Fourth Best Movie Villain of 2014: The Winter Soldier (Captain America: The Winter Soldier) SPOILERS BELOW: A lot of times in action movies, youll have two-types of villains: the one thats behind it all (a la Emperor Palpatine) and the intimidating one the protagonist has to physically defeat (a la Darth Vader). In the case of the titular Winter Soldier, the latter is certainly true as he provides a silent, Terminator-esque menace towards the Super Soldier Serum Sipping Steve Rogers in his newest solo movie. From a purely physical standpoint, The Winter Soldier is an amazing match for Steve: sporting exceptional combats, high-tech weaponry, and a bionic arm that can punch through concrete and even hurl back Caps shield after he catches it. He is a real threat of a villain, cooly performing assassinations for Hydra over the decades and sporting a mechanized screech of a villains theme that affects me in a way I havent been affected since Hans Zimmers theme for The Joker in The Dark Knight. But all of this alone is not the reason why The WInter Soldier: its because of who he is and what he represents. The Winter Soldier is Bucky Barnes: Steve Rogers best friend and fellow soldier who was psychologically brainwashed and placed in a perpetual cycle of cryogenic nap times by Hydra in order to perform special ops and assassination missions to ensure a increasing state of world chaos. This would enable Hydras infiltration of SHIELD, pit the world firmly into the favor of increased security and surveillance, and allow Hydra the power to conquer the world in a much more effective way than they tried back in WWII. On the one hand, The Winter Soldier and Hydra as entities stand as testaments to Captain Americas failure: who gave up everything and everyone from the world he once knew only to awaken in one where not only do his enemies thrive, but their continued success is inspired and initiated because of him himself. On the other, Bucky represents a tragic failure on the part of Cap, who gets to painfully witness his best friend turned into a puppet mockery of everything that the two of them ever fought for and believed in. The scenes where these two fight are especially hard to watch, as we see best friends pitted against one another not because they want to be, but because they have to be. Of the comic book movies this year, this one was my favorite, and a large part of that is because this villain is one of my favorite kinds: the hero who is tragically fallen from grace.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 22:47:24 +0000
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