Matthew Fox
Welcome back to the Marvel Movie Minute, a daily podcast which we assemble to explore the films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, five minutes at a time. In this our ninth season, we’re looking at Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I’m Matthew Fox.
Pete Wright
I’m Pete Wright.
Rob Kubasko
Hey, and I’m Rob Kubasko.
Matthew Fox
And today we’re talking about minutes six through ten, which begins with Cap saying he’s not too scared or shy to date, just too busy, and it ends with Natasha’s kicks spinning almost as much as her hair.
Pete Wright
Oh, I love her hair.
Rob Kubasko
Oh no.
Matthew Fox
I’m just going to call out some things. I’m not doing it with an editorial comment one way or the other.
Pete Wright
Okay. I highly doubt that.
Matthew Fox
I’m just speaking truth.
Pete Wright
Okay.
Matthew Fox
So I described these five minutes as punch, punch, fight, fight, and lots of snappy dialogue. Does that about cover it?
Pete Wright
Yes, I would say some snappy dialogue, mostly punch-punch fight-fight. And that’s okay.
Rob Kubasko
If I had to give this episode an alternative title, I came up with several.
Pete Wright
Oh, outstanding.
Rob Kubasko
Fight on a boat.
Pete Wright
Right across the bow, if you will.
Rob Kubasko
This will have a connection to a part that I do want to bring up, because I believe this entire five minutes is nothing more than a tribute to the gloriousness of the 1990s.
Matthew Fox
Straight ahead, kind of on the nose.
Rob Kubasko
So what is my alternative title? Metal Gear Soldier: Winter Edition.
Matthew Fox
Okay, okay.
Pete Wright
Okay.
Rob Kubasko
Or we could just say, man, that’s a lot of killing.
Pete Wright
Yeah, yes. That’s where I want to lean in first, because this is where we get the Russos being brought in to actually make good on why they are here. Because Kevin Feige says, I want something different than the superhero smash-em-up. And I think the Russos said, this is a hold-my-beer moment for us. We’re going to straight up be killing people, and we’re going to do it from jump. And this is what that looks like. We’re going to throw him overboard hard. We’re going to smash him in the face with the shield. And we’re going to do stuff that reminds people that we’re really great at making tight sequences, and those can be tight in the form of comedy or in the form of action. Because these guys, coming off of Arrested Development and Community, are not necessarily the guys you would think would be ready to make this movie, but this scene — this scene lands them so hard in this universe.
Matthew Fox
I wish you all could see the look on my face if my camera was working, because I am so happy this is where the conversation is going. One of my sort of pet peeves for a while has been that in serious, like adult MCU stuff like the Netflix shows, we talk about whether or not you can kill people. And in Captain America, we don’t. And in a scene like this, you know, Rumlow clearly shoots people. Natasha clearly shoots people. But there’s never any discussion of whether or not Cap is killing people. And I think Cap is probably killing people. So I went through —
Pete Wright
Look at Rob’s face right now.
Rob Kubasko
Oh, hold on.
Pete Wright
Just look at it, look at Rob’s face.
Rob Kubasko
Cap full-blown kicks a guy so hard that it breaks his back and throws him overboard. That guy is dead.
Matthew Fox
Trust me, I know. To prepare for this episode, I went through all fifteen guys he takes down and gave them my understanding of the probability of death. So that’s what we’re going to discuss for at least the next few minutes.
Rob Kubasko
Nice.
Matthew Fox
Because you fool, I tried to have someone else drive the bus. You all wanted me driving the bus.
Pete Wright
I’m trying to have someone else.
Matthew Fox
So we’re talking about killing.
Rob Kubasko
No, no, we’ll take it.
Pete Wright
Yes, for sure.
Rob Kubasko
We’ll take it.
Matthew Fox
Here’s the thing.
Rob Kubasko
I’m strapping in.
Pete Wright
All right, begin.
Matthew Fox
There’s some clear kills. There’s some clear not-kills. If I have a pet peeve, it’s with the idea that you can kick a person in the head just enough to knock them unconscious but not cause traumatic brain injury, because that’s not how the brain works. So I have only one here that I think is an absolute death, one that is an absolute not-death, and a whole lot that I think is a decent chance. So I’m going to go through like two or three at a time, and y’all jump in. Number one, chokes the guy out — chance of death, pretty small. Number two, he hits a guy three times with a shield, but not in the head, and the guy does cry out on the third hit, telling me he might still be around. So, odds of death — medium. Like, certainly possible. Number three, kicks a guy who breaks his back on the side of the ship, then flips into the water. This person is 100% shark food right now. There’s no question.
Pete Wright
Yeah, dead.
Matthew Fox
Okay.
Pete Wright
Yeah. Although, as long as we’re reserving our way-ins for the reveal of three at a time, I want to go back to number two. He hits that guy so hard with the shield — I think the sound he makes might have been one of those involuntary expulsions of air through the larynx.
Matthew Fox
That’s possible. That’s possible too.
Pete Wright
I think he was dead.
Matthew Fox
Okay.
Rob Kubasko
Lot of internal bleeding.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Rob Kubasko
Lot of internal bleeding.
Matthew Fox
This conversation is not going where I thought it was, and I’m really happy about that. So I’ll just go through them and you just stop me whenever you want. Number four, punches him in the head to knock him out — something that is impossible to do without some risk of traumatic brain injury. So I think medium, medium there. Number five, kicks him in the head. Once again, medium. Number six, knocks the guy overboard, but there’s no other injury.
Pete Wright
Was this the guy that he was running down the side and just shoulder-checked him? Yeah, I think he’s probably okay if he doesn’t drown.
Matthew Fox
If we rescue the ship and then think, oh, you know what, I knocked a guy overboard, let’s see if we can throw him a life jacket or something — he might live. Number seven, throws a guy to the ground, very low. Number eight, and here’s where I really start to have some questions — he throws a knife that pins the guy’s hand to the ship. Okay, fair enough. That’s ripe for infection, but maybe.
Pete Wright
Ripe for infection.
Matthew Fox
He then kicks the guy in the head, and the guy falls to the ground with no knife. And so I don’t know if I’m supposed to think that the hand just ripped through the knife, that maybe the knife got pulled out, or is this just a little bit of a production snafu?
Pete Wright
I think the knife got pulled out.
Rob Kubasko
No, I think he ripped his hand through it. Because that knife is hitting steel — it’s wedged in steel. It’s not just coming out from a hand movement.
Pete Wright
Okay, all right. So at a bare minimum, the hand is useless forever.
Rob Kubasko
Yeah.
Matthew Fox
Yeah. So that’s not a good one.
Pete Wright
Right.
Matthew Fox
Where was I? Okay, so next one — hit in the head with a shield. Pretty high. Kicks flying across the ship to crash back-first into metal containers. And I wrote: I don’t think he lives, but if he does, he’s never walking again. The only question is what vertebrae number was shattered.
Pete Wright
Right. Yeah, I think that’s fair.
Matthew Fox
Number eleven, hit in the head with a shield. Number twelve, hit in the head with a shield. Number thirteen, hit in the head with a shield. Hit in the chest with a shield — which I think is a less likely death than the head, but still, a direct blow to the chest like that could easily stop the heart, could easily cause internal bleeding.
Pete Wright
I think it’s one of those — if it stopped his heart, he’s dead, because there is no sign of anyone aiming for any sort of cardiac intervention.
Matthew Fox
Yeah, no. No one has CPR here. Someone gets thrown down a flight of stairs — they’re probably okay. Someone he just kind of backflips and lands on the ground — they’re probably okay. Then, and here’s where I’m not even going to question the death possibility first, because I think it depends on physics, but I need to ask some vibranium questions. Because he holds the shield against someone’s face and then punches the shield. And what we see is that the vibrations of his punching the shield — that impact is transferred through the shield to the head of the guy. I thought the whole point of vibranium was that it doesn’t do exactly that.
Pete Wright
I think this is why Rob is here — for this kind of hard-hitting vibranium science.
Rob Kubasko
So I mean, this is a standard shield. We’ll just say that. This is just the stealth shield. So there’s nothing different about this than the regular Captain America shield other than the colors.
Pete Wright
So it is vibranium.
Rob Kubasko
But it’s vibranium. I think for whatever reason, I want to say that the vibranium will respond in the way that is needed. And I’m not trying to say that it’s intelligent, but I would imagine it’s just really hard. And with a punch from Captain America next to your cheek, bad stuff’s going to happen to you. Was that technical enough?
Matthew Fox
Except it would have to work the other way, because while I know that Cap can generate an awful lot of force with his punches, I don’t think he can get more than a bullet. And when a bullet hits the shield, nothing goes back into his arm. His arm doesn’t flinch in the slightest.
Pete Wright
That’s true.
Rob Kubasko
Oh, okay.
Pete Wright
It absorbs all of that impact. That’s a good point. It makes you wonder if this is one of those snafus, because it looks great on screen. But really his punch would be absorbed by the shield and the guy would be fine.
Rob Kubasko
No, but I’ll tell you this though — I think what vibranium does is it is attuned to the person that’s wearing it. And where he is using the shield as a shield from a bullet, he is forcefully holding the shield with the strength of his arm. And that’s creating a unity of the absorption force. Where he’s using it as an accelerator of the power of his punch, he’s loosening his grip on the shield.
Matthew Fox
Ah, okay, okay.
Rob Kubasko
That allows the attenuation to match the power of his punch and then provides extreme damage to the person who is the victim.
Matthew Fox
It’s kind of like if you hit X, it’s not going to work, but if you hit X while holding down triangle, then you might get it to work.
Rob Kubasko
I just heard thousands of eyes rolling at everything I just said.
Pete Wright
Yeah, a hundred percent. You can hear them. You don’t even have to be that quiet and you can hear them.
Rob Kubasko
I hear them.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Matthew Fox
Look, this is why we are here for the hard-hitting vibranium science.
Pete Wright
Yep.
Matthew Fox
But I do want to say — it’s not that I sat in the theater or re-watched it last night and thought, oh come on, that makes no sense. In the moment I’m like, that’s so badass. But then if someone’s ever idiotic enough to say, let’s not just enjoy the badass moments but let’s go through it moment by moment — then you’ve got to look at it and go, wait, this doesn’t work.
Pete Wright
This is one of the things that I think — and I don’t know if we want to talk about it later, but there’s another death that comes up, not at the hands of Cap but at the hands of Natasha, that is for me the coolest one of these particular deaths. And I’m pretty sure he’s dead. This is, of course, the one where she wraps her cable around his neck and uses him as an anchor to rappel three floors down the boat.
Matthew Fox
Yeah, no, hanging is a form of death, and yeah.
Rob Kubasko
Oh, yeah, he’s dead.
Pete Wright
He’s dead.
Rob Kubasko
He’s dead.
Pete Wright
Yeah, and it’s reverse hanging. It’s her body weight that’s breaking his neck. I’m sure he’s gone. That is an extraordinary action beat. And again, to your very specific point — I just want to watch the badassery. When I think about it, it’s brutal, but man is it a cool move.
Matthew Fox
Well, then don’t invite an ethicist onto your damn podcast, because I’m going to make you think about it. And here’s the thing — I do think it’s an interesting question of why we see Rumlow and Natasha very clearly killing people, but unless you actually think about it for a minute, it is certainly possible to think Cap isn’t killing people. Because to me that’s kind of a framing of him even more as the hero — like, these people have to use lethal violence. They don’t have the ability that he does to knock people out, to take them down without killing them.
Pete Wright
All right, I’ll just say I don’t think I agree, because I feel like he is so brutal with that shield. He is at his most viscerally brutal in this sequence than any other time we’ve seen him, even when he carried a gun in The First Avenger. I don’t see how I could watch this scene and not imagine Cap is killing people.
Rob Kubasko
Yeah, I think that third kill, where he breaks the guy’s back and he goes overboard — right there, you know, he’s killing people.
Pete Wright
It’s over.
Rob Kubasko
He knows he’s killing people.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Matthew Fox
Yeah, okay, that’s fair, that’s fair.
Pete Wright
So he takes out — what did we just count? Like fifteen guys, sixteen guys before Rumlow and Natasha even land on the boat. And we haven’t even — we skipped the most badass move, which is Cap walking off the deck of the Quinjet without a parachute.
Rob Kubasko
Oh yeah, we’ve got to go back to that. We have some things to talk about.
Matthew Fox
But here we have what I would refer to as snappy dialogue.
Pete Wright
Yeah, right. This is a snappy dialogue beat.
Rob Kubasko
Well, and he’s also responding to the “how come you won’t date” — the girl from analytics. “Are you too shy or too scared?” And, “I’m too busy.” It’s just great. This is all great dialogue. Him and Natasha, fantastic throughout this whole segment.
Pete Wright
You know what, all of this snappy dialogue is great. Because when the Strike agent clocks that he just walks off the back of the thing and Rumlow confirms — “Was he wearing a parachute?” “No. No, he wasn’t.” Just —
Matthew Fox
No, he wasn’t.
Pete Wright
Absolutely pitch-perfect delivery on behalf of Crossbones here.
Matthew Fox
And I think that’s an important character moment, because yes, the people who know who Rumlow is, who know who Crossbones is, know he’s going to have a villain turn. But a lot of us didn’t. And to me, we get not one but two moments of great dialogue from Rumlow. One of them is that. The other is when, after taking out these sixteen people, a seventeenth shows up pointing a gun at Cap, and Rumlow — as he’s parachuting in — shoots the guy. And Cap says thanks, and Rumlow says very sarcastically, “Yeah, you looked like you were kind of helpless down there.” And to me, the person who gets to have snappy dialogue with our heroes is a sidekick. That’s not a villain. And so to me that’s a really nice way of giving us that misdirect of, yeah, Rumlow’s kind of more ethically sketchy like Natasha, but he’s one of the good guys. You can trust him, because he has creepy dialogue.
Pete Wright
Yes. And you know, I mean, just the fact that he’s on Team Cap. But I do have to mention — and I don’t know how far we want to get into the structure of the rest of the movie, it may be too early to start armchairing the Hydra-SHIELD relationship — but if we look at Batroc, he is Batroc the Leaper, right? He is in charge of this boat. Batroc is Hydra, we find out. This is a Hydra boat that he’s taken over. Who else is Hydra? Once you’ve seen the movie, you see that Rumlow is Hydra — Crossbones, Hydra-adjacent. The Strike team under Rumlow — Hydra. Everybody who comes on the boat with Cap and Natasha are already Hydra. He is taking over a Hydra boat with Hydra soldiers. That’s where we are in the first eight minutes of this movie. Diabolical.
Matthew Fox
I have to ask something though, because you keep mentioning that he’s the Leaper. And I’m hoping that I’m wrong about this. But Batroc is French, and we hear them speaking French in this. You keep referring to him as the Leaper. A derivative name for French people is often “frogs.” Is there an intentional connection there?
Pete Wright
I don’t want to — if Kyle was here — may he rest in peace, he’s at the dentist — I’m sure he would have some commentary on this. But what I know is that Batroc is French — Georges Batroc. He is an expert in savate, the leg-based martial art, and in fact his villain name was Batroc the Leaper. And I had not even made the connection that he was French — then —
Matthew Fox
Because clearly they don’t say “the Leaper” in this movie, because I don’t think you do that today. But would Stan Lee do that thirty years ago?
Pete Wright
Lee and Kirby — you bet.
Matthew Fox
Absolutely he would.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Matthew Fox
Absolutely he would. All right, so let’s talk about other things that happen. Do these guys know how hostages work? I have two things that kind of throw me. One is that there’s no alarm system whatsoever. One person tries to pull the literal fire alarm on the boat, but if you’re taking over a SHIELD ship, you know that SHIELD is going to try and come and get you, presumably.
Pete Wright
But they’re so sneaky. Do you notice nobody’s feet make any noise?
Matthew Fox
Yeah, but your people are going down. Anyway, the part that really got me is — if you’re holding hostages, at what point do you think you would threaten them? It’s when they’re causing trouble, right? It’s when they’re sort of poking and prodding.
Pete Wright
Right. There was no threat.
Matthew Fox
The hostages are sitting dead still, doing nothing, and the guy’s going, “Do you want a bullet in your head?”
Pete Wright
They’re all tied up. That’s a good point.
Rob Kubasko
The answer is no, right?
Pete Wright
Okay.
Rob Kubasko
No, I don’t.
Matthew Fox
Right.
Rob Kubasko
No, no, I don’t.
Pete Wright
Well, so then we get Batroc, and I just want to say briefly — George Saint-Pierre actually learned all of his dialogue that we hear him say phonetically.
Matthew Fox
He’s also not an actor primarily.
Pete Wright
What do you think?
Matthew Fox
He’s a former professional mixed martial artist, considered one of the greatest figures in MMA history. And he actually won championships at the Ultimate Fighting Championship in two different divisions — welterweight and, I think, middleweight. So while this is by far the biggest movie he’s been in, he’s also been in Kickboxer: Vengeance, Cartels, and King of Killers, none of which I’ve heard of.
Pete Wright
Oh, we’ll be doing movie-by-minute on one of those, I’m sure. I think his performance is great. And what I really love about it — which we’re going to see and have not seen yet — is the question of whether Batroc lives up to the strength and power of Cap. That’s the way the Russos want to introduce this, is to give Cap something tough to fight against. And does he live up to it? So we’ll see.
Matthew Fox
I mean, since he completely rampaged through those fifteen, sixteen pirates, you want someone who’s going to pause the fight.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Matthew Fox
I also just want to say that he doesn’t really have any dialogue — he has some dialogue in French, but there’s no subtitles. If anyone wants to tell us everything that’s said, please write in. He does glower though. And the way that the Rumlow stuff establishes him as a maybe-sidekick heroic guy — the way that we just see a shot of Batroc and he’s just glowering — it just tells you he is evil. A little bit of lampshading, but I thought it was a nice way of reminding us this is a bad guy, TM.
Pete Wright
What else is going on after the house cleaning? Natasha lands, everybody lands, we cut to the galley, they are speaking French, they’re debating killing hostages. Yes, Batroc — one of the speakers we hear in these five minutes is Batroc. And tension is escalating as Natasha is elsewhere. Natasha swings down and is about to take on a separate mission — a mission we don’t know is compartmentalized yet. That’ll be coming soon.
Matthew Fox
Well, and we do know what Cap thinks is her mission, because we actually did get a great line of dialogue to set it up. As they’re striding down the ship together, she says, “What about the nurse who lives across from you? She seems nice.” That nurse, by the way, being Sharon Carter, who we later find out is a SHIELD agent. I’m going to bookmark that because I have a question I want to ask. But first, just this dialogue. Cap says, “Secure the engine room, then find me a date.” And Natasha says, “I’m multitasking.” So at least to Cap’s knowledge, she’s securing the engine room.
Pete Wright
At any point in those microseconds where she says “I’m multitasking” as she’s throwing herself over the ledge, did you think, I would forget one of those tasks and land on my neck? I mean, am I alone? I guess I’m alone. I would have been dead.
Matthew Fox
I could have absolutely no tasks whatsoever, have Zen-like focus on throwing myself over the side of the ship to land somewhere else, and I would fall and break my neck.
Pete Wright
Right, fair, yes.
Rob Kubasko
They’ve had training.
Pete Wright
Yes, so much training. She’s so good.
Rob Kubasko
She knows.
Pete Wright
Yes.
Matthew Fox
So here’s my question though. When Natasha suggests someone in statistics, that’s whatever. But when she says, “What about the nurse who lives across from you?” — that nurse is there specifically to do surveillance on Cap. Does Natasha not know that? Because I would think you don’t want to draw attention to that person if you know what’s going on there. Why does Natasha mention her specifically?
Rob Kubasko
I’m going to assume — well, one, I think it’s all intentional. Two, obviously that implies that Natasha’s been to his apartment a lot, because he’s not going to talk about the nurse that lives across the hall on his own. So that implies a lot of proximity to his life. And I would imagine she has to know who Sharon is.
Pete Wright
I think so too. And I think if anything, it’s probably a motivated ask — like, whatever I can do to keep Sharon, the nurse, closer to Steve, right?
Rob Kubasko
Or it’s just reverse psychology. If I bring it up, then clearly she’s not anybody connected, right?
Pete Wright
Yeah, right, right.
Rob Kubasko
I mean, it’s that too.
Matthew Fox
Right, right.
Pete Wright
Chris Evans is widely commended for his efforts to do most of his own stunts, and when he doesn’t, it’s done by a guy named Sam Hargrave. And Sam Hargrave’s worth a listen.
Rob Kubasko
Hey.
Pete Wright
Did you guys talk about Sam on any of your other stuff, Rob?
Rob Kubasko
I do remember that name. That’s always Kyle’s thing, yeah.
Pete Wright
Yeah. It’s a Kyle thing. So Sam was Cap’s stunt double on this. He was stunt double on Avengers. He went on to be the stunt coordinator and second unit director for Infinity War and Endgame. And then he went on to direct the Extraction movies for Netflix. The guy is a strong talent in the stunt area. Oh, he also donned the Cap outfit in the scene where Cap fights himself — that’s America’s ass. So we do get to see him on screen there too. I think it’s really great. Whatever degree Chris Evans did the work here is strong, but Hargrave was definitely in the suit for these sequences.
Matthew Fox
Wait a minute. I think we need to clarify something. So Chris Evans is fighting him in Endgame, and he’s the one who gets knocked down.
Pete Wright
So yeah —
Matthew Fox
I assume there’s a switcheroo though, because we are still saying that it is Chris Evans’ ass and not Sam Hargrave’s.
Pete Wright
Yes. Although to fit in the suit, you have to have some degree of America’s ass.
Matthew Fox
Okay. I’m always going to ask the questions for the girls, gays, and theys that I’m part of, so I just want to make sure we’re represented.
Pete Wright
Outstanding.
Matthew Fox
I will actually talk about a technical thing that I thought was really well done, but it also sets up another question. Actually, no — I’m going to back up a bit because I do have another nit to pick.
Pete Wright
Sure.
Matthew Fox
We talked earlier about why they have to get to the ship quickly — because it’s moving, you know, etc. And later we talk about Batroc. I don’t speak much French, but I knew enough to understand they’re giving some kind of orders about how the ship is moving. So how does Cap climb up an anchor chain?
Pete Wright
Okay.
Matthew Fox
Eyes prepare to roll.
Pete Wright
Yes, that’s a very good question. I give this credit to the fact that they probably stopped and anchored while they’re waiting to find out if they’re going to have any sway by having hostages. And that’s what they’re waiting on. Batroc, they’re all saying, “We’re going to start sending bodies back in two minutes.” And I think this is a moment of pause in the action. I don’t know why they chose to drop anchor. That is a tough one for me to reconcile. Because you could just stop the engines and the boat was just going to drift a little bit, but probably not that far. So I don’t understand why they dropped anchor. But also Cap needs something to climb up. And that may be enough. That may be enough of a motivator.
Rob Kubasko
You know what — I’m just scanning through it. And when they do the overhead shot, this is like about two minutes in from our clip, the boat is clearly not moving, because you can see the water is not moving. It’s basically anchored.
Matthew Fox
Okay, okay.
Rob Kubasko
So yeah, the boat is definitely not moving throughout these scenes.
Pete Wright
It could just be that they didn’t know the ship had stopped when they were initially doing their rundown of what they were in for.
Rob Kubasko
Right.
Matthew Fox
I will say that to lead up to that — the cool thing I want to talk about and then ask a question — is we do get this shot that, after Cap jumps, comes from the back of the ship and kind of moves forward through it, which is a great tension-building moment. And it’s also here that we get our needle drop. And this is the first piece of original music for this movie. There was already some music that was variations on themes from the first movie that does not appear on the soundtrack. This is the first one on the soundtrack, and it’s called “The Lemurian Star” by Henry Jackman. Henry Jackman composes most of the music for this movie. It’s a great scene — it definitely kind of helps build the tension, and then it’s that music that’s going to be playing through the fight scene. Here’s my question though, because the music is that kind of “dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun” that becomes pretty classic for MCU movies. And I know we’ve seen some articles where it’s actually been documented that MCU had a kind of idea of, let’s always keep the music in this range, not be too flashy, not be too special. Has that already happened by now? Because this certainly sounds like it fits that. It is perfectly fine background music, but it’s not memorable. It’s just — I can feel it increasing my heart rate and getting me more into the fight, but it’s also not something I’m going to be humming coming out of the movie.
Pete Wright
Yeah. It’s actually interesting. We talked a bunch about the music when we did the season on The First Avenger. And I don’t know if that conversation had happened at that point specifically, but it seems like it might have, because Silvestri, who anchored so much of the music for The First Avenger and the pickups and cues in subsequent films, it still feels directly in the range of Captain America. And that was the thing I was thinking about the whole time — it feels of a family with the Captain America character films, more than it does the Avengers itself or Iron Man or — good lord — Thor. It does feel like coming home again after Thor. It’s like a vacation from Thor to get back to Cap music. I don’t know, Rob.
Rob Kubasko
No, I think it’s widely known that the music is not — it’s not all John Williams, right? There’s no — the thematics I think are actually good. I’ve always enjoyed the themes of various characters. But in this I think there’s a very well-known formula for creating tension through sound. And that’s all that this is. We’re not trying to create a big-time score here. It’s really just to elevate the emotions and elevate your pulse.
Matthew Fox
Yeah. And I mean it works. It’s just interesting that we’re already seeing that, because I think what you described, Rob, becomes kind of the mission statement for a lot of the music going forward.
Pete Wright
So Frank Grillo as Rumlow. We’ve talked a bit about Frank Grillo last time. I had not seen Warrior from 2011. Anybody remember Warrior? Okay, I didn’t see it. But apparently he was cast in this role as a result of his role there. He played a very physically intimidating and complex fighter, and the Russos wanted him to feel like a real operator. And I think he absolutely crushes it here as he’s landing and able to be charismatic and have a strong relationship with everybody he’s operating with. He says he did not know Rumlow was Hydra when he was cast, through most of the movie. I don’t think it was a secret that Rumlow in the original material was Hydra — Hydra-adjacent on behalf of Red Skull. But I do find it amusing that he didn’t have that note. I wonder if that would have changed the way he performed had he known.
Matthew Fox
Well, and if it would have, then it’s a brilliant directorial choice.
Pete Wright
Yeah, standard, right.
Matthew Fox
Or did they decide to just give him sides? Or — and I think this might be a bit of a confession — did he not read the full script? Was he just like, I will read when I’m shooting tomorrow?
Pete Wright
I think it’s probably the first. I don’t remember if they were as secretive as they were by the time they got to Endgame and Infinity War — writing fake scripts and tossing those things around — but they definitely kept secrets.
Pete Wright
Scarlett Johansson — we talked a bit about Natasha’s role in the last five minutes, especially as she drives the fancy car. This is where we get to see her first action sequence, where we get to see her become a more fully realized peer to Captain America. And I deeply appreciate that in this sequence she has agency — not just character subservience to the hero, whoever the main hero is. And I think she absolutely proves she’s up for the charismatic challenge of being on par with Steve Rogers.
Matthew Fox
Yeah, I would fully agree. Because when she says “multitasking,” what she means is: I have two missions. Do secret stuff. And keep you so distracted with inane dialogue — talking to you about silly things like who you’re dating — that you don’t notice that I’m doing all this shady stuff. And I think for the most part she does that really well. We talked a lot about how we’re moving her away from just being the hair-flying, high-leg-kicking character in tight leather from Iron Man 2. I do feel like a little bit of that comes out in her fight scenes. And I made the joke about how many hair flips she has. The fight scenes are awesome, to be clear, but her fight scenes are much more sexualized than anyone else’s. And my memory is there’s less of that later in the movie. So I did think that was a little like — okay, we’re still a little bit in line with where she’s been before. That is a very accepted comic book trope, that’s fine, but I’m glad we’re getting a lot more to her than that.
Pete Wright
There’s a comic-frame moment when she lands right before she says “Hang on” — where she lands from her rappelling in hero pose. And then her sister makes fun of it later, right? That absolute hero pose where the frame is pulled way back and we see the soldier on one side and her landing in hero pose. It looks right out of the comic. It’s really, really cool.
Pete Wright
I think I interrupted you, Rob.
Rob Kubasko
Oh no, I’m just going to say I think this has been — just for the first ten minutes of this movie — a wonderful reintroduction to this character. And she has not just disappeared, but dare I say, she’s a woman for all seasons. She is really shown as an equal, confident, action-oriented, and take-charge. You definitely get that she is independent, and it’s focusing much more on the heroic parts of the character.
Matthew Fox
And I think another reason why I like that is it’s really good for her character, and really good for Rumlow’s character as well. But also I walk away from the scene thinking I’m not sure that Cap could have taken down every single person on the ship single-handedly. Rumlow — it’s a joke because he has just rampaged through everybody else. But there’s a guy with a gun to Cap’s head two feet away. And that’s not a good situation for someone who, for all his strengths, is not bulletproof. Rumlow saves him. Could he have probably saved himself? Maybe. Probably. But I like that this isn’t Cap and the stupid kids. It is a mission that Cap is a huge part of, but he needs this team, and he needs Natasha.
Rob Kubasko
I’m not going to lie — the first time you said “rampaged,” I had to look it up.
Matthew Fox
Oh, okay.
Rob Kubasko
I missed that gaming generation, but thank you.
Matthew Fox
Sorry. For anyone who’s confused by it, it is the auto-beat-down — rolling on the floor laughing.
Rob Kubasko
I’m sure I’m the only one.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Matthew Fox
Rampage. To beat up in a hilariously uneven and clearly-you-never-had-a-chance way.
Rob Kubasko
Yes.
Pete Wright
That’s awesome. I think the only other thing I wanted to add is that we get one of these showcase sequences for Trent Opaloch, cinematographer on this one. And especially when comparing to The First Avenger, you can really see the seams where they want to position this film not as a subsequent superhero film but as a follow-up to Three Days of the Condor, as a follow-up to Klute, as a follow-up to these seventies espionage thrillers. And everything is — there’s a lot of handheld, there are a lot of really close-quarters visual language choices that work so well for what they’re trying to do. And these first ten minutes — I’ll say fifteen — have to really get you into the world hardcore, because the rest of the movie doesn’t let up. If you don’t buy what they’re trying to do in these first fifteen minutes, this will seem like a miss of a movie. Because did people want to come in and see a seventies espionage thriller for their Captain America? It turns out they did, but that’s a hard promise.
Rob Kubasko
I’ve got to tell you, this is a perfect segue into one of the themes I wanted to bring up. When re-watching this, I forgot what an homage the opening to this movie is to literally the decade of the 1990s. And I tried to find what are the things that — if you now look at this sequence — what does it remind you of?
Pete Wright
Okay.
Rob Kubasko
I’m going to go by year. 1992: Under Siege, a movie starring Tommy Lee Jones and some other guy. Patriot Games, starring Harrison Ford. And in my notes I had — you might know him, he’s a star from Regarding Henry and Ender’s Game. Mortal Kombat comes out in ’92. So when I see Cap like that, it’s Steve Rogers wins — he’s got these great brutalities and stuff.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Rob Kubasko
1994: True Lies with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis. Tons of strings from True Lies in this sequence. 1997: GoldenEye for the Nintendo 64. ’98: Metal Gear Solid on the PlayStation, and Enemy of the State starring Gene Hackman. There is so much of the nineties already at play in this movie.
Pete Wright
Oh, so much of it. But you know, it’s funny that you say that, Rob. I’m going to keep my hat hanging on the seventies. Because you look at the other nineties films — Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, The Fugitive in ’93, right?
Rob Kubasko
Yes, ninety-three, yes, yes, yes.
Pete Wright
Speed, Die Hard — these big action temples. I think in the nineties they were already trying to pilfer conceits from the seventies action thrillers.
Rob Kubasko
No, I totally agree with that.
Pete Wright
That’s really funny.
Rob Kubasko
Yes.
Pete Wright
We’ve leapt decades to get back here. That’s awesome. So anyway, I just want to highlight Trent Opaloch because I think he really captured what the Russos were going for, what Feige was going for — this departure in tone and visual that makes this movie something special. And these first five minutes — you have to say — this is the first one that’s different from all of the other ones we’ve seen. And there have been eight already. And this one feels like something new.
Matthew Fox
So I actually have a question about how it’s made. Because I know that if I saw this today, I’d immediately think the whole ship is CGI.
Pete Wright
Right, it’s not.
Matthew Fox
This movie is old enough that I’m not sure — is this an actual ship? Did they just rent a container ship?
Pete Wright
Oh, I’m so glad you brought that up. Did they rent a container ship? I mean, does MCU need to rent a container ship? I don’t know if they rented it, but I will tell you — the entire Lemurian Star was a real ship and they filmed the exteriors around it in Cleveland, I think, was the location for this one. And they were on a ship. They wanted to get the realism. It’s an old ship.
Matthew Fox
So I’m watching Lake Erie, not the Indian Ocean. But otherwise they have — okay.
Pete Wright
Yeah, I think that’s probably fair.
Rob Kubasko
I just want to add some insane detail — this was also based on an actual vessel called the Launch Platform Odyssey, which was a self-propelled semi-submersible mobile spacecraft launch platform that was converted from a mobile drilling rig in 1997. And one other little note — “Lemurian Star” — the name Lemurian refers primarily to a mythical continent in the Pacific and Indian Ocean, often compared to Atlantis.
Pete Wright
Wow, there you go.
Rob Kubasko
Just FYI.
Pete Wright
That’s a level up.
Rob Kubasko
I was holding that.
Matthew Fox
There we go.
Pete Wright
Yeah. No, I think you’re right to point that out. That ship, this decommissioned vessel — I think it adds a lot of weight. You really feel like this was not filmed on a volume stage. There’s weight and metal clang and all of that just feels substantive.
Matthew Fox
Yeah. I think that’s all I got.
Pete Wright
This was really fun.
Rob Kubasko
Well, more to come.
Pete Wright
I feel like we’re really in the movie now, you guys.
Rob Kubasko
Yes.
Pete Wright
This is so good. And I cheated — I said I wasn’t going to watch the movie? I totally watched the movie. I couldn’t stop. After these five minutes I watched the whole thing, and I’m going to watch it again and again and again.
Rob Kubasko
Yes.
Pete Wright
Oh, it’s so good. So anyway, MarvelMovieMinute.com — that’ll take you to our landing page where you can find everything you need with this show, whether you want to become a member, whether you want to jump into the Discord, whatever you want. We would love your support and we’re happy to have you here. You can also watch the live streams — that’s right, the live streams. If you’re listening to this, you should jump into the Discord because our live streams for members are up and running again. All the technical stuff is in play now. So you can join us live, ask questions, we’ll figure out how it works. And everybody wish Kyle the best from the dentist.
Rob Kubasko
Yeah, he’s not dead, just so everyone knows.
Pete Wright
May — he’s not dead. May you rest in peace in that chair, Kyle. We miss you. And that’s it, I think we’re done. Thank you very much.
Matthew Fox
We have spoken.
Rob Kubasko
Bye.
