MCU: 10 Things You Learn Rewatching Captain America: The Winter Soldier
3. Alexander Pierce Is A Fantastic Villain
You know, with all these good villains coming around these days, to say the MCU has a bad guy problem would probably be a tad bit disingenuous.
There's Loki, Vulture, Ego and of course Erik Killmonger, but one villain who (both in and out of the film) has managed to eschew the spotlight is Alexander Pierce, Robert Redford's sinister antagonist who preserves Hydra's presence in the modern day.
Pierce is the very manner of a modern major nasty - the kind of villain who utilises any and all means at his disposal but who's able to mask it all with a welcoming presence. It's the perfect role for Redford, who - in the seventies - played the exact antithesis of this character, as crusading journalist Bob Woodward in All the President's Men, and as an analyst on the run in Three Days of the Condor.
It makes his deception all the more convincing, and while he leaves the dirty work for the Winter Soldier himself, he's a villain in the truest sense.