Marvel movies are big. They’re culturally massive, as evidenced by the demand for tickets to Avengers: Endgame breaking several websites. But they’re also massive in scale, with each wave of films adding more and more characters to the mix in adventures with rosters of dozens. There are so many, one could publish a list of the top 50 Marvel Cinematic Universe characters and barely scratch the surface. While you can obviously trace the MCU’s journey back 11 years to the release of Iron Man in May 2008, you don’t have to go back that far to identify the birth of the Marvel movie as we know it today. You really only have to go back 5 years to the release of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the Marvel movie that changed what it meant to be a Marvel movie.

This wasn’t clear at the time. Winter Soldier changed how we all think of Marvel movies that it’s actually difficult to remember what the franchise felt before April 4, 2014. Before Winter Soldier, there was a clear separation between the solo hero franchises and the anthemic team-up of Marvel’s The Avengers. The pre-2014 solo hero movies (then limited to the Iron Man trilogy, Incredible Hulk, Thor and Thor: The Dark World, and Captain America: The First Avenger) were smaller and more or less similar in tone. Sure there were subtle variations, most visible in Iron Man 3 thanks to Shane Black’s ’80s-style action movie cred, but they were all self-contained adventures starring a single hero. And when one of those movies (Iron Man 2) tried to bring in other Marvel characters, fans recoiled.

That’s partly why The Avengers was such a big deal. A movie with six superheroes seems cute after the madness of Avengers: Infinity War, but it was mind-blowing in 2012. Avengers felt different because it not only gave fans the kind of team-ups they’d been waiting four years for, it did them well. And when the franchise picked up post-Avengers with 2013’s Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World, the MCU went back to doing the same kind of small-scale storytelling we got before.

And then came Captain America: The Winter Soldier. This one felt different early on because of one thing: Black Widow.

Unlike the other solo movies, Winter Soldier was billed with essentially a co-lead from the jump–and Black Widow wasn’t going to be the only other superhero in the film. We knew Falcon, a major comics character, was coming. We knew Nick Fury and Maria Hill were returning, too. We even knew that Cap’s comic book love interest Sharon Carter and (duh) the Winter Soldier would have roles to play. Winter Soldier’s cast was the first non-Avengers movie to feature an Avengers-level character lineup.

And it worked.

If Black Widow and Nick Fury’s involvement in Iron Man 2 felt forced, it felt completely natural in Winter Soldier. So did the introduction of Anthony Mackie’s Falcon and Sebastian Stan’s transformation from Bucky to Winter Soldier. Just like in Avengers, every character got a real moment (Nick Fury’s car chase, Black Widow’s highway melee with Winter Soldier, Falcon’s burgeoning friendship with Cap).

This movie upgraded the solo films to team events, prepping fans for the kind of all-hands-on-deck ensembles seen in Captain America: Civil War, Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther, and Captain Marvel. Now when a solo Marvel movie comes out, we know to get excited about characters beyond the top-billed hero.

Beyond the expanding cast, Captain America: The Winter Soldier also expanded our expectations for what a Marvel movie could do in terms of the larger franchise narrative. This is the movie that dismantled S.H.I.E.L.D. in a spectacular fashion, quite possibly the biggest status quo disruption in the entire franchise up to that point. It’s true that we don’t get moves on that scale in every Marvel movie today, but we do go into them knowing that any film–not just an Avengers one–could change everything. Certainly Captain America: Civil War delivered on that since it’s sneakily an Avengers movie. But look at the huge strides made by Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant-Man, Doctor Strange, and Black Panther, all movies that introduced bold new concepts into the MCU.

On a more subtle note, subtler than crashing helicarriers and super-team-ups, Captain America: The Winter Soldier proved that Marvel movies could be more. It proved that “superhero” is not a restrictive genre, and that it’s not even a genre. Directors Joe and Anthony Russo crafted Winter Soldier like a ’70s political thriller, evidenced by the casting of Robert Redford as the surprise villain. MCU movies dabbled in other genres before Winter Soldier, most notably in the fantastical Thor films and the Lethal Weapon-y Iron Man 3. But I’d argue that Winter Soldier is the first time a Marvel movie felt thoroughly transformed, and the first time that transformation felt innovative and essential. Steve Rogers, a man out of time dealing with modern issues of security and freedom, made a little more sense as a political thriller than Tony and Rhodey turning into Riggs and Murtaugh.

Following Winter Soldier, whose connection to classic thrillers like Three Days of the Condor was mentioned a lot on that press tour, every Marvel movie has low-key been expected to riff on another genre. Just look at how different Guardians of the Galaxy, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Thor: Ragnarok, and Black Panther are from each other! All of these films lean heavily into other genres, ranging from space opera to teen comedy to the buddy movie to the Biblical epic.

All that’s because Marvel let the Russo brothers, then totally untested action movie directors coming into the Marvel world from TV comedies, go wild. There were notable Marvel directors before the Russos; Jon Favreau laid down the MCU’s foundation with 2008’s Iron Man, and it’s a solid one. But the Russos made the kind of superhero movie they wanted to make and, in the five years since, it’s arguable that their vision– which blends grit with humor and delivers big action while prioritizing emotional beats–has supplanted Favreau’s and Joss Whedon’s to become the definitive, the default take on the MCU.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, and Avengers: Infinity War form the spine of the Marvel movie-verse as we know it today, and I bet their Avengers: Endgame will join that list.



The risk Marvel took on the Russos is one we’ve seen time and time again since Winter Soldier, as seen in James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy movies, Peyton Reed’s Ant-Man movies, Taika Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarok, and Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther.

Five years after it was released, Captain America: The Winter Soldier still ranks as either the fan-favorite, the critical favorite, or the flat-out favorite MCU movie depending on who you ask. It’s still the franchise at its most effective, and it’s an example of everything that makes the MCU a great place to visit. What I think gets lost, though, is how this movie stealthily redefined what we expect from these movies, from the increased cast and stakes to the fearless embrace of unexpected genres by visionary filmmakers. Iron Man gave us the MCU, but Captain America: The Winter Soldier gave us the MCU we’re still seeing in theaters today.

Where to watch Captain America: The Winter Soldier