Kyle Olson:
Welcome back to the Marvel Movie Minute, a weekly podcast where we disassemble a film from the Marvel Cinematic Universe into five-minute segments and then examine in exhaustive and occasionally hilarious detail. I’m Kyle Olson from the Craft and Chaos Podcast.
Pete Wright:
And I’m Pete Wright, also from the Craft and Chaos Podcast.
Kyle Olson:
Rob and Matthew will not be joining us today as they are working on their YouTube video essays. Matthew’s is entitled “Padme Was Perfect: A Seven-Hour Defense of Star Wars Space Angel.” While Rob is working on “Fallen Woman: Is Black Widow the Mary Magdalene of the MCU?” Video editing takes a lot of time, so you just gotta be with Pete today.
Pete Wright:
It really does.
Kyle Olson:
So today we’ll be succeeding on our insight checks as we examine minutes 16 through 20 of Captain America: The Winter Soldier from 2014, directed by the Russo Brothers. We find Steve and his pal Nick standing together at the railing, gazing out into the future. It might be romantic, if not for the three gigantic war machines that fill their field of view.
Pete Wright:
It starts softly, and it starts as you and Matthew ended last week, talking about how Nick’s granddad used to work in an elevator just like this, in a building full of white people, and it was a kinder time. It was a gentler time. Until — cut to this minute — oh, by the way, granddad carried a gun.
Kyle Olson:
And now we get to see Nick’s gun, I guess.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Nick’s gun.
Kyle Olson:
So he’s now opening his lunch bag and showing us what he’s been carrying this whole time.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
I know you edit the show, so you would have heard last episode. What are your thoughts about why Nick is showing this to Cap now, before we get into their conversation? What do you think is going through Nick’s head as they’re riding that elevator down and going out here?
Pete Wright:
I think I’m some variant of where you two landed last week, which is right in the realm of: this is gonna happen. And Nick’s confidence that this thing is gonna happen is pretty high — though we’ll find out not a hundred percent, but pretty high. And I think there’s just a bit of: I’ve gotta get this guy on my train. I’ve gotta get Captain America on the same train that I am, or there might be additional complications. I think this was a way for him to open the door to something that Cap cannot — according to Nick’s Cap-canon — get in the way of. He can’t impede.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
And I think this is a way to try and get him on his side.
Kyle Olson:
It’s interesting the tack he takes, where he tries to use: hey, you were a war guy. We could have stopped the war if we’d had these then.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, right.
Kyle Olson:
Wouldn’t that have been nice, buddy?
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
But before we even get into the conversation, first we have about a minute of what I would describe as military porn. They really take — I think about 45 seconds of the first minute — and it’s just: whoa, look at these guns.
Pete Wright:
Look at these guns.
Kyle Olson:
Look at these engines. It really is — with big patriotic music. It’s very bombastic: look at how cool these things are. I guess we’re supposed to be in Nick’s head at that point — whoa, American militarism on display.
Pete Wright:
But wait a minute. That paints Nick as an uber-patriot. And that’s one of the things I’ve always struggled with a little bit in the MCU adaptation of Nick Fury — which is: he’s an uber-spy.
Kyle Olson:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
He is an uber-expert in espionage and secrets, and his bombast, his patriotism, has never really been fully on display. To my eye, this is the first time we’ve seen Nick stand up loud and proud and say, look at our military machine. Doesn’t that strike you as a bit of a new turn for Nick?
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, definitely. Especially something so overt. Even if we go by what we’ve known before and what’s coming afterwards — and I hate to talk about it, but the events before Secret Invasion and Captain Marvel — we know Nick knows a lot more than just the Chitauri out there.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
He’s aware of all these things. But everything he’s done has been clandestine. That’s the spymaster, like you’re saying.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
And now to have it be like: and now we’re gonna roll out three gigantic war machines that are gonna kill people from orbit. It does seem a little bit like, is this a Nick plan, or is he having to go along with this?
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
As I watched these minutes and we were examining them, I was kind of like, yeah, something about this doesn’t really seem very Nick Fury.
Pete Wright:
Taking your words — take everything we know about Nick, what comes after and what came before — does it even seem like he should be in charge of this project?
Kyle Olson:
Right. Maybe gathering the intel on who the targets are, but not the idea of rolling out these death dealers.
Pete Wright:
Yes. Yeah. Now, on the death dealers themselves — they’re pretty cool.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. I’ve always loved the Helicarrier as a concept, even just from the ridiculous —
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
— Nick Fury seventies thing of this gigantic aircraft carrier flying through the sky.
Pete Wright:
Which was so dumb.
Kyle Olson:
And then they have — yeah, it’s so ridiculous.
Pete Wright:
The original Helicarrier was so dumb.
Kyle Olson:
But it’s the era. It was a pretty wild time in Marvel. As they’re showing the guns and everything, we fly over the deck and see all the Quinjets. I know you guys talked a lot about Quinjets in Avengers.
Pete Wright:
We absolutely did, and I guess we talked about the Quinjet in the opening shot of this movie too. But that is my favorite.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
I have a weird — I don’t know, maybe it’s a fetish, maybe it’s an action movie fetish — of watching flying things put on top of other flying things.
Kyle Olson:
Can you give me like two more examples of that?
Pete Wright:
No, I can’t. This is the one.
Kyle Olson:
Okay.
Pete Wright:
This is all it is. And it became a fetish.
Kyle Olson:
All right.
Pete Wright:
I love that shot. It’s like a two-and-a-half second shot of a Quinjet on a crane being loaded on top of the Helicarrier, and I am here for it. I don’t know why. I love it. It scratches something in my brain. Flying things on other flying things. Amazing.
Kyle Olson:
I did get a little Independence Day vibe, seeing all of these flying ships together.
Pete Wright:
Yep.
Kyle Olson:
The Quinjet’s first appearance was in Avengers #61 from December of 1968. The Avengers lineup was kind of unique at that point. Do you have any idea who the Avengers were in 1968?
Pete Wright:
I could just start guessing random Sixties Avengers. I think I’d probably land somewhere in the ballpark — but who was it?
Kyle Olson:
You probably would. In that issue, the Avengers were Hawkeye, Vision, Black Panther, Black Knight, and Doctor Strange.
Pete Wright:
Okay. I think I could have gotten four out of five.
Kyle Olson:
Black Knight — the one that may or may not be in the MCU. It kind of goes by how the reception from Eternals went — they kind of teased him. But will Kit Harington ever get to wield the Black Blade?
Pete Wright:
Arguably the best part of Eternals was the post-credit scene.
Kyle Olson:
We don’t know. Or you hear the voice of Blade, and here it is years later, still waiting for him to show up.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Oh my goodness. So that’s the Quinjet, that’s the era of Avengers.
Kyle Olson:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
Do we know where the Quinjet name comes from?
Kyle Olson:
I think because it can move in five really different directions, but I’m not actually sure what the thing is.
Pete Wright:
Okay.
Kyle Olson:
So when it gets to the conversation, we find out what the mission of the Lemurian Star was, which was to launch the satellites that will form the backbone of Project Insight.
Pete Wright:
Right.
Kyle Olson:
Those are the things that will be doing the intel gathering of the targets for these ships, which are the weapons. So those are the scopes — that’s what was on the Lemurian Star. Why Batroc’s people wanted it, we still don’t really know. But we know that was their top secret mission and that it had succeeded.
Pete Wright:
Right. Well, especially because everybody is Hydra at this point.
Kyle Olson:
Yes, right.
Pete Wright:
Even SHIELD is Hydra. Why is Hydra stealing plans from Hydra with Hydra? We’re not gonna probe that because it’s Hydra all the way down.
Kyle Olson:
Right.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
They do a little discussion of other things too as they’re with the Quinjets. They talk about the repulsor engines, and Nick says, oh, they don’t have to land, they don’t have to refuel — repulsor engines.
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Kyle Olson:
And Captain America just says, “Stark.”
Pete Wright:
Yeah. He helped.
Kyle Olson:
And I like the fact that Nick says, oh yeah, he got a close look at them and had some design modifications. And of course that’s referring to the fact that when Tony got caught in one of the engines in The Avengers and bounced around like a pinball.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, he had some ideas. It does imply — or does it imply to you — that Stark was actually involved in the construction of these Helicarriers? Do you think he was compartmentalized out in some way, or that he was in on the secret?
Kyle Olson:
I think — knowing his “build a suit of armor around the world” idea that’s coming down the line here pretty soon — it seems he would not have a problem being a military contractor again in terms of getting engines for it. I don’t know that he knew they were going to be used for Project Insight. I think he probably just thought he was improving on the design for the next Helicarrier after the last one didn’t make it out intact. He might not have known that part of it.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
So I don’t think those are Stark guns or Stark targeting systems.
Pete Wright:
That was my next question. Do you think the rest of this equipment is Stark?
Kyle Olson:
No. I don’t. I assumed that Nick, being Nick, probably got a bunch of contractors to work on individual pieces — they didn’t know what they were doing. Only him and probably Alexander Pierce, and of course some other people, knew what they were really being used for.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
Only he saw the full blueprints. They just saw the individual pieces. It’s the hiring-blind-men-to-make-an-elephant thing. No, I think I took that metaphor too far.
Pete Wright:
Yes, that broke in your capable hands. It does beg the question — we often talk about: when there is a globe-threatening catastrophe imminent, why is there only one superhero available? Well, the same thing goes for this.
Kyle Olson:
Right.
Pete Wright:
When there is globe-threatening investment and infrastructure, everything we know about Stark is that they’re involved in every part of it. So is it that Nick wouldn’t trust Tony? To my mind, it gives even greater reason for Steve and Tony to further develop their rift. But that’s me arm-chairing. They don’t ever really talk about it.
Kyle Olson:
No, but you can see it kind of starting here.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
We know from Iron Man 2 and 3 that Stark Industries is no longer making weapons. But engines aren’t weapons.
Pete Wright:
Right. Engines aren’t weapons.
Kyle Olson:
And was the Quinjet a Stark design? Were they making those? Because they’re just jets. I mean, they have giant chain guns on the bottom of them that could shoot a god, but — they’re just very versatile.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, very versatile. Those guns — that is another thing you just sort of have to wrap your head around during the pageantry porn. Because as they do that pull away from the guns, it’s absurd — the number of guns and the size of the guns.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
It feels like something much more out of, maybe, a Guardians design — a lot of those lines come from Guardians designs. And something that Taika Waititi definitely took as influence for a lot of the weapons that end up being used, the ray weapons.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. And especially because — I don’t know much about guns and war, but I’ve read a lot of sci-fi — I’m assuming that because these are sort of like rail guns with giant barrels, the whole thing is: we can eliminate a thousand targets an hour. But when you see it later on, it’s individuals. So what are they firing from almost orbit that can hit one person?
Pete Wright:
Frozen peas.
Kyle Olson:
At escape velocity, like a ball bearing would do a lot of damage. It’s the whole penny-off-the-top-of-the-Empire-State-Building thing.
Pete Wright:
Right. Just drop it.
Kyle Olson:
Right, exactly.
Pete Wright:
Over-engineering — you can never really over-engineer, is what I’ve heard.
Kyle Olson:
If you’re gonna go big, go big. Big guns.
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Kyle Olson:
But as you’re saying, this is setting the stakes. All we have here is: here is the new problem. Here’s what Steve has to contend with.
Pete Wright:
Well, they do make a narrative statement. It has to be this big in order for Cap to have the reaction that he does over the course of the next act.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, because Nick essentially lays out his plan and says: we’re gonna put these in orbit, we’re gonna pick the individual targets, we’re gonna wipe them all out, they’ll never even know it’s coming. It’s gonna be this massive plan. And all of a sudden — I don’t know what reaction he thought he’d get from Steve, but it’s not favorable. A couple of lines I wrote down: Steve says, “I thought the punishment came after the crime.”
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
And Nick says, “We can’t afford to wait that long.” Ooh.
Pete Wright:
Nick really pretty much should have just said: did you see Minority Report? It was a great movie, and that’ll get you up to speed. And it didn’t end well. Stop after about 30 minutes. You’ll get it.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. He just saw the trailer and he’s like, that’s it, guys. Next morning, cancel everything else.
Pete Wright:
That’s it. Get out your little book. Add that to your list.
Kyle Olson:
This is what we’re working on now.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. It gives us our first real ideological break between Steve and Nick.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
We’ve had little breaks, but those little breaks usually stem from “man out of time” stuff.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
This — Steve’s caught up. He’s caught up enough to know right from wrong and to remember right from wrong. And Nick is executing in the wrong.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. In Avengers his whole thing was he didn’t want to come back to the fight.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
He did his war, he did his time, lost everything — all the guys from my barbershop quartet are dead. That was a joke from earlier in this movie, but also, yeah, they are. So then having joined the Avengers and having Nick sort of running the show, he’s like, oh, I found my place again. And now he’s in a very different place.
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Kyle Olson:
Asked to do things that probably aren’t quite as stars-and-stripesy as he hoped. But then Nick tries to turn this around, being like —
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
— hey, you were in a war. And he mentions the stuff Steve did in the SSR. The SSR is the Strategic Scientific Reserve. According to the wiki, it’s a top secret allied intelligence agency during World War II, formed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Project Rebirth comes in under SSR. That’s Agent Carter’s world — which we’re going to talk about towards the end. That was all under SSR. And somewhere along the line it became SHIELD, or sort of moved into SHIELD. We see a little of that later on in this movie, but that whole era is a little bit gray.
Pete Wright:
Yes, mostly because Agent Carter was canceled too soon.
Kyle Olson:
Yes. Far too soon.
Pete Wright:
But that’s where it comes in pretty heavily.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Was Project Insight part of a program in the comics — part of a Winter Soldier run or a sixties run — or was this all MCU?
Kyle Olson:
As far as I know, this is a complete movie invention. This is all something that Marcus and McFeely came up with. There’s not — there are possibly some analogues, possibly something similar, but nothing on this scale where the government is literally funding its own destruction, even though they don’t know it.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. It demonstrates, I think, just how well MCU leadership was able to adapt to a story that feels comic-resonant and also timeless and also current. All of those things play very well. So that’s our quiz. Anything else on the Helicarriers we want to drool over?
Kyle Olson:
We’ll be seeing them again, so whatever we don’t get here, we’ll get there.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
They’re setting the stakes. Here is the new problem. Here’s what Steve has to contend with.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
And then we get one of his best lines in this — I think they use it in every trailer: “This isn’t freedom. This is fear.”
Pete Wright:
Yeah, it’s good.
Kyle Olson:
Holding a gun to the world’s head. Marcus and McFeely.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
When they get into it, they get into it. It kind of blows my mind when you think of some of the other later Marvel stuff — they were really allowed to dig in here in a way we really hadn’t seen before, to really get into the dirt.
Pete Wright:
Oh yeah.
Kyle Olson:
I mean, obviously you could go much further with this, but considering the fact that this is a superhero movie about a guy who wears the American flag —
Pete Wright:
They’re poking a lot of holes.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
And ending on — or beginning this sequence as he turns around — that reveal. “Mine’s a little bit bigger than a .22, though.”
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, that’s right.
Pete Wright:
What a stellar line.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. And the two of them acting the hell out of it too. Central conflict set up right here, mid-Minute 17. We now know the stakes and what’s happening. And then we’re sort of in Cap’s head as he leaves. So as Minute 18 starts, he’s riding out on his Harley-Davidson Softail Breakout.
Pete Wright:
Oh.
Kyle Olson:
Even the people at the internet automobile database couldn’t exactly figure out which specific model that was, but that’s as close as it got.
Pete Wright:
So these five minutes — I feel like you and I were gifted with the real sweet and the salt.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
We have the great Project Insight reveal.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
And then we go down, oh yes, memory lane.
Kyle Olson:
I actually don’t think it’s a letdown at all.
Pete Wright:
Really?
Kyle Olson:
I think it works because we now know Cap has to contend with the future. He’s just been shown — this is happening. He’s just one guy. Here’s what’s gonna happen. You’ve been running around and punching spies and fighting Batroc, but all that’s over. Now we’re gonna nuke people from orbit. We’re gonna send shells down and just wipe them out — you won’t even have to get your hands dirty — and we’ll do it without trials, without any due process, just because we say so, they get to disappear. And now he has to contend with the fact that this is the future.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
So what does he do? He goes to the past.
Pete Wright:
Visits the past. So you think his visit to the museum is a salve for his bruised sense of the future?
Kyle Olson:
I do. Because he’s going back to what is familiar to him. He really can’t go see old friends.
Pete Wright:
Okay.
Kyle Olson:
So the closest he can get is watching pictures and videos.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. His pictures.
Kyle Olson:
There’s some really nice foreshadowing they put into this that I didn’t even notice until you start digging into it. I didn’t realize how important this part was — reminding people and setting up stuff for the future.
Pete Wright:
It certainly is, for sure. I don’t dispute that. But I do think narratively it throws the brakes on the pacing of the film right here, because I don’t think most people watching the movie are aware of all the little diamonds of foreshadowing in these couple of minutes.
Kyle Olson:
I think you also have to take your medicine a little bit. Because this is the price of being part of a franchise — you can’t assume everyone has seen everything. So we’re about to get into, I don’t know, four minutes of: in case you didn’t watch Captain America: The First Avenger, here’s some stuff you’re gonna need to know to make it matter.
Pete Wright:
Yes. Let me introduce you to the Howling Commandos slowly.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, exactly. Right.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
So Cap is driving over to the Smithsonian Institution National Air and Space Museum.
Pete Wright:
Where do you want to begin?
Kyle Olson:
We know that because there’s a very handy voiceover that says, “Welcome to the Smithsonian.” I love when it’s subtle like that — they just show a bunch of stuff and Cap is walking and you hear a voiceover: “Welcome to the Smithsonian.” They don’t have a big sign that says “Smithsonian” that they slowly pan over and show Steve. It’s a nice way of doing it. We were talking on another show about really bad versions of this — like in Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, where they’re like, “torpedo tube” — when some executive is like, I don’t know what that is, and then they just have to add a really clunky line of dialogue to tell you what it is.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. The ADR parade.
Kyle Olson:
Exactly. I love this one — they told us without telling us. Now, this isn’t actually the Smithsonian. This is the Western Reserve Historical Society History Center in Cleveland, like most of the stuff in this film. And in case you want to go, active military get free admission.
Pete Wright:
Step right up.
Kyle Olson:
Exactly. As the camera pans around, the first thing we see is the Spirit of St. Louis. Now this is a replica, but the one in the actual Smithsonian is the one that Charles Lindbergh flew. He was the first solo non-stop transatlantic pilot, flying from Long Island, New York, to Paris, France. It lasted 33 hours and 30 minutes. I thought it was interesting because they show that as a piece of the past and cut to Cap. And I was thinking — I did the math — I think Cap could have seen Charles Lindbergh take off.
Pete Wright:
Really?
Kyle Olson:
Because according to the lore, Steve Rogers was born on July 4th, 1918. Charles Lindbergh flew in 1927. So Cap would have been nine.
Pete Wright:
Nine years old.
Kyle Olson:
And it’s Long Island. It’s not that far from Brooklyn. He and his mom could have gone over and watched Lindbergh take off. So they put it in there as a famous Smithsonian piece, but it really could be a direct connection to Cap.
Pete Wright:
That’s really interesting. That’s one I did not expect to learn from you today.
Kyle Olson:
As Cap goes in, we discover that there’s a giant Captain America exhibit. It’s called “Captain America: The Living Legend and Symbol of Courage.” There’s a quote from President Matthew Ellis on there, which — if you watched Iron Man 3, you know there’s been a lot of Matthew Ellis.
Pete Wright:
Mm-hmm.
Kyle Olson:
This is where I want to throw to you — because for our younger listeners, people who might not know: tell us why it’s really cool that the voiceover is being done by Gary Sinise.
Pete Wright:
Well, I don’t know exactly what you’re referring to, but it could be Forrest Gump. What is the Easter egg you want me to pull out here?
Kyle Olson:
I’m honestly saying — I think a lot of people don’t know who Gary Sinise is or why, as soon as he started talking, this whole generation went, oh.
Pete Wright:
Oh. No, his voice is iconic. He has been used in many Ken Burns documentaries. He is the slow-spoken voiceover of history. I think that is his first and greatest value in a museum exhibit. It is so natural. But he’s also a major advocate for fallen soldiers. He’s raised a ton of money for service members. He has played roles that absolutely lean on exactly his ideology and tell the stories of the people who are clearly most important to him. I bring up Forrest Gump, but you could say the same thing about Ken Mattingly in Apollo 13.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright:
You could say the same thing about George Milton in Of Mice and Men, right? Trying to understand humanity. And then they give that voice — a voice that is one of searching for the soul of humanity — to Gary Sinise in a museum exhibit about Captain America. It’s pretty special.
Kyle Olson:
See, you didn’t even know I was going to ask you that.
Pete Wright:
No.
Kyle Olson:
And then you were kind of like, I don’t know — and then you delivered this beautiful thing. That’s exactly what I was looking for.
Pete Wright:
Was that what you were looking for? Okay. I stand down. I love Gary Sinise. I’m a stan. It’s okay.
Kyle Olson:
And it’s also interesting to think that Gary Sinise is an actor in the MCU.
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Kyle Olson:
It’s that weird thing of like, okay, so if he’s there — does Tom Hanks exist too? You start going down the line and then you sort of hit somebody who is in Star Wars. We know Star Wars exists — like, do they know who Mace Windu is? And do they say, that looks like Nick Fury? I mean, yeah, well —
Pete Wright:
Do they know it’s the same guy with the purple lightsaber?
Kyle Olson:
We don’t know. Yeah, right, exactly.
Pete Wright:
I don’t know.
Kyle Olson:
You have to wonder a little bit.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
But as Cap is walking in, we see he’s wearing the Marvel disguise — the trademark ball cap —
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
— which immediately makes it so 90% of people don’t notice who he is.
Pete Wright:
Except —
Kyle Olson:
Except we have a kid wearing a Captain America shirt who instantly clocks him. This is Dante Rosalino. He is the nephew of the Russo Brothers. They brought him in specifically just to do that thing. And Cap gives him a little shush, like: yes, it’s me, but don’t make a thing of it.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Do we see Dante in anything else? I didn’t look up his IMDb.
Kyle Olson:
No, this was it, as far as I know. I think it was just like: hey, I’m gonna put my nephew in here to do this thing. And wherever he is, I hope he is happy in his career and has a significant role here in the MCU as someone who is the only person we see actively see through the Marvel disguise — as will be used many times over the course of even this movie.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
You put the ball cap on and suddenly you’re nearly anonymous. It’s the invisibility cloak of the MCU.
Pete Wright:
I love it so much.
Kyle Olson:
As Cap walks by, we see a giant mural done by Ryan Meinerding. He was an illustrator on Iron Man, he became the head of visual development with Iron Man 3, and he is still the head of visual development for all of Marvel. So anything about the look of Marvel has to go through him. He does all his stuff digitally, but he had to teach himself how to make it look painted. So he created that entire image and then had to go back in and add brush strokes and lines and things.
Pete Wright:
He did a great job. It looks really good.
Kyle Olson:
He really did. I hope that’s a real thing somewhere — like if you go to the Marvel offices, in the basement somewhere, there’s one wall that’s just —
Pete Wright:
There better be a mural. It’s really good.
Kyle Olson:
Just Cap’s head.
Pete Wright:
I do love — as he’s giving Dante the shush sign — the quote on the wall right behind him.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Describing: “While on tour in Azzano, Italy, Rogers saved 163 lives, including that of his best friend, Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes.” Welcome to The Winter Soldier.
Kyle Olson:
Right, exactly. And I had totally forgotten that was there. Obviously Chris Evans is magnetic, so you’re watching him do his little thing.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
And then just over his shoulder, written on the wall: James Buchanan Barnes. I kind of forgot that was right there.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Minute 18. Here we are. We’re in it.
Kyle Olson:
Here it is. Obviously he’s going to spend a little more time on this later, but there it is — they’re putting it out there as: here’s a name you’re probably going to want to remember.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, don’t miss this. This is the first time, but don’t worry, we’ll hammer it home.
Kyle Olson:
And then we hear Gary Sinise talking about Captain America and his Howling Commandos. This is, I believe, the first time that particular name is used. We saw them in The First Avenger, but I couldn’t find any reference to them in that movie as the Howling Commandos, even though we all knew them as that.
Pete Wright:
I think they were only referred to in history as the Howling Commandos. It’s not like when they’re sitting in the little bar in Italy talking about going back in to get Red Skull —
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, it starts here, right.
Pete Wright:
— I don’t think they’re ever talking about it in terms of, well, we’re the Howling Commandos, so we should do it.
Kyle Olson:
Right. It doesn’t show up and Cap’s like, who are you guys? “Why, Cap — we’re the Howling Commandos.”
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
So that name comes from Sergeant Fury and His Howling Commandos #1 from March of 1964.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
It was originally Nick Fury’s group. And this was when Nick Fury in the original Marvel continuity — the 616 continuity — was a soldier in World War II, and he led this group. It was only later that they sort of retconned Cap in. Cap was with a group called the Invaders, which is a whole other thing. They sort of merged the two in The First Avenger, and now we have them as Cap and the Howling Commandos, as opposed to Nick, who we now know did not fight in that war.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
He had something called the Infinity Formula, which was his own super soldier serum that kept him from aging. That’s why he’s still around. But it also gave him super strength. Now we have it sorted out. We don’t need to go through all of them because they don’t really play much more than this, but they all show up in various ways. Because we learn that the only one who died in World War II was Sergeant Bucky Barnes.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
Or did he?
Pete Wright:
Or did he? So good. I’m on the edge of my seat.
Kyle Olson:
Because in the Agent Carter one-shot, Dum Dum Dugan did survive. We know he went on — he showed up in that thing hanging out with Howard. You see him and Howard Stark hanging out at Howard’s mansion.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
So we know he survived. And Jim Morita — I think it’s great that his grandson is the principal at Peter Parker’s high school in Homecoming. Same actor. They just aged him up.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
So the Howling Commandos reveal is another thing we are literally hanging a flag on.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
Because later in the film the importance of this display will come into focus.
Pete Wright:
And so we have to linger on it — especially Captain America’s uniform of the era.
Kyle Olson:
That’s right, his First Avenger outfit.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
The one which — it doesn’t really have much of an origin. We don’t really know where it comes from, because they go right from him in the onstage costume, the USO version —
Pete Wright:
The parade fatigues. Yep.
Kyle Olson:
— and then the next time he’s in the gritty armored version. So I wonder how they decided: okay, now we’re into this.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
No one tells Steve what to do.
Pete Wright:
Of the MCU Steve uniforms, do you have a particular favorite?
Kyle Olson:
Not really, because — I don’t really like this one, but I don’t think we’re supposed to. I’m looking at a picture of the Captain America: The Living Legend display that we have at the bottom of our screen, with the stripes and the star. This came later on when Steve had stopped being Captain America but was still just a guy. It wasn’t a particularly fantastic run, so I was never really a big fan of that.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
But I think we’re supposed to dislike it here because we’re supposed to dislike what it represents. I guess the First Avenger one is probably the closest they’ve come to doing it right. When they do the proper direct comic translation — like when he walks out of the USO stage — that’s kind of how Jack Kirby and Joe Simon and all those guys drew him.
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Kyle Olson:
And when you see it on screen, you go, oh yeah, that doesn’t really work.
Pete Wright:
It does not work, but I’m so glad they found a way to honor the comic uniform, because so many of our screen-presence superheroes get no original honor of their uniforms.
Kyle Olson:
No.
Pete Wright:
Can you imagine if they had done a comic-accurate Batroc?
Kyle Olson:
Or Whiplash with his green mohawk.
Pete Wright:
Or Whiplash, right? Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
There are so many of those guys.
Pete Wright:
So what about you? What’s your favorite Cap look?
Kyle Olson:
What do you think is the best Cap look?
Pete Wright:
The one from Infinity War, where it’s black.
Kyle Olson:
Infinity War, where the star is gone.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, right. I just happen to like a Cap that’s a little bit more stealthy.
Kyle Olson:
Stealthy — interesting. So are you very much in the X-Men-should-be-in-black-leather school of thinking?
Pete Wright:
A hundred percent. The gold — I am so not a purist when it comes to X-Men uniforms. I can’t even —
Kyle Olson:
I can’t even tell if you’re doing a bit.
Pete Wright:
There’s no bit.
Kyle Olson:
No?
Pete Wright:
No. I feel very strongly about this.
Kyle Olson:
Really?
Pete Wright:
I hate the yellow so much. I’ve always hated it.
Kyle Olson:
Oh wow.
Pete Wright:
I cannot take the X-Men seriously because of those ridiculous uniforms.
Kyle Olson:
Okay, yeah.
Pete Wright:
So it’ll be really interesting to see how that adapts in coming films. But we digress.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. But here — as you’re saying — it’s literally Chekhov’s costume. There it is.
Pete Wright:
Yep.
Kyle Olson:
It’ll come back in the third act. But here it’s a beautiful display of all of them and their things.
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Kyle Olson:
It was interesting that they have Cap front and center, and then — Dum Dum Dugan’s hat, sure, but — did you really have a beret from — I mean, the rest of them are just in army clothes. It wasn’t like any of them in the real world were ever issued custom-designed armor.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, right.
Kyle Olson:
They’re in literally whatever they found. And I can’t imagine there was a historian on V-E Day who was like, wait, wait — I need your hat.
Pete Wright:
Ha — I just scrolled back to look at it again because my sense memory of that sequence — they actually have a mustache on the mannequin for Dum Dum. And I thought: really? They do not. It’s only in the picture. Good. Dodged a bullet.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. But obviously this isn’t the only time Cap will be returning to the Smithsonian.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
Then next time we see him, he’s watching a video with — I’m assuming — a mother and her child. And we hear a familiar voice: Hayley Atwell reprising her role as Peggy Carter. And we see a tag that says she works for the SSR — in 1953. Now — I don’t know if you remember this, but I remember this being a surprise. When I went to see it in the theater, I did not consciously remember knowing that she was going to be in the movie.
Pete Wright:
Yes. I can say confidently I was also surprised. I don’t know that I was shocked. It didn’t feel necessarily like an Easter-egg stunty thing, because we already knew at this point what Peggy Carter’s role was and what generally the arc was. I think Agents of SHIELD and Agent Carter were contemporaneous enough that we already knew she was an active role in the MCU. So it only made sense that we might see her crop up in a museum piece.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, I mean, I just literally did not know that Hayley Atwell was going to be in this movie at all.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
And I remember being like, oh, hey — that’s really cool. Because you sort of bring back all that — maybe you don’t have the right dance partner — all of a sudden all this stuff comes back.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Well, yeah, and we get — we see Hayley in all kinds of situations.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, but you hear her actually say “Steve” and then correct herself and say “Captain Rogers.” And just once again, that little bit shows that even in 1953, she’s like —
Pete Wright:
Yeah. So great.
Kyle Olson:
Man, she’s still thinking about Steve.
Pete Wright:
Oh, it’s so good.
Kyle Olson:
And if you go by Rogers: The Musical, she’s still showing up — still waiting for that dance.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
It takes a long time before she gets it.
Pete Wright:
I just want to say — right before this — there are three shots. He’s standing in the crowd. And these are some of my favorite little gems of filmmaking — allowing Steve to exist in a wide frame with a lot of activity going on around him.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
We talk about the Marvel camouflage. It’s so much more grounding to see Chris Evans in the hat and coat with so much busyness in such a shallow depth of field — a lot of activity in the foreground and background. It feels so natural and just lovely. In a movie like this, to take up just seconds and let us experience what it feels like to be in that room.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. And to go even more esoteric off this — there’s something about the way that Chris Evans carries himself that if you just took a frame of him shushing the kid, and then a frame of Ransom from Knives Out, you would know which was which.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
There’s something in the way he carries himself as Cap that is totally physically different from his other work. This is the job of an actor, but there is something very particular about the way he stands and carries himself as Cap that he doesn’t really do with anything else.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
And in a way — having watched a lot of Tony Stark — that’s kind of what Robert Downey Jr. is. I don’t mean this as a slight, but he kind of has the same… he’s not a physical actor the way Chris is. There’s something about the way Chris controls himself as Cap — even in the reveal when the hand catches the shield, and it’s a silhouette all in black — everyone knows who it is.
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Kyle Olson:
There’s just something about that.
Pete Wright:
Irreplaceable.
Kyle Olson:
I don’t know exactly how to articulate it, but there’s something else he’s doing besides just acting.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Whereas Robert Downey Jr. — after his troubles — it’s as if someone came to him and said: we’d like you to recast yourself as Tony Stark. You’re just gonna be Tony Stark from this point forward. It’s gonna be a new day for you. And that’s what we get. Everything we get is Tony Stark. I wonder if there’s an opportunity for a part like Chaplin for Robert Downey Jr. anymore.
Kyle Olson:
Right.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
Because he’s so defined by this thing. He was one of those guys — in the same way that Will Smith is kind of always Will Smith and The Rock is kind of always The Rock, no matter what they do. They have that persona and they just do light variations on it.
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Kyle Olson:
Which is not a slight. Multi-million dollar, beloved around the world. But it’s a different kind of acting. And doing these shows is always fun for me because that’s a side I don’t really get to examine. I can see it, I just can’t always articulate it.
Pete Wright:
Well, and it’s so easy to forget that Chris Evans is a transcendent performance inside of a superhero shell.
Kyle Olson:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
That’s the piece worth celebrating. And something I don’t feel like I get to say about the Russo Brothers that often — he’s directed well.
Kyle Olson:
Yes. I would make that point a hundred times over the course of this show. I sort of watch this and go, God, I miss when they were this restrained. Because when they were this restrained — really coming in off of Community and really trying to prove themselves — man, everything in this has this sort of confidence. And even in the things we’re going to see — giant ships and people flying through the air and explosions and people getting punched in the face a lot —
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
There is a real tight control. Whereas if you watch their post-Marvel stuff — The Gray Man, or whatever — they have lost all of that sense.
Pete Wright:
Mm-hmm.
Kyle Olson:
You watch The Electric State and go: how are these the same directors? Without going too far off it — maybe some people are better with guide rails.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
I would say the Wachowskis are the same way.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
There are some directors who are better constrained than given carte blanche.
Pete Wright:
Yep. Yeah. Look at this box we’re gonna play in — we’re gonna be exuberant participants in a box rather than blow the box up.
Kyle Olson:
Right. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
So we see a little of Hayley Atwell, but we’re going to see a little bit more as we continue on the minutes. But that’s for the future.
Pete Wright:
That is for the future. And we end on that last lonely shot — another one of those shots where the beam of light from the projector is over his head. And you called it —
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, calling back to that scene — one of the first times we see him in the movie theater in The First Avenger.
Pete Wright:
Yep.
Kyle Olson:
Once again, watching all by himself.
Pete Wright:
Watching all by himself. But this shot is beautiful because we have the mother and daughter sitting nearby. He is isolated. He is alone. But the mother and daughter are sitting right next to a portrait of Captain America — as Captain America. It is such great composition. I just love the way it fills the frame. I really celebrate it.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. Even this little trip down memory lane — it’s so nicely shot that you only get little bits of it, but you get the idea that it’s this huge space — like half a floor of the Smithsonian is dedicated to this — and they convey it in just a few simple shots. Hopefully we’ll get to see some more of that and find out what Cap’s decision is.
Pete Wright:
Very, very cool.
Kyle Olson:
How does he feel about all of this? We’ll find out as we continue on. If people want to hear more about the show or even help us make it, Pete, where can they go?
Pete Wright:
It’s very simple. If you’ve been listening to the Marvel Movie Minute, just type MarvelMovieMinute.com and you’ll go right to our home on the internet. You’ll find an opportunity to join our member community. You can get access to Discord, you can watch the live streams as we record, you can join us and ask questions, you get a week of early access to episodes, you get your very own private member feed. Lots of benefits, plus you get to sleep soundly knowing that you are supporting what I have now come to think of as my never-ending hosting gig — the Marvel Movie Minute.
Kyle Olson:
So you feel like you’re the Captain America of the Movie Minute, where it’s like you want to get out, but they keep pulling you back in?
Pete Wright:
Yeah, maybe.
Kyle Olson:
You gotta suit up again and sit down in front of the mic.
Pete Wright:
I don’t know, man. Judging by the arc, I may be the Robert Downey Jr. of the Marvel Movie Minute.
Kyle Olson:
Well, you do get paid the most of all of us.
Pete Wright:
Oh, please.
Kyle Olson:
You got points on the back end.
Pete Wright:
Okay, fair. This has been great fun.
Kyle Olson:
Thank you all for coming along. We will hopefully continue on and see you further on up the road. Enough said.
Pete Wright:
Bye … Rob?
