I came away from Civil War really struck by how overwhelming the theme of guilt was. It motivates people to do selfless things, it motivates people to do selfish things, and it’s the driving force behind the ultimate showdown between Bucky and Tony. What the movie does though is contrast the fashion people deal with their guilt.
Tony and Bucky are both people consumed by guilt. In both cases it’s guilt over things they ultimately had no control over. Tony couldn’t have predicted that his parents would die with so many things left unsaid between them and him, yet when we first see him he’s reliving that moment over and over. Tony is steeped in even more guilt when his actions in creating Ultron are thrown back in his face by a victim’s mother. He’s even guilty that his teammates hold him responsible for their containment. The crux of the issue is that Tony just can’t let it go. He’s willing to stare his flaws in the face, but he’s unwilling to forgive himself for those flaws, which leads to an issue I’ll get to in a second. Tony is stuck in an endless guilt loop. His attempts to fix things always seem to lead to more issues that lead to more guilt. He’s understandably frustrated because he’s just so driven to try to make things RIGHT that he’s willing to clash hard and often with people who don’t agree with his ideas. Ultimately the government might be right that the Avengers should have some limitations put on them, but Tony is so desperate to try to fix or at least ease his mind over what he feels like he’s responsible for that he makes agreements and does things without looking at every angle. He flogs himself over his mistakes, but he can’t even really articulate the real problem: acceptance that sometimes things happen no matter what and you’re going to have to live with them.
It’s Bucky who actually voices what is Tony’s issue as well as his. As Steve tries to tell his friend that it was Hydra’s fault and that “it wasn’t really you doing those things” during his assassin days, Bucky calmly and quietly looks up and says “but I did it”. It doesn’t matter to Bucky who MADE him do it. It doesn’t matter to him that he was just the weapon. What matters to him is that he did it. He has to live with that. He has to see something he caused happen in his mind over and over again. He ultimately takes responsibility, and in doing that he echoes something Steve says earlier about being willing to shoulder the blame over things that go wrong. What Steve doesn’t address is not just being willing to bear the consequences of mistakes, but being willing to move forward from there.
That’s the real issue. Not whose fault it ultimately is, but the fact that both Tony and Bucky, in their minds, DID IT. They have to live with that. They have to live with something that no amount of reassurance from outsiders can fix. All the love and understanding in the world can’t help someone who won’t move out of the guilt cycle. And in the end that’s why Tony, in spite of knowing Bucky had no control over his actions in killing the Starks, attempts to kill him. I think it would be easy to claim Tony is motivated purely by revenge, but I think it’s more than that. Tony of anyone should be able to understand someone causing something horrible inadvertently. He’s been in Bucky’s place. He’s caused damage without really knowing it. He KNOWS Bucky was programmed, even calls him the “Manchurian Candidate” at one point proving he completely believes Bucky had no control over his actions. Part of the reason Tony can’t accept Bucky’s moral innocence in what he did is because he can’t accept his own. Tony can’t consider forgiving Bucky because he can’t forgive himself. Tony’s generally a reasonable person, but he’s willing to flat out murder Bucky in the end even though he’s aware Bucky was just the weapon that HYDRA used to kill his parents. Bucky didn’t have a choice in the matter, Tony knows that, but he violently tries to hold him responsible in the same way he mentally holds himself. “Do you even remember them” he lashes out at Bucky, sure that the person involved in causing the determining factor in his life can’t understand the magnitude of what he’s done. Can’t understand the weight of feeling responsible for some many lives. He unwittingly echoes the woman who cornered him in the elevator earlier in the movie. He’s suddenly in her place reacting the exact same way.
“I remember them all.”
That line, right there. If Tony had been able to pause in his rage and grief for a second he would have realized that out of ANYONE he’s come across, Bucky gets it the best. Tony lives with all the ghosts of what he’s caused. So does Bucky. Bucky voices what Tony can’t. No matter what people tell you, you are still going to feel guilty that you did something no matter the reason and every incident can still be fresh and painful and seared on your memory whether it really deserves to be there or not. Maybe you had false information, maybe you didn’t have control, but it still happened. You still did it. You’re still going to have to live with it. And if you don’t forgive yourself to some degree you’re not really going to function. You can see Bucky trying to figure out how to live with himself. He can at least voice that he’s not sure he’s worth it, voice his uncertainty. You see him cringing at the scythe of destruction he is (ie. “what did I do”). You see him figuring out how to live with guilt without needing to punish himself.
Tony says the problem without really saying it. “And then, and then, and then”. The cycle over and over and over. He pushes people away because of it. He tortures himself because of it. And it will eat him alive until he is able to step forward.
I’m gonna talk about how the character of the Winter Soldier relies heavily on sound throughout the film because it’s one of the first things I picked up on during my numerous re-viewings and I think it’s one of the strengths of the film in terms of film technique.
For starters, the Winter Soldier is a really interesting character because he’s one of the titular characters and he’s key to the plot, but he has hardly any lines of dialogue and he’s only in it for maybe a third of the film. But the reason the Winter Soldier has such a presence in the film is because of the strength of Sebastian Stan’s ability to act using just his face and body and also the techniques that the film uses to establish details about his character that aren’t revealed through plot or dialogue. WS has only six real scenes in the film, which are:
First encounter with Nick Fury on the streets of D.C.
Shooting Nick Fury at Steve’s apartment
Speaking with Alexander Pierce
The Causeway
The Bank Vault (”But I knew him”)
Final Battle
So how do you establish the presence of a character who has six scenes during the film? The answer is to use every film technique at your disposal, and this film especially relies on sound. The Winter Soldier has to be one of the creepiest themes I’ve ever seen for a character because it utilizes a lot of metallic noises, robotic clanging, and inhuman screaming, which matches perfectly the visceral diegetic sounds of WS during the film, like the sound of the metal arm. It’s a far cry from what a normal character theme would be, because The Winter Soldier theme is for a presence, not for a person, which works so well given his legendary status as an assassin (“most of the intelligence community doesn’t believe he exists”).
The film uses sound in a major way to fill in the details about his character that can’t be shown on-screen, as well as to establish him as an inhuman figure that has the ability to morph what goes on around him, adding to his threatening presence. Firstly, when he’s first introduced to the audience and to Nick Fury on the streets of D.C., the music, which had been an exciting combat theme mirroring the action, suddenly goes very quiet and what you hear is what I can only describe as a hollow sound, a few notes of the WS theme. It’s a sound very evocative of a desolate wasteland. WS is unique because you never see him ‘enter’ a scene; he’s always there, and as soon as he appears, the sound in the film changes to mirror his presence. This happens when he appears and ambushes Fury’s car and the sound grows very quiet and haunting, and also during the scene where he appears in Alexander Pierce’s kitchen, but it also happens in a much larger way when he gets the shot at Steve’s apartment.
When Steve and Fury are talking, the song It’s Been a Long, Long Time is playing as diegetic music in the background to mask their conversation. It’s symbolic, because the lyrics mirror Steve and Bucky’s relationship, but it also serves a practical function within the storytelling. However, as soon as WS takes the shot and Fury goes down, the music very obviously warps in a really horrifying way that is more psychological. As Steve and Sharon and Fury are talking, their voices still sound normal, but the music playing, which logically should sound exactly the same, suddenly takes on a chilling, haunting quality. All because WS has appeared and distorted the scene. Essentially, the Winter Soldier is a character that is able to distort the reality of every scene in which he appears, because he’s a character that stands outside of reasoning and the fabric of reality itself. (Which makes a lot of sense given that he’s a character who was thought dead, but has in fact been alive for seventy years and has become the world’s deadliest assassin). Even when he doesn’t appear, such as when Steve and Natasha and Maria are watching Fury in the ER, as soon as Steve mentions “he’s fast; strong. Had a metal arm,” the WS music creeps back in because the Winter Soldier doesn’t need to be on the screen in order to ‘be’ there.
The causeway sequence is probably my favourite in the entire film, because it expands on what we’ve already learnt about WS through sound. The theme appears instantly as soon as he lands on top of Sam’s car, and then goes into a very metallic, action heavy piece of music. What’s really interesting, however, is what happens when Natasha draws WS away from Steve and Sam into the streets. As WS is walking down the street (and another thing to note about WS; he’s threatening because he never runs, only walks), the sounds of screaming and sirens are deliberately pushed far down on the sound hierarchy because what’s actually happening is that the audience is being given a rare glimpse into his point-of-view, which is incredible given that he’s a “villain” and not one of the protagonists. It offers the audience a view of how the Winter Soldier’s mind works. He’s focused solely on the mission, which in that moment is to listen for Black Widow, meaning all other superfluous background noise is deliberately muted because it is irrelevant to him. Then, we hear what he hears: the sound of Natasha speaking, which of course turns out to be a recording and not actually her. Later, after Natasha gets shot, the camera does a pov shift to Natasha and the music pretty much cuts out, which helps to show the audience just how terrified of WS she is (the shaky, handheld pov camera shot), which is something incredibly rare for this character because the only other person we’ve ever seen Black Widow scared of is the Hulk. Then WS jumps back into the shot on top of the car, rifle pointed straight at Natasha in what I personally consider to be the single best shot of the whole film, and the WS theme surges back in in a really terrifying way, because both Natasha and the audience know in that instant that if Steve hadn’t appeared at that very moment, Black Widow would be dead.
All of this is great stuff, but the cincher for me in why this film is superior to every other superhero movie in terms of technique is that in addition to establishing the Winter Soldier’s inhumanity through sound, sound also plays a huge role in establishing his humanity, which happens almost at the very instant Steve mentions the name “Bucky.” At the bank vault, when WS is asking who the man on the bridge was, the sound of the robotic, metallic WS theme is deliberately pushed back in favour of an emotional note that is clearly evocative of Steve.
All of this culminates in the scene of the final battle, which takes the established haunting Winter Soldier theme and plays that out while Steve and WS are fighting, until the instant Steve tells him “you know me.” As soon as Steve engages him in conversation, the Winter Soldier theme disappears and instead you get a piece of deeply moving music playing as Steve tells him that he’s not going to fight him, that he’s his friend, and that “I’m with you till the end of the line.” Then it goes into that emotional piano piece as Steve falls into the Potomac and Bucky dives in after him. Essentially, what’s happening here is that for two hours this character has been crafted as a robotic, inhuman assassin who distorts the fabric of reality and morphs every scene he’s in simply through his presence, but suddenly he’s now being treated like a character; an actual person. All because Steve Rogers is treating him like a person. Steve Rogers is the one thing that keeps the Winter Soldier human, and the film manages to tell us that simply through sound.
And this is why CA:TWS stands above every other superhero movie in terms of technique, in my opinion.
I also interpreted that screeching, clanging music to mean horror on the part of the Soldier, or the burned-out shell of a person still there. During certain points of TWS, the Soldier looks confused, scared, or horrified, but keeps on filling out his mission anyway. It’s been said about Seb that ‘he acts with his eyes’ and it’s definitely true; he spends a good portion of the movie with half his face covered and you can still tell that’s not Bucky in there. But at times his deadpan look of concentration gives way these flickers of frantic expression. Someone else described it as the look of ‘someone who desperately wants off the ride’.
Most of the time, he has the illusion of control, because he is badass and deadly and he knows exactly how to orchestrate a mission. But the WS is not in control, and I think there are moments when he has this realization that he’s got his hands off the wheel but the ride’s still running.
And he can’t do anything about it. I think he has moments where he does feel the impact of all the horror he’s committed, this brutal and bloody fast-track to hell his life is taking, and if he was allowed to have questions and to wonder about his own autonomy I think he’d be asking himself “Why is this happening?” (A bit of this shows in the bank vault scene. His implicit trust in his handlers falters, and he seems to know he’s being manipulated even if he doesn’t know why or what he can do about it.) But most of the time he doesn’t have even that much capacity for self-expression. He can’t put it to words or do anything about it, but the feeling is still there.
So that eerie soundtrack and those metallic screams? I think there’s a duality there, and in large part it does show what the Winter Soldier is and his effect on the scene he’s in, especially if you haven’t yet realized that he’s Bucky dragged back from the dead. However, I think it also shows good insight as to what’s going on inside the Winter Soldier’s head whenever his calculating, unfeeling wall of defense begins to fail. Even the thing they’ve made him into has moments of confusion, panic, and horror, and I think it’s perfectly summed up by the soundtrack of pounding and clanging and frantic, metallic screams.
I dunno if anyone’s done this before but whatever. Specifically, I want to talk about Bucky’s brain in relation to the cannibalized MRI thing they strapped on his noggin in CA:TWS. Like what the hell is that thing, how old is it, what are you trying to do HYDRA, is this one of those weird dryer things you stick your whole head in at the hairdresser’s? They have had 70 years to perfect this technology and it looks like a high schooler’s science fair project. There aren’t even any electrodes. Seriously there should be electrodes not only because they’re kind of necessary for this sort of thing but also because who would object to Bucky Barnes looking totally punk rock with a partially-shaved head? No one, that’s who.
But I guess let’s just assume the plate things themselves are in contact with his head and transmitting the charge themselves. Okay. That’s a big area they cover and approximately zero opportunity for finesse, so they can’t localize the damage at all. And there’s still all that hair in the way. But whatever, I’ll shut up about the hair.
So the plate things are basically concentrated on the prefrontal cortex, which is at the very front of the brain, behind the forehead where the plates are located. I mean there looks like there are plates going around around the back of the head but if it only goes as deep as the cerebrum they don’t want to damage anything back there because it’s all motor skills and balance and sensory perception and language centers, all of which were vital in the Winter Soldier’s functioning.
So yeah, the prefrontal cortex seems to be what they’re targeting, and the prefrontal cortex is for short term memory and decision making. However, it would be indescribably stupid to damage short term memory retention, so I don’t think they’d just fry the entire prefrontal cortex. Especially if it could compromise his ability to make quick, logical decisions in the field because the prefrontal cortex is important for logic and impulse control. So I would assume that they’re targeting the connections between the short term and long term memory storage systems rather than taking away his short term memory altogether.
Basically, recalling a memory that’s stored in long-term is just the brain returning it to the short-term memory center, or the working memory, concentrated in the prefrontal cortex. From there your brain literally refires all the neurons that fired during that experience, without compromising awareness of current circumstances. So severing those connections between long and short term memory would not only stop him retaining new memories, it would stop him recalling old ones.
They could be messing with his long term memory, except there are no intracranial bits and bobs that could actually penetrate deeper than the cerebrum without frying everything in between, and the hippocampus and amygdala where long term memory is stored are in there deep.
This picture doesn’t do justice to how deep in the brain the hippocampus and amygdala are, but it works well enough as a visual aid. You don’t want to damage the amygdala in a super soldier at any rate because that’s where the survival instincts are kicking around. Also, damaging the hippocampus on both sides of the brain would turn him into a potato, unable to retain any information at all, not even how to discharge his weapon, so you’d basically have to retrain him anew for every mission. And this contraption has clearly no finesse at all, as stated above, so I really don’t think they’d be able to destroy anything only partially or make any localized alterations.
And sure, maybe they actually opened up his head at some point in the past to get at long term memory storage, and the cryofreeze might stop that from healing, but I think the understanding of the brain was so ridiculously limited at that time that they didn’t really even know how to avoid excessive damage, and I don’t think they would have risked rendering one of their best assets brain dead. Honestly, I think the most likely thing they did was supplement the physical stuff with more traditional brainwashing and conditioning techniques.
So really, all Bucky needs to do is repair the connections between his long term and short term memory. Even with all this damage, the brain is adaptable even in normal humans. When certain parts are damaged, other parts can take over functioning in their stead. Although in this case, if the connections between long and short term memory were cut every time he went into the cryogenic chamber, he never would have stored any of the information gleaned as the Winter Soldier past the short term unless he managed to catch enough sleep to transfer those memories into long term storage before he got zapped or frozen again. So he would potentially remember everything about being Bucky Barnes fairly quickly, assuming his super soldier healing could repair those pathways or create new ones to compensate, and he would never remember most of his time as the Winter Soldier except what they wanted him to remember and let him encode before they took out those connections again. So basically, his combat training, his obedience training, and all that hydra indoctrination crap.
His old memories as Bucky would remain relatively pristine, because the more we view a memory the more current circumstances during the recollection alter it, and what you remember becomes less and less similar to what you actually experienced at the time. So instead of memories slowly changing and evolving as the person themself changes, which is what normally happens as we revisit memories and subtly alter them over time through new perception, Bucky would have this huge, disorienting, sickening divide between the well-preserved, untouched old memories of how he used to be and any new ones he managed to create as the Winter Soldier. The Winter Soldier memories will be less fleshed out, have more holes, be generally more ghost-like because of how they fucked with his brain and memories, so it would be easy for him to dissociate with them and to ignore them, but in order to ignore them Bucky would also have to ignore their consequences. He would be denying a part of himself. And he wouldn’t be able to deal well with their fallout, with the ways those experiences changed him, because he wouldn’t let himself examine them.
Honestly this is horrifying in its own way. All the fic I’ve read talks about how horrible it must be for the Winter Soldier to forget Bucky Barnes, but very little touches on how horrible it would be for Bucky to be all there and have a stranger in his head that he has few, dissociated memories of, but still retains a lot of that conditioning and finds himself acting like someone he doesn’t even remember being. He would feel betrayed by his own body and his own mind, doing things without knowing why he was doing them. I feel like not being the same Bucky as the one who went off to war would be so frustrating to him. Fics paint it as Steve being frustrated by the fact that Bucky’s no longer the same person, but I think Bucky himself would be far more frustrated by that fact than Steve. I think the fact that he’s not the same would bother him more than Steve’s longing for him to be the same, because he would understand that longing, share it even. I think he would dissociate from the foreign Winter Soldier part of himself, would try to bury it or force it out instead of facing it, would hate whatever memories he did retain from that time, because the Winter Soldier terrifies everyone but I think he would terrify Bucky most of all. And it would make sense, too. After all, the winter soldier was always supposed to be a ghost, the unseen threat, the silent killer, and I think, rather than inhabiting Bucky, the Soldier would haunt him, something he can’t prepare for or fight unless he’s willing to look through the dark to find it and confront it.
(All images blatantly stolen)
Much has been made of the fact that Bucky Barnes is one of the few people to recognize the greatness in Steve Rogers before his transformation into Captain America. Much has also been made of the fact that, in The First Avenger, Bucky demonstrably feels conflicted about that transformation. Less noted, however, is how Bucky’s sense of conflict and resentment—and the way he dealt with those feelings—reveals the kind of person he truly is. The narrative motif of the man who can recognize greatness in another but not attain it himself, and who is therefore corrupted by his resentment, is a classic trope. It appears in such literary masterpieces as Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, Melville’s Billy Budd, and Schaefer’s Amadeus. However, the story of Bucky Barnes is one of a man who recognizes a greatness he cannot himself achieve and is not corrupted by that recognition. Unlike the villains of the above-mentioned tales, Bucky Barnes comes to terms with the situation, choosing friendship over envy—and heroism over villainy—something that suggests a greatness within Bucky Barnes that Bucky himself is not aware of. But Steve Rogers, of course, is. Just as Bucky is one of the few people to recognize Steve’s greatness; Steve is one of the few people to recognize Bucky’s. Both of them know each other better than they know themselves, and it is that parallel knowledge that ultimately saves them both.
I don’t have a great sense of the ‘shipping culture. I certainly know that every time we don’t have Steve and Bucky kiss, they’re very upset, and I don’t know what to say that. I don’t discourage anything, but I also don’t want to bait anybody and promise them something that we’re not gonna give them.
Stephen
McFeely, writer of Captain America: Civil War [x] (via stevechoosesbucky)
hmmm I think this is a pretty simplistic way to phrase what (I think) he’s getting at. While I have stumbled across posts from a one or two fans who expected Steve and Bucky to kiss (and even in these cases, I’m pretty sure they were being hyperbolic ), almost every fan of Stucky I have spoken to or read posts from has been like “Yeah that’s not ever happening lmao” because they:
1. Have been alive on the planet ‘Earth’ for at least some duration
2. Have seen at least one or more movies and/or television shows in that span of time.
Queer people literally do not exist in the canon of the MCU in any aspect of narrative, either implicitly or otherwise. So yeah, we got it buddy. Stephen McFeely cannot be bothered to write even a single peripheral queer character, so I don’t think anyone of sound judgement was actually expecting him to make one of the most focal and iconic MCU characters queer, much less two, much less them exploring a same-sex relationship on screen.
People aren’t mad at McFeely because he “didn’t write Steve and Bucky kissing”. I think more than anything, people are frustrated with the landscape of comprehensive exclusion, not just in Marvel movies, but in almost all movies.
As for CACW specifically, the people who have been critical of the relationship between Steve and Bucky have been critical of the lack of intimacy in general, friendship or otherwise. And that’s a narrative critique. If the entire plot to your movie hinges on Steve’s total devotion to Bucky’s well-being and friendship, then perhaps they should have had… ahh… I don’t know… even one conversation together that doesn’t end after 2 minutes or less? Maybe some sort of dialogue to express the depth of that friendship instead of just having it presumed? Beating the shit out of bus loads of people for someone is nice and all, but it is not a substitute for emotional intimacy. (SPOILERS BELOW THIS POINT)
The conversations Steve and Bucky do have were incredibly shallow or rushed (ex. “Why’d you pull me out of the river?” “I don’t know” and then it jumps into a fight scene. In the vice scene, Bucky says two personal things about Steve’s past to prove he knows him, and then Steve jumps right in to interrogating him. One of their longer conversations meant to ‘explore their friendship’ actually centers around some girl we’ve never met, will never meet, and don’t care about.) And if you look at the movie as a whole, Steve has BY FAR more emotionally charged scenes with Tony than he does with Bucky. Charged with contention, instead of camaraderie, but even that does more to establish a believable and sympathetic human connection than lukewarm MASCULINE SHOULDER GRIPPING in silence.
Where’s the emotionally charged dialogue between them? Where are Steve’s concerted efforts to re-establish his personal closeness with Bucky? What’s Bucky’s reason for not wanting to have anything to do with Steve for 2 years? By all means, clue me the fuck in. Steve honestly has no qualms with Bucky refusing to seek help or counseling, instead signing off on Bucky re-embracing one of the cruelest abuses Hydra leveled at him?? This does not seem like a healthy or particularly intense friendship here.
CAtWS wasn’t any ‘gayer’ than Civil War, but it doesn’t have loads of criticism leveled at it concerning Steve and Bucky’s supposed relationship, despite the fact Steve and Bucky don’t kiss or hug in that one either. And the reason for that is because it made a concerted effort to explore the depth of their friendship and included tons of poignant, heart-felt scenes between them and a style of cinematography that emphasized them, something that CACW lacked and desperately needed.
I’m not critical of Steve and Bucky’s interactions in CACW “because they didn’t kiss”. I’m critical of their relationship because their friendship wasn’t half as convincing to me as it was in tWS, and it was at least twice as crucial to Steve’s motivations and to the plot.
I haven’t seen almost anyone discuss this, and I think
it’s because it’s an incredibly disheartening conversation to have, if you care
about Bucky, and if you don’t, well none of it probably even registered for you.
Because the movie very pointedly doesn’t place any kind of relevance on Bucky’s
choices, except for his very last one, and yes, the one to punch his way out of
the cage to get away from Zemo and his little red book (which is, however,
overruled as soon as Zemo finishes reciting the sequence of words).
But the truth is that Bucky does make choices, and I
mean outside of the two notable instances just cited. Only, he makes them
before the start of the movie, or in between one scene and the next, or quietly,
in the background, while the movie tells us to focus on the flashier things
that are happening in the forefront. And they’re not very noticeable choices,
per se, because most of the time, what Bucky chooses is to NOT act. Especially not in his own self interest.
In 1928 Bucky Barnes sees his best friend choke down a glass of raw liver bigger than the size of his dad’s balled fist. It looks slimy. Bucky once saw a neighborhood cat maiming something unrecognizable and red, but cats are predators. He watches Steve’s small frame lurch through a suppressed heave. Something about it feels perverse. Steve’s no predator.
How often during Bucky’s Russian imprisonment do you suppose he passed through the hallways of that Siberian supersoldier training base, and glanced up at the silos that led to the top of the mountain.
How often did a glimmer of hope, the outline of an escape plan, flit through his broken mind.
How often did he imagine the impossible, acting of his own volition to activate the mechanism to open the blast door at the top of the silo, and climb out into the open air.
Maybe it wasn’t often – he wasn’t himself for long, his will to do anything except obey orders was a fleeting thing, fragile and soft and easily trod under jackboot. But surely it happened once, or twice, or half a dozen times over the course of so many decades. Who knows, maybe every waking minute, the smallest fragment of what was left of Bucky Barnes thought about climbing up, climbing out, into fresh air and freedom, into the light.
I don’t know that I’m worth all this to you.
And he’s been keeping a stranglehold on his panic since he and Steve climbed down together into this dark, dead Siberian base. He’s aggressively ignoring the familiar sound of his own footsteps echoing off frozen concrete and dusty, sterilized metal. He’s swallowing sour lumps of bile and frenzied nausea when they walk into the room with the conditioning chair, and his own empty cryogenic chamber.
(After he’d been conditioned, it was so much easier to focus on the mission. Everything in his head was tidier, less prone to fits of memory and conscience. To sit a spell in that chair, and have all of his human mess chipped and scraped away like so many barnacles from a bleeding warship.)
I know … but I did it.
Then the videocasette ends in static, and Bucky’s eyes burn with unshed tears, and Steve shouts “Get out of here!” How many times did Bucky hear that same voice in his broken dreams, in that cryogenic tube, in his waking nightmares; that voice coming to his rescue, helping him to rescue himself. That single phrase from Steve brings all those dormant whispers from his past roaring to life – those fruitless, unrealized urges to climb toward the light, to earn his freedom.
I don’t know that I’m –
Bucky doesn’t make for the front door of the Siberian base; instead, instinct drives him to the silo. Light pours through the opening blast door, cold air washing over him like water from the Potomac. Except this time he isn’t hauling Steve’s body. This time he’s hounded by the sound of battle at his heels, the sleek roar of Tony’s suit and the shrill clang of metal as Steve guards his escape.
Fettered with the weight of decades of imprisonment, buoyed by hope that never quite guttered to ashes, Bucky scrambles up the metal scaffolding toward the sky like a man saving himself from drowning. The harder he kicks, the further he jumps each time, maybe he can shake the shackles from his feet.
He grasps the lip of the silo just as Tony’s missile reaches the gate mechanism, and the blast door slams shut.
Ahhh, I can’t help but think about how important choice is in Bucky’s narrative, especially given the overarching story in this movie. This is about choice, and taking responsibility for your choices, right? Accountability and all that.
Before I start this off, I just want to say that these are all just my opinions and observations, and you’re obviously free to disagree with me on any or all of it.
I feel like there’s an active storyline to Bucky’s trauma that woman really relate to. More so than with Natasha, who has lived a similar experience. Which some people have claimed to be bigoted and misogynistic. But I think it makes sense given the characters as we see them in the movies; hear me out.
When we meet Natasha, she time and time again proves her agency and worth to her self, colleagues, and the fans. She is extremely capable, and for all things considered, framed in a non victimized way. She has already come to terms with her past as much as one can healthily do (or at least shown as such, I don’t mean to imply that Natasha is all rainbows and butterflies inside). She is less sympathetic and more “untouchable badass” in these stories.
She has gotten a more fleshed out foundation of beliefs in recent films, and that does increase the interest and depth around her. For the first couple of movies, you weren’t sure what her intentions were and she was just kind of “she’s cool and she does what she wants”. She begins to shine in “Winter Soldier” and establishes a conviction of character in “Civil War”. The downside of her story was definitely “Ultron” where we do see her at her brainwashing/gaslighting stage, but it was used to further Bruce’s man-pain and I will forever be bitter about it.
I love Natasha, but she has been portrayed as an idol, someone unshakable, and not someone I can really relate to in the realm of “the women experience”. She hasn’t said this, thank GOD, but she probably fulfills the male exec’s love affair with “I’m not like other girls” trope, so we don’t see her endure the same way that other leading women in a male dominated franchise are danger to being portrayed as.
Woman have flocked to Bucky because of his active struggle with gaining agency and having to prove himself in the eyes of others. He exists, but everyone seems to have a say in his life except himself. He is taking the place of the treatment and invalidation of women by the media and the government. He wants control over his mind and body, but any form of rebellion causes others to laugh and say “that’s cute, but you don’t know what’s best for you. We do.” And then they strip away small dignities from Bucky to make it seem like he doesn’t deserve any right to decide (or even know what’s best) for himself in the first place.
Many characters in the MCU have established their core characterizations and have overcome their biggest obstacles to become the person we see them today. Bucky Barnes is in the midst of his struggle, and we want to watch him win.
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