7. Captain America: The Winter Soldier Cap Realises Bucky Barnes Is Alive And Brainwashed
As every Marvel fan worth their salt knows by now, Captain America's best friend Bucky Barnes wasn't killed when he was blasted off of Zola's mountainside train. He was probably badly wounded, sure, but as the casting, premise and hell, even the title of Captain America: The Winter Soldier makes clear, he certainly didn't join the great hereafter. To non-comic fans, a little back-story. The Winter Soldier is the alias of Bucky Barnes after he undergoes massive physical trauma and is frozen in ice. On the page, this trauma was an exploding aeroplane, and on the screen, it was an impromptu fall down a mountain. He loses an arm, gains a cybernetic replacement (granting him super strength, among other things) and gets himself brainwashed into fighting Cap. It's a compelling set-up for a plot, especially when you consider how well-developed Bucky and Steve Rogers' relationship was developed in The First Avenger. I personally really enjoyed it, so to see it come back with this added brainwashing dimension will give both Chris Evans and Sebastian Stan (the guy playing Bucky) plenty of dramatic fat to chew on. The whole character of The Winter Soldier might have more riding on it than you realise Chris Evans recently negotiated his Marvel movie deal down from nine to six movies, and Stan's signed on for a minimum of six, meaning the whole thing just might follow the comic continuity of Bucky taking on the Captain America mantle. I'll stop there though, you'll have to read the comics to see what I mean.