House of R - Our Top 10 ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ Moments—10 Years Later

Episode Date: April 5, 2024

Mal and Jo reveal their top 10 moments from ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ in honor of its 10-year anniversary (5:48). Hosts: Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson Producers: Carlos Chiriboga ...and Isaiah Blakely Additional Production: Arjuna Ramgopal Social: Jomi Adeniran Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:01:34 more restrictions apply, services not available in all areas. Before we get started, does anyone want to get out? And welcome to House of R, a ringerverse podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Mallory Rubin, and it is my absolute pleasure to invite you not only back to this super safe shield helicarrier, but also to House of Our newish podcast feed. Joining me today because I'm her mission. It's my favorite century shaper, Joanna Robinson.
Starting point is 00:02:59 What's up bad babies? Here we are on this safe and sound secure podcast. Nothing safer in the air than a helic carrier, and I'm so delighted to be here with you, Molly Ruffin. What an absolute thrill this is to gather today. I was going to say on the 10-year anniversary, listen, one day after the 10-year anniversary, close enough. Pretty close. Of our shared favorite MCU movie, Captain America, the Winter Soldier.
Starting point is 00:03:28 We are going to, in honor of this 10th anniversary, count down our 10 favorite moments from this movie. As usual, we're going to surprise each other with our moments picks. We're going to count down 10 to 1. And so if one of us has the same thing in a higher spot, we'll wait. talk about it there, but Joanna. Before we clarify, for Carlos and Isaiah, both of whom are here with us today, because you're on Zoom and I'm in a studio. What? Wild times. Before we clarify, that it's not just a flyby, we've got to mingle. Some quick programming reminders. Over on the ringerverse, double midnight boys this week. Don't forget. You're sitting there,
Starting point is 00:04:16 You've got your ringer verse feet open. You already listened maybe to yesterday's Midnight Boys episode. Invincible Season 2 finale. Shogun, the latest X-Men 97 episode. Guess what? You will have at day's end another Midnight Boys' Pugh-Pew episode waiting for you. Instant reaction to Monkey Man. Joanna and I will be back with you multiple times next week, as usual.
Starting point is 00:04:38 And we will tell you what we're talking about at that time. Joe, how can people follow you? along. Oh gosh, I'm so pleased that you ask me this question on this. The highest of holy days, the celebration of Captain America Winter Soldier. Listen, here's my recommendation. Why do you follow the pod? That's just first...
Starting point is 00:05:01 It's a great idea. Just my first instinct. Follow the ringerverse. Follow Hasabar. Just so you're subscribed, you make sure you catch everything that's happening. Also, you could also, in addition, just as a failsafe. Follow us on social, on Facebook,
Starting point is 00:05:17 on Instagram, on Twitter, on TikTok. You know, if you want to listen to us come out of a device the way that Emil Zola comes out of a device in this film, you got to get on the socials in order to make that happen. That's what I have to say about that. Last but not least. Hobbits and Dragons at gmail.com. This isn't a really male heavy episode of the podcast. We're doing in top 10 moments. But I do have one or two emails. I'm going to smuggle in here from our listeners, our bad babies, who had things to say about Stephen Buck. So we will be doing that.
Starting point is 00:05:51 And so, yeah, thoughts or feelings about this. Mailbag episode that we have coming up, anything else is going on, X-Men, et cetera, et cetera, hobbits and dragons at gmail.com. Beautiful. Last programming reminder, it's the friendly neighborhood, spoiler warning.
Starting point is 00:06:08 Today's podcast will, of course, feature ample plot details and particulars from the movie that we are here to talk about today, but also from all of the Captain America movies, from all of the Avengers movies, really from the entire Infinity saga. If it's ever happened in the MCU, it's in the mix today.
Starting point is 00:06:26 It could come up. Also, some Marvel Comics canning could come up. So it's the usual spoiler warning on the MCU front. Okay. Joe, if you want to say something snappy, now would be a good time. Let's pod. Joe.
Starting point is 00:06:48 Usually before we dive into the meat of a pod, we like to do a little opening snapshot. It's a little bit hard to do that today because we don't want to talk too much about the movie before we get into our picks and then reveal our picks. We don't want to tip too many of our picks to each other. But very, very, very quickly, without spoiling your list, is there anything that you want to toss out there as a table setter to indicate what it is that? that you love so much about this movie or even just to tell us what this movie means to you. If you want to save all the reasons why for counting down, you're welcome to.
Starting point is 00:07:28 Anything you want to share as a table-sutter. Yeah, I would just say that I really enjoyed and liked a lot of the Marvel movies that, the MCU movies that came before Winter Soldier, but Winter Soldier is where I, like, locked in to my just, like, emotional investment all the way in on the MCU. from this movie, came from what this movie does to cement our affections for Steve Rogers,
Starting point is 00:07:54 a kind of character that I don't usually find myself caring that much about, but would die for by the end of this movie. And then just from like a larger, like a larger lens MCU sort of perspective, I will say that the team that comes together here, and MCU fans know this, but the team that comes together here in the Russo brothers as directors, in Marcus and McPhileas, screenwriters and a lot of other people that are involved from like fight choreography on down the list, create the spine of the MCU going forward. We go forward to Civil War and then Infinity War and Endgame. And it's this like little mini studio of a team that goes from those films to those films to those films that the joy of Marvel in many ways, especially like I
Starting point is 00:08:40 would say the Iron Man movies is what's someone else's take on Tony at this moment? moment. Like, that's a really fun thing that the MCU did, um, here and there and everywhere, but locking in, Marcus McPhile being with Steve Rogers from the beginning from First Avengers and then just like locking in on this character and elevating him to the level of Tony Stark. And so then it becomes Tony and Steve as the core, the twin cores of the MCU. Um, this movie adding the Russo Brothers to that, uh, brew, um, is, It gives this really steady scaffolding for the Infinity Saga, which, you know, is something, a long arc of a storytelling approach that you and I have spent a lot of time thinking about potting, about, writing, about wondering, about admiring, etc. And I just think it doesn't work if you don't lock this into place the way they did.
Starting point is 00:09:42 I love it. really hard to overstate the impact of Marcus and McPhilly and the Russo brothers on our shared Infinity Saga experience. Faggy plucking the Russo's out of the sitcom, experimental sitcom life, saying this paintball episode of community is so awe-inspiring. You must make a street-level action spy thriller in the MCU is like, one of my first. favorite things to point to when we think back on and it's a we are just in such a different moment in our shared-fsu experience right now that it's actually really nice to steep ourselves in this period of a genius once again this was a popular movie this was a successful movie I have a vivid memory of seeing this movie for the first time in the theater and just like having the absolute
Starting point is 00:10:34 time of my life the this is my favorite Marvel movie I sometimes go back and forth between like the exact order of my top five but this is always a one or two. And the Captain America franchise is my favorite standalone character franchise. This is another opinion that we share. And there are so many different reasons that this movie not only walloped us upon first viewing, but has stood the test of time no matter how many times we revisited. And actually, I think, just becomes an even more rewarding and enriching experience. When you go back to it after having concluded Endgame and the Infinity Saga, it's just a wonderful, wonderful movie to return to 4CAP, but also for all of these relationships.
Starting point is 00:11:16 You know, I don't know how much time we'll have today to get into this aspect of the film, and so I do feel a moral obligation to just note quickly the Beltway aspect of this experience. I mean, Joe, we get a BWI shout out. We get a crab cake shout out. The Potomac is mentioned. A smuggle, an early smuggle. I think we're going to talk a lot about the importance of genre. variance inside of the Captain America franchise of the MCU, a lot about the tone and vibe of this film,
Starting point is 00:11:48 a lot about the themes of this film, a lot about the relationships at the heart of this film, but I had to just mention crab cakes while I could. Don't worry, I'll be talking about musical theater a little later on. We're all on brand. Okay, last question before we dive in. Do you have a prediction? How many of our 10 moments will overlap? I think at least six would be my guess.
Starting point is 00:12:11 Yeah, I think we have to set the over under at six And then take the over or the under And I'm going to take the over It might be the over Carlos, who's handling the clips for us today Did let us know that there are some instances Where we maybe picked different moments From the same scene
Starting point is 00:12:29 So there might be like some gray area here and there But I think we're probably going to be pretty well aligned And I would be surprised if our top four was, we have to agree on these four. Maybe not quite this order, but I think this is true. Interesting. It's really good that we can't see Carlyss's face right now because I don't want to know.
Starting point is 00:12:58 I don't want to know. We cannot. I feel, I will say, as close to certain as I've ever felt doing a top moments countdown with you that we will have the same number one. I just feel sure. Beyond that, I'm actually, I'm expecting some slot variants, but I think we'll have a lot of topical overlap. We will see, though.
Starting point is 00:13:16 We will see. Okay. Should we dive in? Should we start counting down? Let's do it. Okay, Joanna Robinson. What is your 10th favorite moment from Winter Soldier? See, bottom of the list is where you get to be kind of like loose and a little weird, right?
Starting point is 00:13:35 So Carlos, can we play this clip right now? Natasha, Batroc's on the move. Circle back to rum, and protect the hostage. Natasha. Lusely, Batrock the Leaper, as an incredible iconic mini-boss. Like just an early fight that we get right here at the start of the movie.
Starting point is 00:14:12 And I just, the fight choreography in this movie is on a completely different level. I think then I think the only thing that comes close to it in the MCU is Civil War. And it's no coincidence then that James Young, who's the fight choreographer on this film, is also the fight choreographer on Civil War. And so we'll talk about all of that. But Georges St. Pierre, who plays Batrock the Leaper, Georges is a wild person, but he is like an athlete.
Starting point is 00:14:44 And so watching him do this, and he tweaked some of the moves, this like the big, like what he calls the Superman punch, which is like one of his signature moves. He added that in. So there was that kind of tweaking. Sam Hargrave, who is Chris Evans, sent double, just doing an incredible job. Chris doing a lot of the stuff himself as well. So just like an early, incredible, fast-paced, you don't know what's happening fight between. just two guys kicking the shit out of each other. I love I love I love Batroc the Leaper.
Starting point is 00:15:21 Are you a big UFC fan? You watch a lot of MMA in real life? I think you know the answer to that. GSP, a big part of your viewing experience in general. So I'm thrilled that this is on your list because I will take you behind the curtain and say I originally had this at number nine and then removed it from my list. Because I was out of spots. I needed to make a change.
Starting point is 00:15:42 And I'm like, I just have to believe that Joe has this on there. And I can count on it still being a part of the pod and make a change. Always one of the fun parts of our secret moments reveals is when we anticipate the other person having something that we then make the decision to leave off of our list. This is just an, like, incredible fight sequence. The whole Lemurion Star action sequence is wonderful. The, I thought you were more than just a shield challenge and cap in responding in French to say, let's see, taking off the helmet. latching the shield into his back and then flip face kicking Patrick is absolutely wonderful.
Starting point is 00:16:20 I mean, the action, when we talk about genre variance and we talk about this movie as a spy thriller and inspired by 70s spy thrillers and political thrillers. The fact that this is also an expert modern action movie is never far removed from that. Like there's genre variance inside of the film as well. And like whether it's that removing her face cover. Her mission impossible. Did I step on your moment? Yeah. Like there's a mission impossible energy. All of the car chases, the fight like this,
Starting point is 00:16:53 etc. It's, uh, it's an action-packed, fast-paced thriller. This isn't my last, like, obviously, not my last action scene on my list. Yes, I should hope not. Like, obviously. I should hope not. But I was surprised by how many I felt like I needed to put on the list. And I'm not usually hardest things. Yeah, I'm usually like a character, emotional conversation kind of person. But the fight choreography in this movie, and I know that they tailored the style of each of the fighters to the character. Like they were so invested in character and fusion in the style of the fight and stuff like
Starting point is 00:17:30 that. It's so character-based and it is so integral to why this movie is not just like fun. But every scene is doing more. is doing multiple things. And so you're learning something about character and you're having just like a really fucking great time watching two incredibly athletic people kick each other. Yeah, exactly.
Starting point is 00:17:54 Where does this cap suit, the stealth suit, rate for you? Is this your fave? No, it's number two. Like, suits? Same. The captain of the Captain America suits. Because this is, I would say this is the most popular Captain America suit. but my see I have a I think slightly controversial opinion on this which is that the
Starting point is 00:18:16 Infinity War suit is my favorite in part because he's not wearing he's not wearing the helmet and so you can see his gorgeous long hair and just astonishingly perfect beard the suit is clearly the best in Infinity War I think the reason it's a controversial pick is because he doesn't have the iconic shield with him of course right he's got the the two forearm split shields with him in that movie and so I think in some people's minds that's that's like ineligible for consideration, but it is my favorite. This would be my second favorite. Yeah, I was going to say the nomad look is my favorite.
Starting point is 00:18:48 It's simply wonderful. How do you? How do you work? No, no stuff for me. Okay, great pick. What a way to start us off. That's a selection from early in the film, Joe. And my number 10 also comes from very early in the movie.
Starting point is 00:19:02 Carlos, is it safe to play my pick for number 10? You must miss the good old days, huh? Well, things aren't so bad. Food's a lot better. We used to boil everything. No polio's good. Internet. So helpful.
Starting point is 00:19:17 Been reading that a lot trying to catch up. Marvin Gaye, 1972 Troubleman soundtrack. Everything you missed jammed into one album. I'll put it on the list. Okay. So my pick here is the man out of time makes a to-do list. Yeah. Is that safe to talk about here?
Starting point is 00:19:37 100%. Okay. Fantastic. obviously I'm smuggling in the on your left meat cute, which maybe is something we should put a pin in. Let's put a pin in that. More to do with your pick. Okay.
Starting point is 00:19:49 All right. We'll put it in that part of it. The man out of time idea is one of the things we love most about Steve Rogers, about Captain America as a character in comics, as a character in the MCU. And to see the way that that idea is like a given form literally in a piece of paper in Cap's hands here is just like brilliant to me. I always love not only freeze framing and running down the bullet points, but then thinking about how in different markets across the world, there were different specific items on his list. Like it's such a great little movie making flair. Obviously, Steve is first confronting what it means to be.
Starting point is 00:20:35 no longer a capsicle, awoken from the ice, suddenly in a modern world at the very, very end of First Avenger, and then, of course, in the Avengers. But this is the first full movie
Starting point is 00:20:47 inside of his standalone character franchise where he's really grappling with this in front of our eyes. He goes to the Smithsonian a couple scenes after the Sam meeting and the soundbite we just heard. He's incognito, right? He's got the classic.
Starting point is 00:21:02 You put a logo list on, nobody knows who you are. Except that an adorable little kid who shares the sweet little wink-shush moment with Cap. And like the idea that Captain America is a person in the present day and a history lesson all at the same time is so compelling. He's a superhero in a superhero moment and a superhero era, but he's also a myth. He's a legend. He's a person you read about when you go to the Smithsonian. And the list of all the things he missed hearing him say Internet's so helpful.
Starting point is 00:21:35 It just kills me. We return to this idea. We get the little moment later in the Zola Lair when Nat quotes war games and says it's for a movie. I've seen it. I know. Yeah. I know. I love this bit.
Starting point is 00:21:51 And the actual list is just amazing to me every time. I love Lucy, parentheses, television. Moon landing, Berlin Wall, parentheses up and down. Steve Jobs, parentheses, Apple. Disco, Thai food, Star Wars slash Trek, and Star Wars is crossed out, which means the first thing he tackled with Star Wars. And honestly, that feels right. Steve Rogers, come on House of Marr. Nirvana, parentheses, banned, Rocky, parentheses, Rocky 2, question mark.
Starting point is 00:22:27 And then, of course, he adds Trouble Man. And then Trouble Man is what Sam is playing in his hospital room at the end, all of this connecting to the on your left portals moment and endgame. It's just wonderful. It's like the perfect opening note for where we find this character at the beginning of this film at this moment in his life,
Starting point is 00:22:42 trying to acclimate and figure out his place, not just in shield, not just in an army, and the government that he used to want so desperately to fight for and now isn't sure. But in society and culture, like what does it mean to be a man out of time?
Starting point is 00:22:54 And this is like funny and humorous but also I think kind of profound. And I love it. That's my 10th pick. I love that. The idea of the man out of time concept, which was what they wanted to do in the first Captain America movie, which is why John Favro got, like, hired over to Marvel in the
Starting point is 00:23:10 first place because he had done Elf, which is like a quasi-man-out-Nat-N-Oth Pole, man-of-time story. So they're like, let's have you do Captain America. It'll be similar. And then they decided to make that a, you know, a historical incident and brought in Joe Johnson for that. But, like, so that's a reason why John Favro got involved in the MZU in the first place. But I love that they saved it for this one. And what I really love, there's this quote from, by the way, just really quickly, Marcus and McPhile, their meet cute was at UC Davis, which is where I went to college. So I love that about them.
Starting point is 00:23:42 I know, in the fiction writing program there. But this is a quote from, I think, I believe it is Marcus, who said this about the man out of time concept. We knew we didn't want to do like the grandpa story of, oh my God, I'm in the future. What are these buttons? What do they do? He's the most adaptive man in the planet. his brain's been juiced, so he's not going to be baffled for very long by your iPhone. So you have all those ideas first, and you're like, no, those are stupid.
Starting point is 00:24:08 So to exactly your point, the idea that like, yeah, yeah, I'm on top of, yeah, I've already seen Star Wars. Yeah, I've seen war games. Like, I have my list. I'm working on it. I know how iPhones work theoretically. So it's not quite like the SNL sketch of like the caveman lawyer who's like, I'm frightened by your modern technology. So it's like man enough time, but slightly off-kill.
Starting point is 00:24:31 of the sort of worn out version of that trope, which I really love that, too, that they're like, we don't want to do something you've seen a million times before. Yeah, it's a great pick. Perfect. Love to hear Sam. What do you have, number nine? Number nine. Most of the intelligence community doesn't believe he exists. The ones that do call him the winter soldier.
Starting point is 00:24:54 He's credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last 50 years. So he's a ghost story. Five years ago, I was a story. escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran. Somebody shot out my tires near Odessa. We lost control, went straight over a cliff. I pulled us out. But the winter soldier was there.
Starting point is 00:25:12 I was covering my engineer, so he shot him straight through me. Soviet slug, no rifling. Bye-bye bikinis. Yeah, I bet you look terrible in him now. All right, there's a lot of, there's so many good Nat and Steve interactions, obviously. but bye-bye bikinis is like up there. This is best what this was labeled on my list is by-bye bikinis. Because this is, again, to the point of all the scenes are doing multiple things,
Starting point is 00:25:44 this is a really good example. There's a couple major exposition downloads in this movie. Again, we will probably talk about Zola eventually, but maybe, maybe not. But the idea that like Nat here has to give us a little winter soldier exposition. And in doing so, they're having them do it, but they're having them do it in, like, close quarters, sexy murmuring. The way that they're framed is it's, like, largely profiled two shot of them, like, slightly canted angle. So you're getting that sort of, like, parallax view, three days of the condor, like, 70s conspiracy thriller influence. And the fact that Natasha knows how to push all the ones. And the fact that Natasha knows how to push all. of his buttons, how to make you, how to fluster him. He has the physical advantage over her. He is like shoved her against the wall, out of the hallway, shoved her against the wall. He's looming over her. But she just like flusters. She just has to show a little hip bone
Starting point is 00:26:47 and is like flustered the shit out of poor Steve Rogers, our poor Boy Scout. And so yeah, so its exposition is framing its sexual tension. It's the way that they specifically paired Chris Evans with Scarlett Johansson. They have. have, they had worked with each other before, so they had longstanding friendship chemistry. They have other chemistry in this movie. Like, you could not have found a more perfect combination for Steve. And the fact that, like, it was supposed to be Clint and Nat, and then it just wound up being Nat, makes it so, with love and respect to Clint, so much better that it's, like,
Starting point is 00:27:25 largely a Nat and Steve and Sam, like, eventually, like, the trio. but like that that Nat and Steve on the run, the various, the like born identity, the mall sequence, the like, did they just fuck the part that you may bring up later? I will certainly be returning to that. But. You know, it is literally one of my five favorite things to talk about in the history of the MCO. I think it's like in the top two at least. No comment. No comment.
Starting point is 00:27:57 So yeah, I just I just love the how they're always. Marcus McPhile and the Rousers are always trying to get every scene to do five different things at once. Just a sensational pick. I will be returning to Natasha and Steve, certainly. But because of the proximity to the pick you made, I will just note that Steve Rogers, a character I love and respect and adore, hiding the thumb drive behind a, just one pack. A couple packs.
Starting point is 00:28:35 Is it a couple? Obama. Like we gotta do better than that. Nat found it, but I mean, just a couple kids at the hospital for a visit. Could have wanted gum. What then? That's like one of two.
Starting point is 00:28:49 That's like one of two. It might be. It could be. Literally one of like two notes I have on the entire movie. I'm serious. I think it would have been really funny if he had picked like a really hated, like vending machine item, like a grinole bar or something. I mean, yeah, I do love a granola bar, but you're not really going for it in a vending machine.
Starting point is 00:29:13 You're right. Yeah, that would have been a good pick. Yeah. You're in the hospital. You want some comfort something, you know? You need like a funyon or a flaming hot Cheeto or perhaps some hubba-baba-bub. Pina and Eminem. That moment and Bucky just not following Fury in the whole.
Starting point is 00:29:31 he completely improbably and shockingly cuts through the car, the reinforced car, and Roadway are my only two notes on the film, otherwise a perfect movie that I love. 10 of 10. Two notes. All right. 10 out of 10, two notes. My ninth moment, Carlos, is this safe to play?
Starting point is 00:29:54 For once, we're way ahead of the curve. By holding a gun to everyone on earth and calling it protection. You know, I read those SSIS. Harfiles. Greatest generation, you guys did some nasty stuff. Yeah, we compromised, sometimes in ways that made us not sleep so well.
Starting point is 00:30:12 But we did it so that people could be free. This isn't freedom. This is fear. This is, of course. Nick Fury, attempting to assuage Steve Rogers, soothe the bubbling tension between them. Repair. their trust issues by showing him.
Starting point is 00:30:37 Yeah. Project Insight. Cap is already quite on edge at the start of this movie. A lot of trust issues after the events of the Avengers. Avian of them, lots. I'm getting a little tired of being Fury's janitor. This is something we hear Steve say about Fury early in the film. Then to Fury when he walks into his office,
Starting point is 00:31:00 you just can't stop yourself from lying, can you? This is like the opening note for their relationship in the movie. And so we get this elevator ride down into the bowels of the incite den. I'm warming up your hot day. I'm getting ready for hot feet. It's close. We've got to start workshop in the pits. We get this story from Nick Fury about his grandfather,
Starting point is 00:31:32 and then we get this reveal of Project Insight of these helic carriers. Now, the moment in time, this movie comes out in 2014, set in 2014, America in the 2000s, right? What the world was like and what this movie is examining about paranoia, about this impulse for governments to prejudge. We hear Zola voice this idea later. in the Camp Lehigh It's a whole little lair
Starting point is 00:32:06 that Hydra had to bite its time waiting for humanity to be willing and ready to trade their freedom for security. That is where we find our characters in the film. And I love this for a couple reasons. I think this is like for a Marvel movie,
Starting point is 00:32:25 a bold thing to be engaging with in a good and cool and important way. But the genius of it is that it's the Captain America character who's doing it, right? The fact that Cap is a fugitive in two of his three movies and really an outsider in all three of them is, I think my single favorite thing about the franchise and why they're such powerful and incredible movies. He is the one, of course, in Civil War, who will say no to work. inside of the system and to build toward the point where we're simultaneously like bowled over by the surprise of which side Tony and Cap each take but also perfectly prepared for why each of
Starting point is 00:33:13 them would make that decision can't happen without something like this, right? It just can't. And Cap is the one inside of this movie who says to Fury, it's not just about taking down Hydra. Like we have to take down Shield because the rot is no longer something you could just cut out. It's everywhere. It's a fully inviative. thing. And the super soldier being the guy who is not just content even though he could with his powers, with his ability, do it on his own, being the one who's always thinking about how do we make, I love that, like, but that's what makes it an army conversation that Cap and Fury have. Like, he's always thinking about what it actually means to be a part of an army, to be a part of a team.
Starting point is 00:33:55 And what that team then needs to be fighting for. I'm certain this idea will come up in a few more of our moments. So project insight, seeing that this is what Shield is building, that this is the thing that Fury thinks will actually maybe win him over rather than repelling him is such a crucial pivot point, not only inside of the movie, but for the entire Steve Rogers arc in the MCU, we're going to neutralize a lot of threats before they even happen. I thought the punishment usually came after the crime. We can't afford to wait that long. Like this is like an intense and serious thing. And when Fury tells Cap that he has to get right, like get with the program, starts seeing
Starting point is 00:34:36 the world the way it is, not the way that he wants it to be, there are so many different characters across the MCU who have a version of that conversation with Steve. And he has to be the guy who responds to it by saying, I can't accept that. I can't act that way. I'm actually not capable of that. And then we as the viewers have to find that not like Pollyannaish and naive, but utterly aspirational. and the thing that we want to invest in rooting for and watching and believing in.
Starting point is 00:35:04 Very difficult balance to strike. I think that I love this pick. I think that one of my hair things that Marcus Muffieldy talk about when they talk about this aspect of Steve is that they get this directly from the comics. This isn't like a reconfiguration of Steve Rogers from the comics. This is something that the comics themselves had to address when in the 1960s, Marvel is like, Like, how do we have a character running around with like a literal, like, American flag on his costume when America feels like it's burning? Like, how does that not seem stupid? And so what it becomes is that Steve then becomes the person looking at the system, looking at America, not a blindly patriotic, like, you know, unquestioning sort of person, but someone who interrogates power.
Starting point is 00:36:00 and the systems, even as he originally represented the ideal of something. And what I love and what Nick Fury says in the clip that you chose here is like, you know, if Steve's like, let's make America great again, and Nick Fury's like, was it ever fucking great? Are you kidding me? Like, you guys did some pretty sick shit. And this idea, this man out of time idea with Steve Rogers, this idea that like he, you know, they like, everyone who,
Starting point is 00:36:30 who works on Steve Rogers as a character, be it the Rooster Brothers or Marcus McPhiley or Kevin Feigy, refer to him as like a Gary Cooper type figure, this sort of like monolith who doesn't move, you know, you move. No, you move. Yeah, no, you move. Everything moves around him. He doesn't move.
Starting point is 00:36:49 And so he is enshrined in these ideals of an earlier time that actually weren't even the ideals of the earlier time. there were just the ideals of him, skinny Steve Rogers, who could do this all day, sort of thing. So paying attention to things. It's how we show love. I love you. See, you have to ask the question. You have to interrogate.
Starting point is 00:37:12 Yeah, exactly. No you move, obviously from a different movie, but why not since you quoted it? Just take a second here to reflect on the fact that in the third Captain America movie, Captain America kisses Sharon Carter. who shares that wisdom, voicing the ideals of Peggy Carter, his great love. Just the second worst thing that happens around Sharon Carter at the MCU. For a while it was the worst thing, and now it's the second worst thing. Knocked out of the top spot. My power broker, I'll come back to that.
Starting point is 00:37:47 Oh, man. All right, Joe, what do you have at eight? Want some milk? The timetable is moved. Our window is limited. Two targets, level six. They already cost me, Zola. I want confirmed death in 10 hours.
Starting point is 00:38:24 Sorry, Mr. Pierce, I forgot my phone. Oh, Renata. I wish you would have knocked. Alexander Pierce kills Renata is genuinely my number eight pick, and here's why. Craig, this is honestly an incredible pick. The reason the clip is a little long is I also need to get my milk takes off, which is like it is absolutely foul and disgusting, I think, in general, to have milk at night. But also, like, he pours like a half inch of milk.
Starting point is 00:39:11 It's the most psychotic thing you could do with dairy is what Alexander Pierce does with this glass of milk. He literally just splashes it into a tall glass. Like, at least get a smaller glass. What are we even doing here? When was the last time you had a glass of milk? Outside of, like, we've baked some cookies, go to the store and get some milk so that we can have. with the cookies. Yeah, without a baked good. Yeah, I mean, frankly, even with a baked good, but without a baked good, as an adult human, when was the last time you had a glass of milk?
Starting point is 00:39:39 As an adult human, if we're making, like, freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, I will enjoy a glass of milk. But other than that, no. You don't just use it as an excuse for another coffee? I know you're fucked up rules about cutting out caffeine at a certain point in the afternoon. Never mind. I retract the question. I'm also like, I also just like both despise and envy people who can just drink straight dairy because he seems like he's drinking just like full fat like milk. And I'm just like, do you have no issues with lactose? Anyway, that's not really why we're here. Why we're really here is to talk about the banality of evil in this movie.
Starting point is 00:40:13 Because the fact that Alexander Pierce is... I would say that lactose does still fit under that umbrella. Yeah, the banality of evil. The contrasts between Alexander Pierce as a villain versus someone like red skull, this like cartoonish, you know, is red, but in the moral sense, black and white, evil, Nazi, mustache twirling if he had a mustache figure. Versus the bureaucracy. If his face had melted off and he could still grow a mustache, yeah. Versus the bureaucracy of Alexander Pierce, the way that Pierce views himself as a hero in all of this.
Starting point is 00:40:58 And that's why the whole Renata thing really gets to me, because he's, just sort of like, oh, Renada, I wish she had knocked, you know, and I have to kill you. And it's just sort of like, it's so blazze. It's so like, oh, I like you. It's hard to find good health these days. You know, he's also, like, playing out the string of like, well, who's going to clean up then now that I've killed you? Oh, he's got a whole team, you know. He's got a what works team.
Starting point is 00:41:23 It's fine. But good villains think they're the hero, the story. And it's something that, like, Marcus McPhile. and the Ruses will take and fuse. I mean, like, the most complicated version is Civil War. But then, like, when they create Thanos, they're still thinking about a villain who thinks he's the hero of the story. And so when you...
Starting point is 00:41:44 And then casting Robert Redford, obviously, is, like, the biggest... Like, I think the biggest casting get in all of the MCU. That's how I feel about Robert Redford in this movie. Astonishing. Also, like, this is a phase two movie. Yeah. Like, when we think of the moment in time, and that condor connection, like, taking such a central figure from the films that inspired the tone of the movie and plucking him and putting him right there at the heart of it is... And then making him the villain when he was, like, you know, in his younger years, the hero.
Starting point is 00:42:19 And I think that there's this story that I've heard multiple versions of that, like, basically, like, Nate Moore stops, like, it's either the Russo Brothers. Marksophilia, I can't remember in the hallways of Marvel. And he's like, we're going after someone from that genre of movie that you guys are like postishing here. And they're like, no. And he's like, yes. And so they like, they rewrote the character for Redford. And then they rewrote again once they cast him because they like to tell the story
Starting point is 00:42:47 about how he was like, you see you have three, you know, because Redford himself is a consummate director and all of that sort of stuff. And he's like, he's like, you see you have three lines here. I only need one and I'll do the rest of my face. I'll do the rest with my face. Joe, and what a face it is. What a face it is. That's how I prefer to podcast.
Starting point is 00:43:06 I really just go for one sentence than I just do the rest with my face. And that works really well in a podcast and medium. Yeah, yeah. As you know, Robert Redford directed my favorite movie. Ordinary People. I was going to say Ordinary People. I don't know that Ordinary People is your favorite movie or is your favorite
Starting point is 00:43:20 movie? It's your favorite movie. I mean, one and the same, given the role the divorce movies play in my life. It's certainly one of my favorite movies. And many times in my life, I would have said it was my favorite movie. I absolutely love that movie. It's a massive piece.
Starting point is 00:43:34 Devastating. Fury saying of Pierce, he said peace wasn't an achievement. It was a responsibility. See, it's stuff like this that gives me trust issues. Part of what I love about Pierce is not only everything that you just beautifully outlined, but then the layers of the shattered trust and the deception. And the paranoia. Is your relationship with Fury?
Starting point is 00:43:57 We've got Pierce and Fury. We've got Fury and Steve, we've got Fury and Nat, we've got Nat and She. Like, everybody has their tether to this noxious, festering carcass of an institution that is seeking to warp and control the entirety of the human experience. And this guy in a suit standing in your office, pretending to be your friend. And I think like you're actually like you're saying worse, believing he is your friend. telling Fury basically, well, like, you're the one who inspired me to be this way. It's so fucked up and harrowing. Sick.
Starting point is 00:44:39 And have you seen what he does with a glass of milk? Terrible. Oh, man. Yeah, well, you think, you know, you mentioned Thanos. Like, you think that's Pierce's version of balanced as all things should be. Just making sure he gets that necessary diet. Just a dairy fix. One inch of milk.
Starting point is 00:44:55 Calcium per night. Another great pick. Okay. That brings us to my number eight, I believe. When I first joined Shield, I thought I was going straight. But I guess I just traded in the KGB for Hydra. I thought I knew as well as I was telling, but I guess I can't tell the difference anymore. So, initially, I mean, again, it's like we're trying to spoil our list.
Starting point is 00:45:35 We've already just said, I have more Nat stuff coming later. And initially I had kind of bundled and smuggled all net-centric material into that one pick. But this is actually what I ended up pulling out to knock off our guy, Boud Track the Leaper, because this just felt like a separate and distinct thing to me that I wanted to talk about with you. And that I think like I've always enjoyed in the movie, but not only after Endgame, but after the Black Widow movie. and everything that we have been through with Natasha really stands out to me in a heightened way on a rewatch.
Starting point is 00:46:16 So much of this movie is about Steve Rogers and his emotional experience, his intellectual experience, his philosophical experience. But all of that is present here in a way for Nat 2 and the number of different characters in this movie who have a really rich full text and who give us, like, who we get to access different parts of their journey
Starting point is 00:46:38 their life, even though it's not their movie, is like one of the things that's most impressive to me about the film. So we can start with like something like Nat, we watch Nat, watch Fury, and the heaviest air quotes possible here, dying. Nick, I wonder why everyone has trust issues. Good God, man. And the way that she's like repeatedly whispering to herself, don't do this to me, Nick, don't do this to me, Nick and what it means for Natasha to confront losing someone like Nick Fury. And then in a much bigger way, what it means for Natasha to have to confront losing the sense of the thing that she latched onto to rebuild her entire life around. Right.
Starting point is 00:47:24 So that's my bad idea is like Natasha wrestling with the loss of the thing that she latched her new life onto. And the like, I love that you picked that bikini moment because part of what I enjoy about that sequence is how, you know, Steve is hearing her talk and like describing what she's saying as like a ghost story. But that idea of the ghosts for Natasha is like so interesting to me like the haunted aspect of so many of these moments and stories. And like having to process the hydro reveal from our guy, my guy and yours and certainly Howard Stark. Arnhem Sola. Every time we go to the camp Lehigh, time I've seen an endgame.
Starting point is 00:48:13 Genuinely, one of my favorite scenes of the history of the MCU, and there's that moment where Stark is like, Zola, I'm like, if we could just have a do-over on a couple of these choices, folks. Incredible stuff. So it's this key moment for Nat, what she's saying to Steve here,
Starting point is 00:48:29 after they have learned the truth, they've made it back to Sam's. I will be returning to that and another context later. The newly, not only what Nat is confronting here, right? But then in tandem with that, this like newly forged trust between Natasha and Steve, her asking him in this really vulnerable, candid moment, if it was the other way around and it was down to me to save your life. And you be honest with me, would you trust me to do it?
Starting point is 00:49:00 And he says, I would now. And then, like, we think about, like, something like the peanut butter sandwich moment in endgame. Yeah. And how, like, you can't have something like that if you don't have this here. And you don't get that moment with Nat and Steve if she doesn't have to confront whether she moved from what she thought was a lie into truth and found out it was just a different lie. Like, the layers there are riveting. And that's the rich reward of this, you know, Infinity Saga arc of the MCU is like, you know, Marvel hates when you call their film franchise television. But it is like television.
Starting point is 00:49:47 You were invested long term in these relationships and they, you're rewarded again and again and again. And this, the fact that this film interacts with relationships from the first Captain America movie in. Peggy and Bucky, et cetera, you know, but then like pitches forward. And so on the rewatch, we've already mentioned this a couple times. Like on the rewatch, certain moments are infused with so much more meaning that it makes the movie that was already so special to us that much more impactful. That's when you feel the joy and beauty of a connected universe rather than just like the weight and the shambles. Yeah, exactly. Oh, man. Okay, Joe, you're up with your seventh moment. Not one again, we actually don't have a ton of overlap yet. Number seven, can we play
Starting point is 00:50:35 this, Carlos? Natalia Alianovna, born 1984. It's some kind of recording. I am not a recording Freud. I may not be the man I was when the captain took me prisoner in 1945, but I am. You know this thing? Arnhem Zola was a German scientist who worked for the Red Skull. He's been dead for years. First correction. I am Swiss. Second, look around you. I have never been more alive.
Starting point is 00:51:27 Um, I just shout out. Shout out to Jason Concepcion for making me just love this character all the more. I am Swiss. I am Swiss. I am Swiss. I am Swiss. That's why. Historic stuff.
Starting point is 00:51:45 I had to include that part because also, I mean, like, Jason's impression is so good, but also, like, just the fact that he's like, he's like, firstly, I'm Swiss, okay? I might be ones and zeros, but also I'm Swiss. Okay, let's just get it straight. Let's don't get it mixed up. Okay, this is another love Zola, love this sequence. Everyone who made this film talks about how many times Various people tried to get this sequence taken out of the movie Because you and I love this movie
Starting point is 00:52:21 And we love absolutely gonzo comic movies as well But Winter Soldier is a favorite of a lot of people Who don't really like comic book movies And are just sort of like Oh, but I like that Winter Soldier one Because it feels like the most grounded Street level, yeah, street level, blah blah It's related to genre films from the 70s that I'm familiar with.
Starting point is 00:52:42 I can see the film history pedigree or whatever. What I love about this moment. And then they're like, the people who were trying to get rid of this sequence were basically saying, like, this kind of blows up that whole grounded aspect when you've got a ghost of the machine who is insisting he's Swiss. And what I love about the Roosier brothers of Marcus Felia, like, let's not be afraid or embarrassed to make a conversation. comic movie. We're making a comic book movie. We like comic books. We're not embarrassed to do that. So we're going to do this. We're going to let Toby Jones completely wild out while he's doing this. Just like... Sparishing stuff.
Starting point is 00:53:22 Just slathering on the Swiss chocolate and the cuckoo clocks and all the stuff into his accent. And then like... And then again, this is another exposition moment. We have a huge exposition info dump here. Yeah. And it's entertaining. It's baffling. And it's a wonderful moment of this great, you know, the Natasha clip that you just played is part of the aftermath of that. But also just like this great unmooring for Steve Rogers, you know, and we'll have other unmooring moments in this.
Starting point is 00:54:01 But this is one where it's like, here's everything you thought was true. Guess what? It's not. these things, these institutions that you thought you believed in, guess what? Bullshit. So, yeah, Zola. I felt like Zola had to be here. Is seven high for Zola?
Starting point is 00:54:16 I don't know, but he's there. I was counting on Zola making the cut for you. Okay, great. The scene did not make the cut for me, but it does... It belongs there. It belongs there. A lot of other scenes. Great pick.
Starting point is 00:54:28 Okay. Carlos, can we hear my seventh moment? Seriously, you could do whatever you want to do. What makes you happy? I don't know. I think about this moment all the time. This is Steve visiting Sam at the VA. What makes you happy?
Starting point is 00:54:52 I don't know. Like you talk about a grounded movie and a human movie inside of a superhero universe. Like, I don't know that there's anything more human than that. What makes you happy? I don't know. And for a character who, again, like, we could just think of in less deft hands and less interesting and nuanced stories across
Starting point is 00:55:14 comics canon and film canon think of as the ideal, like the guy who got it all, that's so rarely almost never what a Steve Roger story is interested in examining. And that is crucial. This is also just a, I think, a beautiful scene, not just from the Steve perspective, but in a great Sam movie, like nailing the Sam intro, especially in a story that is so rooted around the deep and abiding and defining friendship between Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes, you have to introduce Sam Wilson into the story where we are like ready to embrace him, not only in the MCU, but in Steve Rogers's inner circle in life, without it feeling like a threat to Bucky. And of course, that ends up
Starting point is 00:56:00 being like one of the great successes of the MCU too, like a moment in Civil War. It's like, can you move your seat up. No. And then we go toward those two getting their own television show together because Sam and Bucky had such fun and interesting chemistry and such a fun and interesting dynamic together. But to learn more about Sam too, right? To learn about Riley, to hear him say that after losing Riley, like, I had a really hard time finding a reason. And each experience and the context for why they feel that way is distinct and specific to them, but they're both having a, I had a really hard time finding a reason. Or like, no. knowing how to channel that reason or make sense of how my reason fits into the space that I now inhabit and the people who are around me shared experience.
Starting point is 00:56:45 And there's charm, there's wit and humor. I love when Sam is like ultimate fighting, just a great idea off the top of my head, which is just a wonderful little moment as well. But like Sam asks a question here that Steve is, like, is not ready to like, forget answer, not really ready to even ask himself until the end of his journey in the Infinity saga. And we build then toward tried some of that life Tony was telling me to get, and we know how much it means
Starting point is 00:57:25 that he gave himself permission to be happy. Like, it's just beautiful. And so this little moment, like not only do we think about this, this moment with Sam here when we see Steve in endgame leading support groups, right? And we know that watching Sam in this context helped inspire him to spend his time that way. But like, this is a crucial, crucial part of him deciding to go back, to be with Peggy to find her. And so I love it and I cherish it.
Starting point is 00:57:53 And I think it's beautiful. That's my seventh pick. I love that. I think that to your earlier point and true point here, like this is, it's surprising how much of an ensemble film this is when you watch it closely, like that there is room for Nick and Natasha and Sam and Sharon and, like, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,
Starting point is 00:58:17 before you get to Stephen Bucky, like, is astounding. And I think a big part of that is not just the way the script is crafted and how Mark has been feeling feel are so good with character relationships, but also the Russo brothers are so good. given their experience in television, dealing with a sprawling cast, be it arrested development or a community, they know how to give attention to everyone, give weight to everyone. And so then when later they're doing civil war, where they have to give so many people a room and then even more Infinity War, etc., like the fact that
Starting point is 00:58:53 they're able, the Infinity War is just astounding, like, how that works at all. The Thor Guardians pairing is like, I still think one of the master strokes of the hire MCU. It's just unbelievable. Not making anything feel out of whack. So let's give Sam these, like, you know, giving Sam his backstory, giving Sam his moments, giving Sam his victories, I think is such a key part of this movie. I love that you picked this moment. Great pick. Did you know about one and three people with plaques psoriasis may also develop psoriotic arthritis, which causes joint pain, stiffness, and swelling? Does this sound like you? Listen to what it's sounds like to be a million miles away.
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Starting point is 01:01:13 The backyard tradition now available behind the counter. Visit your local deli today. Discover the craftsmanship behind every bite. Borshead committed to craft since 1905. My number six might be one of those that's like slightly off center of one of your picks. Carlos, is that true? Yes. So I'm going to call an audible here and play Mal's clip first for number six and then yours.
Starting point is 01:01:36 Oh, so we both have it at six? Yes. Oh, great. Attention all shield agents. This is Steve Rogers. You've heard a lot about me over the last few days. Some of you were even ordered to put me down. But I think it's time you know the truth.
Starting point is 01:02:00 Shield is not what we thought it was. It's been taken over by Hydra. Alexander Pierce is their leader. The strike and insight crew are Hydra as well. I don't know how many more. But I know they're in the building. They could be standing here. They could be standing right next to you.
Starting point is 01:02:22 They almost have what they want. Absolute control. They shot Nick Fury. And it won't end there. If you launch those helic carriers today, Hydra will be able to kill anyone that stands in their way. Unless we stop them. And I know I'm asking a lot. The price of freedom is high.
Starting point is 01:02:49 It always has been. And it's a price I'm willing to pay. And if I'm the only one, then so be it. But I'm willing to bet I'm not. Did you write that down first? What's it off the top of your head? The Price of Freedom Speech. Iconic moment.
Starting point is 01:03:15 Do you want to hear mine? Let's hear yours. Okay, Carlyth. I'm not going to lunch those ships. Captain's orders. Move away from your station. Like he said. Captain's orders.
Starting point is 01:03:33 You picked the wrong side, agent. Depends on where you're standing. All right. Beautiful. Before I get my. Sharon Carter agenda off. I can't wait for the way through this.
Starting point is 01:03:48 The Price and Freedom speech. You know, we got to hear, we got to hear Rumlow there for a second. So let me just, let me just, let me just say. In a movie starring some of the hottest people alive,
Starting point is 01:03:59 Chris Evans, Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackey, Scarlett Johansson. Shout out now and always one of my greatest loves, Frank Carillo, who played hard shots up
Starting point is 01:04:09 on guiding light. I picked... the cap speech after our heroes infiltrate shield HQ because of the substance of what he's saying and everything we have talked about today, staring the truth in the face, cutting out the rot, etc., making a hard call, asking a hard question. But really, I picked it because I stay on a cap speech now and always. It's just they always land. This is in our minds when we are. are watching one of the best moments in the entire MCU, the endgame speech. This is the fight of our lives and we're going to win whatever it takes.
Starting point is 01:04:58 We even get like a little version of Sam's. Did you write that down first or listen off the top of your head when Rocket says he's pretty good and Scott says right? I just always love not only the fact that we get like treatise after treatise on the nature of belief and convince. from Steve Rogers, but then we get to see that the people around him and the story are reacting to what they hear the same way that we are at home. It's awe-inspiring. It is amazing. And I'm so glad that you picked your moment because one of the things I love about this is that he inspires
Starting point is 01:05:30 this poor fucker to just, like, with Romlo holding a gun to his head, and I have to presume his own piss, like, pulling his feet. He's consumed by terror for him to say, no. Like, I'm not going to going to do what you said, I am going to, I'm going to do what Captain America is inspiring me to believe is possible because that is like the heart of who Captain America is, right? Makes me think always back to like one of my other favorite moments from First Avenger, Erskine, that this is why you were chosen, right? Good becomes great. And like, what is inside of Steve that actually truly, it's not the super serum, the super soldier serum,
Starting point is 01:06:09 it's that the super soldier serum unlocked the thing inside of him that was already special. And you get to feel that and see that in a moment like this. and you get to see the way other people around him feel and see that and then what it inspires them to do. And I love that. I just love it. Erin Hemelstein, who plays specialist Cameron Klein, the aforementioned piss-soaked. Shield employee who stands up. I love this moment. Steve Rogers is a leader of men, or gender-neutral leader of men, is so important to me.
Starting point is 01:06:41 It's in that sort of like coach Eric Taylor vein of like, you, understand why people would follow him into battle. This speech, everything that he does. And so when you have poor specialist Cameron Klein, like, stand up and him reminding us of skinny Steve. Like, he reminds us of the Steve we very first met. So have him have that moment of just sort of like, no, I'm outmatched. I, like, there is no way I am winning here, but I have to stand up for what's right and I've been infected by Steve Rogers' like optimism and like stirring leadership
Starting point is 01:07:25 is incredible to me. And then Sharon Carter steps in. And Sharon Carter, Emily Vang, I love call her Kate or Agent 13 or whatever you want to call her in this movie. Sharon Carter. I love Sharon Carter in this movie. And I think diminishing returns after this movie.
Starting point is 01:07:43 Starting with like them trying, trying to force her into a love interest role in Civil War, and then the absolute travesty that is the power broker storyline. The fact that Sharon Carter, Captain's Order's, she has become a believer. She's set to spy on him and she's become a believer. And it just makes, you know, there's so many things that we can look back on. You know, you mentioned the endgame speech. There's so many moments to come even that, like, are informed by things that come after it.
Starting point is 01:08:21 This is one of those few that I'm just like, this is why, this moment is why I will never believe. A, that Steve Rogers would abandon Sharon Carter and B, that she would become the powerbroker. I still don't believe it. It outrages me. It outrages me to this day that they thought they could get away with that. character assassination of two people at once hated it. And so Sharon, Sharon standing up here. Also, important to note that a key, key part of this movie that we haven't really fully
Starting point is 01:08:57 addressed yet is not only is Steve Rogers an inspiring leader, but pretty much like almost everyone wants to fuck him. That's an important part of this movie. Sharon Carter is no exception. One of our listeners Jeremy wrote in to ask, is this. the hornyest Marvel movie. Do you want to save that for your later segment or do you want to talk about that here? Yeah, let's save it for a moment I have coming up. But I think I will say it is easily without question the sexiest Marvel movie. I don't really think it's particularly close.
Starting point is 01:09:29 No, I agree. And I think it's also the horniest. Yeah, I agree. I can't wait to talk about why. 100%. Great question. Great email. Love the bad babies. That's a great one. Great stuff. All right. Oh, ma'am. Fabulous pick. Cap. What a character. Has to confront the fact that the thing he sacrificed his life for.
Starting point is 01:09:51 Like, survived his bravery. And then he still just does it again. Like, he really can do it all day. All day. It's just wild. All day. All right. We're getting to the top five.
Starting point is 01:10:06 I presume we have more overlap coming. Let's find out. What is your first? fifth pick. Great news. This is also my number five. Okay, great. I have a second clip paired with my first clip was Bucky, who the hell is Bucky, and then I have a second clip to pair with it. I love that we had the same, in essence, same scene for six and five. It's happening. We knew it would. All right, let's hear the second clip that I had selected, and then we'll talk about it all together. Your work has been a gift to mankind. You shape the century. And I need you to do it one more time.
Starting point is 01:11:59 society is at a tipping point between order and chaos tomorrow morning we're going to give it a push but if you don't do your part i can't do mine and hydra can't give the world the freedom it deserves but i knew it's so sad it's honestly heartbreaking our our listener uh liz in who has a chunk of an email read later but she has a line in her email where she says Alexander pierce back hands bucky the same way I used to hit a fax machine to get it to work. Tough. Fucking stuff. The reason that my clip is as long as it is, is I wanted to get a bit of the score in
Starting point is 01:12:50 because the Winter Soldier's score, the shrieking score for Bucky is incredible. And then, you know, you can hear the arm winding up and deploying. And then also in that sequence, he grabs the shield. It's a lot that's going on. And then you get the, like, Bucky who the hell is Bucky? I was a sooner Amanda wrote in to say, The Who of the Hell is Bucky Line is such a devastating moment? It breaks my heart every single time.
Starting point is 01:13:15 But a set of scenes a little later, shatters my heart into a million pieces after Steve's. Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky line. He's heartbroken that Bucky doesn't know who he is. And in the next scene, Bucky is insistent that he knows the man on the bridge before being wiped. So Amanda is encapsulating both of those picks. I, this, okay, so this is not, this is also not the last fight scene I'll have on the list. Certainly not. Nor the last Bucky moment, I suspect.
Starting point is 01:13:41 No, but it is incredible the fight sequence that happens here where we get Sam and Nat and Steve all doing their best against the Winter Soldier here before, you know, and then we get the reveal. But like, this street fight from the overpass down into the street, everyone bringing in their particular style, Nat gets one of her classic like widow. throw like thigh leap around the neck moments incredible stuff we've got the knife flip moment from bucky which is absolutely iconic um james young who i mentioned who is the fight choreographer on this film uh also doubled uh he was also this double for um bucky and so he he says he claims this might be apocry phil he claims bucky grabbing the shield was his idea um and he says because he knows, he knew that in the comics, like, Bucky would become, I feel like everyone has tried to take credit for this. So, like, I'm a little skeptical. The only thing that I,
Starting point is 01:14:47 that makes me dubious about this is that we get the first version of this in First Avenger on the train when Bucky gets to hold the shield. So, like, it's to sit at a version of it. For sure. No. And he, and he says that, like, in the interviews that I read with him, he says, like, you know, it happens in the train sequence. It's always iconic, though. Every time Bucky has that shield in his hands. People lose their fucking mind when it happens. And then just like that reveal, even though, like, even though 99% of us knew that that was Bucky, I'm sure there's like a few people, few like, you know, sweet summer children who go in not knowing that's Bucky. And then when the mask gets knocked off, they're like, holy shit, he went off. He dyed his hair.
Starting point is 01:15:27 That's so sick. But it's such this, it's just such an unmooring moment for Steve. And again, this is like one of those like. something I so, like, ironclad knew to be true. My best friend died. And it's, no, my best friend was tortured and tormented and turn into the very enemy. We thought he sacrificed himself to fight and protect the world from. Oh.
Starting point is 01:16:00 I, the star-crossed lovers, fighters, Stephen Bucky relationship is so important to me. I do have some questions about how it all wraps up, but here now in this movie, it is one of the best things that Marvel has ever done. Couldn't agree more. We'll talk about that more. Could not agree more.
Starting point is 01:16:23 I mean, what happens when your best pal becomes your opponent because of the very force that you were seeking to eliminate? And then also you realize that he is alive and did not, in fact, when you watched him fall in front of you into the abyss. I love one of the MCU interview quotes that I think I've referenced most often on Ringer pods over the years is from Joe Russo from a 2014 Washington Post interview
Starting point is 01:16:55 with Emily R about the Steve Bucky dynamic inside of this movie through the lens of the Winter Soldier. the hero's only defined by the strength of a villain. And this is an incredible villain because he can emotionally undermine the hero. Simple, clear, perfection. And that first encounter, like the little like tease we get after Fox Trot down, I'm in pursuit.
Starting point is 01:17:23 And the shield catch and then the brief eye contact. And we're not really at a moment of reverend. but we're setting the stage for it, like so deliciously. Everything about the actual fight choreography that you outlined, I mean, it's just, it's absolutely like gobsmacking. The dragging of the knife across the side of the fan is, like, my favorite. I just absolutely love that part of it. The knee to the chest, the knee jump to the chest that Steve does.
Starting point is 01:17:56 Fantastic stuff. And then you have like the literal nature of Steve Rogers staring the truth. in the face after Bucky's mask comes off. And, you know, one of the things, you mentioned Jay's sole impression. One of the things that Jason used to mention the most during the Captain America Pots for Bingewell Marvel was like the comic, the longtime comics truism, right?
Starting point is 01:18:22 About no one's staying dead except Uncle Ben and Bucky Barnes and Jason Todd. And then like that's not truly. anymore after the iconic Ed Brubaker, Winter Soldier, run in 05. And so, like, it's this seminal thing in comics canon and in the MCU, and to, like, nail it in both spots is really hard to do. And the fact that it's a moment of revelation for both characters and, like, hits us equally hard for both of them as one of my favorite things about it. And that's why I picked that second clip as well.
Starting point is 01:19:03 Because, like, going back to that reset lab, where they're about to put Bucky's brain back into a blender to borrow some of the FCs, F's poetry. And we see that Bucky is, like, trying to make sense of his own mind. We see a flash of Zola. We see a flash of the snow. We see a flat. Put him on ice. And him not answering. the mission report prompt.
Starting point is 01:19:37 It's like, first of all, just an incredible setup for Civil War, right? But to see the way that he is like seeking to understand the man on the bridge, who was he? And he just sounds like so anguished and so pained as he is trying to puzzle out his own life. Yeah. And that'll come back in another moment that we will talk about later. I have no doubt. But I knew him. There's this like desperation.
Starting point is 01:20:04 this need to understand and this fear that he is unable to. And then we just get to really glimpse head on the hideous nature of what they are doing to him. Like one of the favorite things that I love about the Bucky Barnes character over the MCU is that we have these moments where Tony will say to him in Civil War. Like, do you even remember them? Like, do you remember my parents? And Bucky says, I remember all of them, right? Like, we have to confront the nature of the memory wipes,
Starting point is 01:20:29 but also that he is carrying this with him when Steve will tell Bucky later. like it's not your fault and Bucky says yeah but like I still did it like the way that that is something he carries with him forever even after he is repaired and brought back into his own true full sense of self is such an essential part of the character and so like we hear then wipe him and start over
Starting point is 01:20:56 and have to then think about how many times this has happened to him over the course of his life but also understand that this is different and distinct because he's staring and staring at Eve Rogers, he's staring at his childhood best friend. And then on top of it all, on top of all of the emotion and all of the memory and all of the questions of identity, we get some of the best abheaving in the history of cinema. I mean, he bites down on that mouth guard and those abs. How quickly and loudly I agreed with that, but yes, I agree with you. It's just a very important moment.
Starting point is 01:21:29 Okay, Joe, that takes us to your number four. I know you have this, but you have it higher. You're alive. You came back. There's been so long. Now when she owes me a day. Okay, by your franticisticulating, Mallory, it seems like this is our shared number four. This is our shared number four.
Starting point is 01:22:11 I picked a different clip, but same scene. Carlos, you want to play that too? The world has changed. None of us can go back. All we can do is our best. And sometimes the best that we can do is to start over. It's been so long. All right.
Starting point is 01:22:36 I'm uncontrollably weep when I watch the scene. And there's a couple reasons why. The, you know, the wholesome goodness of Steve and his heart, his faithful attachment to Peggy, which is as important to me as his attachment to Bucky. And we might talk about those three in a future episode that we have planned coming up on the feet. A little end game anniversary got to come in. That's not what I was thinking.
Starting point is 01:23:13 I was thinking that we might be doing a thruple episode. Oh, yeah, right. We have multiple lots coming up. I would put these three on the list. Great stuff. The steadfast, like, you know, good-hearted, like, loyal, you know, soldier, that is Steve Rogers, the way in which she is the only person he thinks before he understands about what's going on with Bucky, who remembers who he was, who knew him before he was.
Starting point is 01:23:48 he was a fossil, an icon, a museum exhibit, all that sort of stuff. And, you know, the clip that you played, I'm really glad you played it because, like, she's giving such, like, good, wonderful advice to him, and then she vanishes, right? And she forgets him. And they have to start from scratch. And he, of course, plays along because that is the kind thing to do. but the anguish on his face, again, to your question earlier,
Starting point is 01:24:20 how many times, you know, the echo of Bucky getting his memory wiped and Peggy obviously on this sort of like reset cycle, how painful that is for Steve to be forgotten or to have to play along with this or watch someone he loves so much, like, fade away. And also, it's so important. for someone like Steve Rogers, who is so strong and smart and good and handsome.
Starting point is 01:24:53 For us, the audience, we need to constantly be reminded about the anguish and the pain and the hell that he has gone through so that he becomes someone that we want to root for. It is why we meet him as skinny, Steve. That is important. But, like, the people who make these Marvel movies are constantly aware that they're giving us these, like, you know, these very, like paragones of strength and intelligence and morality. And it's like, you don't want that person to be boring or you don't want that, or you don't want us, us the audience to resent all the gifts that they have. And so you need to show us all the things that their gifts have cost them.
Starting point is 01:25:31 And his, you know, quasi-immortality in this scenario has cost him this. And, you know, we'll talk about endgame at some point in the future and in terms of like how that all wraps up. But here we feel that loss so acutely. And you do it inside of a character. You do it inside of a character. See, this is very intentional. They really wanted to show us the hell that Steve Rogers has been through. And they did it with an emotional, like, love scene with Peggy Carter in her hospital bed. So good. It's perfect. Time, the passage of time, love, sense of self. all of it. I love your point about reminding us
Starting point is 01:26:16 of who he was before because one of my favorite little touches is in the aforementioned time heist in end game back to Camp Lehigh when he sees into her office and he sees the picture
Starting point is 01:26:27 that she, what picture does she have of him on her basket? It's skinny Steve. Like, because that's the heart of who he is still after all the muscles
Starting point is 01:26:35 and the abs. So those are also special and important. Also, when she says you're alive, you came back, that's again an echo of what he then experiences with Bucky. You're alive. You came back. Right. You know, like it's someone you thought you had to say goodbye to being in front of you again.
Starting point is 01:26:54 But in a very complicated fashion, I just love the scene. And it's on the heels of like he goes to visit her on the heels of seeing the footage of her speaking about him at the museum exhibit, right? At the Smithsonian. And she's saying in that. in that film, he saved over a thousand men, including the man who would become my husband, as it turned out. Even after he died, Steve was still changing my life. Now, to this day, I don't want to talk about it. We're not going to get into it. We have to at least remark upon the fact that that the photos of her family in the hospital do not feature a husband, only the kids, and the fact that the brain trust of Marcus Baffili and the Russo brothers do not agree and have the position on whether it was Steve all the time or whether we're in an offshoot timeline because of the endgame. We're not going to talk about it now, but we have to remark upon the fact that
Starting point is 01:27:50 this scene is a crucial part of fueling that discussion for a decade now. A decade. I actually never retire of talking about it. I loved it. But like, okay, back to the emotion and the heart of it. When he's looking at those photos and then turns to her and she says, I have lived a life. Like, it destroys to me because and this is another thing that is like perfect when we encounter it for the first time and then
Starting point is 01:28:22 just utterly magical when we return to it after watching them dance at the end of end game and knowing that he went back and that they got to live a life together and independent genuinely of where you land on the world
Starting point is 01:28:38 did they lived life together here the whole time or what it's in this moment It's been so long. He's genuinely like happy for her, right? And glad that she lived a full life and also devastated to see her in this current state. And also like, of course he and we are thinking of the fact that he was deprived, at least the context of this movie when we first see it, of sharing that with her. And that's why I, like, that's why I picked the soundbite.
Starting point is 01:29:12 the world has changed, none of us can go back. Because, like, he gets to. Until you do. He gets to. And so I think, like, we chat a lot, not just with the MCU, but with, like, genre stories about how one of the things you always, when a movie or a show or characters in your hands have to think about is, like, maintaining the stakes. And so to be able to actually have Steve go back.
Starting point is 01:29:42 and for them to live that life together and also preserve the heartache and despair and longing, the yearning tendrils in this moment here is, like, nothing, not only is nothing lost, not only is this moment not in any way sapped or diminished,
Starting point is 01:29:59 it's heightened, it's enhanced by the choice that he will make because we know what it means for him to have built up the courage to, like, allow himself to do that, again, to give himself that permission to, like, be happy,
Starting point is 01:30:12 like we were talking about earlier. And it's just like the, it's just a beautiful and very sad scene. The look on his face when she says you're alive and like he has to confront what is happening to her is just, it's, it is so, so, so heartbreaking. And one of the things about Peggy is like she's always present for Steve in these movies even when she's not literally present in the scene on the screen or even alive anymore. Like later in this movie when Nat and Steve are at Camp Lehigh and Nat sees Steve. Eve looking at Peggy's picture on the wall and, like, asks, like, who is that?
Starting point is 01:30:46 He doesn't, he, like, can't bring himself to speak, right? He can't bring himself to answer and we can, like, feel the weight of why. Or we talked about the no-you move, like the impact of how she is shaping his life even after she's gone. And that's one of the things I love about the scene, too, is that he's there because he's lost. And, like, Peggy is one of the only people, not only who knew him before, but who he trusts. Like, he tells her that the fact that you, that I know you founded Shield is, like, the reason I stay.
Starting point is 01:31:11 100%. And, like, he's looking to her for guidance because he's so tough. So unsure of how to navigate his life. It's, like, it's just devastating. It's such a bitter twist of the knife that he's, like, you built this. And then we find out about the rot at the center of this thing that Peggy Carter built. It's horrible. Also, we should say this is just, like, a huge moment in digital effects in the MCU.
Starting point is 01:31:37 Because to have, to get to have Haley at once. part of this performance that involves her and older woman and Lola, I believe it's Lola VFX doing like, you know, some blending and stuff like that is makes it that much more impactful. They could have hired a woman who looks like her. But this is, you know, when you watch it now, you're like, okay, I can, okay. But when we first saw it 10 years ago, I was like, holy shit. Like, holy shit. And that, you know, they would build on that and build on that to give us, like, you know, various digitally DH people.
Starting point is 01:32:16 But then, like, Thanos is like, you know, comes sort of directly from this kind of face mapping performance. So, yeah, great stuff. Wonderful. All right. Do we have the same number three? Before we get started, does anyone want to get out? All right. Same number three?
Starting point is 01:32:43 Okay. I think our number two is different than our number one is going to be the same. I think that's the case. That's the case. Does anyone want to get out? Take us through it. The iconic fabled elevator fight. The iconic we redubbed this line, a moment where originally says, does anyone want to get off? And if you just look at it without the sound on or the captions, you can see that that's what Chris Evans is saying. Does anyone want to get off? And they're like, and then someone in a screening was like, um, phrasing, and they changed it. Because everyone would say, uh, cap. I mean, if you're offering. Something that I love about, okay, there's two things I love about this scene.
Starting point is 01:33:22 One is the like, again, to invoke like Brian De Palma, the building of the tension where it's, where we're just like, we wait and we wait as more and more people get on and we watch. Again, this is why does anyone want to get off? What have been perfect, you know? Because you're like Frank Dillow is there. I would like to see it. So the tension building is one thing. Another thing that I love is, um, I don't think this. made it into the final version of the MCU book that...
Starting point is 01:33:51 New York Times bestselling author of MCU, the reign of Marvel Studios. That we wrote. But Gita Silva, who's one of the stunt fighters in this scene, and he also, he doubled for Chadwick Bowesman later as Black Panther. But they were on the floor for so long. He's like, I fell asleep. He fell asleep on the floor of the elevator. They just had to be done.
Starting point is 01:34:16 never so long. Okay. This is, I think, this is, it's between, to me, it is between this
Starting point is 01:34:26 and the tarmac scene in Civil War as the top MCU fight scene. And actually this might be number one for me. Because it has to do
Starting point is 01:34:38 with, again, character, right? I can do this all day. Like, yes, he's got super soldier to see her,
Starting point is 01:34:44 but there's so many guys in that elevator and they have so many prods and things to zap him with. Constantly zapping him with cattle proths. But the creativity. Special handcuffs also would have worked with. Does anyone get a hard? Well, Captain America, colon special handcuffs is the one shot of praising intended that he will be writing later.
Starting point is 01:35:08 But like, okay. Like, do you think he took those and used them later for someone? I hope so. Yeah. Yeah. I got these when the attention built in the shaft. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And I said, does anyone want to get off? And then a bunch of sweaty men. Okay. Anyway, listen, the point is, the creativity of this fight, like the limitations, you know, you have stuff like end game where there's just a million different characters and a million different combinations and a million different, like, cool things that can happen. And the digital effects are going crazy and all this or stuff like that. But the fact that you, I mean, this is just not just like a top. fight scene in the MCU, top fight scene in all of cinema, the elevator fight scene in Winter Soldier. And it's just people at the fucking top of their craft being really creative in a really cramp
Starting point is 01:35:57 space. The fact that the action is like clean and legible, which is often hard to do. And later in the MCU, I would argue that they lose track of that sometimes. But here in this cramped space where you're like fighting to get like the right angle. I'm sorry. Yep. We were supposed to move beyond the phrasing stuff. And you're talking about getting the right angle in cramps spaces. That's just for you.
Starting point is 01:36:19 It's a love letter to you, Mallory. I love you. And then there's also, this is also part of the ongoing, we've talked about this a lot, I think, more with Thor and, like, Thor Ragnarok, this idea of, like, when you strip everything away from a character. Okay. Indeed. Yeah. Uh-huh. What do they have left?
Starting point is 01:36:43 You know, you take Thor's. hammer in his costume and his hair and like, Bob, bum, what do you have left? And, like, this is, this is the, um, stripping bear of Steve Rogers. And this is part of it is like, here are all his co-workers. It's not personal.
Starting point is 01:36:57 Well, it feels personal. It feels personal. Right? And, like, these are all his co-workers turning on him. And it's just, like, another thing that, that he does not have to protect himself. Yes. And over to you, Mallory Rubin.
Starting point is 01:37:12 I think you, you honestly covered all of it. This is just a perfect. Perfect movie moment. You nailed it. It's a perfect movie moment. Rumlo attempting to make tactical small talk when he enters the elevator is like quietly one of my favorite parts of this. Like some fibers on the roof. Cap. Really good. Absolutely kills me. Rumlo is pretty underrated in the NCS. I wish that we got more Rumlo. I mean, obviously we get more after this. But like before we get to the crossbones of it, it's just very special.
Starting point is 01:37:44 The choreography of this tight space fight that you outlined is obviously like the thing that makes it legendary. That overhead shot of the kick of the shield up into his hands. The thing like on that mounting tension front that I love so much is like tracking Capp's observational prowess. Yes. The way that he begins to sense that something is. a miss. And like this is, this scene is on the heels of basically he refuses the alliance with Pierce. Pierce makes this big, very like Baylon skull-esque. You gotta tear it down sometimes. Beach, right? Cap's like, this is not really my vibe. Nick Fury told me not to trust anyone.
Starting point is 01:38:32 I'm gonna go. So, you know, he's primed already, but he notices, dude's hand on his gun. he notices the beads of sweat trickling down a temple. He notices, he notices, he notices. And the way that we can watch that observational power and understand the depth of his, it's not just that Captain America is strong, like all of these different attributes that make him such a capable defender and protector
Starting point is 01:39:02 and investigator. It's so deftly on display here. Yes, in every single respect. It's just absolutely awesome. This is impersonal into the slam. The ceiling slam of Rumlow into it kind of feels personal. It's just and then that overhead shot of the collection of bodies around him. It's simply astonishing stuff.
Starting point is 01:39:25 Including a napping, Gita Silva. We hope you enjoyed catching those ease. Absolutely fabulous. I thought that might be your number two. I thought I might be, I thought I might have it lower. But here we are with a shared number three. And I think you're right. I think we're going to have different number two picks and then the same number one.
Starting point is 01:39:40 So, Joe, what is your number two? Uh-huh. On my left. Got it. Don't say it. Don't you say it. On the left. Come on.
Starting point is 01:40:03 Need a medic? You're earlier alluded to on your left, meet cute moment. Wonderful. Wonderful. What a fun thing to listen to, the little pitter-patter of their feet as they go. This is became even before the callback. in Endgame, this became this very special catchphrase in the MCU on your left. And then it just becomes, I mean, the on your left moment in Avengers Endgame
Starting point is 01:40:43 reduces me to absolute rubble, just absolute torrents of tears. And so then you go back and you watch this and you feel the origin of the Sam and Steve Bond. And just the way, the power of film or television, repeated lines, callbacks, references, blah, blah, that can just circle back and forth on each other to infuse each other with meaning, I just think on your left is so powerful for everything that it holds. And it's very simple origins here in this moment where we're hearing the patriotic bassoon music behind them in the. the pre-dawn, DC moments. I also love the Sam-Steve relationship, which you already have talked about a couple times here, but the way in which he's not in awe of him,
Starting point is 01:41:45 he's not hero-worshipping him. He's treating him like a person immediately, that he's not like, oh, my God, I am so honored to be laughed by Steve Rogers. He's like, you motherfucker, you know, like, fuck you, dude. You know, and so then they're just, like guys being bros and bros from the start. And that's such an important
Starting point is 01:42:05 foundation because Steve Rogers doesn't want to be a museum exhibit. He doesn't want to be a fossil. He wants, you know, he wants to be a guy. And Sam offers that to him right away. And I love their be cute. I love this moment. It's a very, very important MCU moment. Yeah. I love it. It's a great pick. A portal of a different sort. Beautiful. Wonderful.
Starting point is 01:42:29 All right. You know what my number to us. Ready to get very horny? All right, I have a question for you. Which you do not have to answer. I feel like if you don't answer it, though, you're kind of answering it, you know? What? Was that your first kiss since 1945? Not bad, huh?
Starting point is 01:42:45 I didn't say that. Well, it kind of sounds like that's what you're saying. No, I didn't. I just wondered how much practice you've had. You don't need practice. Everybody needs practice. It was not my first kiss since 1945. I'm 95. I'm not dead. I'm 95. I'm not dead.
Starting point is 01:42:59 dead might be my single favorite moment in the history of the MCU, even though it's not my number one pick today. This is just absolute perfection to me. And I will use it as an excuse for an orgy of smuggles about whether Nat and Cap fucked in this movie off screen, which I love talking about. And we'll never tire of discussing. This is, per your email prompt earlier, definitely the sexiest movie in the MCU. the
Starting point is 01:43:30 the chemistry between Nat and Steve is impossible to contain and so the fact that they lean in and this flirtation is such a consistent part of this entire film
Starting point is 01:43:46 but despite the running bit not actually in a way that leads us to believe that they will hook up they did it's I just love this is my head canon
Starting point is 01:43:59 and perhaps theirs. But the line of inquiry about Steve's dating life from that through the movie just kills me. It's so good every time. You do anything fun Saturday night? Well, all the guys from my Barbershop Quartet are dead. So no, not really. The Barbershop Quartet line is so good. I love when she like she just continues when she drops out of this guy in the parachute and she just continues the conversation on a
Starting point is 01:44:30 a stroll of like off the parachute drop. It's so good. Secure the Android room, then find me a date. I'm multitasking. It's just incredible. And then like we get to the Apple store. We get to the mall sequence. Shout out D.C. Pearson.
Starting point is 01:44:48 Yeah. She sheds incredible. I have the exact same glasses. Wow. You guys are frankly twins. Wonderful. And then of course, this stretch where Nat tells Steve they're going to use PDA because PDA makes people uncomfortable and they're going to use this as a way to go
Starting point is 01:45:04 undetected. So the kiss on the escalator, as Rumlow says, snake the upper levels work down. Just, this is just beautiful. This is wonderful. You're a special person. Thank you. Thank you, Joe. After the kiss, you're still uncomfortable? That's not exactly the word I would use, Steve Rogers says, is he a justice throbbing boner. And they move on in their time-sensitive mission into the car ride that is the, just one of the most important stretches in the history of cinema. Movie stars being hot and effortlessly generating chemistry together is not, you know, new or so rare. But this stretch, the soundbite we heard into the, The, like, so, you know, no one's special.
Starting point is 01:46:05 No, it's hard to find somebody with the same, like, shared life experience. And then into a conversation, like, kind of of substance about trust, right? And that's a tough way to live. Like, it's a sexy scene. It's electric, but it's also actually, all jokes aside, genuinely important character moment for both of them. And you then spend years of your life discussing with your friends whether they pulled over and fucked on the side of the road before they arrived. Lehigh, which I would like to think that they did. But here's the great news, Joe, even if they didn't. I know that's not the moment. It wasn't the last opportunity. I know that's not the moment where you
Starting point is 01:46:40 think they fudge. It was not the last opportunity because they make their way to Sam Wilson's house. And they are in the same room tidying up. They are in, isn't that is sitting on a bed. Steve is in the bathroom, towing off. Now, my question to you is what are they tally off from? Is it, it from the dust and rubble of the missile attack on Zola's Lair? Or is it from whatever they've been up to? It's Sam Wilson's spare bedroom. It's a question I've posed before, and it's a question I will never stop posing. And thanks to Shee Hulk, we know, Cap, not a virgin, right?
Starting point is 01:47:24 That's according to Bruce. I don't know that that's true. Not a virgin. We was fucking up a storm on the US. tour. No, let's be accurate at least. Steve Raj is not a virgin. He lost his virginity to a girl in 1943 on the U.S.
Starting point is 01:47:43 O tour. That's not fucking up a storm. Fugging up a storm. Had sex with one girl, but I also just don't think he did that. When Sam offers them breakfast, and they're like, yeah, we need some replenishing calories.
Starting point is 01:47:57 Let's do it. Let's do it. And then they just never stopped talking about it. They never stop talking about it. They are interrogating Jasper Sitwell, dropping him off of a roof and still making time for this exchange. Oh, wait. What about the girl from accounting? Laura, Lisa, Lillian, lip piercing, right?
Starting point is 01:48:14 Yeah, she's cute. Yeah, I'm not ready for that. It's sensational. It's sensational. I am more willing to believe that they've fucked when they were on the run in the nomad era than I am willing to believe that they had sex. in this movie. I think Peggy Carter's in the ground and then he has sex with this. That's what I think. Peggy Carter is in the ground. He kisses a known relatives and then goes and finally fucks nat. Okay. I like this. I like it. Glad we workshoped that. This is compromise. This is my compromise to you.
Starting point is 01:48:53 That they fucked but it wasn't in this movie. It was later. I could do this all day. Okay. Because we now have to get to the actual hornyest most romantic moment of this movie. Our share number one, Carlos Lee, please play this. Your name is James. If you can't have born. I'm not going to fight you.
Starting point is 01:49:31 You're my friend. My mission. Then finish it. Because I'm with you to the end of the line. Oh, my fucking God. A puddle. Oh my God. Overwhelming.
Starting point is 01:50:09 So, Moorto, like, on your left, I'm with you to the end of the line. Incredible, like, you know, again, Marcus McPhile, like, pulling their own lines again and again throughout the spine of the MCU that is the Captain America saga into the Infinity War endgame double feature. I loved this line that we got in this email from our listener, Lizanne, who says, Bucky is ultimately a damaged damsel in distress. He's also the sleeping beauty awoken by Trulov's kiss with the marriage. Fowl, I'm with you till the end of the line. Listen! Yes, thank you.
Starting point is 01:50:46 I love it. Oh, my God. Bucky and Steve are so important to me and are so incredible in this moment. You know, this is the best thing Sebastian Stan has ever done. And I like him in general, but this is just like, this is it. This is the peak. And the fact, this is the stuff. This is the stuff, not only Lionel, but everyone agrees.
Starting point is 01:51:11 This is the stuff. And listen, this dynamic, this I'm with you no matter what till the end of the line, then finish it because I'm with you till the end of the line. This is the core strength of cap, his undying loyalty to Bucky that becomes his flaw in civil war and becomes the central conflict. that fuels civil war. And that's why it's so satisfying. This trilogy of films and the Bucky Steve dynamic through all three is so incredibly satisfying. I can't even begin to talk about how they then really fucking sideline Stephen Bucky for the rest of the franchise.
Starting point is 01:51:59 It is, I am indignant about it, actually. But this is so important. And it's just like, you know, we did a whole episode on enemies to lovers. This is like best friends to enemies to best friends with a tinge of lovers. Like it's all in there. It's just like the juiciest, most Shakespearean, most soap opera, most fan fiction, most AO3, most everything inside of an extremely macho. The Helic Carrier is crashing once again movie about the way in which our government lies to us. Got to swap those server blades.
Starting point is 01:52:39 The full, this is everything you could ever want in a movie moment. It's perfection. I had absolutely no doubt this would be our shared number one. I think it would rank quite highly if we did a list of just moments across the MCU, period. It's perfection. And one of the things that I love so much about it is earlier when they're prepping to try to thwart project insight. and Steve is thinking back to his memories of Bucky and he thinks back to this moment
Starting point is 01:53:15 after he buried his mother and Bucky invites Steve to live with him. And you get all this like shorthand in that scene for just how well they know each other. Steve's looking for his key. He can't find that Bucky kicks over the rock where he knows it's waiting. Like those little glimpses that
Starting point is 01:53:34 and we've spent time with them in a prior movie before but still like those little moments that just reinforce, like this is a person who has been with you every minute of your life, like before you found yourself like in this spot and in this way. And he says, what does Steve say in that memory? Like, thank you, Buck, but I can get by on my own. And Bucky's response to that, which sets up this then climactic sensational moment is the thing is you don't have to.
Starting point is 01:54:01 You don't have to. I'm with you to the end of the line, pal. And it always makes me cry in that memory we glimpse. And then it just makes me like weep when Steve says it back to him here and knows that that will be the thing, hopes that that will be the thing that reaches Bucky that unlocks it. I mean, Steve has been shot multiple times. The helicarrier is crumbling around them. He drops, he refuses, he is willing to die in this moment. He drops his shield.
Starting point is 01:54:35 He is refusing to save himself to escape this wreck because it is the most important thing that he has left to try to reach Bucky to try to repair this thing. And the, again, pairing in this film, like it's so expertly balanced throughout that of course it's not a surprise that they nail it in the climactic showdown, but the fight choreography,
Starting point is 01:55:00 the tension of the action are they going to save it in time? We're cutting back and forth. Rumlow fighting Sam is the helicopter going to reach the right floor? There's so much happening at this point in the movie. And yet there is like all the space in the world for the substance of this shared experience and this effort to like no matter literally what is happening around you, try to save the person who matters the most to you in the world.
Starting point is 01:55:30 The look on Bucky's face when he hears Steve say this, like the way that Sebastian stands's eyes go wide, it's just, man, it's just absolutely incredible. Again, this is like Civil War bleeding back in to inform this, but I love that this is the healing opposite of longing, rusted 17-day break furnace. You know, like these are the activating words to like bring him back to himself. It's just... I love this movie. Fucky Barnes, ready to comply.
Starting point is 01:56:05 Beautiful. Beautiful. Okay, we did it. Run through if everyone needs a refresher, very quickly. Rapid fire. What was your 10 through 1? Let's hear it. Recap.
Starting point is 01:56:15 Yeah, very rapidly, because I have it right in front of me, and it's all good. Okay, we've got number 10, Bathtrak the Leaper. Number nine, bye-bye bikinis. Number eight, Pierce kills Renata and drinks an inch of milk. Number seven, Zola is Swiss, and don't you forget it. Number six. Sharon Carter pre-character assassination.
Starting point is 01:56:33 Number five, Steve and Bucky, fight in the street. Number four. Peggy, it's been so long. Number three, elevator fight. Number two, on your left, and number one, you were my mission. I love it. Mine. Number 10, man out of time makes a to-do list.
Starting point is 01:56:53 Number nine, Fury Shows capped Project Insight. Number eight, Matt wrestles. Loss. Number seven, Steve visits Sam at the VA. Six, Steve Rogers makes a speech. Five, Cap learns that Bucky is alive. Bucky learns that he's Bucky. Four, Steve visits Peggy at the hospital.
Starting point is 01:57:15 Three, does anyone want to get out? Slash off. Off. Two, Nat and Cap maybe fuck on the road and then again in Sam's home. Number one, he's with him till the end of the line. Beautiful. We did it. What a wonderful experience this was. What a great movie.
Starting point is 01:57:36 Great movie. Absolute joy to revisit. Had a blast. Marvel, make movies like this again. Just an idea. Just a thought. Good. I like it. I like it. All right. That's a wrap on today's podcast. I do already have our first correction. And it is that we are Swiss. Thank you. Time for thank you. to Carlos Chiroboga for producing this episode. Thank you to Isaiah Blakely for helping to produce this episode here in person today. Arjuna Ram Gapal for his additional production work on this episode and Joe Mia Denneron for his work on the social for this episode. Remember, head back into the ringerverse today for another Midnight Boys Pew Pew episode. Instant reaction coming on Monkey Man. Joe and I will be back with you here in the House of Our at the top of next week. Until then, remember, I do what
Starting point is 01:58:32 what she does, just slower.

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