Equal parts Inspiration and Procrastination

These changes from comics canon contain some of the things about the character that were compelling, and also the things MCU had no idea what to do with in later installments

In the winter soldier comics, (which are themselves a violent re-invention of the character, he was raised on a military base and became Steve's sidekick after Steve had become Captain America, kind of a darker figure willing to do dirty work that Cap couldn't be seen doing

in the movie, he's Steve's closest childhood friend. They only end up paired up and fighting together because Steve goes on a desperate mission to save his life

in the winter soldier comics, he is something like 7 or 8 years younger than Steve and they still have a mentor/sidekick type of relationship

in the movie they are the same age and steve is no longer a "mentor" figure, that dynamic is eliminated

in the winter soldier comics Bucky loses all his prior memories after his apparent death, making him a blank slate to be groomed into a soviet super-assassin. There is no brainwashing.

in the movie they deliberately erase his memories by strapping him into this scary device that fries his brain with electricity. It's clearly torture: he is shown hyperventilating as the restraints close onto his limbs and then screaming in agony as the device activates.

in the winter soldier comics Bucky as the Winter Soldier is capable of independent thought and snark, and is shown questioning and mouthing off at his superiors

in the movie, Bucky is completely passive. He barely speaks at all; when he does, he is almost childlike, meek and quiet in his interactions with the Hydra characters, stubborn and confused in his fight with Steve. The main antagonist slaps him across the face for not answering a question and he doesn't retaliate at all even though he can obviously kill everyone in the room in the blink of an eye. In the same scene he also lets the scientists manhandle him and eagerly opens his mouth for the mouthguard even as his heart rate is spiking on the monitor and he's starting to hyperventilate because he KNOWS the pain is coming.

(side note: he is shirtless in this scene for no reason)

(second side note: the line "who the hell is Bucky?" is in the movie because it's iconic from the comics, but it's arguably super OOC for mcu!bucky)

The long hair and cyborg arm are straight from the comics, but the most striking change to his appearance is his mask: in the comics, he's wearing a domino mask over his eyes, but in the film, he has an opaque black mask covering his nose and mouth that takes away much of his ability to emote and looks strikingly like a muzzle. The comics mask evokes mysterious wiles; the film's mask evokes dehumanization.

basically the films gave him a much deeper and more intimate connection to Steve while putting the two of them on even footing as friends and partners, and changed him from a morally gray character who indifferently kills people and regrets and becomes angsty once his memories are restored, to a tortured and dehumanized human weapon who obeys despite not understanding anything that's going on because he knows nothing but pain and punishment.

The film's version is really much more interesting. Snarky antiheroes who kill indifferently are a dime a dozen; a character who is palpably, terrifyingly dominating and powerful yet completely powerless in the hands of those who control him, who is hollowed out of all personal identity and who has no agency or control over his own body as it is mutilated, reconstructed and wielded as a weapon, is something much more delicious and fascinating.

We watch this guy slaughter people effortlessly with an apex predator swagger that projects pure dominance and prowess, then we watch him meekly accept abuse and torture with soft, confused eyes.

The rest of the MCU portrayal of Bucky though after that? Clearly no idea what they fuck they had on their hands or what the fuck they were doing with it.

Flattening his character out into "morally gray depression man and he has Gun." And essentially making his story about shouldering responsibility for what he did as the Winter Soldier. A very flat, "guy did bad thing and now he's angsty and guilty about it and trying to redeem himself" (boring) instead of like. the gut wrenching horror of having your memories burned away and your name taken from you and your body reconstructed without your consent and used against your will.

We could be telling the most brilliant stories about The Bucky, if we all understood the essential principles (that stories are not Owned by anyone, but become Alive when they are told, in the hearts of the teller and the listener, and to listen to a story gives the gift of the power to tell it again)

And if we could all defeat our enemy, the Cringe (which is to say, that which cringes at sincerity)

God, the writers you put on this earth to write Buckyfic are trying to create something "Original" instead

The broad consensus in modern western media seems to be that Torture Is Basically Fine. It works. Torture is an effective way of extracting accurate information. And because that alone isn't enough to make it seem legitimate, there's another failsafe: Torture works only on bad people. Villains crack under torture, and heroes don't.

This is how media creates a culture that finds torture justifiable. Especially media that is largely sponsored by the US military, of course, who in a post-Abu Ghraib, post-Guantanamo, post-CIA papers world has an interest in creating public indifference (or straight up support) for torture, but there's torture in animated movies for children, too. It's ubiquitous.

In real life, torture is horrific violence inflicted on our fellow human beings, that traumatizes both the victim and the torturer, creates heaps of false information, and has no discernible benefits. It doesn't work.

But in fiction, it must work, every time, because if it doesn't, then that collapses the entire structure, doesn't it?

In comes Bucky in TWS.

He's a character who is tortured into complete submission. Who is given electric shocks to the brain to erase his memory, but he still holds onto his own humanity. He is tortured into doing horrible things - the torture works - but it doesn't work completely. He breaks through it. He's beaten, abused, violated on screen, but - and this is important! - because he overcomes in the end, he's not the villain. His story evokes pity and sympathy, not suspicion.

With hindsight, it is clear to me that the mind wipe scene was meant to inspire disgust in the audience. Bucky's terror without fighting back, his defeated acceptance of the inevitable, the slow, lingering pan up his unclothed body. This is emasculating; at the time a lot of meta has been written about how Bucky is shot like a woman in a rape scene.

He submits. This is meant to be suspicious.

But it completely backfires, because what is shown and what follows is the story of a victim of unspeakable abuse finally breaking free from his abuser in a show of awe-inspiring mental strength.

(and also through the power of gay love but let's not get into that)

That's a problem. By complete accident, the film ends up saying Hey, torture is maybe sometimes bad? And that cannot be allowed. There is a more conventional torture scene in the film, where Steve and Sam throw a guy off a roof to get information out of him, but that almost doesn't matter. This is the one instance that makes the whole house of cards come crumbling down. If Bucky is a victim, then torture is both bad and does not work.

It is obvious to me that what followed TWS didn't know how to reconcile that. CA:CW felt extremely jarring because it treats Bucky with so much suspicion; it even retcons in the trigger word nonsense to justify that suspicion. Bucky has to earn trust. He has to redeem himself. From what? Not being able to withstand seven decades of torture?

Well, yes, the film says. Torture only works on bad guys. Bucky allowed the torture to work on him, and so, has proven himself to be untrustworthy. The abuse he suffered sullied him. He has to earn back his moral righteousness.

I want to stress that I do not think any of this is intentional. I don't think there was a meeting in the writer's room where they talked about how they accidentally made it seem like Torture Is Bad Maybe, and how they could reconcile that. If that had been the case, CW would have been a more honest movie. But looking back, it is clear in how the directors talked about the characters after CW came out, and in the baffling writing choices they made, that they were trying to breach this disconnect, without being aware that this is what they were doing.

For the fan spaces I hung around in at the time, where cis men were a minority, this was baffling. There's a reason post-TWS fic almost exclusively talked about Bucky's recovery, not his redemption. There simply was, in fandom's eyes, nothing to redeem him from. CW made clear that w completely misinterpreted TWS.

I'd love to go back in time to observe what the fallout from TWS and CW was in male-dominated fan spaces; how they talked about Bucky in 2015 and 2017.

Anyhow. With the benefit of hindsight, it is obvious to me that no one involved in the writing of CW and what came after took a moment to actually think about the themes and motives of the movies beyond the shallowest surface, and not just with regards to Bucky.