Thanks to the awesome trailer that was released this past Tuesday, just about all Marvel Studios-related conversation this week has been about James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy, but we can't forget that the comic book movie studio has one more little adventure to show before spending us into outer space with Star-Lord and his buddies this August. Joe and Anthony Russo's Captain America: The Winter Soldier remains one of our most anticipated movies of the spring season, and while Guardians has attempted to borrow some of its thunder, the patriotic hero is ready to get it back with a brand new TV spot showing off a surprising amount of new footage.
Based on a script by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, the same writers who brought us Captain America: The First Avenger and Thor: The Dark World, the Captain America sequel begins as the titular superhero (Chris Evans) continues to adjust to the modern world after being frozen in an ice cube for more than half a century. Following the Battle of New York, he has taken a job as a field operative for S.H.I.E.L.D., working to protect the world from evil and teaming up with Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson). What Cap slowly discovers, however, is that the people he is working for may not be the people he can trust, and things get even worse when an important figure from his past long thought dead makes his return...
It's possible that I'm just reading things wrong, but is there a big spoiler vibe running through this trailer? Previous trailers and TV spots have told us that Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) winds up being one of the Winter Soldier's (Sebastian Stan) targets, but Captain America's dialogue about "last words" suggests that maybe he doesn't pull through after the assassination plot. All that said, Nick Fury is a character who has faked his death something like 1,000 times in the comics, so it's possible there won't be any finality on that end.
As for things getting "personal," that's kind of an understatement. Comic book fans know that the real identity of the Winter Soldier is actually none other than Bucky Barnes, Cap's best friend when he was growing up who we "saw" die during a World War II mission shown in Captain America: The First Avenger. It's unclear exactly how Cap will be figuring out this vital information in the new movie, but it's clearly something that will make a significant impact on his arc.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier will be in theaters on April 4th.
