(another) Thing That Annoys Me About The Cap Movies: 

(another) Thing that annoys me about the Cap movies: 

We never got to see the scene where Steve & Co found out about the torture and mind-control used on Bucky. 

Because that should’ve been super important!

It would have vindicated Steve’s faith in him, proved Bucky’s victimhood and innocence, and turned Nat and Sam 100% around on whether or not Bucky was worth helping (whether or not it was worth them apparently wasting years of their lives helping Steve to find him). 

They’re supposed to have been: 

A) hunting down the remains of Hydra for years, 

B) familiarising themselves with all the Hydra info Nat dumped at the end of of CATWS, and 

C) hunting for Bucky-related information specifically amongst all that. 

Meaning they absolutely cannot have avoided finding, for example, all the places Bucky was tortured in, the specialised enhanced torture equipment (impossible to mistake for that used on a non-supersoldier), cells he was held in, all the specialised physical restraints, tailored for an enhanced person with a cyborg arm, documentation of his torture, witness testimony from surviving Hydra mooks at the Triskelion, etc., and seeing it firsthand. 

And for some of that time, they know Hydra had access to a magic mind-control stick, courtesy of Loki, and an enhanced person who can control minds (Wanda). 

So even if Steve didn’t find evidence of Bucky’s mind-control early on in his search, he and Natasha definitely do know that mind-control is possible (especially Natasha, given her roots in the Red Room and the fact that her bff was mind-controlled.)

Even if you ignored Nat and Sam’s personal backstories, which preclude both of them from being dismissive of a victim (a veteran who suffered a fall, a mind-controlled Russian ‘assassin’), it doesn’t make sense for Nat and Sam to still be trying to suggest Steve step back from helping Bucky, the way they do in CW. 

They cannot still be ignorant of what was done to Bucky, when they have been specifically investigating what was done to Bucky, and all that information has to have been impossible for them to avoid! 

Instead of which, the movie just skips right over the reveal to Steve and Sam of the mind control (going straight from ‘scene of mind-control’ to ‘scene of Steve being skeptical (which he shouldn’t and wouldn’t be)’ to ‘scene of talking about trigger words already’). Casually implying that either Steve and Sam already knew about it, or that Bucky has just explained it to them… 

But only off-camera. 

And yet, Sam is still salty and scornful of Bucky’s innocence (even when they have just seen mind-control happening, Bucky is suffering amnesia of WS acts in front of him, apparently just told him about mind-control, and then proves that he has his pre-war memories). 

So they imply the content of skipped scenes but then have characters act in ways that are… irrational, given the skipped content?? 

Makes no damn sense!