****SPOILERS****
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• There’s a Winter Soldier figure in the toy line for the film… This has nothing to do with the film, but maybe it does? There are distinct references.
• None of the Howling Commandoes are mentioned by name during the film, only in the credits. That was kind of weird.
• This may be the bets origin story for Steve Rogers ever.
• There are little nods to Marvel history, but they blink or you miss it and also the kind of references that you REALLY need to know your Marvel stuff to really catch. One of them was quite the tease and I hope there’s a chance it makes an impression in later Marvel Studios Universe.
• That super serum is way more powerful than ever. It doesn’t just enhance your body, but your brain. At least that’s how it seemed with how good Cap suddenly got without training and be a dog & pony show for months.
• The dog & pony show sequence was awesome.
• The origin for Red Skull was pretty excellent.
• There was no Strucker or Zemo, although I guess that’d make things complicated
• Peggy Carter is British, I’m not sure if this actually means anything since before the invention of Sharon Carter, Peggy was basically an unnamed girl working in the French Resistance who went on a date or two with Cap.
• Dominic Cooper does a pretty good Mad Men like twist on a Robert Downey Jr. impression, which essentially is what he said he did to prepare for the role in interviews (studied the son and older version of the character from IM2)
• Tommy Lee Jones was pretty awesome for an old man.
• Pre-serum Rogers kind of looks like a bobblehead at times, but it isn’t too bad.
I LOVE the “twists”/re-thoughts on the origin:
• James Barnes and Steve Rogers being the same age and best friends back in Brooklyn
• Red Skull being the first failed super soldier and the twists that the serum can bring out the best or worst in people.
• Rogers having to prove he’s right for the program even though Erskine handpicked him.
• The whole war bond promoter section where he’s wearing a version of the regular costume and the only reason he decides it’s time to go to battle is because he thinks Bucky is a POW or dead and he wants to recover him.
• Then biggest thing is that Captain America has no secret identity. The world knows he is Steve Rogers. That has been done before in comics, in certain ways, but never from “day one”.