Canonically, if the films can’t show everything, then wouldn’t it have made more sense to make the inference that the Howling Commandos, including Bucky, “taught” Steve additional ways to fight? In the films, he’s shown fist fighting even before the serum, he goes to basic training (even for a short time) where he displays mental and physical dexterity (even if he’s not the strongest), then he goes on the USO tour where it’s clearly implied there’s no fighting or learning to fight really happening including with Peggy, then the dude goes and spends a couple of years leading a spec ops team of fighters - and it’s THAT group with Steve that is depicted fighting together the most consistently.
In fact, the STRIKE teams in later movies are a callback to the Howling Commandos and meant to echo what Steve has lost. In Avengers, he’s using battlefield strategy that to Steve, he was just using a couple of weeks back; he’s using the shield to fight soldiers (the aliens are even referred to as a battalion or something similar). In TWS, he’s shown using knife skills to directly mirror the Winter Soldier.
When he’s in the elevator fighting the STRIKE team, they fight like Steve. That’s why they thought they ever had a chance of winning. Brock in particular uses a fighting style very close to Steve’s, aka very similar to what is taught to spec ops soldiers (again, mirrored by WS, the ultimate spec ops soldier). Look at the fight between WS and Steve and how evenly it’s matched, and they use similar moves (another example, Steve kicks the guy off the boat, the way Natasha kicks Sitwell off the building, the way WS kicks people off the helicarriers, etc.). By CATWS, Steve displays fighting styles that weren’t even introduced, let alone popular, in the US until after he was frozen, so he wouldn’t have even have had a chance to learn them until he was taught after he was defrosted.
All that to say - Steve fights like a (modern) trained special forces soldier, aka the people he spent most of his time fighting with in WW2, then SHIELD in modern age. Also, Why wouldn’t he have wanted Bucky to teach him how to shoot, when Bucky was considered a highly elite sniper and adept at hand-to-hand combat and boxing, if he needed to learn? “No, thanks, Bucky, I know you and the Howling Commandos are a group of expertly trained, highly-skilled operatives, but someone I know who has never been in actual combat taught me how to throw a punch (even tho I already knew how to do that, since I was shown doing it about an hour before in this film) and she shot straight at me once and I learned how to shoot, so I’m all set!”
Unless the argument is Peggy taught all of the Howling Commandos lol. Also in no way would anyone consider Steve’s fighting style to be *defensive* or like that of an opponent who doesn’t know his own strength or considers himself weaker?? The ONLY time he does that is when he’s fighting the Winter Soldier when he knows it’s Bucky. (Compare: when he doesn’t know it’s Bucky, he goes running full tilt at him.)
Anyway I know that’s an older post, but I just saw it again for the first time in a while and it just doesn’t make sense that Peggy fans argued that she taught Steve.
Thanks for the rant XD Yeah when I saw the Peggy + Steve fighting style post I was like what?? Bucky's fighting style clearly mirrors Steve a lot more, even though they are also very different.
I wish we got more of the stunts actors talking about Steve and Bucky's choreography. I remember watching some videos a long time ago. Steve's fighting style is very different in CATWS compared to the previous movies (A1 and CATFA), which to be fair didn't really showcase his fighting prowess beyond shield throwing. I think one of the stunt actors said they incorporated various Asian martial arts styles for Steve in CATWS, and made him a lot more acrobatic in his movements. Personally I think the brute force of the strike team is more similar to Bucky than Steve, who's far more agile -- but also from a practical perspective, the guys in the elevator are the stunts people/choreographers so of course their movements are similar to Steve and Bucky's styles. (The Asian dude in the corner is the stunts guy for Black Panther in Civil War, very cool!)
Steve's new fighting style is extremely efficient. I don't think it comes from a "used to be weak" background (like the Steggy meta said), because it's so different from his "in the back alley" fighting, which was just punching and shielding until he got knocked down. In CATWS he's trained his body to take advantage of his new physique -- sure it's bigger, but it's also faster, more agile, stronger, better endurance, and better coordinated. There are scenes he gets by with brute force (e.g. running through the walls) but where he can, he uses jumps, rolls and spins to increase the impact on his opponent while taking less blunt force on himself. I'm not sure if the stunts actors were riffing off Chris's own dance background, and Chris is a big guy, but Steve looks very light-footed and nimble in this movie. It might also be because his centre of gravity changes a lot in this new fighting style -- he'll make high leaps and spins, but he'll often also hug the ground with his shield, so it gives a sense of incredible agility.
Bucky on the other hand - we never see him in hand to hand combat in CATFA except maybe when he (literally) kicked the guy's ass in the alley, so the Winter Soldier's fighting style is also completely new. It's a very distinct way of movement, and I remember a TFATWS interview where someone said Sebastian was being very particular with the stunts team about how Bucky moves (Sebastian doing the heavy lifting when it comes to Bucky's characterisation again...)
The Winter Soldier - and even Bucky, in later movies/series, makes big flourishing movements with his arms and get into wide-based stances (and very big kicks) that make him look bigger than he actually is. Which is interesting because why would a sniper/stealth assassin need to have a threat display? Predators who are on the hunt don't do this because it would startle their prey. Threat displays are defensive (or territorial, which is kinda still defensive).
The Soldier is perfectly capable of sneaking up on his prey when he tries, e.g. him stalking after Nat on the Causeway. But when he's in melee mode, his movements are (coming from an untrained eye) a lot less economical than Steve's because of these extra flourishes, and it makes the Winter Soldier look like a creature of brute force rather than stealth.
Which is...interesting. From a Doylist perspective, maybe they wanted the Terminator vibes to make him look like an unstoppable "cyborg" as they called him.
From a Watsonian perspective, two thoughts: 1) Hydra turned an instrument of finesse (sniper) into a blunt force weapon, and 2) despite his proficiency, Bucky/the Winter Soldier does not feel at ease with hand to hand combat, hence the extra threat displays that's meant to scare his opponents into submission...which when your opponent is in any way trained, is just going to trigger their fight response.
Even when you look at this fight, yeah Steve was pushed onto the defensive quite a few times by the Winter Soldier, but he didn't come in on the defensive, he was very much on the offensive. And as you say, Steve's entire fighting style is that of someone who is very self-aware of his superhuman strengths and uses it for maximum attack damage despite using a defensive weapon (shield). Similarly Bucky's moves are also that of someone who's been force-trained to push that body to the limit of his strength and speed.
If we're really talking about someone whose style is based on defensive strategies, that's Nat. Her moves are far more characteristic of someone of a smaller stature taking on bigger stronger opponents, hence her abundance of stun weapons and her reliance on stealth and surprise.
