Despite being superhero movies in broad strokes, each movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe adheres to the familiar tropes of a certain genre. Ant-Man is a heist movie, Spider-Man: Homecoming is a high school comedy, Thor: Ragnarok is a zany space opera etc. Captain America’s solo outings have jumped from genre to genre.
The First Avenger is a pulpy World War II actioner; The Winter Soldier is a ‘70s-style paranoid conspiracy thriller; and Civil War is an espionage story about a superhero team divided against itself. So, here are 5 Spy Movie Tropes (& 5 War Movie Tropes) In Captain America’s MCU Solo Trilogy.
Spy Movie Trope: Brainwashed Assassin
After Bucky Barnes was apparently killed by a fall from a great height in Captain America: The First Avenger, he returned in The Winter Soldier as the titular villain. Hydra got a hold of him and brainwashed him to become an assassin who would murder targets for them on command.
Brainwashed assassins are a staple of espionage stories, and can be seen in everything from Telefon (Don Siegel’s masterfully directed actioner that inspired The Naked Gun) to The Manchurian Candidate (which Tony Stark even calls Bucky in Civil War).
War Movie Trope: Power-Hungry, Warmongering Villain
Since the heroes in war movies often just want to end the war they’re fighting in and bring peace to their country, the villains tend to be the power-hungry warmongers who want the war to keep going until they’ve taken over the world.
The First Avenger’s Red Skull fits the criteria for this kind of character. He wants to use the Tesseract to create an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction that he’ll use to dominate the world, a little like the infamous dictator he answers to.
Spy Movie Trope: Government Conspiracy
As a pastiche of political thrillers from the 1970s, Captain America: The Winter Soldier revolved around a government conspiracy. In the ‘70s, the wave of political thrillers was brought on by the paranoia surrounding the Watergate scandal and the demise of the Nixon administration.
In The Winter Soldier, Steve Rogers discovers that S.H.I.E.L.D. has been controlled by Hydra – the Nazi organization he battled in World War II – for decades, and has to go on the lam when they find out that he knows their dark secret.
War Movie Trope: Breaking Out P.O.W.s
In Captain America: The First Avenger, Cap infiltrates a Hydra base and frees a bunch of prisoners of war. A soldier breaking his comrades out of a P.O.W. camp is a clear-cut act of heroism that gets moviegoers to root for a protagonist.
It can be seen in Missing in Action, Rescue Dawn, and Rambo: First Blood Part II. All these examples are set during the Vietnam War, whereas The First Avenger places this kind of narrative in World War II.
Spy Movie Trope: A Dead Character Who Turns Out To Actually Be Alive
In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, we’re led to believe that Nick Fury is dead. When he’s attacked by the Winter Soldier, as far as we know, he’s dead. We see a coroner pronounce him to be dead, while Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanoff are both present at the morgue.
However, later in the movie, Fury is revealed to have faked his death, and he’s recovering in a secret underground medical facility. (To a different degree, the Bucky twist also adheres to this trope.) Plot twists that reveal dead characters to be alive can be seen in dozens of spy movies, from Skyfall to Mission: Impossible to Kingsman.
War Movie Trope: A Bunch Of Guys On A Mission
One of the most overdone subgenres of war movies (and particularly World War II movies) is a bunch of guys going on a mission. The most famous example is The Dirty Dozen, and a recent example is Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds.
Captain America: The First Avenger falls into this category. When Cap is sent to take down the known Hydra bases, he assembles a team – consisting of Bucky Barnes, Dum Dum Dugan, Jim Morita, Jacques Dernier, Gabe Jones, and James Montgomery Falsworth – and they’re called the Howling Commandos (or, at least, they are in the comics; they aren’t identified as the Howling Commandos in the movie).
Spy Movie Trope: A Good Guy Who Turns Out To Be A Bad Guy
In a lot of spy movies, someone who is introduced as being on the good guys’ side actually turns out to be a bad guy, whether this means a plot twist revealing them to be a double agent or the good guys have been convinced that their side is right when it’s actually the bad guys’ side all along. This kind of double-crossing is common in John le Carré stories.
In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Alexander Pierce is introduced as the guy that Nick Fury answers to and Brock Rumlow is introduced as a fellow S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who accompanies Steve Rogers on missions. Both Fury and Steve trust them, and it’s later revealed that they’re working for Hydra.
War Movie Trope: Stock Nazi Characters
Hollywood movies about the Second World War tell their stories from the point-of-view of Allied forces. The most ethically complex war movies, like Saving Private Ryan, make sure to point out that a lot of the German soldiers were just as frightened and unprepared and non-violent as a lot of the British and American soldiers.
But plenty of war movies – particularly the ones made shortly after the war ended and it was fresh in viewers’ minds – depict blindly evil and malicious stock Nazi characters. The Captain America movies do this with characters like Red Skull and Arnim Zola.
Spy Movie Trope: MacGuffins
Ever since the days of Alfred Hitchcock, it’s been common for spy movies to use MacGuffins as plot devices. All the Captain America movies use them. In The First Avenger, the characters are chasing the Tesseract and trying to keep it out of the wrong hands. In The Winter Soldier, they’re hunting down a flash drive and trying to keep it out of the wrong hands.
Civil War took a slightly different approach, using the proposed legislation known as “the Sokovia Accords” to divide the characters and get them into dangerous situations. These MacGuffins aren’t necessarily Hitchcockian MacGuffins, which are designed to be insignificant; they’re more like George Lucas-style MacGuffins, which contribute to the themes of the story.
War Movie Trope: The Brotherhood Of Soldiers
Every war movie from The Great Escape to Hacksaw Ridge to Sam Mendes’ recent 1917 has a strong focus on the camaraderie of soldiers. Being in the same boat, in a life-or-death situation, binds the characters together.
This is particularly seen in Steve Rogers’ devotion to Bucky Barnes, even in the face of accusations of terrorism, but it can also be seen in the bond Steve forms with Sam Wilson, and the dynamic shared by the Howling Commandos.
