CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER
The Abridged Script
EXT. WASHINGTON, D.C.
It’s SPRING in America’s capital city, and BROMANCE is in the air. CHRIS EVANS comes across ANTHONY MACKIE while jogging.
CHRIS EVANS
Hey, you running from something?! Show me some ID!
ANTHONY MACKIE
Is this because I’m black?
CHRIS EVANS
Sorry, I’ve been frozen in ice, do we not do that to black people anymore?
ANTHONY MACKIE
Well… let’s just say we don’t. Why don’t you make it up to me by dropping by the V.A. hospital as Captain America and cheering up the veterans?
CHRIS EVANS
Well, that sounds like a wonderful--
ANTHONY MACKIE
Ha ha, no, really I just want you to help me score with the receptionist.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON drives up.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON
Yo, Chris! You do know the movie started like five minutes ago, right? Nobody’s going to pay IMAX 3D prices to watch you two pull each other’s pigtails. Time to suit up!
INT. SHIELD CARIBBEAN PRINCESS CRUISELINER
FRENCH-SPEAKING TERRORISTS have captured a SHIELD NAVY VESSEL and are holding everyone HOSTAGE.
CHRIS EVANS
I bulked up to the size of a fucking tank for this movie. Why are you shoving me in a padded black suit like I’m Michael Keaton?
SCARLETT JOHANSSON
Sorry, our toy company contract specifies at least one new costume per movie. Besides this outfit is much more practical for stealth missions. Now grab your fluorescent red and white shield, and go kick some ass!
He DOES.
RANDOM BAD GUY
You may have defeated 28 regular terrorists with your bare hands, but I have a super power none of those other guys had… a speaking line!
By Screen Actors Guild rules, CHRIS is required to TAKE HIS TIME with this fight for NO APPARENT REASON. Fortunately, this gives SCARLETT time to secretly download the ship’s secret DATA FILES onto a secret FLASH DRIVE of secrecy.
MAXIMILIANO HERNANDEZ
(mugging for the camera)
I was one of the hostages! See? See? I’m from Agents of SHIELD! Awesome, right?
CHRIS EVANS
Sorry, never seen it.
MAXIMILIANO HERNANDEZ
Because you’ve been frozen in ice for 70 years?
CHRIS EVANS
Because no one actually watches that show.
INT. SMITHSONIAN MUSEUM
CHRIS visits a SMITHSONIAN EXHIBIT about HIMSELF, because I don’t care how humble you are, admit it, if the Smithsonian had an exhibit on you, you’d go visit that thing every fucking day.
CHRIS EVANS
Just in case someone missed the first movie, I better listen to the entire museum audio tour in its entirety.
GARY SINISE (V/O)
Fade in: Exterior, New York City, 1942. A weak, SUPER-SKINNY CHRIS EVANS gets picked on by BULLIES.
(reads the entire Abridged Script to the audience)
CHRIS EVANS
Wow, Gary Sinise? We overcast the shit out that role. Does he owe the IRS money or something?
INT. SHIELD HEADQUARTERS
SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON is showing off THREE NEW HELICARRIERS capable of individually targeting and assassinating MILLIONS OF PEOPLE EVERY MINUTE, because the line between “espionage” and “wiping out an entire nation from your floating death fortress” gets blurry when you’re wearing an eye patch.
SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON
All this technology was all made possible by our friend Robert Downey, Jr., from the much more popular Iron Man franchise. Now we’ve only got to shoehorn his name into the movie two more times in hopes that he’ll magically appear like Beetlejuice.
They DO, but he DOESN’T.
CHRIS EVANS
Is anyone else bothered by this new technology? Fortunately I met a wise black man while jogging this morning, and Hollywood says they have the best advice.
INT. VETERANS ADMINISTRATION HOSPITAL
CHRIS walks in on a P.S.T.D. GROUP THERAPY SESSION and listens in for a while, because that’s the sort of thing they just let people hang out and watch. Go ahead, try it, bring some friends and some popcorn, they’ll be happy to see you.
CHRIS EVANS
Hey, Anthony, I’m worried SHIELD is crossing the line from morally ambiguous assassins to morally ambiguous assassins with three new helicarriers. I feel like maybe I should retire.
ANTHONY MACKIE
Nah, that’s just a symptom of Superhero Sequel Syndrome. Think Superman II, Spider-man 2, Batman Forever, The Dark Knight Rises, The Wolverine, Ghost Rider 2, even Hellboy 2.
CHRIS EVANS
Gosh, you’re right. All better now. Having a black friend is great.
SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON
What am I, one-eyed liver? I’ll make you appreciate me again!
EIGHT MILLION ASSASSINS try to kill SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON but fail… only for SEBASTIAN STAN to demonstrate how badass he is by killing him SINGLEHANDEDLY!
SCARLETT JOHANSSON
Nooooo! I can’t believe he’s dead!
CHRIS EVANS
I know, it’s hard on all of us--
SCARLETT JOHANSSON
No, I literally find it impossible to believe that he’s dead. He’s Samuel L. Motherfucking Jackson and we all know he’s in the next Avengers movie. Besides, have you never read a fucking Marvel comic book? No one stays dead, not even Bucky anymore! Oops, spoilers.
INT. SHIELD HEADQUARTERS
ROBERT REDFORD, who may or may not be U.S. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, details, details, and who may or may not be in charge of SHIELD now, who knows, calls CHRIS to his office.
CHRIS EVANS
Oh, no! Hollywood royalty over 60! Every superhero movie’s true villain!
ROBERT REDFORD
What? That’s preposterous.
CHRIS EVANS
Gene Hackman, Jack Nicholson, Willem Dafoe, Liam Neeson, Ian McKellan, Sam Elliot, William Hurt, Jeff Bridges, Ben Kingsley--
ROBERT REDFORD
Fine. Fuck it. I’m evil. You’re under arrest. I order all of SHIELD to hunt you down.
CHRIS is ambushed by wave after wave of SHIELD AGENTS, but he brushes them off just as easily as TV AUDIENCES do.
INT. APPLE STORE – YES, REALLY, A FUCKING APPLE STORE
CHRIS meets up with SCARLETT JOHANSSON at a mall with an Apple Store so they can finally open the FLASH DRIVE OF SECRECY and check out all the new iPAD AIR starting at $499!
SCARLETT JOHANSSON
Damn, it’s encrypted. And true to real life, we can’t just reroute the jargon hocus pocus tech babble. Fortunately, we do have this magic compass that tells us exactly where the encryption program was written right down to the street address.
CHRIS EVANS
Much more realistic, thanks.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON
Now let’s make out. But only because SHIELD was automatically alerted to our location the moment we plugged in the flash drive and we need to hide our faces.
CHRIS EVANS
You’re a ridiculously hot redhead and I’m practically a Greek god. You don’t think groping each other in the middle of mall is going to make us even more conspicuous?
SCARLETT JOHANSSON
You’re forgetting that SHIELD agents have the emotional maturity of middle schoolers.
SHIELD AGENT
(blushing)
Ugh, kissing, yucky! I refuse to look!
They ESCAPE.
INT. NEW JERSEY
CHRIS and SCARLETT search the abandoned ARMY POST where CAPTAIN AMERICA was created in the FIRST MOVIE and which apparently became the first headquarters for SHIELD after World War II. We know this because the WORLD’S MOST SECRET SPY ORGANIZATION didn’t bother to remove the GLAMOUR SHOTS of all its FOUNDING MEMBERS from the FUCKING WALL when they moved out.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON
Yo, dawg, I heard you like secret rooms, so we put a secret room in your secret room. Oh, and try not to remember that the second secret room is buried deep underground or it won’t make any sense how we’re about to walk away later.
CHRIS EVANS
Look! Someone added a USB port to these old 1970s computers!
CHRIS inserts the flash drive, and the ancient computers SPRING TO LIFE.
COMPUTERIZED TOBY JONES
It is I, the Red Skull’s henchman from the first movie! I’ve downloaded my consciousness into this 1970s super computer!
CHRIS EVANS
Wow, that flies so far past ridiculous it somehow circles back around to awesome.
COMPUTERIZED TOBY JONES
After World War II, SHIELD recruited Hydra scientists to join the organization, but soon the Hydra scientists were secretly controlling SHIELD from the inside! Bwahaha!
CHRIS EVANS
How horrible! Let’s go fight--
COMPUTERIZED TOBY JONES
Yeah, you’d think that’s plenty of villainous exposition, but no. You see Hydra was established in 1932 with a charter establishing a regional board of governors who…
(six hours later)
…and so we plan to establish world peace with a computer algorithm that predicts any man, woman, or child who might disrupt that peace at a future date and preemptively executing them with the three new SHIELD helicarriers.
CHRIS EVANS
How could you possibly know the algorithm works? It’s completely impossible to test.
COMPUTERIZED TOBY JONES
That’s a remarkably good point for someone who forgot that plugging in the super special flash drive automatically alerts SHIELD to your exact location. INCOMING!!!
A SHIELD cruise missile destroys the entire facility, consuming everything in a 3,000° C fireball, burning away all the oxygen in an instant, incinerating our heroes’ lungs if not their entire bodies, and burying the remaining ashes under a hundred-thousand tons of rock and concrete deep below the surface of the earth.
CHRIS EVANS
Hellllllooooo, did you forget about my shield? Did you not see me hold it up? We’re fine.
INT. ANTHONY MACKIE’S APARTMENT
CHRIS EVANS
Hello, perfectly innocent near-stranger. You don’t mind if we crash here while the world’s most dangerous and resourceful murder agency tries its damnedest to kill us, do you?
ANTHONY MACKIE
Um, wouldn’t Iron Man’s place make more sense? Hell -- I can’t believe I’m saying this -- but even Hawkeye would be a better choice.
CHRIS EVANS
Sorry, you’re right. We’ll go.
(pause)
Unless by huge fucking coincidence you just happen to be a superhero, too, with, like, super-powered mechanical wings or something.
ANTHONY MACKIE
Well, duh.
EXT. INTERSTATE
CHRIS, SCARLETT, and ANTHONY are driving around town when SEBASTIAN STAN and the BAD GUYS just kind of show up and don’t bitch about it because that’s what you wanted to happen anyway, so just shut up and watch.
ANTHONY MACKIE
Okay, time for the Falcon to spread his wings!
ANTHONY FLIES!
ANTHONY MACKIE
Okay, that’s all I’ve got.
SCARLETT JOHANSSEN
Wow, you’re almost but not quite as useful as Robert Downey, Jr.’s left tit.
CHRIS and SEBASTIAN STAN whale on each other for a while until SEBASTIAN STAN’S MASK falls off revealing… SEBASTIAN STAN!
CHRIS EVANS
Gasp! It’s that guy Gary Sinise kept talking about!
FORTY-THOUSAND SHIELD AGENTS, who were apparently waiting behind a bush for the BIG REVEAL, jump out and capture CHRIS, SCARLETT, and ANTHONY.
INT. SHIELD TRANSPORT TRUCK
CHRIS, SCARLETT and ANTHONY are chained up in the back of a truck, being transported to their execution by the ONLY TWO SHIELD AGENTS IN THE ENTIRE MOVIE WHO ARE WEARING MASKS.
MASKED SHIELD AGENT #1
So, anyone catch the series finale of How I Met Your Mother the other night?
MASKED SHIELD AGENT #2
Yeah! It fucking rocked!
MASKED SHIELD AGENT #1
What?! Everyone hated it! You must be--
MASKED SHIELD AGENT #2 pulls off her mask to reveal COBIE SMULDERS, who immediately kicks MASKED SHIELD AGENT #1’s ass.
COBIE SMULDERS
Robin Sparkles for the win, bitches!
She frees CHRIS & CREW and takes them to SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON.
CHRIS EVANS
You’re alive! I’m so shocked, blah, blah, blah, can we go kill Hydra now?
SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON
Wait, don’t you want to know how I survived? We’ve got a serum that mimics death by slowing your heart down to one beat per minute!
CHRIS EVANS
That would kill a perfectly healthy person, much less someone with all the injuries you had that we just went out of our way to list for the audience.
SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON
Hey, you ever read Romeo & Juliet, motherfucker?! If it’s good enough for Shakespeare, it’s good enough for Captain Motherfucking America.
CHRIS EVANS
Fine, let’s just move on. We’ve got to stop the helicarriers from launching, but we need a plan. Our team consists of two black guys, two white women, and one white guy, so I guess it’s pretty clear who’s in charge.
SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON
Looks like you’re giving the orders now, cracker--er, captain.
INT. SHIELD HEADQUARTERS
CHRIS EVANS slips into SHIELD COMMUNICATIONS CENTER with slightly less difficulty than he would slipping into the average female audience member’s panties.
CHRIS EVANS
(on building-wide PA system)
The helicarriers are controlled by Hydra! Soylent Green is made of people! To Serve Man is a cook book!
MASS HYSTERIA breaks out as GOOD SHIELD AGENTS and EVIL SHIELD AGENTS get into gun fights all over the building. After 20 minutes of characters we’ve never met killing other characters we’ve never met, the EVIL AGENTS succeed in launching the helicarriers.
COBIE SMULDERS
Okay, our only hope is to replace the network card on each helicarrier so it gets our Wi-Fi signal instead of the bad guy’s. We keep the helicarrier’s computer hardware components on a third-story catwalk because we fucking hate our IT department. Oh, and the catwalk is located in an empty glass atrium like you’d find on any massive flying military airship.
Elsewhere in SHIELD HQ, ROBERT REDFORD has taken the creatively named WORLD SECURITY COUNCIL hostage.
ROBERT REDFORD
Where the hell is Powers Boothe? He’s the only one of you assholes who’s recognizable from The Avengers.
JENNY AGUTTER
Maybe you’ll recognize my fist!
JENNY is really SCARLETT in disguise! She beats the shit out of ROBERT REDFORD.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON
Here’s someone else you may recognize!
SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON walks in.
ROBERT REDFORD
Um, are you wearing a bra? I know superheroes like to wear their underwear outside their clothes, but this is ridiculous.
SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON
Chris convinced me SHIELD is hopelessly corrupted. We’re shutting down SHIELD and releasing all of our top secret information to the public on the internet.
ROBERT REDFORD
Everything? You don’t think that’ll compromise the lives of every secret agent currently in the field? Or give the blueprints of weapons of mass destruction to terrorists? Or allow Iran to attack Israel or North Korea to attack South Korea by giving away their every defense secret and strategy? Or collapse the entire world economy by sharing every trade secret in the world? Or collapse every government in the world by airing every politicians’ dirty laundry at once? You know, you’re pretty much fulfilling every evil genius movie villain’s master plan at once.
SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON
Huh, and the worst consequence we could think of was a little embarrassment to Scarlett Johansson over a naked selfie or two. Oh well.
INT. HELICARRIER
CHRIS has sabotaged one helicarrier, and ANTHONY has taken out another. Now, CHRIS is about to replace the network card on the final helicarrier, but SEBASTIAN STAN stands in his way.
CHRIS EVANS
Don’t you recognize me, Sebastian?
(trades punches)
We grew up together!
(trades punches)
We’re best friends!
(trades punches)
We touched willies once!
SEBASTIAN STAN
At some point, is it going to occur to you to take off your mask?
CHRIS EVANS
Oh, yeah!
SEBASTIAN STAN
Still doesn't ring a bell. Maybe if you lose 150 lbs. of muscle.
CHRIS EVANS
Uh, I think I’m just going to have to beat you into unconsciousness instead.
He DOES. Then he replaces the final network card, bringing down the final helicarrier.
CHRIS EVANS
Sebastian, if you don’t remember me, life isn’t worth living. I mean, sure, I got over your death once before, and the death of everyone else I’d ever met, and so this seems like small potatoes all things considered, but whatever, I’m going to sit down next to you and die in a fiery helicarrier crash.
SEBASTIAN STAN
Not if beat you to death first!
CHRIS EVANS
I’m not sure what that’ll accomplish since we’re both about die anyway, but if it makes you feel better, go ahead.
SEBASTIAN STAN
Well now you’ve just taken all the fun out it. Nevermind.
SEBASTIAN saves CHRIS through the power of convenient SCENE EDITING.
INT. EPILOGUE
SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON
Okay, SHIELD is in shambles, all the world’s top secret information is public knowledge, Sebastian Stan is still on the loose, and we’ve only got 90 seconds to tie up loose ends. What’s the most important thing you think the audience wants to know?
CHRIS EVANS
Easy -- what happened to evil Senator Gary Shandling from Iron Man 2. I’m tired of people asking me that wherever I go. The letter writing campaigns, the rampant internet speculation, the countless panels at ComicCon, I just can’t take it anymore.
SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON
Done. Anything else?
CHRIS EVANS
Yeah, if SHIELD is shutting down, where is Cobie Smulders going to work next? Can we show her in a job interview or something?
SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON
You’ve really got your finger on the pulse of the Marvel moving-going public.
INT. MID-CREDITS EPILOGUE
THOMAS KRETSCHMANN
Holy fuck these credits go on forever. But did you notice Lee Majors II listed as a Lighting Tech? Pretty wild, right? Anyway, here’s a sneak peek at Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch from Avengers 2.
Despite being locked in cages, both happen to be showing off their superpowers for the audience’s benefit at this very moment.
THOMAS KRETSCHMANN
That’s long enough. Tumblr, commence bitching.
TUMBLR
If that’s Scarlet Witch, then why is her hair black and why is she telekinetic and why is everything wrong and why does Marvel hate its own fans and this is going to be the biggest disaster ever in the history of movies!!!!!!!
JOSS WHEDON
Did I mention I directed this scene personally?
TUMBLR
(vomits rainbows)
END.