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 five minutes at a time.
Pete Wright:
Most shows would be parked out of film.
Matthew Fox:
In this, our ninth season, we’re looking at Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I’m Matthew Fox.
Pete Wright:
I’m Pete Wright.
Kyle Olson:
I’m Kyle Olson.
Matthew Fox:
And today we’re talking about minutes 76 through 80, which begins with Jasper name-dropping famous Marvel characters and ends with Sam quite literally bringing a knife to a fully automatic machine gun fight.
Pete Wright:
That’s a hell of a kicker, though. Just Sam with the knife.
Matthew Fox:
Sam with— and it’s like, that is not a knife that Crocodile Dundee would respect, to be clear.
Kyle Olson:
No, but Deadpool would.
Matthew Fox:
Like, that is a small little blade.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, a hundred percent. Deadpool would.
Matthew Fox:
That’s true.
Pete Wright:
So— no, wait just a minute. Kyle, you were not here last time, and we started our run—
Kyle Olson:
I missed some soft bedroom conversation between Natasha and Steve.
Pete Wright:
You did, but most importantly, you missed the first few seconds’ introduction of Falcon’s wings.
Kyle Olson:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
And we tried. We did our level best. But we want to make sure you have the floor, at least briefly, to do some foundational work with us on your Falcon lore. It’s Falcon lore with Kyle.
Kyle Olson:
Okay. I will keep this brief, because I know we want to keep the show moving. I did research back into it, because you had sort of caught me off guard with that. I hadn’t looked it up in a while, and I forgot how bonkers that story actually is.
They go to— they meet on an island, an exile island, and they’re fighting Nazis, and Cap’s like, these people need a symbol, we should make you a falcon. And they had a whole costume so that the people can rally behind him and fight off these Nazis who have taken over. And he’s literally just a guy in a Falcon costume, and he does not fly for a while.
And then Cap’s like, hey, you’re a Falcon, maybe we should get you some wings. Hey, T’Challa, do you think you can come up with some wings? And T’Challa, being the Black Panther, the magnanimous king that he is, was like, absolutely. And so the first set of wings came— they are Wakandan wings, the ones created by the Black Panther. So that is where his first set of wings came from.
Pete Wright:
Wow.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. And as I was looking through it, I forgot— this was also when Falcon was one of the most prominent black characters in Marvel entirely, after T’Challa. He was sort of the next one who was front and center, sharing the cover with Steve in the 1960s. So it was a big deal.
Pete Wright:
That was one of the notes we did call out— he was the first black character not to have the modifier “black” in his superhero title.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, yeah.
Pete Wright:
Crazy.
Kyle Olson:
Black Panther, Black Lightning, all those guys. He’s stopping that.
Matthew Fox:
And it’s not like “Black Falcon” has trouble rolling off the tongue. It’s not like you had to do it with Falcon— you could have made him Black Falcon. So I’m really glad they didn’t. I’m also really glad to hear the connection between his wings and T’Challa, and presumably them being made of vibranium, because we haven’t gotten there yet, but I believe later in this movie, and certainly in later movies and Falcon appearances, the wings being bulletproof is a hundred percent a thing without any explanation whatsoever. So knowing that they have that vibranium history, even if that’s not part of the MCU’s canon itself, at least makes sense.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. Maybe there’s something that Shield has underneath, so it’s like adamantium, vibranium, and then Starkium. Maybe it’s the stuff that they came up with in Iron Man 2, his dad— you know. So something along those lines, to make them a little sturdier than you would think.
Pete Wright:
Falconium. That’s really interesting.
All right. So we do— we had some seconds of Falcon in this suite of two five minutes. But mostly we wrap up our interrogation, and we get some exposition dump.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, that’s right. This is why you go after the little guys and squeeze them, because just one little kick off of a building, and suddenly Jasper’s ready to sing.
Pete Wright:
Right. And he gives us the world, Jasper. He gives us the entire plan, the mission statement of Hydra across this movie, which is to choose targets. The TV anchor in Cairo, the Under Secretary of Defense, the high school valedictorian in Iowa City. Bruce Banner and Stephen Strange are on the same level as the high school valedictorian in Iowa City.
Kyle Olson:
I know. It’s quite a jump up. I want to know that valedictorian, because the next thing he mentioned is Bruce Banner. I was like, that’s quite a list.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, and Stephen Strange, right? The Stephen Strange name-drop is awesome, because this is what, three years prior to Doctor Strange?
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, I think 2016 is when it came out. So it must have been firmly in pre-production, if not in production, at this point. So it wasn’t one of those aspirational things like Iron Man 2 when they mentioned Wakanda. They already have it cast. They already have it on the way. So I think it was a smart call for them to put that in there, to be like, wink.
Matthew Fox:
And I remember people going nuts over that. That was a big point of discussion on the MCU podcast and stuff like that when this movie came out. As well as a lot of people trying to really dive hard to figure out who that high school valedictorian in Iowa City was. And for the most part, I think intentionally, coming up with nothing. But I heard a lot of theories about who might have gone to high school in Iowa City.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. But it’s interesting now, being here in the future, looking back, going, why would Shield— or Hydra— even care about Stephen Strange? Because at this point, he’s a surgeon who got in an accident, went to Nepal, and now just lives in a brownstone. I don’t think it’s known that he’s the Sorcerer Supreme at this point. He doesn’t make a big splash when he saves the world— he kind of does it quietly in another dimension and then comes back, just like, all right, back to New York. So I don’t know why he would necessarily make this list, aside from fan service.
Matthew Fox:
I mean, I think it’s just that they may also not realize Bruce Banner is the Hulk. I think it’s because they’re two of the smartest people in the world.
Kyle Olson:
Oh, no, I think they very much know that. I mean, after the events of Incredible Hulk—
Pete Wright:
After the Avengers.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. He was a fugitive— and the Avengers now too, yeah.
Matthew Fox:
Okay, that’s fair. But with Strange, at least, I think it’s just that he’s one of the smartest people in the world. And that algorithm would say smart people who are also not good at taking orders is exactly the kind of person who’d go to the top of the list.
Pete Wright:
And must be at the very top of the list, for Sitwell to be terrified on the roof of this high-rise and drop that name in the first set of five things, right? They’re really talking about Stephen Strange at the highest levels of Hydra. Even not just the highest— at the Sitwell levels of Hydra.
Kyle Olson:
And, yeah, let’s go around the room and name people we would put on that list. No, no, no, no.
Pete Wright:
It does give us the entire mission statement of the movie. He tells us now Hydra is doing this. Hydra is reading your bank records. And what was the line— evaluating people’s past to predict their future.
Kyle Olson:
That was Zola who was doing all that.
Pete Wright:
At what point do we do a digression on Snowden? This movie is a direct reflection of real life.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. Honestly, it’s one of those easy, scary things, where they’re talking about the algorithm looking at your data and knowing exactly what it is and determining your future. And I was like, oh boy. Markus and McFeely, man— you really had your finger on the pulse, because whoo, here we are ten-plus years later, and this is exactly what is happening right now. And right now the race is who can make the best Zola.
Matthew Fox:
Right. And to me, that’s part of the irony of it— I think for very good reason they were saying be scared of the government doing it. And we should be. And that is still a thing the government’s trying to do. But the fact is, the government is being lapped constantly by corporate America, who isn’t trying to figure out who’s a danger to the government. They’re trying to figure out what to sell you next. Which in many ways is just as insidious. So yeah, I think this is one of the things of the movie that has aged so well, in how much it predicted the exact kind of situation we’re in today.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. I think of Westworld too. If you get farther into Westworld, past the cowboy stuff, there’s a big thing in the later seasons where they talk about how the algorithm has now figured out who you’re going to marry, when you’re going to die, and then is making investments based on that information and running you like a program. So it’s a direct line of some real hard sci-fi truths that we’re still grappling with.
Pete Wright:
This movie came out less than a year after the NSA leaks broke. So when we talk about Markus and McFeely having their— and the Russos having their— fingers collectively on the pulse, they had their fingers on the pulse years prior to the NSA leaks happening, right? This was almost prophecy. By the time they were making this movie, and then this stuff happens— Matthew, you say how well it’s aged. It is truly pristine in the shot that it managed to call here. It’s incredible.
Kyle Olson:
It’s kind of impressive how much they’re also sort of allowed to do. As I’m watching this, I’m thinking, well, this was top of mind, top of news— to be going after the military-industrial complex in a Marvel movie. Disney just did their first sort of Planet of the Apes movie [unclear], and it was so toothless. Whereas I think of this and go, wow, what happened? That you were allowed this much freedom to flex a little bit. And now they would never allow you to do anything like this. As we’ve seen with Captain America 4, they did everything they could to not call attention to any particular idea, prophecy, topic, anything controversial.
Pete Wright:
Right.
Matthew Fox:
Down to wiping all references to the character being Israeli, or certainly any connection to the Israeli secret service that I can’t remember the name of now.
Pete Wright:
Mossad, yeah.
Matthew Fox:
Mossad, thank you. Yeah, I think that’s really true. And it’s interesting, because this is still the era when the US military is helping pay to get these movies made. And so they are inserting positive references to the US military— for example, with Falcon and his character. Is it that it’s subtle enough that they miss it, or just that they were a lot more hands-off? Because I would imagine that today, if the MCU was trying to make a movie that was this critical of ongoing government policy, the military would say, we’re going to pull our money unless you cut that scene.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, roll that way back.
Pete Wright:
What’s interesting about that is, I think maybe a policy change comes when—
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
—the movie is about, you know, we’re making this case that mass surveillance and predictive analytics equals authoritarian pre-crime, right? But that was before we knew it was happening. Once you know it’s happening, then you’ve got to put the authoritarian boot on the neck of the creative, right? That’s the stuff that we don’t want to hang a flag on. I don’t know.
Matthew Fox:
I think there is also one key difference, and it’s really subtle, so I don’t know if it registers for people, but this might be the line that Marvel was able to use. In this, they’re not saying that the algorithm is hacking anything. They’re saying that all this stuff is publicly available, and this algorithm is gathering all of that and then processing from it. What Snowden revealed was that the NSA was gathering a whole bunch of things far beyond that. It was hacking in and listening in on people’s phones, doing all this kind of stuff beyond that.
And whether it’s government or corporate America— I think we’re now thinking of things like Palantir. Sorry if they were going to become a sponsor, and I’m blowing that up now. But, you know, that overlap of where government and the commercial world are now coming back together. It’s very scary, and I think that was kind of the point. Part of it’s about, hey, how dangerous is it that people can do all this? But also part of it’s about, hey, how easily are we giving them all our information?
Kyle Olson:
And just to re-emphasize for anyone out there who’s working on the other side of this— these are the bad guys. The bad guys are the ones who are doing this. So maybe if you look at your job description and it lines up with what Hydra was doing, maybe you should think about moving on to a new career.
Pete Wright:
Excellent point. I’m glad we put a flag on those particular kinds of points. When the bad guys are just doing business today, that’s a problem.
We do have— let’s see— I think, yeah, now we get to meet the Highwomen, Matthew.
Kyle Olson:
Now it’s time for a road trip. Woo.
Matthew Fox:
Oh, I have a few other things to say about this conversation with Jasper first.
Pete Wright:
Oh, for sure.
Matthew Fox:
First, can we talk about Jasper’s emotional 180 that happens halfway through?
Kyle Olson:
Oh, all right.
Matthew Fox:
Because he is so scared and so worried. And then they talk about the algorithm, and Captain America says, how would it know? And he just, all of a sudden, goes from “oh no, I can’t believe you’re going to hurt me” to “Muahaha, let me, James Bond villain, tell you our evil plan.” Did that seem really kind of weird, that he just has that flick of a switch? Is that just the actor having fun? Do you think that’s intentional?
Kyle Olson:
No, I think it literally is— Jasper is a squirmer. Basically, he sees which way the wind is going, like, oh, okay. I’m not a fighter. I’m not going to stand up to torture or anything. I already think our side’s going to win. We’ve got three helicarriers full of heavy ordnance, ready to launch in just a couple of hours. So I think he really is very confident in where he sits, so he’s not really as worried. He’s more than willing to just roll over and be like, oh, okay, well, I mean, you guys have already lost, so—
Matthew Fox:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
I also think there’s a piece of it where you get him talking about the specifics of the technology, and Sitwell— who is, I imagine, at the end of his title the word “analyst”— is probably pretty proud of what they have accomplished, just at a raw technological level. Being able to do this. Once he starts saying, look at all the stuff we get, it’s amazing what we have done. And that, to me, is what that pivot represents— Sitwell going from the reality of his situation to—
Matthew Fox:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
—Sitwell being a braggart about what they’ve accomplished.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, I’m sure he’s pretty proud of his connections too. Later we’ll see Pierce calls him on the phone, so it doesn’t seem to be an uncommon occurrence. He’s probably worked directly with Zola. He probably felt like he was such a special boy, because important people are always around him.
Matthew Fox:
Yeah, totally agree. And I think that interplay of “how could it know? how could it not?”— it makes sense that it’s there, because that’s where he starts to be like, oh, look how stupid you are, so therefore let me show you how smart I am.
Now, here’s the other question I have about this— and it’s a question I’ve had about the whole movie, but here’s the time to ask it. So the plan is that the helicarriers go live and just start committing mass murder.
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Matthew Fox:
Let’s be clear— it’s not that the American justice system has decided that. The algorithm— if you’re an F-15 pilot flying over Washington, DC, of which there are multiple, or perhaps someone at Andrews Air Force Base not far away— and all of a sudden there are these three helicarriers mass-murdering people, don’t you think the US Air Force might come over and have a look? Maybe fire? You’re so wrapped up in it that you don’t care, but the whole point of this podcast is that we get to care.
Kyle Olson:
Who’s to say they’re not on the list already?
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Matthew Fox:
This plan makes no sense whatsoever. The first ten people are taken out, and the missiles are flying, and these helicopters are going down.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Especially— I mean, Sitwell characterizes it as, when we start scratching people off the list a few million at a time—
Matthew Fox:
Like—
Pete Wright:
The scale of that particular genocide is something the movie doesn’t ever need to reckon with, because plot.
Kyle Olson:
Mm-hmm. Yeah, but I’m interested to see— I want to see the slide deck of the pitch for this.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
You know? Like, what was it? Just like, no, no— deterrence. All the weapons will be fully live.
Matthew Fox:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, exactly.
Kyle Olson:
No, no, we’re going to have live ammo in all of them, but— deterrence, right? You see that out there and people will just surrender. We don’t have to fire a shot.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. And you can hear it— it was probably Sitwell making the case, and he probably put the theme of Top Gun at the back of the PowerPoint, right?
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Matthew Fox:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Like, yeah.
Matthew Fox:
I’m just saying— granted, a machine gun way up in the air has a pretty far range. Do you know what’s out of the range of a machine gun floating over Washington, DC? Iowa City and its valedictorian. You’ve got to take that helicarrier a couple thousand miles before you—
Pete Wright:
To Iowa City.
Matthew Fox:
Anyway. Okay, so with that, let’s go into the greatest road-rage exposition scenes that we’ve ever seen.
Pete Wright:
Okay.
Kyle Olson:
Uh-huh.
Matthew Fox:
And I just want to say— you all know that I care about how characters die, and I care about when our heroes kill people. And a trope that I think Marvel falls into— but I love it every time, so I don’t mind that it’s a trope, but it’s worth calling out— is: a really bad guy is now hanging out with our heroes, and our heroes can’t just kill him, but he absolutely deserves to die. And so either by intent or by accident, when the enemies start attacking our heroes, that guy will be the first to die, and he will die quite gruesomely. And I think the Jasper death— being in the middle of berating Cap for a stupid idea, pulled out of the car and thrown literally into the path of a truck, which I think is a Penske—
Kyle Olson:
Uh-huh. Penske.
Matthew Fox:
Penske, thank you.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Matthew Fox:
Which— I don’t know who in the Penske PR department decided, how about if our product placement is, we murder someone?
Pete Wright:
No, no, we’ll take anything.
Kyle Olson:
Twice. This is the second time. My headcanon is, there was a guy who got a Penske truck to move, and during the Nick Fury thing, hit the one and was like, oh no, and then went back and got a second truck. And is now leaving the city, like, whoo, that was a bad morning. Oh no, not again.
Matthew Fox:
Can you imagine his insurance? No one’s going to rent him a truck ever again.
Kyle Olson:
Right?
Pete Wright:
Oh.
Matthew Fox:
But yeah—
Kyle Olson:
He’s like, I just got fired, I’m trying to move back upstate. Right.
Matthew Fox:
He’s going back to Iowa City, come on.
Kyle Olson:
I’ve got to get to the graduation.
Matthew Fox:
What did you guys think of Jasper’s death?
Pete Wright:
Well, I love it. Because whenever everything you just described happens, and the character is ripped from the scene, you just know— oh, so I’m done learning everything I need to know about the movie now. Now it’s just action. Because not only did he get the exposition dump, then he was killed. So functionally, it’s really satisfying to know I’m totally caught up, and now they’re just going to be a parade of pixels. And it’s awesome.
Kyle Olson:
And I love an interrogation interrupted— that they’re having this conversation, and I love when an action scene crashes into a dialogue scene. They do it all the time, and it gets me every single time. Like, oh, oh god— just that fast. It’s like, hey, what is the— and then Jasper’s flying out the window. I love it.
Matthew Fox:
Well, and I just love the squaring of the circle— obviously we’re going to find it very satisfying for this guy to die a gruesome death, but we don’t want our heroes to do it. And so here’s how we can have both, we can have our cake and eat it too. In a way that, if Natasha actually kills him, this becomes a very different kind of movie.
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
The only thing I think that would have made it better is, had we heard in the background just, “I’m on your side.” That would have really completed the death for me.
Kyle Olson:
Hail Hydra.
Pete Wright:
So it’s a very elegant way to end the exposition on behalf of Jasper, and we get to move on to the Winter Soldier on the roof. And this is the first time—
Kyle Olson:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
—where the film’s sort of action commitment hits, right? Because we’ve had a lot of action beats, but this is the one where the Winter Soldier gets to be his complete evolution as the Winter Soldier. He is completely dominating. He has minions. He jumps off of bridges, he has his grenade gun, he walks through smoke. We get the awesome— he slides backwards and his fingers are in the asphalt. All of that stuff is what makes his character in this movie the thing we’ve been waiting for for over an hour. This is where it pays off.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, because we’ve seen a little bit of that in the Nick Fury thing. We got to see him shoot his cool mine-launcher gun, but then he failed his target. We’ve seen him shoot through a wall and get somebody. But now— this is what level six is, I guess, because this is what Pierce told him: the time for subtlety is done, do the thing that you do. Because he is unafraid. Bright sunlight, just standing in the middle of the road. He is not trying to hide. He’s not the guy with the sniper rifle shooting someone from a distance. No, this is— they know the secret is out. There’s going to be tons of footage of him now. So at this point, yeah, go for broke.
Matthew Fox:
You mentioned so many of the scary things, and all of them are up there, but for me the absolute top— we’ve seen the person reach into the car and grab the steering wheel to twist it one way or another to direct you, but just straight up ripping the steering wheel out of the dashboard.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. That can happen.
Matthew Fox:
That, to me, is terrifying. It’s such a visceral, oh my god, that is not supposed to be what that does.
Kyle Olson:
My friend Lorraine Dom, friend of the show, loves this movie. She’s maybe the number one Bucky stan out there. And this is one of her favorite moments of this movie— Bucky takes the wheel. It’s such a power move. I’m just reaching in and ripping it out, like, what are you going to do now? And Sam is just looking like— it never crossed his mind that that would happen. Like, well, what do you do? Yeah.
Pete Wright:
To me, the sequence in this moment that I go back to is riding the shield. That is such a viscerally bruising effect, right?
Kyle Olson:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
When he says, hold on, and grabs them and falls out, and starts sliding on the shield, while Sam is just doing barrel rolls down the highway behind them as they’ve all come out of this flying car. It’s not a very glamorous stunt, right? It’s not one of the most flamboyant stunts. But it just reminds me how brutal soft things smashing into hard things feels. And it really works.
Matthew Fox:
Was it the shield? Because I thought at one point they’re sliding down on a car door.
Pete Wright:
No, he knocks the door out, but he’s got his shield between him and the door.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, it happens really fast.
Pete Wright:
So the door comes out, and he’s— yep.
Matthew Fox:
Okay.
Kyle Olson:
Cap takes the shield and puts it against the door. He has Nat already in his lap, because she came from the back, because the Winter Soldier was shooting down— and then he grabs Sam. It was really hard to tell exactly how he did it, but I guess enough leverage that he pushed down and then knocked the door off as it hits the ground, and it stays while the car continues on. And then because of momentum and physics, the door slides along. So it’s sort of like door, shield, Cap— and then Sam, unfortunately, bounces for a while.
Pete Wright:
Sam bounces off, yeah.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, he basically goes rolling down the street.
Matthew Fox:
So let’s talk about the shield. Because Kyle, you are the MCU physics expert. And I know that we have some returning questions about vibranium.
Kyle Olson:
I am. Oh, wow.
Pete Wright:
Recurring questions about vibranium.
Kyle Olson:
Returning to my brain, yes.
Matthew Fox:
Returning questions, returning questions. What is it that happened? Because if it does stop all vibration going through— how is it that machine gun fire doesn’t do anything, but when the shield gets hit by a rocket, it sends Cap flying? Is it just that the vibration doesn’t affect the metal, but that the force is transferred through? Because that certainly doesn’t happen other times.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, that was my thought. Because we haven’t seen them shrug off anything missile-sized. So it can very easily take very small pieces of metal coming at it. But an explosion— essentially something small getting very big very fast— there’s just that concussive force, and it doesn’t matter whether you absorb vibration or not, it’s going to push whatever is on there. And as we’ve seen later on, he’ll take a hit and go sliding across, because there’s still that kinetic energy, but not enough that it actually will damage him inside. I think that’s part of it— just preserving the thing or person that’s behind it, not necessarily stopping all physical force. I think you’d need the Power Stone in order to get that level. Because even later on with Black Panther, when he’s in a full vibranium outfit, he’s still getting knocked around. But the fact that he can just stand back up, and later on can give that force back— obviously that’s further technology, and this is still just a circle.
Matthew Fox:
So, to put it in D&D terms— you have total immunity to thunder damage, but not necessarily force damage.
Kyle Olson:
Oh, yes. Yes, yes, that’s very good.
Pete Wright:
Well done. That is about the best explanation I’ve ever heard of vibranium.
Kyle Olson:
I like that. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
It took D&D to get there.
Matthew Fox:
There we go.
Pete Wright:
Outstanding. Now— so that’s the shield. Were there any other shield physics questions? I’m sure there’ll be more.
Kyle Olson:
Oh, I’m sure there’ll be more. As Peter says later on, this thing does not obey the laws of physics at all.
Pete Wright:
The Winter Soldier walking through smoke is, I think, the shot that puts Sebastian Stan on the action-hero movie map. He is so cool. A little bit— a little bit you want him to win.
Kyle Olson:
It’s so cool. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Right? Like, come on.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, just so much power. And I love the fact that— you talked about how he has this little crew. He has a grenade-launcher steward.
Pete Wright:
Yes, he does.
Kyle Olson:
I love that. She just hands out his grenade launchers— no words. They know. Like, oh, he’s going to want that, I should have that ready for him.
Matthew Fox:
And I liked it because— I will note, we’ve noted this before, but I do think that the DC traffic is at least a little more responsive to Beirut-style assassinations on the streets of Washington, DC. In this, we hear one or two cars honk and drive out of the way, and that’s about it.
Kyle Olson:
There is a long-standing tradition— I’ll go all the way back to Incredible Hulk— of Marvel people going, eh, it’ll be fine, they’ll clear it out. There’s two raging titans in Harlem beating the crap out of each other, and people are like, yeah, but I’ve got shopping to do.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Matthew Fox:
Kyle, I am from New York City, and I will not stand for the slander that puts New York City people and Washington, DC, people in the same category— if you grew up in New York City, you have seen some shit, okay?
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. But you also know that when stuff goes down, you get away. Like, oh hey, that’s not my problem, I need to get the heck out of here. Not standing in the gates like, huh, how about that.
Pete Wright:
Marvel pedestrians are NPCs.
Kyle Olson:
Look—
Pete Wright:
No, but it doesn’t matter what city they’re in.
Kyle Olson:
Exactly.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
Right. And as much as there could be— we see nobody getting hit by straight bullets.
Pete Wright:
There are a couple where, like, a grenade throws a Miata off the bridge, kind of a thing.
Kyle Olson:
Some cars do go boom, and there’s no way that they survived that.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Matthew Fox:
Well, here’s the question I was building towards. When that truck comes up from behind and slams into the back of the car that Falcon is driving— did you all immediately figure out that that was henchmen? Because at first I thought that was, oh, we’re finally dealing with the fact that this is happening and cars are driving. And then I realized, oh no, you’re still accelerating. Okay, clearly this is bad people doing bad things. Once again— if your job is to smash into another car in your car, you’re doing what Hydra does. Probably quit your job. Unless you work for a demolition derby. But did it take you a moment to realize this was intentional, not just more of the traffic pile-up because we’re fighting World War III on the highway?
Kyle Olson:
No, I think it pretty much has that bad-guy motif. Like, big scary black SUV— it kind of reads as, oh yeah, this is what the bad guys did.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. I think the first close-up, as it’s coming into the bumper, is a giant knobby tire and fender, and it just felt like, this is not standard DC fare. So I had it pegged pretty early. Also, these guys are running from somebody, and we know action must ensue. And we already knew the whole story, so surely something was going to happen.
This gets us to— did anybody survive on the overturned city bus sequence?
Kyle Olson:
Right. Yeah. Because it’s Cap on the shield, he draws fire, he pushes Nat away, gets hit by the grenade from the grenade launcher, goes flying over the edge, through the bus, loses the shield. The bus then gets hit by a truck and rolls to the side, and he is, as far as we can tell, out. Cap is knocked out— we won’t see him for the next couple of minutes. He has definitely got his bell rung at that point.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. So Natasha gets to swing.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
That’s pretty cool.
Kyle Olson:
Love that. Heidi Moneymaker, shout-out.
Pete Wright:
Yep. That’s pretty cool. Then we get Hargrave and Moneymaker doing their thing in this sequence. It’s just lovely to watch these stunts. It’s fantastic. She gets to slide. It does indicate she’s wearing her bracers— bracers of rope protection— all the time.
Kyle Olson:
Look, according to Marvel, they are known as Black Widow’s Gauntlets. I always thought of them by a different name, but it turns out— one of the features of them— they first appeared in Tales of Suspense number 64, in January of 1965, written by Stan “the man” Lee, with Don Heck as the artist. If you’d seen the original— if you go back to our Iron Man 2 episodes— you know that Black Widow, when she first showed up, was very much a femme fatale. She was in a dress with a veil, very much like the spider. Here she shows up as a proper supervillain in almost a Spider-Man-esque unitard and mask, and then she has these things now.
So the gauntlets essentially have weapons in them. They have the Widow’s Bite, which is when you see the energy come out— she uses that in Avengers and will continue to own that, the zap. The Widow’s Kiss, which they don’t use in the movies, which is like a gas to knock people out. And then the Widow’s Line, which is what we see here— there’s a little thing that she grapples onto and goes on. Each gauntlet has different things in it, so one does the electricity, one does the other things— you can’t have them all. And this isn’t just me talking— this is from the holy gospel of OHotMU, the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe.
Matthew Fox:
Oh.
Pete Wright:
Oh.
Kyle Olson:
There is a diagram that shows exactly what is inside all of those and how they work. I will be sending that in, and we will have that in the show notes. It was one of my favorite things, because they really, at the time, got into this stuff, and they would do complex breakdowns— they would literally open it up and show you each piece of it and how it works. So it’s not just comic-book physics.
Pete Wright:
And how much rope it can actually hold, because that’s always what I think when this deploys.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. How do you have that much coiled up inside the little thing?
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Matthew Fox:
It’s a fairy-tale coil.
Pete Wright:
How can she possibly bend her elbow? I’m sure it’s all wrapped up around her arm.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, right. The ones we see in here are literally just around her wrists, but the ones she has later are more down the arm.
Pete Wright:
Yes, yeah. You get that full bracers-kind-of-gauntlet feel to them.
Kyle Olson:
So they have more space to put stuff. Yeah. And I also love that she comes out from underneath and doesn’t stop— grapples over the side as the car falls, hits the ground, continues on, and then looks and sees the Winter Soldier’s shadow on the top of the thing, and stops. It’s like, oh man— tactical awareness, an underrated power. She’s already seeing, by where the sun is— oh, if I come out, he’s going to kill me. So I can get an angle on him from here.
Matthew Fox:
Well, and there’s something so powerful about seeing him and his minions use these incredibly powerful eighty-million-bullets-a-moment, Gatling-gun-style machine guns— and she just has pistols. And you just know that’s how effective she is. Because at the end of the day, you don’t need to fire a hundred bullets, because you’re not good enough to hit somebody with one. Her pistols— they’re close enough range— she can fire one pistol and be far more effective.
Kyle Olson:
And she does— she shoots him in the eye. From underneath, shooting up— maybe she could just see the top of his head— she shoots him in the eye. She’s that good, that when he drops back down to take cover, it’s cracked on the right lens. If he hadn’t been wearing that bulletproof face mask, she’d have got him.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, it’s good.
Kyle Olson:
It’s pretty impressive.
Pete Wright:
It’s really impressive.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Steve wakes up. Steve gets the bus, catches the bus. Mostly it’s chaos. Are there any other major beats that strike you?
Kyle Olson:
Well, we see a cameo from Old Painless— the big mini-gun—
Pete Wright:
Oh yeah.
Kyle Olson:
This is not the last time we’ve seen this in the MCU, but also, you know— from Predator. This is what Jesse Ventura held. It didn’t work on the Predator, and it doesn’t work on Captain America either.
Pete Wright:
No. It doesn’t work on vibranium, and also running through the bus.
Kyle Olson:
But yeah. And then we also hear Bucky speaking— maybe his first line, I think.
Pete Wright:
In Russian.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, in Russian. “Find him.” So he has picked Natasha as his target at this point, and he’s having his guys focus on that. And then, as Cap is waiting him out of the bus, we see Sam starting to move into action with his adorable knife.
Matthew Fox:
That is an interesting moment from the Winter Soldier, because— I’m a New York Knicks fan, I have basketball on the brain right now— but if my seven-foot guy says to me, hey, why don’t you guard their seven-foot guy, I’ll cover the five-foot-six guy— I’m kind of like, why are you sending me against the super soldier, and you’re going after the woman with a pistol?
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. But, you know, they have history. And I think in this situation— I mean, she did just shoot him in the eye— so I think she’s probably the more dangerous, because she’s done this kind of stuff before, the sort of World War II warfare.
Pete Wright:
Sam’s pararescue. I will also say, the music in this beat— when it changes, it changes on the Winter Soldier in the street. And I love the Winter Soldier’s theme here. I think it makes for a great action bed. Again, Henry Jackman with the score hit it out of the park. It’s wonderful.
Matthew Fox:
Well, and I’m sure this was only a small part of it, but it was a part of it, I have to think— because of how much I noticed it— when you switch to that score, there’s enough of an underlying constant sound that sounds similar enough to a car horn that I stopped thinking about, why are there no car horns? Why is no one honking? Why is there no screeching of cars? Because that music just sort of carries all of that noise in it.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, it really does. That’s a great way to put it. It’s a very noisy thing. And you hear that sort of distorted industrial drone turn on first as he peels his fingers out of the street. It is really one of the most distinctive MCU scores until maybe we get to Doctor Strange, which is another extraordinary one. So yeah, it’s a wonderful set of minutes. Can’t wait. I wonder how it’s going to shake out.
Kyle Olson:
I know. And we’re only halfway through this action sequence.
Pete Wright:
I know.
Kyle Olson:
Good stuff’s coming.
Pete Wright:
Awesome.
Matthew Fox:
We’ll see. What’s he going to do with the knife? We’ve got to find out.
Pete Wright:
We’ll never know.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, it’s a lot of people.
Pete Wright:
Maybe a steak. Thank you.
Matthew Fox:
Tune in next time— same Cap time, same Cap channel.
Pete Wright:
You can find us at MarvelMovieMinute.com. You can follow us there. You can join us, you can send us questions. We will take your questions. There’s a button now, officially, on that page where you can submit a question to us. And we’re recording ahead, so I imagine by the time you hear this we’ll be many minutes down the road— but that’s okay, send your questions anyway, we’ll do a recap. We’d love to hear from you.
And give a quick shout-out, gents. Where do you want to send people to learn more about your stuff, Kyle?
Kyle Olson:
Craft and Chaos— craftandchaos.fun— our podcast about how to make art when it seems like the world’s on fire.
Pete Wright:
And, apropos of nothing, Matthew?
Matthew Fox:
TheEthicalPanda.com— how to talk about the world being on fire when the world’s on fire, because you don’t want to make art because the world’s on fire. Oh, but also Star Wars. Star Wars is cool.
Pete Wright:
And let’s just say TheNextReel.com. That’s where I podcast about movies, and we just announced our 16th season— the next 48 movies, broken up into seven series, and we’re very excited about the year to come, starting very soon. So, TheNextReel.com. Thanks, everybody, for joining us. We will see you right here next week on the Marvel Movie Minute.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, it was— it was knife to see you both. So, enough said.
Matthew Fox:
Let’s go, Knicks.
