Captain America: The Winter Soldier - 10 Ways It Beats Thor 2

9. It Works As Both A Self-Contained Movie & A MCU Movie

There was something about Thor: The Dark World that offered up the impression that it didn't really know what to do with itself - what Thor story did it need to tell at this specific point in time? In the end, it almost felt as though the filmmakers had been working through a mental checklist of things that needed to happen, things that needed to be referenced, and things that needed to be done in time for Avengers: Age of Ultron, and just sort of constructed the most basic, near-functioning plot they could think of out of all those pieces. It was okay, but it wasn't special. What's great about Captain America: The Winter Soldier is that it doesn't embrace the haphazard shaping of The Dark World at all: the story, though inclusive of the rules and stories set in place by the MCU, works separately from the movies that came before and are set to follow on from it, whilst still managing to come full circle by directly linking plot points and characters from The First Avenger. So we get a plotline about Hydra that ensures the Captain's old life still remains a part of his new one: reprising characters like Peggy, too, who appears as an elderly woman, ensures that there's an emotional resonance to go along with all the explosions and bullets.