Heroes and the Creation of Myth: Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Superheroes occupy a nearly-unique position in the history of human character creation. They are creatures of myth, but at the same time people with the concerns of human beings, even when they are themselves alien. This puts them in a position to not only be the subjects of myth, but to interact with and in some cases control the creation of the mythology which surrounds them.

In this series I set out to analyze the different ways heroes participate in the creation of their own mythology. I've decided to begin with the largest single continuity ever attempted in film, the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In the time leading up to the release of The Avengers: Infinity War I'm going to watch or rewatch the eighteen existing MCU films in order to look at them specifically from this perspective. Today I'm looking at Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

"On your left." That's the running gag between Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson throughout this film, but I feel like it's also the Captain America team lapping the rest of the MCU. The Iron Man franchise has kind of run its course, and at this time Robert Downey Jr. was doubtful about continuing in the role. Thor just failed to level up in his second movie. Hulk was/is tied up in film rights limbo. It's time for Steve Rogers to take a leading role in more than just his own movie. It's time for Captain America to drive the mythology of the universe.

And we get it from the very beginning, as Steve's team and Black Widow head out to recapture a S.H.I.E.L.D. naval vessel that has been taken by hijackers. Steve and Natasha aren't the most natural teammates, and conflict between them soon emerges when Natasha abandons her role in the team's mission in order to pursue a secret intelligence directive from Nick Fury. Captain America's ideas about loyalty and honor aren't well-suited for intelligence work in the first place, and they certainly don't hold with abandoning one's comrades in the middle of a mission. Ten minutes into the movie he's already in conflict with Natasha, and by proxy Fury, his closest allies.

Fury attempts to address this conflict by introducing Steve to his top-secret dramatic expansion of the surveillance state. Which, of all stupid things, is the most Nick Fury stupid thing in the whole universe. "I'm a realist," he says, which I'm sure is why you thought to show all this authoritarian technology to a man who is basically the embodiment of Constitutional rights. He may think of himself that way, but this is still the Fury from the end of The Avengers, the one who believes in his vision of superheroes far more than any practical plan.

Rogers, not knowing how to resolve his conflict between loyalty to the people's rights and loyalty to S.H.I.E.L.D., goes incognito to his own Smithsonian exhibit in a blue jacket and cap, colors I'm sure no one imagines him in. Good job, Steve. But I think it's great that Steve not only has a Smithsonian exhibit but goes there to contemplate whenever he has doubts about his identity and his place in the modern world. He's never been quite comfortable with the mythic aspect of Captain America, and has to immerse himself in its ideological center in order to integrate it with his own conception of self.

While the Captain is on his mission of personal understanding, we're introduced to Fury's political partner, Alexander Pierce. Where Fury has become a visionary, Pierce is ruthlessly practical, ready to do anything necessary to get the helicarriers from Project Insight operational and surveilling the entire world.

I can't be the only one who sees Redford's portrayal here as a direct descendant of his character from Sneakers, can I? Redford has a lot of different characters, but Pierce's language and mannerisms are spot on for Martin Bishop's. We just had Ben Kingsley in Iron Man 3, so I feel like they owe me the rest of the cast. Poitier and Aykroyd aren't working anymore and Phoenix is dead, but I really want to see David Strathairn and Mary McDonnell in the MCU. I suppose that will happen when they hire John Sayles to direct one, which is to say, in my dreams.

It's amazing how often the next step after "anything necessary" is trying to kill your boss. After his meeting with Rogers, Fury expresses doubts of his own about Project Insight, and not long after his car is being riddled with gunfire of various shapes and calibers, not to mention a fancy battering ram. Whatever else you might say about Pierce, he's efficient, and he doesn't delay his decisions.

Desperately injured, Fury seeks out Rogers. Before being shot again by the mysterious Winter Soldier, he tells Steve not to trust anyone, apparently forgetting that Captain America is approximately as good at being untrusting as he is at costume design. Fury's decision-making remains distorted by his vision of the Avengers.

Steve's version of not trusting anyone is to meet with Pierce and tell him not quite face out that he doesn't trust him. But rather than let the string play out, let the naturally-trusting Rogers start to doubt himself, Pierce tries to have Captain America killed on his way out of the building. Once again he's lacking neither boldness nor quick decision-making. It doesn't work out for him, though, because of the whole Captain America thing.

Steve escapes, meets up with Natasha, collects the data Fury was keeping from S.H.I.E.L.D., and they have a bunch of actiony, mildly amusing chase scenes before making their way to the Army camp where Steve was originally trained, and S.H.I.E.L.D. was founded, and discovering an ancient computer lab in the basement.

I have to digress for a minute here, because Natasha makes a WarGames joke, then stops to explain it to Steve, who says he's seen it. I buy that somebody showed it to Steve, but who pulled Black Widow aside and made her watch WarGames? Even if she had been alive for it - and Scarlett Johansson was born a year after it came out - she spent her entire early life in a region of the world that missed a few decades of American culture, including the early 1980s. So someone, at some time after she started working for S.H.I.E.L.D., had to think it was a good idea to sit Natasha Romanoff, former Russian super-spy, down to watch Matthew Broderick nearly stumble his way into a global thermonuclear war. I'm fascinated by this thought. Who could it be?

Also, I expect she probably has a thing for Professor Falken.

Anyway, speaking of suicidal mad scientists, they discover that the computer is holding the mind of Hydra scientist Arnie Zola, who S.H.I.E.L.D. recruited after the war in a move reminiscent of the way the US government recruited Wernher von Braun and other top Nazi minds. Zola reveals that he suborned S.H.I.E.L.D. from within, turning it into a duck blind from which Hydra can hunt all the people in the world who could prevent them from ultimate control. And they plan to do this all at once using Project Insight. Zola's monologue is just a distraction for Pierce to blow up the facility with a missile, which again fails to kill Steve, because, Captain America. Pierce makes quick decisions but he doesn't seem to learn from them.

This self-immolation doesn't feel like the Zola we met in the first movie, who isn't at all in a hurry to martyr himself for Hydra. I suspect we're going to find out that wasn't the only version of him out there.

We're more than halfway through the movie, but finally the conflict has been mostly established. Captain America, with the help of Black Widow, has to defeat Hydra, which has hidden itself within S.HI.E.L.D. And in order to do that, they decide to trust some guy Steve had a brief conversation with while jogging on the National Mall. Because Captain America is excellent at this "don't trust anyone" thing. Conveniently he's just been waiting around to be a superhero himself, he just needs them to break into a secure facility to get his wings.

OK, now that we know most of what's going on, where are we on the myth? Hydra's built a few pretty good ones - S.H.I.E.L.D., the preeminence of national security, the credibility of Pierce - and one hasty one, the betrayal of Captain America, which is going to have a hard time holding up once people start asking questions like who were all those guys dressed as cops shooting at Nick Fury in the middle of rush hour traffic. The Captain doesn't seem to care much about the idea that S.H.I.E.L.D. and the public think he's betrayed his country, because he knows he hasn't. But at the same time he's completely failing to adjust to thinking like a spy. Fortunately for him the next plan calls for direct action. Wilson is itching to be Falcon again, but it's hard to tell if he's given any thought to what it will mean to his life when he isn't flying. Black Widow is just ready to go kill some Hydra guys.

Or at least throw them off of roofs. Agent Sitwell is the first Hydra agent to show any awareness of the myth of Captain America, correctly judging that Rogers won't kill him, no matter what he's done. So throwing him off the roof is Natasha's job. (And saving him so he can talk is Falcon's.)

They meet up with Fury, who has a plan to stop the Insight helicarriers that came straight from Real Genius, because this movie is clearly a homage to all my favorite late-20th-century nerd movies, and somewhere there's been a S.H.I.E.L.D. movie night that I wish I could be a fly on the wall at.

But the plan once they get inside S.H.I.E.L.D. is all Captain America. When you tell Steve Rogers not to trust anyone, he falls back on the one thing he always knows is trustworthy: the American people. He reveals the existence of Hydra to everyone at S.H.I.E.L.D.; Black Widow releases all of the classified data S.H.I.E.L.D. has, Hydra and otherwise, to the public internet. Blowing things up is great, but Captain America fights darkness by shining a light, one that's sure to have repercussions throughout the world.

Then they get to blow some things up for dessert.

Previous entries in this series:
Part 1: Iron Man (2008)
Part 2: The Incredible Hulk (2008)
Part 3: Iron Man 2 (2010)
Part 4: Thor (2011)
Part 5: Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
Part 6: The Avengers (2012)
Part 7: Iron Man 3 (2013)
Part 8: Thor: The Dark World (2013)

_{All images in this post are from Captain America: The Winter Soldier, copyright 2014 Marvel, used in this post under Fair Use: Criticism. Provided courtesy of Movie-Screencaps.com}