Matthew Fox
Welcome back to the Marvel Movie Minute, a weekly podcast in which we assemble to explore the films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe one minute at a time. In this, our ninth season, we’re looking at Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I’m Matthew Fox, and I’m happy to welcome Rob Kubasko, Kyle Olson, and Pete Wright. You’ll be hearing from all four of us in various combinations all through this season. Today we’re talking about minutes one through five, which begins with the MCU comics logo and ends with Steve saying he has not asked out Christine from statistics because she might — horror of horrors — say yes. Let me start with a question: does anyone else get a fun nostalgia bump when they see that comics logo? I don’t remember what movie they switched to the logo made up entirely of images from the movie, but I didn’t like it. I really prefer this one, and I’m wondering if anyone else was happy seeing it again.
Pete Wright
I was for sure. I really loved this initial comics flyby. You’re right — does anybody remember when they switched to images from past movies?
Kyle Olson
It was when the full changeover happened — when Marvel Studios became its own independent thing. That’s when they drew the line. I know it’s in a couple of movies, but I’m not exactly sure which ones.
Pete Wright
We’ll talk about it. But for now, this feels like old home week.
Kyle Olson
Yeah, going back to the roots — hey, this is where it all started from, as opposed to going off of their own stuff.
Matthew Fox
It always goes too fast for me to tell, but I think it’s always the same comics, right? Like, they don’t for the Hulk movie have it be more Hulk comics — do they adjust it?
Kyle Olson
They do adjust it. It goes so fast. I’ve seen blogs where people try to figure out where every single panel comes from, but I don’t think anybody has ever actually put all of those together — each individual piece, where it comes from.
Pete Wright
But it’s the ones like Hulk where I feel like I can actually tell, because otherwise they’re generic gloved punching hands. But when it’s the Hulk you can see a green fist. You can see the teeth sometimes as they fly by.
Kyle Olson
Or if it’s a red boot, it’s probably Cap.
Pete Wright
Yes. Right.
Rob Kubasko
I also thought about how I miss the “Big Marvel Little Studios” card.
Pete Wright
Right.
Kyle Olson
Yeah.
Rob Kubasko
Because when that changed, the emphasis shifted to Marvel and the history of Marvel — not the production company.
Matthew Fox
Right.
Pete Wright
Yeah, that’s fun.
Matthew Fox
So let’s dive right into the minutes.
Pete Wright
On your left. It’s iconic — iconic like a runner.
Kyle Olson
Yeah.
Pete Wright
The movie opens on a sunrise over the Potomac River. We have the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, and the colors in the sky are just beautiful. It puts me right there in the workaday humdrum of being a superhero in sweats, just trying to fit a workout in. I love it so much. It’s so practical.
Matthew Fox
This made me wonder something. This is Washington DC — I grew up in New York. They start with the river, but eventually what they’re running laps around — the reason Steve keeps saying “on your left” — is the reflecting pool, the big pool between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. In New York, people run laps around the Central Park Reservoir. Is that a thing in the rest of the country, or is it kind of an East Coast thing — there being a central man-made body of water that people run around?
Kyle Olson
Well, here in Phoenix we don’t have what you would call big water. There’s the Hoover Dam, but that’s pretty much it.
Rob Kubasko
In the sprawling metropolis of Tempe, Arizona, we actually do have a man-made lake, and people do run around it — very similar. It’s three miles.
Matthew Fox
I did get jostled and spill half a bottle of Gatorade on the streets of Phoenix, so, you know.
Rob Kubasko
Whatever, everybody.
Pete Wright
We here in the Pacific Northwest have forest trails. They sometimes loop, but most of the time you run through woods and then turn around and run back to your car.
Matthew Fox
Why run on flat ground when you could have tree limbs to trip over and bears to say hello to?
Pete Wright
You always want to run on a path. That’s just smart.
Matthew Fox
So here’s my question. I know they weren’t thinking too far ahead — but do you think when they came up with “on your left,” anyone was thinking that line would someday be called back? Because I don’t think I need to remind anyone that it’s the great line in Endgame — Steve telling Cap he’s not alone anymore.
Pete Wright
I don’t think they thought that far ahead. I haven’t heard anything otherwise, but I think that’s an emergent reality that comes from making that movie and having a great reveal. They weren’t planning for it.
Kyle Olson
Yeah. I think they thought of it as just within this movie — a clever thing, but not “this is our ‘show me the money'” moment.
Matthew Fox
Yeah.
Kyle Olson
They didn’t know it would live on.
Pete Wright
I think it’s funny in that moment and we get to be with it. But it’s also a meet-cute.
Matthew Fox
Yeah.
Pete Wright
Right? Oh, it’s adorable — the boys meet.
Matthew Fox
So we then pretty quickly get — as they start talking — we hear about Trouble Man, which we’ll get to in a second. But then we see Cap pull out the list. I decided to write it down and I want to talk about it.
Here’s what’s on the list: I Love Lucy, Moon Landing, Berlin Wall — “Up and Down,” which is a great way of bookending what Cap missed, like the entire Cold War. Steve Jobs, Apple, Disco, Thai Food, Star Wars — which is crossed off — slash Star Trek. So to me, that means he’s watched Star Wars and just hasn’t watched Star Trek yet. Then Nirvana, Rocky, and Rocky 2 with a question mark. Who do we think gave him this list?
Pete Wright
How dare they.
Matthew Fox
Is it from Nick Fury? What are we thinking?
Kyle Olson
I think this is assembled as he’s moving through the world. Like, he’ll do something — someone mentions the moon landing — and he thinks, I’ve got to write that down. I really think each piece came from whoever he was talking to at the time. “Apple — like the fruit?” “No, there’s a guy.” “Oh, alright. Let me make a quick note.”
Matthew Fox
I’d be worried, though, because Cap doesn’t know much about the internet, and this is 2014 — if he Googles “moon landing,” isn’t he going to find his way to the conspiracy stuff pretty fast?
Pete Wright
Oh, by 2014, yeah, you’re right.
Rob Kubasko
Not as much as today, but a little bit. What I have more concern about is: why does he have a question mark on Rocky II and why not just Rocky IV? Because that would explain a lot.
Pete Wright
Yeah, right.
Matthew Fox
Rocky III gives him race relations, Rocky IV gives him the Cold War. You know.
Kyle Olson
Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright
And he could have gone all the way to the street fight Rocky. You can learn a lot of the cultural history of the United States through the Rocky movies, writ large.
Rob Kubasko
Just watch all the Rockys.
Kyle Olson
So in Rogers: The Musical — if anyone has watched that — they make a big thing of I Love Lucy, and I didn’t realize why until now. It’s the top of this list. That’s why they make a big joke of it in the musical.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Matthew Fox
That’s a great callback. Good call — I hadn’t remembered that.
Kyle Olson
There are different versions of the list.
Pete Wright
Wait, what now?
Kyle Olson
In other countries, there are different lists. This is the one we got, but there was one for the UK, one for Russia, one for South Korea, and one for Australia.
Pete Wright
No China, though.
Kyle Olson
No, China didn’t get their own — not that I found. These are the ones I was able to track down. Let’s go through them.
Pete Wright
What do we learn?
Kyle Olson
In the United Kingdom, the top is hard to read, but there’s Moon Landing, of course, then The Beatles, the World Cup Final of 1966, Sean Connery, Thai Food — and then the list continues the same way: Star Wars, Nirvana, Rocky, and Trouble Man.
Pete Wright
Sean Connery gets the mention. That is extraordinary.
Matthew Fox
The World Cup Final of 1966 — I believe that’s the last time England won the World Cup.
Kyle Olson
That would track.
Pete Wright
Tracks. Okay, so does the Australian list get Mel Gibson?
Kyle Olson
The Australian list starts with AC/DC, then Space Travel, Steve Irwin, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, Tim Tams — and then it’s the same: Thai Food, Star Wars, Nirvana, Rocky. That seems to be the recurring backbone across all of them.
Matthew Fox
Okay, no Mel Gibson.
Kyle Olson
No Mel Gibson.
Pete Wright
Okay. Where next — Russia or South Korea?
Pete Wright
Russia, let’s go to Russia.
Kyle Olson
Russia starts with Yuri Gagarin, then a second name I’m trying to read through Steve’s handwriting, then Soviet Union Dissolution 1991, Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears — I’m not sure what that’s a reference to — then Disco, Thai Food, Star Wars, Nirvana, Rocky, Trouble Man.
Pete Wright
I love that Thai food makes it to the Russian list.
Matthew Fox
For more minutia about the minutia: Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears — Google showed me it’s from 1980 by a Vladimir someone, then switched to Cyrillic, so I couldn’t finish the read.
Rob Kubasko
I think it’s actually a film. Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears — it’s a Soviet film. That might be the soundtrack.
Kyle Olson
Oh, okay.
Matthew Fox
Now here’s my question — I’m sitting in a theater in St. Petersburg watching this movie. Obviously they’re changing the shot of the list each time. Is the list appearing in English, because Steve is American, or appearing in Russian so audiences can read it?
Kyle Olson
It’s written in English, same handwriting.
Pete Wright
Although it would be amazing if Steve Rogers could write Cyrillic.
Matthew Fox
I mean — but consider what that means. They redid that shot for Russian theaters, and probably half the audience isn’t going to be able to read it. But they still did it.
Kyle Olson
I wonder if they put subtitles under the handwritten text. I don’t know.
Rob Kubasko
But hold on. In the movie, these are two Americans talking to each other. Why would Sean Connery be on that list?
Pete Wright
Who was he talking to?
Kyle Olson
These are culturally significant things that Steve missed out on.
Pete Wright
Steve was probably talking to somebody from MI6 at some point, and they said, “You’ve got to check out Connery.”
Matthew Fox
There’s a phrase I learned growing up: “world famous in Brooklyn.” The idea being that in your little corner of the world, you think everyone knows about this thing. I think that’s what’s happening here. An Australian might be amazed to think we haven’t heard of Tim Tams.
Kyle Olson
To be clear — Skippy the Bush Kangaroo is a TV show. Tim Tams are the food.
Matthew Fox
See? Exactly. The case that proves the point.
Matthew Fox
Okay. South Korea?
Kyle Olson
South Korea begins with Dance Dance Revolution, then Ji-sung Park, then Oldboy.
Pete Wright
Oh, nice.
Kyle Olson
I’m going to pause for laughter on that one. Steve Rogers sitting down right after the events of The Avengers: “I need to relax. Oldboy. Oh. Alright.”
Pete Wright
He likes the hallway scene. “I’m just looking for a movie that fits my 1930s sensibilities and has a guy kill a bunch of people with a hammer.”
Kyle Olson
After that is the 2002 World Cup — which I’d imagine is when South Korea advanced so dramatically — then Disco, and then everything else the same: Thai Food, Star Wars, Nirvana, Rocky, Trouble Man.
Rob Kubasko
Thai food is consistent on all these lists?
Kyle Olson
Yes. Can you believe that?
Pete Wright
That’s amazing.
Matthew Fox
And yet they didn’t make a separate list for Thailand.
Pete Wright
Thailand’s list would just say hot dogs.
Rob Kubasko
That one would have just said hot dogs.
Pete Wright
So is that the end of our list interrogation?
Kyle Olson
That’s it. Those are the ones I could find. There may be others out there, but those are what I tracked down.
Matthew Fox
Back to the movie.
Matthew Fox
I love this conversation between Steve and Sam because — this is the first time we’ve seen Cap’s day-to-day life. And it does such a good job of grounding him: he’s military. That first exchange about the bed feeling like a marshmallow — we often ask how normal people can relate to superheroes. Sam is able to look at this guy and think, sure, he’s got superpowers, but he’s a soldier. He’s carrying the same trauma, probably the same reentry problems a lot of people have coming back from combat.
Kyle Olson
And we talked about this a little in the comic primer episode, but Sam in the comics is not and has never been a soldier. He was a social worker. That’s where he met Steve — in the 70s, in Brooklyn. Moving him to being a fellow soldier is a movie invention, but I think it’s a really smart one. It establishes an immediate common language around deployment and coming home and adjustment. And it still connects to that social worker identity — now he’s working at the VA.
Pete Wright
Exactly — and it explains how he has access to military equipment, while also tying him back to that legacy from the comics. That’s really smart writing.
Matthew Fox
Especially for one of the first MCU movies that’s being a little self-reflective — not quite as rah-rah combat, but asking what are the dangers of being so invested in the war machine. It feels fitting to also say: yeah, even World War II, there’s still a cost to coming home. And the time and place of this movie — 2014 — is exactly when we were seeing soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, dealing with PTSD, dealing with a VA that wasn’t there for them the way it should be. It needed thousands more Sam Wilsons.
Pete Wright
You know what they call thousands of Sam Wilsons, right?
Kyle Olson
A flock?
Matthew Fox
Yeah. That’s fair.
Pete Wright
Worth it.
Matthew Fox
Okay, back to the minutiae. Who listened to the Trouble Man soundtrack?
Rob Kubasko
About half of it, yes.
Kyle Olson
I was too busy looking up lists.
Matthew Fox
What did you think? Did it explain the last forty years to you?
Rob Kubasko
The best word I’d use is “moody.” It’s a very interesting, experimental musical experience. And I don’t think most people realize — if you’ve never listened to it — it’s mostly instrumental.
Matthew Fox
Yeah, I was definitely expecting songs about important moments. I get what Sam means in terms of the music capturing a feeling and an experience. It’s a film from 1972 — 1971 had been Shaft, one of the first of the blaxploitation films, and there was a big push to do more like that. After Isaac Hayes had come to prominence because of that soundtrack, Marvin Gaye wanted to do something similar, and he’s the vocalist on the few songs that have vocals. It’s a great album, and I get what Sam is saying, but it’s definitely not what I was expecting.
Pete Wright
It’s very much a vibes experience. It actually makes me more curious about the international lists — how does Trouble Man explain the last forty years to audiences in Russia, Australia, the UK, and South Korea? After listening to it, I don’t quite see that connection.
Matthew Fox
I think Sam is saying it explains things from the Black American experience. So maybe it wouldn’t translate in the same way — and the film doesn’t really spell that out directly.
Rob Kubasko
I mean, for Russia it would have been something like “Endless Happiness by Boris — ” and everyone would have just been like, “Why?”
Matthew Fox
No, I think the Russian one would have been the Tetris music, played over and over. The original 1990s electronic version.
Kyle Olson
Yes. We can all agree on that.
Matthew Fox
I thought about watching the film — Trouble Man — but the New York Times critic Vincent Canby described it as a horrible movie but worth thinking about. Which, for the record, is better than Thor: The Dark World got.
Pete Wright
Oh.
Kyle Olson
True.
Matthew Fox
Check off that box on your bingo card.
Rob Kubasko
I just want to make sure we don’t miss the one reference I loved — Cap saying they used to boil everything.
Kyle Olson
Mm-hmm.
Rob Kubasko
I laughed at first, because I thought, well, we boil eggs. But then you think: with his time period, you boiled everything because it was simple. You boiled meat, potatoes — it stretched the food, put the nutrients in a broth, and not everyone had an oven. It all made sense. I thought that was a nice little historical detail.
Kyle Olson
I also love the fact that Sam recognizes Cap — obviously at this point Steve should be one of the most famous people on the planet — but doesn’t fanboy. He’s just like, yeah, I know who you are. He gives him a little grief: “Did you take another lap?” Basically saying, look, I know you’re outside my weight class, but come on.
Pete Wright
But don’t you think — when Cap starts walking away, right before Natasha shows up in the Corvette — Sam saying “It’s the bed, right?” feels a little bit like he’s exercising a parasocial relationship? Like, trying to keep the conversation going?
Kyle Olson
I think it’s the other way. I think it’s a code switch. He shifts into counselor mode because he recognizes a hurting soldier. He goes from fan to work mode — “I can already diagnose your problem.”
Matthew Fox
Part of what I got in that moment was that Sam is trying to connect with Steve as a fellow soldier, and Steve has a wall up. “On your left” — Steve is just being polite, just being nice. Sam takes it as being shown up. And that mismatch is kind of what helps them connect. Sam recognizes: everyone else looks at you as a hero. I see a hurting soldier like me. He wants to connect on a different level. Hence: hey, there’s a girl at the VA who seems to like me.
Pete Wright
That’s really good. I had read it as Sam trying to stop him because he wanted to keep talking to the hero — but this reading makes more sense. “No polio is good” — I love that line, too.
Matthew Fox
So then we get Natasha showing up — in her words, to pick up a fossil. I love the Smithsonian line.
Pete Wright
Any Corvette gearheads want to weigh in?
Rob Kubasko
You mean the 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray C7, with a 6.2 liter V8 engine?
Pete Wright
I knew that was going to happen. I knew it was going to be dueling engines with Rob.
Rob Kubasko
It’s also the first of many Chevrolets brought to you by the fine people of Chevrolet in this movie.
Pete Wright
Yes. It is. And it’s a really nice one.
Rob Kubasko
Great car. And the whole exchange — what I love is seeing a group of people showing real, sincere confidence in their own presence in conversation. There’s teasing, there’s a little flirting, but you get such a clear sense of the trust that exists between these people. A lot of it comes from their shared experience as service members and as people who’ve been through things. And you see it especially when Black Widow shows up.
Pete Wright
That’s one of the things I love about this movie, and I think it sets the table for the very humane approach to elevated characters throughout the rest of the film. Everybody is speaking to one another in a pragmatic and grounded way — nothing feels like superhero talk. So much of that is on the very broad shoulders of Chris Evans.
Kyle Olson
I think this may be my favorite portrayal of Black Widow in all of the MCU. In this film she’s playing so many different versions of Natasha and just shifting between them effortlessly. Such confidence — “this is her world.” And it’s interesting because in her own solo film she doesn’t have that ease. She’s off balance in Black Widow. But here it’s: no, this is where I live.
Rob Kubasko
That’s because she’s an equal. She’s equal to the other characters, and everyone involved understands that.
Kyle Olson
The way Scarlett plays it — giving Captain America grief, flirting just slightly with Sam, showing up in the Corvette right by the Lincoln Memorial. That’s a flex.
Matthew Fox
And making an age joke about the guy everyone else looks to as the biggest hero around.
You’re right about Natasha — and I’ll get more into this later, but jumping ahead for a second: when she asks why he hasn’t asked out the girl from statistics, it’s a signal very early on that this is not going to be a romance between these two. And the marketing was actively trying to suggest otherwise — that fake kiss shown in the trailers was deliberate misdirection.
Kyle Olson
Yeah. Intentional misdirect.
Pete Wright
“Maybe we can get women to come to our movie.”
Matthew Fox
Yeah. Exactly.
So — Natasha picks him up, and now we’re in the Indian Ocean, on board a Quinjet, heading into a mission briefing.
Rob Kubasko
Wait — do we have any license plate deciphering to do?
Matthew Fox
Oh — this is a level of detail.
Pete Wright
Yes, Rob. Yes.
Rob Kubasko
When she drives away, there’s a Washington DC license plate clearly visible on screen. The DC format is usually two letters followed by four numbers. This one reads 1YR31L. Nobody seems to know for certain what it means. The R on a DC plate usually indicates a rental — which, if true, is very funny. It might not even be her car. The Y-1 could reference the year The Avengers came out, 2011. Some people think the R could be a nod to Romanoff. But my favorite theory: R31L is a ham radio code associated with Russia.
Pete Wright
Yes. That one.
Matthew Fox
I like it. I was suddenly thinking about why we didn’t do more license plate analysis in the Thor movies, and then I remembered: they don’t have license plates on Asgard.
Pete Wright
No license plates in Asgard.
Matthew Fox
So I feel fine letting that go. Okay. So the mission: rescuing the Lemurian Star, a mobile satellite launch platform. I thought that sounded like a ridiculous string of words — because when I imagine launching a satellite, the rocket goes up, fire comes down, which is bad for a ship. But it turns out mobile sea launch platforms are a real thing — not for missiles, but for actual orbital rockets. We’re also told there are 25 pirates, led by Georges Batroc, who is a member of the DGSE — the Directorate-General for External Security, France’s foreign intelligence service. The equivalent of MI6 or the CIA, established November 27th, 1943. Is Batroc from the comics?
Kyle Olson
He is. He’s Batroc the Leaper. Strong calves. He made his first appearance in Tales of Suspense #75 in March 1966, and he has been a fairly broad French stereotype through most of that history. Long curly mustache — “Oh, Captain, I will leap over you!”
Matthew Fox
I kept waiting for him to offer Cap a glass of wine.
Pete Wright
“But I have some aged cheese.”
Kyle Olson
Yeah.
Matthew Fox
So Batroc is one of the first people we’ve seen actually hold their own in a fight against Cap without being a superhero. Is he powered, or does he just never skip leg day?
Kyle Olson
Pretty much just leg day. Like most of these “guy with a gimmick” characters — Whiplash, and so on. His gimmick is strong legs.
Pete Wright
He’s a master of savate — French kickboxing martial arts. That’s why he’s always kicking. Big kicker.
Kyle Olson
But they soup him up in the film and make him a genuinely intimidating opponent.
Pete Wright
It almost felt like an Easter egg when he showed up — because he’s been such a dated, broad stereotype in the comics for so long. I actually think they worked him in really well, and tactfully — nobody’s poking fun at him. They just let him be a credible threat.
Kyle Olson
And they did cast a legitimately French actor to play him — Georges St-Pierre. And if you look closely, Batroc’s armor in the film carries the colors of his classic comic costume, just not quite as loud — because that was Lee/Kirby era. Bright colors. But just enough that you can clock it and think, ah, I see what you did there.
Matthew Fox
Love it. We also have — in this briefing scene — the first hint of tension between Cap and Nick Fury, who isn’t there but is represented by Natasha. She’s defending Fury’s information management, which also starts to set up where her arc goes — she’ll shift toward Cap’s side as the movie progresses. Steve is following orders but not happy about them.
Kyle Olson
And the person who is very happy to receive exactly as much information as is given — is Brock Rumlow, aka Crossbones, played by Frank Grillo. This is his first MCU appearance. Fun fact: his first television gig was on an episode of Silk Stockings.
Pete Wright
Silk Stockings, yeah.
Matthew Fox
USA Network. Up all night. I remember that show. Frank Grillo is now also playing Rick Flag Sr. in the DC universe — one more of those actor crossovers. And we’re also introduced to Jasper Sitwell.
Kyle Olson
Sitwell had appeared in one of the MCU one-shots — The Consultant — and on Agents of SHIELD.
Pete Wright
Definitely on Agents of SHIELD.
Matthew Fox
That was also a nice connective tissue moment for people following that show — there was still uncertainty about how much the SHIELD continuity and the film continuity matched up. Was Sitwell from the comics?
Kyle Olson
Yes, but not at all like he is here. In the comics he was just another pencil pusher type.
Matthew Fox
Okay. So — we get to Pete’s question. What’s going on with Natasha pressing Steve about Christine from statistics, right before they jump into a mission?
Pete Wright
I don’t fully get it, but I kind of love it. My impression is she very much wants him to feel completely engaged in the present. How is he going to do that if he’s not in a relationship? I don’t quite understand how they’ve established this as a Black Widow character trait — that she cares so much about other people’s love lives that she’s meddling — but I kind of love it. We’re going to need a scorecard.
Kyle Olson
She’s been a wingman. But I also love that behind them are these gung-ho black ops soldiers geared up and ready to go — and for Cap and Natasha, this is just water cooler talk. They’re about to jump into the ocean and they’re casually going, “Did you talk to that girl?” It’s just another day at the office for them.
Matthew Fox
I’m with you, and I am starting a list of potential Steve Rogers dates — we’ll keep that going. But I think there’s something a little more calculated in Natasha’s motivations here. Yes, she loves meddling and playing Cupid. But if she gets him thinking about Christine, he’s not thinking about what Natasha’s secret parallel mission might be, or why Nick Fury is sending them out with incomplete information. It’s a diversion tactic.
Kyle Olson
Yeah.
Rob Kubasko
That’s how it comes off.
Matthew Fox
And now I’m very curious — the next time she brings it up, what is happening in the conversation? Is she trying to redirect his attention again? That theory might be wrong, but I’ll be watching for it.
Pete Wright
Oh, I like that. The scorecard is going to need a new column.
Matthew Fox
Right. We need a chart.
Pete Wright
Google Sheets to the rescue.
Matthew Fox
So — why hasn’t he asked out Christine from statistics?
Kyle Olson
I think it ties into the central theme of this whole movie: the man out of time. He doesn’t feel connected, so he can’t really make a connection with anyone who isn’t in this world — the superhero world.
Pete Wright
I can imagine it more easily than you’d think. If I imagine just lifting my entire identity out of my life and dropping it forward a hundred years — a lot will have changed, but in my head I’m still in a relationship. I’m not ready to consider it over. The internet’s great. No polio is great. But in my head, I was in love with someone who isn’t around anymore.
Matthew Fox
Yeah.
Rob Kubasko
He’s carrying that flame. But there’s also probably something underneath it — a sense from everyone around him that he’s innocent, pure, that a lot has happened since he was under the ice. I even think there might be a little of that from Natasha’s side — “even if I wanted to, I shouldn’t.” Because Black Widow’s world is pretty dark.
Pete Wright
I mean, come on.
Rob Kubasko
But then here’s the beauty of it — Cap’s basically like, “Hey, I’m here now. Let’s go.”
Pete Wright
Yeah. If you turn the page on his little notebook, there’s some dark stuff on there too.
Matthew Fox
This is the man who, six months ago in his own timeline, wasn’t sure what fondue was and got very confused.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Rob Kubasko
When he says “the internet’s great” — that’s carrying a lot of weight.
Matthew Fox
I am absolutely positive there are eight million fanfictions about innocent Cap discovering the internet.
Kyle Olson
Oh yes.
Matthew Fox
That territory has been well explored without us. Thank you, AO3.
Kyle Olson
We appreciate you.
Matthew Fox
Alright. So that’s what I had for these minutes. What else do you want to jump into?
Pete Wright
I can’t talk right now — I’m Googling “innocent Cap learns about —”
Kyle Olson
We’ve lost him. On first appearances: Scarlett Johansson’s film debut was in 1994 in North, directed by Rob Reiner. Chris Evans’ film debut was in Not Another Teen Movie, which is one of the best of all the parody movies.
Rob Kubasko
Cap is not going to know what to do with that one.
Kyle Olson
Right. And Anthony Mackie’s film debut was in 8 Mile, playing Papa Doc. Rob has offered to perform Papa Doc’s final rap from 8 Mile. Rob, go.
Rob Kubasko
I only boil eggs. That’s all I have.
Kyle Olson
You know what — if you had said nothing, you would have won. Papa Doc doesn’t say anything in that final battle. And this is the second time 8 Mile has come up today.
Rob Kubasko
I didn’t know! I didn’t know.
Matthew Fox
We’re going to have a Cap rap by the end of this season.
Kyle Olson
That’s right.
Matthew Fox
Anything else? Are we wrapping up?
Kyle Olson
Yeah, we’re about to take a dive as we move past minute five.
Pete Wright
Classic Olson. This is really great. I’m very excited to be here, and I love knowing that every five minutes after these five minutes is five minutes I’m looking forward to.
Kyle Olson
Yes. New scorecard: is there a bad five minutes in this movie? I don’t think there is.
Pete Wright
I don’t think there is.
Kyle Olson
But we’ll see.
Matthew Fox
I’m knocking on my wooden desk pretty hard because I don’t want to jinx it. I’m hoping. I’m hoping.
Pete Wright
Strategically, as we wrap up — did all three of you watch the whole movie in preparation for this season?
Kyle Olson
No, because I’ve seen it so many times. I’m intending to watch it with the commentary track so I can have that information.
Rob Kubasko
I rarely do a full rewatch going in. I like my commentary to go along with the viewer — I like being reminded of things in the moment.
Pete Wright
This is the first time I’ve done it that way. It’s been a long time since I watched the whole thing straight through. I’m going to save that for after we finish the entire season conversation. It’s really fun not to remember exactly what order things are coming in. I like rediscovering it.
Kyle Olson
That’s how we did Iron Man 3 too, and it was fun that way.
Matthew Fox
This is why it’s good to have a terrible memory. Right now I’ve just seen the movie. But two months in, I’m going to be right there with you — “Oh, that happens? I forgot about that.”
Pete Wright
It’s perfect.
Matthew Fox
Yeah. Thank you everybody. To our listeners — we’re getting started with the movie, and we want to hear your thoughts. Write in through all the channels you’ll find in the show notes. We’re all involved in different podcasts and projects, and all of that will be in the show notes as well. Please check out everything happening in the TruStory FM family of podcasts. I’m Matthew Fox, with Pete Wright, Kyle Olson, and Rob Kubasko. May the Force be with you.
Kyle Olson
Enough said.
Rob Kubasko
Bye.
Pete Wright
I don’t have one.
