Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Join this week’s guest Rajeev Ram and I on the third episode of In Kino Veritās— a podcast where the guest picks a film, we both watch, and discuss.

We don’t simply review films but dive deep into their themes, characters and cultural context. In this episode we explore the 2014 Marvel film Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The film was released during Marvel Mania of the 2010s but looking beneath the comic book facade lies a film hitting on many trenchant cultural points for the time. Namely, patriotism vs a fleeting trust with national authority figures, friendship & trust as both vectors for strength and manipulation, Millennial attitudes, and the end of the Post-WWII consensus.

Be sure to check out our upcoming Tortuga Book club!

Where you can stream Captain America: The Winter Soldier (Use your local library to get a physical copy for free)

Main Points

• Who’s Rajeev Ram? Writer of The Cactus Brahmin Testimonials, member of leadership for the Tortuga Society

• Mention of Tortuga Society’s upcoming book club on Pillars of the Earth

• Rajeev’s film choice: Captain America: The Winter Soldier — a Marvel movie with unexpected ideological weight

• Quick synopsis: Captain America wakes up in a technocratic surveillance state infiltrated by Hydra and faces off against a brainwashed best friend

• Spoilers past this point

• Rajeev justifies choosing a Marvel film: late millennial nostalgia, ideological gravitas, and Robert Redford’s stoic villainy

• The Russo brothers’ pedigree (Community, Arrested Development) and millennial tonal signature

• Project Insight as allegory for the surveillance state and Patriot Act anxieties

• Theon on epistemic uncertainty and institutional betrayal—especially through Black Widow’s arc

• Rajeev reflects on growing up loyal to cosmopolitan institutions that now feel hollow

• Shift from clean-cut patriotism in First Avenger to institutional ambiguity in Winter Soldier

• Black Widow’s disillusionment mirrors the millennial "are we the baddies?" moment

• The generational rupture: late millennials as the last to remember the old American consensus

• Opening scenes as metaphor for millennial cultural dislocation and lost bearings

• 2014–2015 as hinge moment: rise of populism, democratic socialism, woke, and the alt-right

• Rajeev: individual heroism becomes complicated in an age of corporate-state fusion (Google, Facebook, etc.)

• Theon on Bucky’s path as narrative about breaking free from mythologized history

• No easy answers: even Nick Fury, Natasha, and Cap left grappling with the ruins

• Captain America’s arc: from institutional loyalist to principled radical

• Contrast with Iron Man’s arc: from playboy rebel to pro-institution advocate

• Ambiguous threats = ambiguous ethics; no more clear “Nazis vs. America” morality

• Theon jokes about Alex Jones vibes in Hydra’s infiltration plot

• Falcon as ideal friend: unshakable loyalty despite his own burdens

• Friendship as an enduring anchor when institutions fail

• Rajeev: Falcon is the kind of loyal companion political culture no longer knows how to write

• Theon on how friendship, loyalty, and moral complexity were lost in later Marvel films

• How the film watches in 2025: less resonance for Zoomers, more nostalgia for millennials

• Zoomer cynicism vs. millennial disillusionment: two different inheritances

• Rajeev: 2010s as painful awakening; Zoomers enter the world already disenchanted

• Theon sees Winter Soldier as elegy for a fading consensus—before the full unraveling

• Lament for post-WWII order and the confusion that follows its collapse

• Rajeev on the “burn it down” instinct: emotionally satisfying but socially complex

• Theon: Zoomers may misread early scenes (e.g., interracial harmony) as naive conservatism

• Rajeev: appreciation for nuance of that era; some millennials still stuck in it

• Millennials caught between crumbling ideals and emerging cynicism

• Where do we go after we burn it down? No easy replacements for lost institutions

• Rajeev’s disillusionment with academia; COVID as final blow to its authority

• Theon proposes curated, smaller communities as potential future learning hubs (e.g., Tortuga Society)

• Rajeev agrees: Pillars of the Earth and pre-Renaissance church corruption offer useful parallels

• Captain America as outdated hero archetype—Falcon and the Winter Soldier shows fragmentation of narrative

• Theon: collective disorientation birthed the Substack exodus and search for epistemic clarity

• Rajeev: we are all “soldiers in the middle of winter” trying to stay loyal to something

• The film as a generational mirror more than timeless cinema

• Value of openness over fixed ideology in navigating collapse

• Theon on conscientiousness: a tool, not an identity—used when stakes justify the pain

• Rajeev: hope that this discussion gives Marvel content a new interpretive frame beyond good vs. evil

• Theon, intrigued by Winter Soldier, now considers watching Civil War

• Rajeev recommends Age of Ultron as connective tissue—peak Marvel sociopolitical arc

• Debate on Civil War: Rajeev aligns with Cap—anti-authority, pro-individual trust

• Theon compares “Project Insight” to Death Note: algorithmic executions justified for the greater good

• Rajeev: anti-heroes like Black Widow, Zuko (Avatar), and Karna (Mahabharata) reveal power tensions

• Anti-heroes as vessels of complicated moral insight and practical power

• Closing thoughts: gratitude, book club plug, and invitation to rewatch Winter Soldier with new eyes

• Look forward to next episode!