A brief rant on how good Captain America: The Winter Soldier is.

It’s generally agreed upon as being very good, but I really think it belongs in the conversation as one of the absolute best movies of the MCU.

The way it wove together existing characters like Fury and Black Widow, while growing those characters into far deeper characters than they’d been previously, set the stage for the future of the MCU and the way characters would cross over between franchises.

The friendship between Natasha and Steve is perfect. They easily could have tried to create sexual tension, but instead wisely made them peers.

And her expertise is necessary for Cap to navigate the spy elements of the story. He’s a hammer but has no idea what to hit or how to be subtle. She shows him the way.

On top of all that, it has some fantastic action sequences. The Fury car chase and the elevator fight are absolutely fantastic.

On the elevator fight, it works so well because the confined space negates some of Cap’s strengths. It puts him in a position to do cool things other than punch and then sprint to the next bad guy.

And ultimately the movie sets the stage for Civil War in a way that makes Civil War seem natural, but without making Winter Soldier feel like it exists only to set up Civil War.

And I’m getting a lot of responses that people already hold this opinion of the movie. I’m not saying it’s hated. But I think more recent movies like Ragnarok have stolen some of the spotlight in recent years.