Captain America: The Winter Soldier was one of the big cinematic successes of 2014. While nobody expected it to perform badly - it's a Marvel Studios movie for goodness sake - this undoubtedly surprised some staunch comic book movie fans, given the moderate box office performance and fairly underwhelming action of Captain America: The First Avenger. It actually turned out to be a fantastic, action-packed epic adventure which totally changed the face of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It grossed $715 million at the worldwide box office, as the plight of Cap, Black Widow and Sam Wilson saw it outperform the likes of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and Interstellar. It was certainly helped by being a little different to most superhero movies in the sense that it was a lot more grounded, particularly in comparison to the three Marvel Studios movies that came before it (Thor: The Dark World, Iron Man 3 and The Avengers). With HYDRA hot on Cap's trail for the duration of the movie, it was two hours full of memorable scenes - Cap taking out the team of agents in the elevator, Cap coming to the realisation that he was facing off with his old buddy Bucky, and Arnim Zola's digital resurrection stand out. However, some tantalising moment didn't make it into the released version. Here are the six best.
Honourable Mention: Hawkeye
Having been screwed over with his appearance in The Avengers (in which he was mostly a mind-controlled goon for Loki), Jeremy Renner was intended (and expected) to reprise his role as Hawkeye in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. It didn't happen due to scheduling conflicts (the actor was working on the Mission: Impossible franchise), and therefore can't be included in the main list, but details of what his brief role was expected to be have emerged, so it definitely deserves a mention. When Captain America was on the run from S.H.I.E.L.D./HYDRA, Hawkeye was expected to be called in to help catch him. He would then have engaged the super soldier, fired off a couple of arrows towards him, then have got close enough to tell Cap to punch him to make the fight look genuine (they would have been monitored by cameras in the sky). It would have gone a long way to clarify Clint Barton's allegiance and status, but it never materialised. Audiences will next see the character in Avengers: Age Of Ultron, a movie in which his role is expected to be much more prominent.