**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 them in obsessive and occasionally hilarious detail. I’m Kyle Olson from the Craft and Chaos Podcast.
**Pete Wright:** I’m Pete Wright from — The Craft and Chaos. No, wait! I’m Pete Wright, author of the new novella, *Lattice*.
**Kyle Olson:** Woo!
**Matthew Fox:** I’m Matthew Fox, owner of a copy of the new novella, *Lattice* — also The Ethical Panda, host of Superhero Ethics and Star Wars Generations Podcast, where we’re talking about *Maul: Shadow Lord*. It’s really good, guys.
**Kyle Olson:** Rob will not be joining us today because he is off reading *Lattice* by Pete D. Wright and could not tear himself away.
**Pete Wright:** Amazing. I can ask for no better excuse.
**Kyle Olson:** We are here to discuss minutes 46 through 50 of *Captain America: The Winter Soldier* from 2014, directed by the Russo Brothers. We are rejoining Cap in the middle of a tense conversation with Alexander Pierce. And then he’s going to take a very casual elevator ride down to his motorcycle and then go off to be with his thoughts.
*[Rob Kubasko joins the call.]*
**Kyle Olson:** And in a shocking twist, Rob Kubasko has finished the novella and has joined the group.
**Pete Wright:** Rob Kubasko is here!
**Rob Kubasko:** Hold on a second.
**Matthew Fox:** He has broken out of a lattice work of things that were holding him in place.
**Rob Kubasko:** That was weird.
**Pete Wright:** Hi Rob, we’re already recording in progress.
**Rob Kubasko:** Okay. Oh, I’m sorry.
**Pete Wright:** No apologies. Just know you’ve missed the intro and now Kyle is setting the stage.
**Matthew Fox:** Excuse me — K-Money is setting the stage.
**Kyle Olson:** Yes.
**Pete Wright:** K-Money. K-Money is setting the stage.
**Kyle Olson:** This conversation with Alexander Pierce — what is his goal here? Because it seems like he’s already kind of made his decision about what Cap’s going to be. But even here, in the first minute we’re going to talk about, he’s still playing the part of the concerned colleague when he knows full well what’s about to happen.
**Pete Wright:** Okay, wait — there are two — this is a blooming onion right now.
**Matthew Fox:** Yeah.
**Pete Wright:** We’ve got a lot of layers, a lot of crispy fried layers. The first one is: is he, at the end of this conversation, is he still playing the concerned colleague? Because these last few minutes sound pretty sassy to me. This sounds like he has turned a corner and now he’s straight-up threatening Rogers.
**Rob Kubasko:** Oh, absolutely.
**Pete Wright:** This sounds like the turn for him as a character.
**Rob Kubasko:** Yeah.
**Kyle Olson:** Hmm. But he’s the one who shot Nick. So it seems like he’s ready to take revenge, but he’s the one who did it.
**Pete Wright:** But the way he delivers it, it sounds to me like he is trying to set the conversation toward “Cap, you’re a target now. I am going to deflect blame for whatever happens, and we’re going to try and frame you.” That’s what we’re doing. That’s the game right now. It just became that.
**Matthew Fox:** See, I got the exact opposite. And I know Kyle, you and I were discussing this. The way I see it, the attack and what he says kind of don’t line up. Because what it sounds to me like he is saying is he’s trying to play the part of — in a world where you can’t trust anyone, Cap, you can trust me. And when he gets accusatory, it feels like he’s committing to the bit. Like he’s saying, well, Cat, if I’m being the person who I’m trying to convince Cap I am, then if Cap won’t tell me, I have to maybe suspect Cap. Are you in on this? So I think it is sort of saying — but I don’t know if there’s any reason why you would be telling Cap “we’re about to frame you,” because that just puts Cap on edge. There’s no reason to say “we’re about to attack you.”
**Kyle Olson:** Yeah. Especially with the plan as we’re going to see. It was sort of set up for Cap not to know it’s coming.
**Matthew Fox:** I think he is playing every card he can to get Cap to say, “Okay, you’re right. Someone got our friend. Let me tell you what Nick told me.” In which case Pierce can then be like, okay guys, we don’t have to take him down.
**Pete Wright:** So when he says, “I’m gonna find out why. Anyone gets in my way, they’re gonna regret it” — like a real 1920s street tough — that to me seems like the turn. Who says “anyone gets in my way” to someone else and doesn’t mean “I’m threatening you”?
**Rob Kubasko:** Yeah. He’s basically saying it’d be a sad thing if something happened to that — like, that’s what he’s saying.
**Kyle Olson:** Because it’s America’s ass. Is that why?
**Pete Wright:** Yes. A hundred percent.
**Matthew Fox:** But he’s not doing it from the perspective of “Cap, I’m letting you know I’m the bad guy.” He’s doing it from a “I’m so devoted to pretending I’m the good guy that I’m gonna act like I think you might be the bad guy.” All of it is aimed at keeping Cap confused and keeping Cap feeling like whatever we’re doing is different from the people who attacked Nick.
**Rob Kubasko:** Well, that may be true.
**Pete Wright:** So the question to me then is: when Cap leaves — he says “understood” and he leaves — do you think he’s playing that as if to say “I believe that you and I each know what we’re talking about”? Or is he playing, “Look, you sound really shady and I’m now suspicious of you, Pierce,” because of two data points: one, you’re acting really shady, and two, Fury told me not to trust anyone. And that whole line — “I wonder if that included him” — from Pierce. Like, that’s just nonsense, right?
**Kyle Olson:** Mm-hmm.
**Matthew Fox:** Forgive me, I’m gonna do some trope appropriation here. Because I think all of this is a reference to action movies of the ’80s and ’90s.
**Pete Wright:** My people don’t care for that.
**Matthew Fox:** I’m sorry, Rob. Because you’re right — from Pierce today it sounds like the bad guy. But what do the good guy cops say in the ’80s and ’90s all the time? “I’m gonna get to the bottom of this and God help anyone who’s in my way.” That’s a hero line in a lot of the movies this is playing off of. So I think they’re doing a cool thing there — Pierce is saying something that if you watch the movies this is referencing, we’re conditioned to think of as a Dirty Harry-but-he’s-a-hero line. But today, he’s not a hero anymore.
**Pete Wright:** But the context matters there. In those movies, it’s usually the hero talking to someone we don’t trust — as a villain saying “anyone gets in the way, meaning you.” This is different. Actually, I take it back — this is the same. This is Pierce talking to someone he’s now trying to frame as the threat.
**Matthew Fox:** I think it’s that Pierce is trying to claim that he is the hero. Pierce is trying to say, “I’m Dirty Harry. I want to get to the bottom of this crime. And if you get in my way, you’re the villain.”
**Pete Wright:** Exactly.
**Kyle Olson:** You know, it occurs to me — if this conversation is being recorded, that does change a lot of this. Because then when Cap is framed as the villain, he can play it back and say, “Look, I tried. I tried to warn him and he was determined to stay on this course of action. What could I do? He’s Captain America.”
**Pete Wright:** You’re right. And everything is recorded all the time everywhere.
**Kyle Olson:** Yeah. And the other thing about all of this is that Cap doesn’t know anything. I mean, the only thing he’s concealing at this point is the Shield compromise.
**Pete Wright:** That’s true.
**Kyle Olson:** Pierce doesn’t know that, but there’s not a big secret Cap is keeping here. He has a data drive but he doesn’t know what’s on it.
**Pete Wright:** Yeah. He hasn’t put on his jeans and sneakers yet. He hasn’t done his real gumshoe bit.
**Kyle Olson:** Right. But as he exits — and there is a very famous glitch here for those who know — there is a CGI mistake they did not fix and it still remains. As Cap is walking out past the couch and grabs his shield and flips it on his back, his shield phases through the couch before it gets there. If you watch it frame by frame, it literally just phases right through — like Vision stepping through the walls of Avengers Academy. It just goes right through and then onto his back. Chris Evans just walked and did the motion, and they added it in later, and no one noticed until it came out. You can see it on compilation reels of when CG goes bad.
**Pete Wright:** On the minute, it’s at about thirty-two seconds. It just goes right through the armrest of the couch and then onto his back. Very satisfying.
**Kyle Olson:** Yeah.
**Matthew Fox:** So let me ask a different question that I think also really informs what Pierce’s goal is here. What are they trying to do in that elevator? Because if they’re trying to kill him, there’d be a lot better ways to do that. They’re clearly trying to incapacitate him. Why?
**Kyle Olson:** I still think it’s scapegoating. I think the whole plan is to pin this onto him, and it’s easier when he’s in a cell and they can make up whatever story they want. Because he’s too big a thing to just disappear or be shot on the street — that’s suddenly national news. Nick gets killed and, yeah, you know, a drive-by incident happens in downtown DC. And that’s it — he’s page ten. But Captain America goes? That’s the news for the next six months, and it’s gonna mess up all their stuff. So it’s removing him from the board.
**Pete Wright:** Yeah. And ruining his reputation.
**Kyle Olson:** Yeah. That was my thought.
**Pete Wright:** I could see that. And then this is really just sort of the end of a bitchy little threat session.
**Kyle Olson:** Yeah.
**Rob Kubasko:** Yeah. Now wait — before we do that, there’s a wonderful positioning shot. And just to make sure you see it — whether implied or not — what is the building in the distance as we watch Cap get on the elevator?
**Kyle Olson:** Oh yeah.
**Rob Kubasko:** The Watergate building. And if you look to the lower right, you can also see a smidge of a certain performing arts center.
**Matthew Fox:** What?
**Rob Kubasko:** The Kennedy Center.
**Pete Wright:** Excellent. Once and forever, the Kennedy Center.
**Kyle Olson:** So we get some conspiracy, we get some theater.
**Rob Kubasko:** Yes. It’s the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of DC. It’s a complete shot.
**Pete Wright:** Great establishing shot.
**Kyle Olson:** Yeah. So we see Cap stepping into the elevator all by himself. There’s that shot of the shield on his back as the doors close in on him. Then we immediately cut outside and get another establishing shot — letting us know this elevator is a glass elevator on the side of the building, going down. They’re doing a very good job of setting up: here are the exact dimensions of what’s about to happen, and even showing a little to the side of where Cap will end up because you get to see the big glass ceiling of the Triskelion as they’re going down. A beautiful job of setting up all the pieces before we move into the really tight action.
**Pete Wright:** So apparently this entire sequence — the elevator fight — was not intended in the original script. This is one of those amazing coincidences of budget that allow us to have an incredible, trailer-level sequence that defines the movie — and it was accidental, because they didn’t have the budget for it. Originally this was supposed to be, I can only imagine, a sort of bumper-cars sequence of Cap running through the Triskelion, and they didn’t have the budget to build all those sets. Russo apparently said, “I don’t know if we can afford all that, but we can afford an elevator.” And thus the elevator sequence was born.
This was, in fact, Evans’ first day on set — the very first thing he shot for the film.
**Kyle Olson:** Can you believe that?
**Pete Wright:** There’s no warm-up. Day one, we’re gonna fight ten guys in a box. And I think that is next level.
**Kyle Olson:** It’s crazy. I’m sure he’s been training and doing all the choreography, but the first time you’re in the new suit, you haven’t done any of the other stuff, you haven’t even met everyone else, and it’s like: okay, now for the next two weeks, you’re going to be in a small box with a bunch of stuntmen getting every single possible angle.
**Pete Wright:** The stunt coordinators — Harper and Brewster — they choreographed every agent. Every single one. They call it the every-character method. Their rule was that one guy standing there doing nothing when he should react breaks the whole illusion. And when you think about it that way, it makes all other fight scenes look really dumb. Every single person in here is an active participant at all times. If they’re not actively punching, they’re trying to figure out how to actively punch again. You can really tell. This is an extraordinary close-combat sequence for that reason.
**Kyle Olson:** Apparently they call it “egg on the face” — that’s their stunt term for having a guy standing off to the side waiting for his turn to punch the hero. They wanted to make sure there’s none of that in here. Everyone is accounted for. No matter what angle they get, even the person who’s not actively involved in the fight has a reason that they’re not.
**Matthew Fox:** I have to say — that story you told, Pete, about this being a result of budget, is kind of like how they didn’t have the budget to show the full shark in *Jaws*, so they just showed the fin.
**Pete Wright:** Yeah.
**Kyle Olson:** Yeah.
**Matthew Fox:** This is one of the best fight scenes I think I’ve ever seen. And it’s because it is so contained, because it is so real. I’m the person who’s least likely to love the big bumper-cars, huge-chase stuff. But this is the opposite end — to me, this is Netflix *Daredevil* at its prime. It is so gritty, so down-to-earth. You see that Cap takes far more blows and is in trouble far more in this than he ever was on the Lemurian Star. The magnetic handcuffs that hold him to the wall —
**Pete Wright:** Which are awesome.
**Matthew Fox:** Which are awesome. The super tasers they’re using against him that are clearly getting to him, but not enough. I think this is just a phenomenal scene. Thank God for the small budget.
**Rob Kubasko:** It is a masterclass in building tension. You have the enclosed space, you have it all in glass. You slowly add more participants, and then there are those little notes — like noticing the guy perspiring — the perfect amount of tension. And then incapacitating Cap’s one arm with the Magna-Cuff, or whatever that is, adds a whole new level. And his shield is on the ground through most of the fight. Fantastic. It’s really well done.
**Pete Wright:** I want to ask a philosophical question as we define terms. This is anchored primarily on a conversation I had with Matthew on the Star Wars Generations Podcast talking about Maul. We were talking about hallway fights. A hallway fight: our principal character is going down a hallway, fighting a lot of people that come at them. Could this be construed as a hallway fight, where you put them in a box and send them down? They’re not just moving down a hallway, they’re moving up and down. Can I get a judge’s ruling? Is this a variant of the hallway fight?
**Kyle Olson:** Ooh. We’re getting very close to the “how many holes are in a straw?” conversation, and I don’t think we want to get into all of that.
**Pete Wright:** Somebody has to take this on, you guys.
**Kyle Olson:** I would give that a thumbs down.
**Rob Kubasko:** It’s not — it’s a “down” because the protagonist has to have forward motion in a hallway fight.
**Kyle Olson:** Yeah.
**Pete Wright:** And this is only gravity.
**Rob Kubasko:** So that’s the requirement. This is only gravity. Now — you do raise a good point. So the list of movies I was thinking of earlier: *The Shining*, *Aliens*, *Fatal Attraction*, *The Departed* — all movies with consequential elevator scenes. And continuing my theme of ’90s movies, my top three elevator scenes in ’90s movies, in ascending order: *Mission: Impossible*, 1996; *Speed*, 1994; and number one — 1993’s *In the Line of Fire*, starring Clint Eastwood and John Malkovich.
**Pete Wright:** I don’t even remember the elevator scene in that one.
**Rob Kubasko:** The elevator scene is at the very end. It’s him and Malkovich in the elevator. He’s down on the ground, and he tells the Secret Service, “aim high,” because the lights are out, and they take out Malkovich because they shoot high.
**Pete Wright:** Oh yeah.
**Kyle Olson:** I’d say you missed one crucial one in that list, though.
**Rob Kubasko:** Oh, what a miss.
**Kyle Olson:** *Die Hard with a Vengeance*.
**Pete Wright:** Yeah.
**Rob Kubasko:** Oh, also true. Also true. Well, you can even say *Die Hard* — *Die Hard* is a little bit of an elevator.
**Kyle Olson:** Yeah, but *Die Hard with a Vengeance* literally has this same scenario where he realizes he’s surrounded by enemies and has to do something to get out of it — and even has a cool line before he fires through his own shirt to shoot the guys around him.
**Rob Kubasko:** You’re a hundred percent correct. Retcon that. But I will say — my favorite elevator movie of all time: 2010’s *Devil*.
**Kyle Olson:** Oh yeah, I thought you might talk about that.
**Pete Wright:** Okay.
**Rob Kubasko:** So there we go.
**Pete Wright:** All right. I love elevators, but I need to take a sidebar and talk about the video game *Captain America: Super Soldier*. Was this on anybody’s list to talk about today?
**Kyle Olson:** No.
**Pete Wright:** Has anybody played *Captain America: Super Soldier*?
**Matthew Fox:** I have not heard of it.
**Rob Kubasko:** No.
**Kyle Olson:** I don’t think so.
**Matthew Fox:** What generation and platform?
**Pete Wright:** Sega, July 2011.
**Kyle Olson:** 2011, so PS3?
**Pete Wright:** It was released by Sega as a timed tie-in with *Captain America: The First Avenger*. It got some really middling reviews — it did not do well. As most movie tie-in games did at that period.
**Kyle Olson:** As most movie-based video game tie-ins did at this period.
**Pete Wright:** So nobody’s played the game, but here’s the thing. Russo sits down with Chris Evans, gives Evans this game, and says, “Hey, you should play this.” And Evans — because Evans actually voiced Captain America in this game — sat down to play it and fell in love with the actual fight mechanics, the movement mechanics. And said, “You know what, Russos? We’re gonna do this game’s fight mechanics in *The Winter Soldier*.” He literally went from voicing his own character for a game that essentially borrows from the *Arkham* games — the Batman fluid fight-control concept — borrowed that to make a middling superhero tie-in, which came back to the star of the next movie, and they readapted the entire fight style based on this video game.
I watched a half hour straight of the video game on YouTube today. It blew my mind. I felt like I was watching the elevator scene. They really did it. They made this guy look like the video game he’s playing. It is a mind-blowing, time-is-a-flat-circle kind of experience. It’s really beautiful. I’ll put a clip in the show notes — people can go watch this — because it is unnerving how close the fight choreography of Chris Evans in this movie gets to the video game. It’s really beautiful work.
**Kyle Olson:** All right. So as Cap is there all by himself, the elevator doors open, Brock walks in with a couple of guys and is making small talk — basically talking about the case, just normal stuff. And Cap is sort of in his own head, has this moment of “oh right,” goes into work mode and says sure, fine, whatever. Then he notices that one of Brock’s guys seems a little twitchy. Holding one of the taser staffs — I don’t know if we have an official term for that — a little too closely. And there’s this great shot where it’s just the side of Chris Evans’ face and you see his eyes flick down, look at that, go back up, and his brow goes just a little — and with like ten seconds you’re like, okay, Cap is like, what’s up with that guy?
**Pete Wright:** Yeah. There are only two guys in the elevator at this point.
**Kyle Olson:** Right, yeah. He’s not thinking “this is a huge attack coming.”
**Pete Wright:** Yeah.
**Kyle Olson:** He’s like, “Huh, there’s something weird about that guy.” So he’s already marked him as, “that could be a problem.” Then the next floor opens up and a couple of just regular business guys come in — suits, briefcases, seems normal. Brock is still continuing to talk, but now Cap looks over and sees the bead of sweat on one of them. No one else in the elevator seems to be sweating. He has to be wondering — this guy who’s supposedly having a normal business conversation with his colleague, why is he sweating? And you can tell in just the way Chris Evans is carrying himself that Cap is onto it, continuing to answer but like — okay. You can see he’s already sizing up that something’s about to go down.
**Pete Wright:** And I love your description of how the people get on. The one thing you left off is — they get progressively bigger. By the time the third group gets on, those guys are monsters. And the school-of-fish rules apply where everyone has to move, can’t touch anyone. And magically, effortlessly, Chris Evans ends up in the middle. He was in the back at the beginning. But if you watch how they structure it — he starts the line from the back. “Before we get started” — he delivers it from the back. I think that’s executed perfectly.
**Rob Kubasko:** Amazing job, Kyle, of talking about his expression. I will say that Chris Evans masterfully shows an escalation in awareness — like, “huh… hmm… crap… oh, son of a—” You can see it where it’s just like, this is on. Let’s go.
**Kyle Olson:** Language.
**Rob Kubasko:** *(laughs)* You can see where it’s just — this is on.
**Matthew Fox:** That suspicion meter goes from ten percent to thirty percent to fifty. It’s beautifully acted. I love Rumlow trying to keep up the small talk. And you kind of wonder — what if Cap had said, “Yeah, let’s go look at that.” Like, I think he’s just killing time, but I wonder: does that mean they’re gonna have the fight somewhere else? And the fact that some of them are wearing suits — two of the hugest linebackers are the ones who come in in suits. And you’re like — sir, you were not hired to be an office drone. You left the NFL as a linebacker to come work at S.H.I.E.L.D.
**Kyle Olson:** To do spreadsheets.
**Matthew Fox:** Exactly.
**Kyle Olson:** Yeah. And then the last set of doors opens up and the face we see is Callan Mulvey, who is playing Jack Rollins. He has fifty credits on IMDb. Funny — two years later, he would play almost this exact same role in another big crossover: *Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice*, as Anatoly Knyazev, a.k.a. KGBeast. He’s really from New Zealand, so it’s an international thing. But he has that look. As soon as he comes in, you know — that face where you’re like, okay.
**Pete Wright:** Do you notice when he turns around, there’s a real close-up from Cap’s POV of the back of his head — and you see the greasy little curl of hair going down his neck. That guy’s trying to do something.
**Kyle Olson:** Ha. Yeah. And we’ll later find out that Agent Jack Rollins was in New York during *The Avengers* — because he will reprise this role in *Endgame*, which technically takes place in that timeline. He was part of the group that helped get Loki’s scepter out at the end of the battle. Yeah. And then that’s when Cap decides it’s time to start things up.
**Matthew Fox:** Well —
**Pete Wright:** You wonder who would have started things up if Cap didn’t.
**Kyle Olson:** It would have been Brock. Crossbones was absolutely gonna make the move.
**Pete Wright:** But how do they — how do they elegantly — right, obviously inelegantly — begin this conversation? Do they all turn around to face Cap at once, very slowly?
**Kyle Olson:** Just like, “Look, we can do this the easy way.”
**Pete Wright:** Yeah, the easy way or the hard way. I would like to see that timeline. What was your plan to start this engagement?
**Kyle Olson:** Yeah. Yeah.
**Matthew Fox:** Well — partly because I’m gonna break containment here for a second and talk about DC, because they’re both awesome. One of my favorite characters is Amanda Waller. Especially in the most recent movies, she’s been presented as a bad guy, but in a lot of the continuity she’s not — she’s deeply suspicious. She and Batman really get along because she’s the one who’s like, “All right, Superman seems great, but we’re gonna have some kryptonite on hand. Just in case.” Between the combination of actual Hydra and just someone like that — I think Nick Fury is kind of like that — I have to believe that someone was saying, “Look, Cap is great, but just in case he goes bad someday, we need to have a practiced takedown.”
**Kyle Olson:** Mm-hmm.
**Matthew Fox:** So this is not “oh my god, we’re gonna have a fight now.” This is something they rehearsed. This is the “let’s get the kryptonite out of the closet if we absolutely have to” moment. I think they probably knew this guy goes first, and then this guy pulls out the handcuffs, and this guy tries to take out the knees — all of that.
**Kyle Olson:** Yeah. And it goes to show — I have to give Hydra their props. When it came to Nick Fury, they did not hold back. They sent a lot of guys. And so in this situation, just like Matthew’s saying, they planned this specifically to negate all of Cap’s advantages. So the shield doesn’t come into play at all — and that’s the trademark thing of it. They chose a safe, contained location — a small space they’re in control of — because we see during the fight, they cut to Sitwell watching on the monitor. Which tells us: oh, this is S.H.I.E.L.D. This is coming from command.
**Matthew Fox:** And that raises a really good question. I’ve been throughout this curious — who is actual Hydra, and who are people who just believe in Insight and are being manipulated that way? Are some of the people in that elevator — or working with Jasper — do they honestly believe Cap has gone bad? Are they buying the Kool-Aid in that regard?
**Pete Wright:** That’s a really interesting question.
**Kyle Olson:** Yeah. And it gets into — when he comes back, that does become a big question: are people just following orders, or are they following orders?
**Pete Wright:** That’s the Danny Pudi conundrum. We’ll tackle that in later minutes.
**Matthew Fox:** Right.
**Kyle Olson:** I think Brock’s team is pretty much Hail Hydra. But the other people in there? Yeah, I don’t know. And even Cap can’t know — which is good.
**Pete Wright:** Interesting.
**Kyle Olson:** Like as we talked about before — he could have killed them all. Cap has red in his ledger, so he really could. But he doesn’t. So they’re not trying to kill him, and he’s not trying to kill them.
**Rob Kubasko:** He just kills one.
**Kyle Olson:** Oh, you think the guy that flipped backwards into the —
**Rob Kubasko:** The one with the neck in the corner. That guy’s dead. Yeah.
**Pete Wright:** Okay. Okay.
**Kyle Olson:** In a very PG-13 way of just like, “oh, that doesn’t —” yeah.
**Pete Wright:** One. We’re gonna insinuate you didn’t make it.
**Matthew Fox:** Yeah. A much lower body count than the Lemurian Star.
**Pete Wright:** What a great comparison though. You talk about removing his strengths. If you give Captain America space, he is going to do some serious damage. Clearly he’s going to do serious damage in a confined space too, but at least it feels like they might have a shot. And Grillo reportedly was all in — apparently quite dangerous because he gives so much to these fight sequences. But it does show that Grillo would be the last man standing. He’s the last one able to stand and say, “Whoa, big guy.” And in this context — saying “whoa, big guy” to an angry Captain America after he’s knocked out nine guys? That is a recipe to get your ticket punched.
**Kyle Olson:** Yeah. Classic overconfidence, like — I know you knocked out nine guys, but now it’s just you and me.
**Pete Wright:** Nine big guys bigger than me. But I have two sparky wands.
**Matthew Fox:** I think we’re supposed to think they’re idiots. Like, Cap’s “does anyone want to get out?” — to me that says, “You’re not gonna win, boys.”
**Kyle Olson:** Right.
**Matthew Fox:** Like, this is not a good idea.
**Kyle Olson:** And I believe it’s a legitimate offer.
**Matthew Fox:** Yeah.
**Kyle Olson:** Like, I really think he means it.
**Pete Wright:** Would have been nice to have the elevator doors stop and just one guy walk off. He’s like, “Excuse me, excuse me — the guy with the briefcase — I really do just do spreadsheets. I don’t know what everybody’s doing here.”
**Matthew Fox:** Yeah.
**Pete Wright:** Then we do get one of the great falls. This stunt is awesome.
**Kyle Olson:** Yeah. From when the doors open up and he sees — oh, the fight’s not over, there’s a group of armed soldiers coming at him. He immediately gets out of the line of fire, uses his shield, snaps the cables, and drops the elevator. Then when he gets to the next floor and the doors open — there’s another group of them on multiple floors down.
**Pete Wright:** Yeah. They’re on every floor. Video game rules.
**Kyle Olson:** They’re on every floor. Yeah, that’s right. As soon as you open those doors, do you activate the spawn point?
**Pete Wright:** Yep.
**Matthew Fox:** I thought it’d be fun to see like one person being like, “Wait, that’s my —” Nope, this is not your elevator. Take the next one.
**Kyle Olson:** And then yeah — then he decides the only way out is all the way down, out the other side of the elevator. And so in a very quick move — another surprise thing, as opposed to standing up and shielding himself — he just turns and throws himself out. Just that fast. Falls all the way down — at least ten stories — crashes through the glass ceiling and onto the floor of the Triskelion lobby, scaring the hell out of everyone there.
**Pete Wright:** Oh my god. I’m surprised he didn’t kill somebody just by landing on them. We know the Triskelion is fourteen thousand stories. The fall — it does look like probably ten stories to the atrium, which slows his fall because he breaks through it, and then another three or four stories in the atrium to the pavement. That hit when he hits the ground — that takes the wind out of me just watching it. That stunt is so perfect. The pace, the speed, the visual effects cleanup — it makes the case for hybrid visual effects. It is beautiful.
**Kyle Olson:** Yeah. And I also love something that Marvel has done consistently — when Cap hits the ground, he doesn’t immediately pop up and start running. Like, he’s just fallen ten stories onto his shield. He survived, but he’s not suddenly ready to fight. It’s sort of that Indiana Jones thing of like, “Okay. All right. Now on to the next thing.” And they’ve always done a good job of that. Even knowing Cap has this incredible physical resilience, he’s still the one going, “Okay, like — I’m just a guy. Let me just still be jogging.”
**Pete Wright:** Yeah. He still takes a hit.
**Matthew Fox:** He’s not gonna break a bone. He’s not gonna actually injure himself in any way that’s gonna matter in thirty seconds. But he’s gonna get bruised. He hurts.
**Kyle Olson:** Yeah, yeah. The physics of which confuse me, but fair enough.
**Pete Wright:** They do some time compression too, here. The next line is Sitwell saying, “He’s headed to the garage.” And Cap is already on his bike and racing out onto the frontage road. But it’s only moments like this — when we’re watching it five minutes at a time — that I notice: how did he get there that fast?
**Matthew Fox:** Here’s my theory. To close the parking door, it’s kind of like lighting the fires of Gondor. He’s got to give a command, a red light goes on, someone runs to the other end of the parking lot and has to push the button.
**Pete Wright:** There are like fifteen red lights that have to go off in sequence before the door starts to close.
**Kyle Olson:** Well, we also know he came down pretty low — the floor right below him is probably the garage. So like he’s at floor one.
**Pete Wright:** It makes you wonder — how didn’t he just fall through the asphalt? He was coming with some velocity right there.
**Kyle Olson:** Yeah.
**Rob Kubasko:** As much as I love the scene and agree it’s visceral — when you see the impact, I’m surprised they didn’t have him dent the floor a bit. The shield should have caused an impact. There should have been a little crater.
**Pete Wright:** That’s a really good point. As long as we’re armchairing a fantastic billion-dollar film, let’s go ahead and give notes.
**Rob Kubasko:** It’s not perfect. Come on.
**Pete Wright:** I’m looking at it right now. I don’t think there is a single dent. That would have been a great hero shot.
**Matthew Fox:** How about appropriating someone’s gimmick?
**Kyle Olson:** Well, at least he didn’t do the superhero landing — you know, the Deadpool thing of like —
**Rob Kubasko:** Oh no, yeah, no.
**Pete Wright:** Yes. This — I’ll just say — is a full Winter Soldier: we get five minutes that give us an entire sequence and end on a banger. The doors close, the motorcycle jumps, and now we’re onto a new set of awesome stunts and effects.
**Kyle Olson:** Yeah. It ends with the doors closing as he rides out.
**Pete Wright:** Yeah. This was a great five minutes.
**Kyle Olson:** Yeah. Cinematography, fight choreography, acting — this is the whole package. If you just wanted to convince anyone to watch this movie, here’s five minutes.
**Pete Wright:** 46 to 50. That’s it. Hero minutes.
**Kyle Olson:** Yeah. Anything else?
**Pete Wright:** That’s it?
**Rob Kubasko:** That’s it.
**Kyle Olson:** All right. And now Cap is on the run from the people he called his friends and colleagues. What will happen next? You’ll have to come into the next episode to find out. In the meantime, if you want to support the show, Pete — is there a place they can do that?
**Pete Wright:** There is. You could head to MarvelMovieMinute.com — that’s where you can learn more about the show, sign up to become a supporting member. Proceeds go to support our time, investment, and infrastructure in making this show and keeping the lights on — keeping the lights of Gondor lighting in sequence, one after another.
**Matthew Fox:** Firewood’s getting expensive.
**Pete Wright:** It is very expensive. MarvelMovieMinute.com. We sure appreciate your support.
**Kyle Olson:** We’ll be back next week to talk about the next set of minutes. Make sure you don’t miss it.
**Matthew Fox:** Same Cap time, same Cap channel.
**Kyle Olson:** Enough said.
