What were some of the design’s most challenging aspects?
“A lot of the initial development was done trying to figure out how much of his face was going to be revealed and come up with a mask that could break apart into goggles and the lower mask. The first time you see him, you wouldn’t see enough of him that Steve would be able to recognize him. Then you have other options to slowly reveal him, and have bits and pieces of it come off in different scenes so that his identity would be concealed until the moment of the reveal. And I was always interested in finding ways to do the domino mask without really doing the domino nask – doing the face paint and blackening around his eyes so that it reads like the mask.” – Ryan Meinerding, Head of Visual Development (Art by Ryan Meinerding)
– The Road to Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War – The Art of the Marvel Cinematic Universe
Bucky Barnes, aka the Winter Soldier, is a man on the run. He was falsely accused of creating an explosion at a United Nations gathering that resulted in multiple fatalities, including the king Of Wakanda. His childhood friend, Steve Rogers, believing in his innocence, set out to find him and clear his name.
As the Winter Soldier, Barnes could be manipulated through a series of trigger words implanted by the subversive organization Hydra. Although Hydra is gone, the triggers remain. Believing himself to be a threat, Barnes chose to be cryogenically frozen until the alterations to his mind could be undone.
The Winter Soldier’s design pretty much came straight from the comics. What elements did you bring in when designing his look?
“The design brief from the Russos was to try to create someone like Boba Fett, or Darth Vader – they wanted the coolest-looking villain. So how do we create someone that feels dangerous, threatening, and cool, but that kids will still want to be for Halloween? Our job as film concept designers gets a lot easier when the reference material developed is closer to when the movies are being worked on. Some of the characters we’ve worked on were created some sixty or seventy years ago – as opposed to the Winter Soldier, whose design was done in 2005. It’s much easier to take a very current design and try to translate it from the comics. He’s essentially wearing something that already makes sense in a modern context.” – Ryan Meinerding, Head of Visual Development (Art by Maciej Kuciara and Ryan Meinerding)
– The Road to Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War – The Art of the Marvel Cinematic Universe
You know when someone comes at you over and over and over again, and they can’t hear you; they can’t see. You’re pleading with them, you’re trying to figure out how to get through to them and they just won’t accept it. And at some point, you just give in and you go “that’s right… that’s what you wanted.”
No but, HYDRA, a generally covert operation goes full on overt with the attack on the causeway.
I was thinking about post-recovery Bucky trying to get back into the ‘real world’, but everyone recognises him because he can’t hide that damn arm ALL the time.
But before the causeway incident, hardly anyone would have known about the Winter Soldier. He could have spun some story about his prosthetic and people would have had to have shrugged and accepted it. But the causeway was all over the news – AND they sent him out with that arm in full view, something to remember him by. Every man and his dog has now seen that masked man bristling with knives and guns and a very distinctive metal arm.
So now they all know who he is, and that’s gonna make it so much harder to integrate back into normal society.
And I think HYDRA possibly did that on purpose, their intention was to dispose of the Asset once he’d killed that pesky Captain America and Project Insight was launched, but just in case he went rogue again, here’s something for EVERYBODY to recognise him by.
I think this is a point fanfiction authors should take note of, because this is one major difference between the comics and the movies. In my experience, post-CA:TWS fanfiction tends to fall into one of two categories:
1) The Winter Soldier is a ghost story and civilians don’t know who he is–this is true for the comics but not for MCU.
2) When Natasha leaked S.H.I.E.L.D.’s files in MCU she also leaked HYDRA’s files and somehow this means everybody knows everything the audience does about the Winter Soldier, including that he was brainwashed and/or that he’s Bucky Barnes.
However, #2 fails to take into account that there’s no way HYDRA kept all–or even a significant percentage–of its secret files on S.H.I.E.L.D. servers where anyone could stumble across them. Apart from a few S.H.I.E.L.D. mission reports, S.H.I.E.L.D. probably didn’t have any information on the Winter Soldier–they didn’t even know he was working for HYDRA (otherwise the HYDRA reveal after his first appearance wouldn’t have surprised anyone, they’d just gone “oh, the Winter Soldier is here, must be HYDRA again;” presumably, the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who knew he was real believed he was Soviet). All S.H.I.E.L.D. had on the Winter Soldier was an impossibly long casualties list and a big red DO NOT ENGAGE THIS OPERATIVE stamp, and that’s what the public got with the S.H.I.E.L.D. leak.
In MCU, unlike the comics, the Winter Soldier is no longer a ghost story. Everyone has seen him on TV–there were news helicopters hovering over the causeway and people everywhere with smartphones and YouTube accounts, and you can bet that as soon as the media realised Captain America was involved every frame of every video and every pixel of every photo were endlessly scrutinised. They’d have spotted the Winter Soldier’s cybernetic arm and the red star (Fox News: “PUTIN DECLARES WAR ON US,” CNN: “COLD WAR ISN’T OVER”), and post-S.H.I.E.L.D. leak they’d instantly make the connection (Fox News: “SOVIET SUPERSOLDIER CONFIRMED FOR HYDRA TERRORIST,” CBS: “WHERE IS HE NOW? MANHUNT FOR HYDRA’S SUPER ASSASSIN,” PBS: “FBI WARNS PUBLIC: DO NOT APPROACH HYDRA SUSPECT”). Photos and descriptions of the Winter Soldier would be circulated everywhere, everyone would recognise the metal arm, and everyone would be convinced he’s still working for HYDRA and/or the Soviet Union. Cue mass panic every time someone recognises him because TERRORIST.
As for why HYDRA dispelled with the secrecy, though, I think the Winter Soldier was meant to be a distraction. First HYDRA needed to convince the World Security Council to resume the launch of Project Insight postponed by Fury, and they did this by framing Fury’s death as a shady deal gone wrong–meaning they couldn’t make his death look like an accident or natural causes, they needed to make a public display of it. Secondly, HYDRA didn’t know who Fury might have told about their impending takeover. Sending the Winter Soldier to very publicly execute the two main candidates meant 1) Steve and Natasha weren’t working 24/7 to unlock the USB drive because they were too busy not dying, and 2) anyone else Fury might’ve given the information would assume they were next and hide from the Winter Soldier rather than interfere with HYDRA’s plans. While everyone’s attention was on the Winter Soldier, HYDRA could quietly continue working towards launching the helicarriers. And once the helicarriers were in the air, HYDRA would have no further need for secrecy (killing 20 million people is about as unsubtle as you can get). HYDRA sacrificed Zola to distract Steve, and they sacrificed the Winter Soldier to distract everyone else.
lemme talk about how much i love the Winter Soldier theme again.
first: i think its basically what Buckys head sounds like. screaming, metallic sounds. that bit in the beginning – ever been somewhere dead silent and get that loud hum in your ears? it sounds like that to me. its a great way to represent how completely alone and isolated he is. the radio-static with the distorted talking, maybe its memories being completely distorted to the point he cant tell what they’re saying.
BUT this is the gorgeous part of it:
so, its been theorized that the metallic sounding scream is actually Bucky screaming as he falls from the train, but slowed down and stretched out with heavy filtering.
lemme tell you why thats got to be true. first, how beyond perfect?? its taking something thats *Bucky*, something he did while he was still himself. a very human sound, full of fear and shit. its taking that -just like Bucky- and turning it into something inhuman and metallic.
also, that even though he’s been turned into a cold, calculating killing machine, the machine is still screaming.
when you get your first look at Bucky, when he pulls the goggles off, what do you hear? the scream. you see his face a bit on the rooftop scene, but good enough as to tell its Bucky. but there we get a closeup of his eyes, and its sort of like the last time we saw him and the first since then are being tied together.
and ok, holy shit, i tried listening to it on my headphones, closed my eyes to focus…and had to open them because its just such a fucking terrifying song i got freaked xD
but think about that. you’re not suppose to know its Bucky yet. you’re suppose to be afraid of this dude, and the music seriously adds to that. but, in reality, its not the Winter Soldier thats scary, its what was done to him. the thing thats freaking you out is his terrified screams
now, ok, maybe its not that i could be wrong.
…except im not.
listen, listen! play the song. listen very carefully at the tail end of the first scream. you can hear Steve yell “Bucky!”.
and what is so bleeding brilliant is that, even though its heavily filtered too, its much less filtered than the rest. its the only thing that sounds remotely organic and human in the whole thing. basically, the one thing still human in Buckys mind is Steve.
on that note: does anyone think they know what the static/radio sounding voices are saying? i need fresh ears
anyways here the song xD (the thing im sure is Steve is about 0:25 seconds in. verrry faint gotta turn that bitch up)
Update
oh my god.
all this time, i never thought of the most obvious thing: the most distorted, unrecognizable words in Buckys mind…would be his.
@kaleenjackson figured it out. the first bit of speech around 1:20, listen a few times, and im pretty sure the words will click too “im with you till the end of the line”
of course thats in his head, if this is Bucky’s mind, and we know he recognizes it when Steve says it….what if he’s spent years trying to figure out what its saying, and then Steve says it and it clicks. The Russo’s said in the beginning of CW he doesn’t remember much, what if he doesn’t remember saying it, he realizes thats what the words he’d been trying to figure out have been.
look at his reaction with this in mind: distorted words in his head that are messed up and he cant understand what therye saying, probably getting more distorted as time went on, but always there. he knows its this on, huge important thing that he’s been trying to figure out for decades…and Steve just says it, and he’s realizing thats what the words in his head have been
this guy knows what they mean. Bucky might not remember saying them, but its this one, deep personal thing he’s been able to hold onto but never understand. if this guy knows them, he has to be telling the truth.
ily @kaleenjackson, i honestly do. this is just fantastic. i need to lay down ive worn myself out. and should go explain to my roommate why she just heard robot screaming and a bunch other terrifying shit and then ‘HOLY FUCK!!!! HO. LY. FUCK”
also on that note, i think the second bit of speech is “Sargent James Barnes”
it’s not very often that you see a superhero with a little sister. So I think that is probably not going to occur to people that that, it’s not unheard of but it’s an unusual thing, so I think it brings out a different part of his character.[…] Even if it’s not a physical prowess, there is a mental prowess. It’s intelligence and savvy and so all of them present that, but the one that stands out the most actually is Shuri because of the ability, the way a little sister can poke at you and you’re protective of her but she still thinks she’s your mother, like all those different things.
my primary reaction to infinity war is like…. wow. under hypercapitalism we literally can’t imagine any other fables about resource scarcity, huh?
i’m not even talking about only thanos. every time thanos said his plan to kill half the galaxy (because it’s “finite,” lol ok one-semester-of-econ guy) the other characters were like “no!” or “you can’t!” or “that’s madness!” instead of… counter-arguing, or saying anything like “couldn’t you just… double the resources with a snap of your fingers?” obviously, nobody wants thanos to murder all those people, but it’s also as if everyone tacitly accepts his framing of the problem. “i want to kill half the universe because of resource scarcity,” he says, and everyone says “no, that’s too cruel!!” instead of “wait… wait just a fucking second there, paul ryan.” they don’t even have a line like that even when they’re talking amongst themselves, just musing at how twisted his worldview is, that he can only imagine infinite power as an infinite power to kill. no time is spent imagining an alternative.
and i can’t help but think about how we in the quote-unquote “first world” treat the resource consumption of the so-called “developing world.” we, who have enjoyed the pleasures and benefits of fridges and air conditioning and televisions and cars and convenience food and all that shit for generations: we look at the growing energy & plastics consumption of the developing world and go “uh oh, they’re really running the tab up over there, we can’t let this happen, think of the…. trees!!!” we have the audacity to act like people living in poverty in the tropics wanting window fans is selfish and short-sighted for the environment, and meanwhile we use and waste all the energy and resources we can get ahold of, like a continent full of montgomery burnses.
infinity war could have taken thanos’s approach to scarcity somewhere bigger: somewhere that was useful as a parable for our hypocrisy. the way that ragnarok was brave enough to make a parable of empire; the way that black panther could explore diaspora and identity; the way that the winter soldier actually had something to say about the surveillance-terror state. but for all the moving pieces of infinity war, i don’t think it knew where its central ethic rested. certainly, its characters showed the desire to preserve and protect life. but that’s true of any superhero film.
what it comes down to for me, is that it’s not enough for this movie’s theme to be “let’s protect people, because killing people is bad!” or even, sorry steve, “we don’t trade lives.” it’s not enough. thanos basically says, “there’s one bowl of soup and one spoon and two hungry people, so one of them has to die.” so what i needed was someone to openly reject that whole proposition. not just “no, you shouldn’t kill trillions,” but “no, that is fucking ludicrous, i reject that worldview. i reject human life as a brutal competition. group survival, even in the face of scarcity or hardship, is exactly what the fuck we developed culture for.” like, we could use that message. that message, delivered palatably in a blockbuster action movie, could do some good.
but it wasn’t really in there. maybe in little bits, in pieces. maybe. so i’m sure we’re going to have to endure a bunch of “welllll, thanos was a bad guy, but he did have a point about scarcity” metas. because we’re still failing to see how asking other people to die so that the rest can enjoy plenty is itself exactly the fucking problem on this bitch of an earth
i will acknowledge that gamora comes the closest to doing this. gamora comes down on thanos for slaughtering half her planet. but!! but! then thanos gets this horrible line about how the children who grew up after his genocide got to have “full bellies” and the planet’s a “utopia” now. and what does gamora get to say back to that? nothing! she doesn’t get a line after that! she looks angry and grief-stricken, but the writers don’t give her a single fucking thing to say in disagreement!! like, how about: “growing up as a traumatized survivor of genocide isn’t very fucking utopian????” the writers couldn’t imagine that fucking line?
Okay, this warrants some further dissection, and I’ve got @maichan808‘s blessing on this so STEP INTO MY OFFICE. Or as I like to call it:
I can’t honestly say I’ve ever given a tremendous amount of thought to how the fuck Captain America gets dressed in the morning (as opposed to how he gets undressed or is undressed by someone else, ahem), but now that the question’s been posed and @maichan808 suggested I do a full post about it, I went down that rabbit hole in about .5 seconds flat because I’m a librarian and a costume nerd and this is how we do. SO.
Not only is Cap’s uniform pretty fascinating from a costuming perspective (although uniform functionality for Cap as a character and functionality for the costume department are two totally different things, as I’ll mention later), but it’s also useful and interesting to think about for fic or art purposes. Because, let’s face it, fandom spends an incredible amount of time writing about Cap getting naked, and the logistics of… how he actually… does that are kind of cool when you dig into it.
So here’s what we have for Cap’s uniforms spanning from Captain America: The First Avenger to Avengers: Infinity War, and I’ll break each one down from there.
From L to R: Captain America: The First Avenger, Avengers, Thor: The Dark World (which I disregard here), Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Captain America: Civil War, Spider-Man: Homecoming (also disregarded for the purposes of this post, but it’s the same uniform as Avengers 1), and Avengers: Infinity War.
Much like the character, Cap’s uniforms evolve over time and get increasingly more complex and intricate, and there are large and small variations based on who directed the movie. For instance, Joss Whedon’s Cap looks cartoonish and extra spangly in Avengers and even Ultron, to a lesser extent, because Joss is overly married to comics!Cap and very literal in his interpretation of the character, while the Russo Brothers’ Cap is more of a study in how a practical uniform would have to look and function in the Real World. (As someone who’d like to push Whedon out an airlock, I don’t think it’s coincidental that this is an excellent metaphor for where those movies diverge thematically and in terms of Cap’s character development.) Which is why we have lycra and red go-go boots on the one hand, and the gift that is the stealth suit on the other.
The question that was posed originally, and which started this whole rabbit-hole dive, is a) how the fuck does Cap get in and out of this thing (or better yet, have someone remove it FOR him), and b) is it actually a onesie? Because that’s what the hell it looks like, and thanks to Spider-Man: Homecoming, we now know how superhero onesies come off.
As much as I’d love to see that, let’s start with Cap’s uniform in The First Avenger. With bonus Bucky.
There are a greater amount of seemingly useless buckles and straps on this one, but you can just about see how the costume comes together if you look closely. It’s three pieces including the pants (but not counting his gloves, boots, etc.)
As far as I can tell, it looks like his uniform consists of the main part of the top, with white sleeves and a white torso with two red stripes/buckles. The second piece is a set of epaulettes-slash-crop top that fits over his shoulders, buckle twice around his biceps, and then also attach to the red buckles. Then it comes behind his shoulder blades, where you can see it’s a separate piece of fabric. Sorry if this gif is a dick punch, guys.
The grey stripe below the star is where it ends, which you can tell more clearly here based on the slight shadow beneath the stripe.
It’s an interesting approach and actually pretty functional.
Weirdly, his uniform in the promo images looks more seamless, although that could just as easily be Photoshop. a separate top part would be way more breathable and easy to move around in.
No bells and whistles but still gives him extra padding/armor where he needs it around the shoulders, which is pretty appropriate if you’re running around on the Western Front during WWII.
Next is Avengers, which I’m going to spend the least amount of time on because it’s the easiest to dissect from a costume perspective and also the most boring/ridiculous, IMO.
You can see pretty clearly that it’s two pieces, a top and pants, and if we ignore the super stylish decorative zippers for a moment, you can see in the picture to the right where the top zips up, and that the area around the star would fasten with velcro. Much easier to change in and out of, but: yawn.
The Winter Soldier was the first real break we saw from the comic-book style of visuals and costuming for all the characters. (And not just Cap. Black Widow’s uniform becomes more practical-looking and less cartoonish as well, but the difference was most obvious with Steve.)
Not only did he get a costume made of kevlar and not lycra, with strategically padded areas and functional details like cargo pockets, arguably much more practical in the field, but we got the stealth suit, which reduced the spangly factor significantly and made him look like an actual special forces operative. He fits right in with his team, except that he’s in navy blue, not black, and still has the star on his chest and the cowl. There is only the tiniest bit of dark red on the sides, if you look closely. Overall, as the name implies–stealthy. But more importantly, it’s realistic, like Cap might actually be out there in the real world saving people and doing things, and not just as comic book character.
This costume not only set the tone for the movie, IMO, but it introduced a level of design complexity in the MCU that takes some figuring out because it’s not obvious how the suit does up. It does actually look like a onesie until you look more closely. And as a costume nerd, I’m impressed by how well-thought-out and cleverly designed this costume is. Not surprisingly, they went so far as to pattern all his other uniforms off this one, with minor differences depending on the tone of the movie and the director, which I further break down below.
Ultron (Whedon):
Civil War (the Russos):
I love how the Russos’ vision of cap is so restrained, practical, and realistic while still capturing the iconic costume/image–no loud colours, not even the white stripes, but it’s still obviously Cap and representing everything he stands for. Whereas with Ultron Cap, it’s like Whedon can’t help himself, putting him back in spangly colours and random red-and-white accents that take the tone the Russos painstakingly created in Winter Soldier and sends it eighteen steps backwards. Kind of like Ultron did as a movie overall.
I’ll include a shot of Cap in Avengers: Infinity War too, but it’s important to note that it’s the same suit he wore in Civil War, just dirty, beat to all hell, and with the star ripped off. Because the costume designers were clever enough to factor in that Steve probably wouldn’t be picking up an edgy new uniform as an internationally wanted fugitive. But then I started thinking about what state of mind Cap would have had to be in to claw the fucking star off his uniform, and then I had to go sit quietly by myself for a few minutes.
In terms of how the costumes are constructed in Ultron, Civil War, and Infinity War, they’re very similar. To address the most basic thing first: no, it’s not a onesie. It’s less obvious in the movies, and I’ll touch on why in a minute, but from behind-the-scenes pics, we can see there are two distinct pieces they strategically hide with a belt.
Let’s start with the jacket.
In this picture, you can see fairly clearly that the jacket isn’t one seamless piece, like a shirt. It wouldn’t be practical with this stiff kevlar, and take it from someone who used to have to wear head-to-toe kevlar as a competitive fencer: that shit can be stiff as hell, and Cap’s uniform is also padded to make getting dressed and undressed extra difficult while protecting him from minor inconveniences like bullets and people trying to kill his ass. At the neck there are symmetrical sections that come forward over his shoulders and fasten on either side of his neck and chest, likely with velcro. (Can we also appreciate the attention to detail in adding a tag with ROGERS below the shoulder? In case anyone forgets who the suit belongs to? I’ve watched TWS eleventy billion times and never noticed this.)
This shot from IW shows that there is a piece that comes up over the backs of his shoulders, although it’s a little difficult to distinguish from his harness.
And this shot from Civil War clearly shows there’s a place where the jacket separates and fastens down, probably also with velcro.
What I imagine is that Cap’s uniform jacket probably goes on a bit like a straitjacket (with the arms free, obviously), where he’d stick his arms into it from behind and then do it up the back and over the shoulders.
What I think is most hilarious about this is he’d probably need help getting in and out of that thing, which I’ll let your imaginations run wild with at your discretion.
Now for the pants. Steve does appear half in uniform in a couple different places in the films–ironically both in Whedon’s Avengers. The first in Avengers 1 where he’s sitting at a conference table wearing a running shirt, and we can extrapolate from there that he’s probably wearing pants underneath the table. Probably.
The other time is in AoU, when he’s at Avengers Tower and just walking around in his uniform pants and, presumably, the undershirt he wears under his tac jacket.
This isn’t the exact shirt he wears at Old McBarton’s farm in the movie–that one is more blue–but clearly this style is his preference because he’s a smedium until death it shows up multiple times in the movies.
That one’s for science.
The one other point I’ll make here is that it’s important to distinguish between what is considered practical for Cap as a character, and what is considered practical for the costume departments. For Cap as a character, an athletic undershirt, tactical jacket, pants, and belt (plus the harness, gauntlets, gloves, boots, etc.) are what would be considered practical to keep him intact in the field and make it easy to get dressed and undressed without a team of stylists.
But for the costume departments, they have other considerations, like what will look the best and create the smoothest lines while still being easy to move in. Which is how we end up in somewhat more wacky territory like that of the belly window. We all remember the belly window, right? If not, let me remind you.
This is where I go and contradict myself, because that? That is a belly-windowed onesie with a jacket that goes over top. Chris Evans on set wears a onesie; Captain America does not. (Again… probably.)
Here’s another because it totally looks like Cevans is very self-conscious of said belly window and trying to cover it up. Not that I blame him.
The whole point of this is because a onesie with lots of mesh and spandex creates smooth lines under a jacket and won’t show gaps when he’s moving around and doing lots of stunts. Realistically, Cap’s uniform should show tons of gaps and ride up awkwardly and move around like crazy because it’s two separate pieces, but that’s Hollywood magic for you. Costume designers have to think of these things and concede the point that Cap likely would be difficult to take seriously in a fight if he were flashing his midriff all the time. Just goes to show what they know, because blinding people with his abs would probably come in handy now and then.
So if you’re a writer or a fan artist or just a very curious individual who wants to know how Cap would get dressed or undressed, there you have it. This was a super long post, but these are things we as serious researchers need to know in the interest of attention to detail and accuracy.
But if you take away nothing else, just remember: that jacket is super awkward fastening up from behind, so Cap? He’s probably gonna need you to have someone give him a hand with that. Who you elect for the job is entirely up to yourself, but don’t leave the guy hanging.
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