Captain America: The Winter Soldier - 10 MCU Mistakes It Repeats

10. Weak Villains

As much as it hurts, it must be said that Captain America: The Winter is - as with so many MCU ventures - lacking in the intriguing villain department. Think back to any MCU movie aside from those that feature Loki as the main antagonist, and you'll notice a running trend - the MCU rarely seems able to get this right, and The Winter Soldier is no exception. So our villains this time around are Bucky Barnes, who is the Captain's former ally, also frozen and awoken 70 years later, and Alexander Pierce, a S.H.I.E.L.D. executive with a hidden agenda and ties to HYDRA. In the case of Barnes, the eponymous Winter Soldier, we have a villain who has been brainwashed and is therefore boring. He's a physical match, but there's no personality on show - he's just a shadow, a cardboard cut-out. Though we understand that he has to kind of be like that because the plot requires him to be serious and deadly and under orders, it also means - like Malekith from The Dark World - that he's kind of forgettable, too. Robert Redford's Pierce is equally frustrating: he's literally a template "rich businessman" with a hidden agenda. Yawn.