Can we talk real quick about how Bucky fights differently the second fight with Cap? Like, completely differently?
So throughout the whole movie, what we see of Bucky’s fighting style is this terrifying efficient brutality. He constantly gives a sense of being three steps ahead of everyone else in the fight (with the only exception of Natasha, who knows how he fights and can out-think him, barely), he always takes the first shot or the first attack (usually because he is already in the fight before his opponent even knows he’s there and that they’re fighting), and when he fights Steve earlier it is everything Steve can do to match him. This is before Steve knows who he is, and therefore he has no reason to pull his punches, and Steve spends more than half the fight backing up and on the defensive from the Winter Soldier’s terrifying onslaught. He doesn’t have even split seconds of breathing room. The Winter Soldier has him on the ropes for most of the fight.
But their later fight in the helicarrier is completely different. They face off and then Steve throws the first punch. That is huge, especially since Bucky should have just been freshly wiped, and should thus be back to the level of complete non-recognition that he started with. Given what we’ve seen of the Winter Soldier’s fighting style for this entire movie, we should expect for this fight to start with the Winter Soldier appearing almost out of nowhere and going straight for the jugular. But instead he does nothing. Steve says he doesn’t want to fight, and he does nothing. They only begin to fight because Steve makes a move to attack/disable him, and Bucky fights back.
Then it gets weird, because suddenly Bucky isn’t fighting to kill. If you watch the earlier fight, he’s like a whirlwind of death. Fists, knives, guns, anything he’s got, anything it takes. And he doesn’t leave breathing room. But in this fight, Steve knocks him back repeatedly, for long enough to fumble with the targeting chips for several seconds. This is a completely different fight than the earlier one, and Cap has the upper hand for almost the entire fight.
And it’s not like the Winter Soldier has any reason to be off his game. We saw him a scene earlier brutal as ever, tearing off Falcon’s goddamn wings and tossing him off a ledge without any hesitation and single-handedly decimating Cap’s air support team.
But it’s Bucky who doesn’t want to fight Steve in this fight, more than the other way around. In fact, he never once in this fight genuinely tries to kill him. He takes three shots once Steve has knocked him down and left him on the lower level. I checked this on rewatch. He has clear shots for the first two shots, from, what, a thirty-foot distance? And with his own weapon. Then Steve gets over the grate, blocking his aim, and so Bucky moves position so that he has a third clear shot, also about a thirty-foot distance. This is Bucky. He’s known for his aim. He was the sniper for the Howling Commandos. He damn well doesn’t miss. Even left-handed he could have put all three of those bullets through the base of Steve’s skull. (Note: he can’t seem to shoot Natasha earlier in the movie, but this can easily be attributed to the fact that he’s using a borrowed machine gun that’s not designed for either distance or precision.)
The Winter Soldier goes into every fight before this one with absolute clarity of intent. But in his fight with Steve, he doesn’t seem to have any clear mission, and he seems to mid-fight decide that his mission is stopping Steve from whatever he’s doing with the targeting chips. He fights as hard as he does and holds on to the chip even after Steve has dislocated his shoulder not out of clarity of mission or even because he has any idea what the chip does (he doesn’t). He does so because he can’t kill Steve, can’t even seriously fight him, but he needs a mission because that’s how he’s programmed, so he clings onto that chip like it’s a raft from the shipwreck of his own brain because without it he’s forced to deal with whether to finish his mission or to save this stranger who he inexplicably feels he has to protect. Especially since he started this scene not wanting to fight. He wasn’t going to fight Steve, he just wasn’t going to move or back down. And then Steve says he doesn’t want to fight but moves to attack first. (I think it’s pretty clear that Bucky’s mental state at this point is not making nuanced logical connections like he doesn’t want to fight he just wants to complete his mission. It’s more likely something like i know him. we’re friends? i don’t want to fight him. HE ATTACKED ME no but we’re friends BUT HE ATTACKED ME but i know him…)
gummygunk
tangentwithtanner
annaxmalina
theartofmadeline
titsay
