As I ranked the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) movies near the end of 2019, I had no trouble figuring out that “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” is the best of the lot. In my own words:
“It is a perfect MCU movie because every element works just right: The special effects look real instead of like CGI, the action scenes are breathtakingly well-choreographed, the story is intelligently written, it works equally well as both its own standalone story and a continuation of the larger MCU narrative. It has the courage to be more than just a superhero movie, but also a political thriller as well: The story involves spies infiltrating our government who need to be rooted out, dangerous technology that Captain America realizes threatens our civil liberties and must be stopped, a paranoid plot in which no one knows who they can trust.”
To these observations I would add five more:
- “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” gains considerable mileage as a political thriller by contrasting the idealism of World War II era America with the moral ambiguity of our imperial age. These issues provide the core character conflict for Captain America/Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), who learns that a Nazi sect known as HYDRA has secretly infiltrated SHIELD, the organization that monitors and helps coordinate superhero activity. Now that he can’t trust the institution to which he has pledged his loyalty, Captain America must struggle to find a new political identity, ultimately settling on one that prioritizes human rights over specific national loyalties. (By contrast, the overhyped “1917” five years later would never challenge the precepts of nationalism.) This causes his character to make decisions that are inspirational, eloquent and quite relevant to the choices we make in real life trying to balance individual rights with our need for security.
- The movie’s best psychological moments build off of the tension Captain America feels as he goes about his business while trying to quietly figure out who he can trust. The subplot is also eerily prophetic: Given that our military has a white supremacist problem and President Donald Trump is becoming a literal fascist, the idea that our own government may be secretly controlled by the far right has troubling resonance today. Just as Rogers thought he had defeated the Nazis in Germany in the 1940s, only to learn that he now has to fight them again, so too are we facing Nazis in our American midst.
- There are little character moments in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” that make it qualitatively superior to the storytelling in other MCU movies, where the dialogue exists either solely to further the plot or to be humorously quirky. Stand outs include the dark banter between Rogers and Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), the heartbreaking reunion between Rogers and his World War II era true love Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) and the scenery-chewing smugness of one villain who unexpectedly reveals how HYDRA’s fascist subversion succeeded. Personally, my favorite scene is when Rogers is talking to Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) about how elevators used to play music. Fury responds by telling a story about his grandfather, who was an elevator operator for forty years and watched as his neighborhood deteriorated. Eventually he began carrying around a paper bag, and when potential muggers asked him about its contents, “he’d show ’em a bunch of crumpled ones… and a loaded 0.22 Magnum. Granddad loved people. But he didn’t trust them very much.”
- The theme of trust is a constant in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” — trusting your mentors, trusting your friends, trusting your employers, trusting your government. It also provides the movie with its emotional center: Despite all of the lies and betrayals surrounding him, Rogers refuses to give up on his best friend The Winter Soldier/Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), who he trusts not to kill him despite having been brainwashed by HYDRA. The Rogers-Barnes friendship is one of the most powerful emotional bonds in the entire MCU.
- “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” also contains two of the MCU’s best action set pieces: A car chase involving SHIELD head Nick Fury and Captain America’s iconic defeat of a dozen HYDRA agents while being surrounded by them in an elevator.
That is all I have to say. “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” is the best MCU movie. Period.