive destruction incurred from their world-saving battles?

Civil War takes the basic story from the 2006-2007 Marvel Comics limited series of the same name, written by Mark Millar and penciled by Steve McNiven, and uses it as a springboard to address narrative threads introduced in The Winter Soldier and Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). Civil War intertwines two primary storylines: Captain America and Falcon track down elusive assassin the Winter Soldier, and the continuing animosity between Cap and Tony Stark a.k.a. Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), which finally reaches a critical mass when they disagree over the creation of an international governing body to watch over and control the Avengers, splintering the team into two camps – those on Cap’s side and those on Iron Man’s. This culminates in an epic battle between both sides.

The individual human cost of battles, like the one in Sokovia at that climax of Age of Ultron, weighs heavily on Tony as do the people that died during the mission that kicked-off the movie on Cap. To make matters worse, United States Secretary of State Thaddeus Ross (William Hurt) meets with the Avengers to inform them that the United Nations is preparing legislation that will sanction their future actions. He considers them all dangerous and is concerned that they continue to operate unchecked, showing them a greatest hits montage of carnage that ensued during their battles. He gives them a choice: come on board with this legislation or retire.

Tony feels guilt over the ramifications of his actions – what with helping to create Ultron and all – and that of the Avengers and backs the sanctions along with Vision (Paul Bettany), War Machine (Don Cheadle), and Black Widow. Cap argues that signing this legislation will take away their right to choose. What if the U.N. sends them somewhere they don’t want to go or shouldn’t go? Where does it all end? Things for Cap only get more complicated when the Winter Soldier is responsible for the death of T’Challa a.k.a. Black Panther’s (Chadwick Boseman) father. Meanwhile, the mysterious Helmut Zemo (Daniel Bruhl) is quietly plotting something big and it involves the Winter Soldier.

While this movie seems plot-heavy, it moves along briskly, punctuated with kinetic action sequences, like an exciting chase through the streets of Bucharest as Cap tries to capture Bucky alive while preventing Black Panther from killing him. It starts off as a dynamic foot race and then ramps up to vehicles that rivals the chase early on in The Winter Soldier. Much like with that movie, directors Anthony and Joe Russo have a real knack for orchestrating kinetic action sequences that create an almost palpable sense of danger for our heroes because so much is at stake. It doesn’t hurt that they wisely enlisted the help of Chad Stahelski and David Leitch, directors of the dynamic action revenge thriller John Wick (2014), to choreograph some of this mayhem.

This culminates in the epic airport battle teased in all the movie’s trailers and ads. It is everything they promised and more and is easily the best action sequence in any of the Marvel movies since The Avengers. It’s epic, visceral and loaded with several mini-battles as hero fights hero. We also get the first appearance of the then-new Spider-Man (Tom Holland) and he’s everything you’d want him to be – full of funny quips, nerdy and more than capable of holding his own with the likes of Cap and co. only he lacks the battle-hardened experience. This is easily the best cinematic incarnation of the webslinger since Spider-Man 2 (2004). On Cap’s side, Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) pops up to lending a helping hand and offer a slew of his own funny one-liners and a cool surprise in the heat of the battle.

There are deeply personal stakes for several of the characters in Civil War, from Black Panther’s desire to get revenge for the death of his father, to Tony’s guilt over the death of a young man in Sokovia, to Cap and his friendship with Bucky. All of these things are powerful motivators for what they do in the movie and supersede accords and sanctions. Initially, there was some concern that the inclusion of all these characters would create an overly stuffed movie but on the contrary the Russo brothers found a way organically integrate newcomers like Black Panther and Spider-Man and use their appearances as a springboard for their upcoming standalone movies.

In a nice contrast to past Marvel villains, Zemo is a more cunning, understated menace whose endgame isn’t readily apparent and only reveals itself towards the end at a crucial moment just before the exciting climax where Cap and Tony have it out one last time. The filmmakers mess around with the formula on this one. Whereas Age of Ultron featured yet another super baddie bent on world domination, Civil War features a villain that wants something that isn’t on an epic scale. He wants revenge and has a very definite agenda that only gradually reveals itself over the course of the movie in a wonderfully understated way that makes quite a gut-punching impact when it is finally unveiled to our heroes. By the end of Civil War, Cap’s notion of “I don’t like bullies” has been turned on its head as the superheroes have become the bullies. They spend more time in the movie fighting themselves than villains like Zemo.

Unlike Age of Ultron, the filmmakers of Civil War do a great job of juggling this large cast of characters, giving everyone their moment to say something cool/funny and do something significant without forgetting that the movie is ultimately about Cap and the arc of his character so that he goes from being a patriot in The First Avenger to someone openly questioning his government in The Winter Soldier to an insurgent in Civil War. It’s his story and a personal one at that. It is really a marvel of narrative juggling that succeeds where even the overstuffed Age of Ultron came precariously close to collapsing under its own ambitions. One the strengths of the Cap movies are their consistency. All three movies have the same screenwriters and the last two have the same directors. As a result, the three movies feel like chapters of a larger story whereas there is a wild range of tones and levels of quality in the Iron Man and Thor movies. This makes the Captain America movies the strongest series of the initial wave of MCU heroes as it feels like a definite story arc was planned and thought out as opposed to the others that feel like disparate chapters with very little links between each other.

It can’t be overstated how good Chris Evans is as Captain America in these movies. He never winks knowingly at the camera and instead starts off playing him as someone who earnestly believes in his country. By the second movie this belief is chipped away when he realizes that the institutions he once held in high regard are corrupt from within. By the last movie, he is a man without a country and without a team as he and Tony Stark come to serious blows over how their fellow costumed heroes should be governed. Evans really shines during the more intimate moments, like his relationship with Peggy in The First Avenger, his burgeoning friendship with Sam in The Winter Soldier and his willingness to stand by Bucky despite his questionable past as an assassin in Civil War. These relationships give Evans a chance to emote and demonstrate that Cap is more than just an icon.

So many movie trilogies tend to end a weak third installment that tries to tie up all the loose narrative threads created in the previous incarnations while going bigger in scale, losing sight of what made them so good in the first place (i.e. Return of the Jedi, Spider-Man 3 and The Dark Knight Rises). At the heart of Civil War is Cap’s friendship with Bucky. It’s a thread that has run through all of the Captain America movies, culminating with this one where it is put to the ultimate test. This relationship is also the most satisfying aspect of this excellent movie as it is also the most compelling thing about it. Civil War manages to be simultaneously epic in scale in terms of how what happens affects so many characters and intimate in relation to Cap’s journey over these movies. The filmmakers never let us forget that at its heart, the movies are about Cap and Bucky’s lifelong friendship. That gives us something to care about amidst all the carnage and CGI workouts.