Summary

• Captain America: The Winter Soldier is hailed as one of the best MCU films ever because its directors, the Russo Brothers, made sure that it was "Honest Trailer-proof."
• The success of The Winter Soldier influenced the direction of the MCU, leading to a more formulaic approach that prioritizes logic over emotional storytelling.
• Recent MCU projects, including movies like Eternals and The Marvels, and TV shows like Secret Invasion and She-Hulk, have received mixed reception due to their departure from the "Honest Trailer-proof" formula and lack of attention to detail.

It's generally agreed upon that 2014's Captain America: The Winter Soldier is one of the strongest entries in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It kickstarted the blockbuster careers of Anthony and Joe Russo, leading the pair to become some of the highest-grossing directors of all time with Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame. In many ways, the success of Captain America: The Winter Soldier dictated the direction that the MCU took through Phase Three and beyond. And therein lies a problem.

In a 2014 interview with Collider, Joe Russo admitted to being a fan of ScreenJunkies' popular web series Honest Trailers, and that when making the film, they had decided that "This is not going to end up in an Honest Trailer. This logic isn't sound enough yet. We literally tried to Honest Trailer-proof the movie." Above everything else, it's clear that they wanted to make sure that the film's logic was airtight and that no one would be able to nitpick the film apart -- and it worked!

Updated by Timothy Donohoo on November 24, 2023: As the Marvel Cinematic Universe inches toward the end of the Multiverse Saga, one of its early films remains among the franchise's most popular entries. Captain America: The Winter Soldier remains an excellent example of what the MCU should be doing with its upcoming projects, including 2025's Captain America: Brave New World.

Honest Trailers Found Little Fault With Captain America 2

Read CBR's Review of Captain America: The Winter Soldier

When ScreenJunkies made a humorous Honest Trailer video for the MCU's Captain America: The Winter Soldier, they joked that their jobs had been made much harder by how strong the script was on a technical level. From every angle they tried to nitpick at, the film was impenetrable. The Russos had succeeded. Indeed, their work on The Winter Soldier was so successful that the duo were practically handed the reins of the MCU's third phase.

However, there is a problem with an "Honest Trailer-proof" approach to making movies. It's a small one that has snowballed into becoming a bit of a problem for the MCU. Films are art -- they're a magic trick that uses 24 pictures a second flickering by to induce an emotional reaction in the viewer. Prioritizing creating a logical film over an emotional one is a big risk. It's one that paid off for The Winter Soldier, but it is perhaps not a direction the entire MCU should have taken.

Why Was Captain America: The Winter Soldier So Beloved?

The Marvels Hasn't Killed the MCU, It Proves the Actors' Worth

By the time Captain America: The Winter Soldier was released, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was already well into Phase 2. This meant that the shared movie universe had also cemented its formula, especially following the success of 2012's Avengers. Sadly, that movie and the ensuing release of James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy two years later solidified the MCU as a somewhat "jokey" series of movies. Despite this seemingly being what audiences wanted from those movies, Captain America: The Winter Soldier went against the grain to the star-spangled tune of success.'

Unlike many of its contemporaries, The Winter Soldier was far from a comedic, breezy romp. Instead, it was a mostly serious affair with the tone and scope of an action-based spy/espionage movie. This matched the tone of modern Captain America comic books, namely the classic run by writer Ed Brubaker. Not only did the story take a more grounded turn, but the same was the case with the movie's action. Captain America: The Winter Soldier was lauded for its realistic action sequences, which largely eschewed bombast for more hard-hitting, choreographed fisticuffs. This gave the movie a strong degree of verisimilitude, making it stand out both from its predecessors, other MCU movies at the time, and those that came afterward.

The MCU Formula Creates a Problem for Standalone Entries

Why the Russo Brothers Were Perfect for Marvel Studios' Visual Style

One of the biggest criticisms leveled at the MCU is its formulaic nature. In treating filmmaking like solving a high school math problem rather than creating a work of art, Marvel has gradually homogenized the look and feel of its films. It has been too fearful of pushing the boat out, too dedicated to "Honest Trailer-proofing" its projects. It's why more recent MCU movies rarely leave an impression in their own right, as the conversation is instead always around how these films fit into the larger universe, what references they make, or what threads they are setting up. This leaves present-day Marvel in a tricky place.

Films that artistically rock the boat, such as Eternals and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, tend to divide audiences more than the "Honest Trailer-proof" ones. On the one hand, a version of the MCU that takes bigger swings, even if it results in bigger misses, is good. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 was an emotionally-driven character piece that was more well-received than the action-packed Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, despite having released only a few months apart.

However, there are few films like GotG Vol. 3 because of the risks it poses. The "Honest Trailer-proof" films are the ones that tend to make more money and are generally more well-liked but not well-loved. That's a shame because a film that forgoes logic just to make a moment that much more memorable are the films that stick in someone's mind. The MCU doesn't need to make its movies "Honest Trailer-proof;" it needs to get to the heart. The fact that the "Honest Trailer-proof" Captain America: The Winter Soldier is nearly a decade old also speaks to the current direction of the MCU as a whole.

The MCU's Current Projects Are Far From "Honest Trailer-Proof"

Movies

Can the X-Men and Fantastic 4 Actually Save the MCU?

As mentioned, many of the recent Marvel Cinematic Universe movies from Phase 4 and Phase 5 haven't been as universally praised as many of their predecessors, let alone Captain America: The Winter Soldier. In some cases, it's the result of some of these movies bucking certain trends, though the quality of the projects themselves is also a major factor. The aforementioned Eternals was the first MCU movie to be rated as "Rotten" on the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes, and it's highly contentious among the fandom. One problem was how bloated the cast and story were, with many feeling that it might have worked better as a Disney+ TV series instead of a movie.

Thor: Love & Thunder was seen as a steep step down from its predecessor's quality, namely because it ramped up certain elements from that movie. While the more comedic and bombastic nature of Thor: Ragnarok was highly praised, Thor: Love & Thunder taking these elements into a more over-the-top direction disappointed many. This also happened with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which dropped the more low-key tone of the previous movies while failing to earn such an "epic" upgrade. Worst of all, it formally introduced the villainous Kang the Conqueror, who was poised to be the overarching villain of the current Multiverse Saga. His humiliating defeat in the movie took the wind out of his antagonistic sails, however, with most seeing little threat in the character.

The latest MCU movie that failed to reach the same heights was The Marvels. Teaming up Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel, and Photon, the movie is largely seen as a middling, mediocre-at-best film. A big issue is a breezy tone that was completely lacking in tension, something made only worse by the movie's final trailer hyping up the villainous Dar-Benn as a threat on par with Thanos. The movie's reception is currently seeing it score the worst box office intake in the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, proving that most of the studio's current crop of movies are far from "Honest Trailer-proof." It's also rather noticeable that they're almost completely removed from the tone of the successful Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

TV Shows

The first MCU TV series on the Disney+ streaming service was WandaVision, which was widely praised. Even then, it wasn't without faults, with the final episode in particular being heavily criticized. Said conclusion devolved into the sort of generic CGI battle that had at that point become blasé, not to mention ill-fitting for the series in question. While some of the other shows were successful and well-received in their own right, none of them became the pop culture darlings that WandaVision was. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Moon Knight, and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law had much more mixed reception, with the latter in particular being rather controversial in some circles.

Conversely, Moon Knight was noted for its egregious changes to the Moon Knight comics, doing away with the comics' more grounded tone in favor of an overtly supernatural premise. While Ms. Marvel's earliest episodes received high praise, the latter, rather disjointed developments felt like a different (and inferior) show entirely. It was also the Disney+ Marvel show with the lowest viewership, which likely fed into the box office for The Marvels. The worst of the bunch was easily 2023's Secret Invasion, which faced all manner of behind-the-scenes and direction issues. The most well-received shows since WandaVision were Hawkeye (which received favorable reception) and Loki, with the latter recently completing its second and possibly final season.

The downturn in quality is seen by many fans as a result of the uptick in quantity. Many have noted that the MCU feels like an "assembly line" of projects more than ever, with the previous quality control simply not being as present. Said attention to detail was what made Captain America: The Winter Soldier into a near-flawless, "Honest Trailers-proof" movie, with the creators behind it determined to deliver the best film possible. It was a delicate balancing act that combined crowd-pleasing content with material that wasn't quite what some expected, but the result was easily one of - if not the - best MCU movies ever.