It stars Chris Evans as Steve Rogers / Captain America alongside Scarlett Johansson, Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackie, Cobie Smulders, Frank Grillo, Emily VanCamp, Hayley Atwell, Toby Jones, Jenny Agutter, Robert Redford, and Samuel L. Jackson.

The script draws from the Winter Soldier story arc in the comic books written by Ed Brubaker and conspiracy fiction from the 1970s such as Three Days of the Condor (1975).

Captain America: The Winter Soldier premiered at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, on March 13, 2014, and was released in the United States on April 4, as part of Phase Two of the MCU.

's headquarters, Rogers confronts Director Nick Fury and is briefed about Project Insight: three Helicarriers linked to spy satellites, designed to eliminate threats preemptively.

Zola reveals that after being captured by Rogers during World War II,[b] he was recruited to S.H.I.E.L.D., where he secretly reformed Hydra within its ranks, sowing global chaos using the Winter Soldier as their primary assassin.

Sitwell is killed in an ambush by the Winter Soldier, whom Rogers recognizes as Bucky Barnes, his longtime best friend previously thought dead; he had survived due to Zola's experimentation and has been repeatedly brainwashed and cryogenically frozen to perform Hydra's missions.

In a mid-credits scene, at a Hydra lab, Baron Wolfgang von Strucker and his scientists examine an energy-filled scepter[c] and two test subjects: one with superhuman speed, the other with telekinetic powers.

Thomas Kretschmann, Henry Goodman, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Elizabeth Olsen make uncredited appearances as Baron Wolfgang von Strucker, Dr.

In April 2011, before Captain America: The First Avenger was released in theaters, screenwriters Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely announced that Marvel had already hired the duo to work on the film's sequel.

"[65] The film would be "Cap versus the world we all live in today",[68] while averting excessive comedy regarding the hero's time displacement, as Markus considered the Captain "the most adaptive man on the planet.

[42] This still proved a challenge in the reveal of Arnim Zola, that had to be extensively rewritten to convey how "this grounded espionage paranoid thriller suddenly screeches to a halt and you switch gears really quickly with this ghost in the machine" that introduces more science fiction elements.

[69] Markus and McFeely wanted to adapt Ed Brubaker's Winter Soldier storyline from the comics, which they described as "the tone of Cap's modern franchise",[70] but it took the duo six months to convince themselves they could do it.

[17] In the meantime, while thinking how to progress from the war film tone of The First Avenger, the writers settled on the conspiracy genre for the screenplay, and cited Three Days of the Condor (1975), The Parallax View (1974), and Marathon Man (1976) as influences, feeling it better conveyed Captain America's trust issues and contrasting values in the new world he was living in,[17] with Markus saying, "If you put that 1940s man into present day geo-politics everything is going to seem like a conspiracy.

[76] As to why Johann Schmidt / Red Skull from The First Avenger did not appear in The Winter Soldier, Joe Russo explained, "I know we have a guy in a computer, but the tone we were chasing was sort of that conspiracy thriller.

[45] Feige sought out the Russos after watching the genre-parodying season 2 finale of Community which Joe directed,[82][83] and for the additional ideas they brought to the initial story pitch.

The fight scenes were staged for months, with a choreography that aimed to highlight Captain America's superhuman qualities, and "move away from impressionistic action into specificity": the raid on the S.H.I.E.L.D.

vessel had stealthiness as the Captain knocked out enemies to avert detection, and the freeway fight with Winter Soldier was more "last minute" to highlight the characters' struggle to survive.

[42] Additional photography was filmed in December 2013 and January 2014,[117] for the Russos to accurately show the state of each character after the defeat of S.H.I.E.L.D., having read the script of Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) to guide their choices.

[121] However, aerial footage of the city was filmed and used for live action plate photography for shots involving the Triskelion, which is located on Theodore Roosevelt Island on the Potomac River.

[145] The Los Angeles Times said, "The clip promoting the April 4 release had a recognizably melancholy tone as Chris Evans' patriotic hero grapples with the moral ambiguities of the modern age.

[147] A few days later General Motors announced that Chevrolet partnered with Marvel Entertainment and provided a specially designed Corvette Stingray C7 for use by the Black Widow in the film.

[152] On March 18, ABC aired a one-hour television special, titled Marvel Studios: Assembling a Universe, which included a sneak peek of Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

[169] Deadline Hollywood calculated the film's net profit as $166.2 million, accounting for production budgets, marketing, talent participations, and other costs; box office grosses and home media revenues placed it ninth on their list of 2014's "Most Valuable Blockbusters".

The website's critics consensus reads, "Suspenseful and politically astute, Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a superior entry in the Avengers canon and is sure to thrill Marvel diehards.

[186] Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter said the film "takes the bold (for Marvel) step of reducing CGI spectacle to a relative minimum in favor of reviving the pleasures of hard-driving old-school action, surprising character development and intriguing suspense.

"[187] Scott Foundas of Variety said it is "chockfull of the breathless cliffhangers dictated by the genre, but equally rich in the quiet, tender character moments that made the first film unique among recent Marvel fare.

[190] Ty Burr of The Boston Globe said the film "delivers all the 3D CGI mayhem audiences have come to expect from the Marvel entertainment juggernaut, but there's darkness and confusion just under its comic-book surface.

[193] Manohla Dargis of The New York Times said, "Like many others of its type, [Captain America: The Winter Soldier] gets off to a kinetic start only to lose steam before blowing everything up.

[197] Jake Coyle of the Associated Press said the film's biggest misstep was the handling of Stan's Winter Soldier, and that it was "getting difficult to tell the Marvel movies apart".

[214][215] Evans, Johansson, Stan, Mackie, VanCamp, and Grillo reprise their roles from The Winter Soldier[216][217] and are joined by Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark / Iron Man, Paul Bettany as Vision, Jeremy Renner as Clint Barton / Hawkeye, Don Cheadle as James "Rhodey" Rhodes / War Machine, Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff, Paul Rudd as Scott Lang / Ant-Man, and William Hurt as Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross,[218] all reprising their roles from previous MCU films.