Two years after the events of The Avengers,[5] Steve Rogers lives in
Washington, D.C., continues to work for the espionage agency S.H.I.E.L.D., and struggles to adapt to contemporary society. After meeting and befriending war veteran and PTSD counsellor Sam Wilson on a morning jog, Rogers is called to help save a S.H.I.E.L.D. vessel from Algerian pirates led by
Georges Batroc. Aboard, he discovers fellow agent Natasha Romanoff extracting data from the ship's computers, making him question whether he should trust S.H.I.E.L.D. At the agency's headquarters, the
Triskelion,
Nick Fury introduces Rogers to Operation: Insight, three Helicarriers linked to spy satellites and designed to preemptively eliminate threats. Rogers later visits the elderly Peggy Carter at a nursing home.
Later, Fury is denied access to information on Operation: Insight, and on his way to rendezvous with Maria Hill is ambushed by assailants disguised as police officers. A mysterious assassin called the Winter Soldier blows up Fury's SUV. Fury escapes and sneaks into Rogers' apartment, but after handing Rogers a USB flash drive he is gunned down by the Winter Soldier. Rogers gives chase, and his neighbor Sharon reveals herself as S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Agent 13. Fury appears to die in surgery, and Hill recovers the body.
The next day, Rogers is summoned by senior S.H.I.E.L.D. official Alexander Pierce. When
Rogers withholds Fury's information, Pierce brands him a fugitive. Hunted by the agency, Rogers meets with Romanoff; using data in the flash drive they discover an old S.H.I.E.L.D. underground base within abandoned U.S. Army base Camp Lehigh, Roger's World War II camp, in in New Jersey. They activate a 1970s computer containing the preserved consciousness of Arnim Zola, who reveals that when S.H.I.E.L.D. was founded after World War II, HYDRA secretly operated within its ranks. HYDRA plans to use the new Helicarriers to selectively kill 20 million people whom Zola's data-mining algorithm has identified as potential threats. Rogers and Romanoff narrowly escape death when a S.H.I.E.L.D. missile destroys the bunker.
Two years after the Battle of
New York, Steve Rogers a.k.a Captain
America is out on a jog in Washington D.C. While jogging he is
frequently passing by a man who later introduces himself as Samuel
Wilson telling him that he used to work in the army but now he works in
the debriefing section. After the jog, Sam and Steve have a chat about
how Steve is adapting to the new world. Natasha Romanoff then arrives to
take Steve with her on a mission. The mission at hand is to rescue the
hostages of a pirate-hijacked S.H.I.E.L.D ship. Cap, Agent Rumlow,
Romanoff and his men fight the pirates and rescue the hostages. But as
it turns out Natasha had gotten a secret mission which was to receive
some S.H.I.E.L.D data from the ship, to a USB-stick arrousing suspicion
from Steve.
When back at the Triskelion, Steve is angered with Nick Fury for
lying to him. Fury then takes him to the basement where there are
several Helicarriers and he introduces Rogers to the Insight Program. He
tells Steve that S.H.I.E.L.D takes the world as it is, not as they like
it to be. They are going to use the Helicarriers to fight threats
before they even happened. Cap then says that,
This is not freedom. This is fear...
Later Steve visits the Captain America museum and also visits
Peggy Carter in a retirement home, now past 90 years. He also meets with
Samuel Wilson again after watching him during the end of his debriefing
session. Meanwhile Fury discovered that the data on the USB was
inaccessible.
He tells this to Alexander Pierce, who just had a talk
with the World Security Council about whether or not to let Fury
continue to run S.H.I.E.L.D. Fury is on his way away from the Triskelion
when he is attacked by false cops. He defeats them but is stopped when a
masked man shoots a magnetic bomb under Fury's car, flipping it over.
But before the masked man gets to Fury, he managed to drill a hole in
the ground whit a gadget and escape.
Steven arrives to his apartment after talking to his neighbor but
gets suspicious when he hears his stereo's still on. He sneaks in
through the window and finds Nick Fury sitting in his couch. He tells
Rogers that his wife kicked him out and that they might be overheard by
someone, before getting shot several times in his back through the wall.
He gives the USB to Steven and tells him not to trust anyone, before he
falls unconscious. Roger's neighbor smashes in the door reveling
herself to be Agent 13. Cap finds the gunman and starts to chase him. He
throws the shield at the masked man, but surprisingly the man catches
the shield with his cybernetic arm and throws it back. He then jumps of
the building and disappears.
Fury is taken to a hospital but his heart stops and he couldn't
get revived. He's taken away and Agent Maria Hill asks to take care of
the body. Agent Rumlow tells Cap that he is wanted for a hearing. He
quickly hides the USB in a vendor machine and leaves. When he arrives at
the Triskelion he is questioned by Alexander Pierce who says he is one
of Nick's oldest friends and wants to know who killed him. He also says
that he and Nick where realists and that to build a new world sometimes
meant tearing the old one down.
Cap doesn’t trust Pierce and tell him
none of what Fury said. He leaves Alexander to go to the hospital. When
in the elevator it starts to fill up with people and he soon realizes
that they are there to take him down. He asks if anyone wants to get out
and then the fight begins. It's hard but Cap manages to knock out all
his attackers, before jumping out the elevator to avoid arrest. After
surviving the fall he drives away on a motor-cycle. A roadblock is set
up for him and also gets stopped by a
Quinjet. He does however get past
both.
It is later revealed that Pierce is working with the masked man
when he shoots his cleaner for seeing him together with the masked man.
He arrives later to the hospital where he notices that the USB is
gone. Natasha had taken it and he angrily asks her what she knows about
all that has happened. She tells him that the masked man is a spy known
as the Winter Soldier and she had encountered him once before. She
decides to follow Cap. They go to an internet café to see if there is
any valuable information on it. But they, as Fury did, find nothing.
However they did find the location where the USB could be unlocked.
Rumlow and his team try to find them but fail to do so.
They steal a car and drives to the location while talking about
the good old days. When they arrive Steve realizes that they are at the
old training facility where he trained during WW2. They find a secret
storage room full of old computers inside a S.H.I.E.L.D office. There
they find a more modern looking USB slot and they put the USB in. The
computers power up and someone starts to talk to them. It is Arnim Zola
who tells them that he was recruited by S.H.I.E.L.D after WW2 and that
he helped to rebuild Hydra, inside S.H.I.E.L.D. But in the 70's when he
got the news that his body where un-savable. S.H.I.E.L.D, still needing
his help, transferred his mind into a software. He had been working on
an algoritm that Hydra wanted. He told them that some of the deaths of
S.H.I.E.L.D leaders had been due to Hydra, showing them a picture of
Howard Stark, implying that his death might not have been an accident.
He was also involved in the Winter Soldier program. But before Rogers
and Romanoff can get any more information out of Zola S.H.I.E.L.D shows
up and blows up the place. They survive the explosion and seek refuge
with Sam Wilson. Sam tells them that he was part of a military project
called Falcon, a testing of a new form of winged Jet-Packs.
They went back D.C to talk to Agent Jasper Sitwell who is also
working for Hydra. He just had a meeting with Senator Stern, who before
saying goodbye whispered
Hail Hydra. Sam Wilson called Sitwell
and forced him up on the roof of a tall building together with Natasha
and Steve they get him to tell them that Zola's algorithm could
calculate if a person would be a threat in the future. He also tolled
them that Hydra are going to use Project Insight as a weapon to
eliminate what they saw as threats against the world, mentioning Tony
Stark, Bruce Banner and Stephen Strange. This though would also mean
that millions of innocent people would die.
The gang leaves but is attacked by the Winter Soldier and his
men. A battle breaks out and as Cap and the Winter Soldier fights his
mask is broken and it is revealed that he is Bucky Barnes. Cap says
Bucky?,
but Bucky don't know who that is and Cap, Black Widow and Sam are taken
into custody. While in the prison van one of the guards stuns the other
one and reveal herself to be Maria Hill. She then uses the drill gadget
to escape with the gang.
Agent Hill took them to a secret facility where Nick Fury where
resting, revealing that he didn't die, even though he where severely
injured. He had taken a anti stress serum, developed by
Bruce Banner ,
that lowered his heartbeat to only one per minute so that he would
appear dead. Hill and Fury told them that Project Insight where only
hours away and that they had to act quickly. The Helicarriers would
hover in a triangle, connected, targeting all its targets before firing.
The only way to prevent this where to use three special chips that
alter the helicarriers' program. Cap had lost his suit earlier so he
needed to break in to the Captain America museum and steal the one that
was on display.
The Winter Soldier is being prepared for battle but he starts to
ask who Bucky is. Hydra decides he knows too much about his past and
they brainwash him again. He gets a flashback showing how Hydra's
Russian division found him in suspended animation after falling of the
train. We then learn that
Doctor Zola amputated his destroyed left-arm
and changed it with a cybernetic one. He also remembers how he where put
in Kryo-tanks between his missions so that he would not get old.
The members of the World Security Council arrive at the
Triskelion. They are given one device each to put on their collar that
will grant them access to anywhere in the Triskelion. They then all walk
up to Alexander Pierce's office. Captain America and Sam a.k.a The
Falcon, breaks in and take control of the microphones. They tell the
staff that there are traitors in
S.H.I.E.L.D and that Alexander Pierce
is one of them and that they cannot initiate Project Insight. Rumlow and
his men walk in to the control room and threaten to shoot the guy in
charge if he doesn't get the Helicarriers in the air. But agent 13
intervenes and a gunfight breaks out, but Rumlow still manages to get
the Helicariers in the air.
Pierce pulls a gun at a WSC member but
Agent Romanoff, disguised
as a WSC member, stops him. She then calls for Fury who is an
S.H.I.E.L.D agent of the highest degree, and since two
S.H.I.E.L.D
agents of the highest degree are needed to stop Project Insight she asks
Pierce to help them. Fury states that Pierce probably erased all traces
of Fury being the director of S.H.I.E.L.D, but not on the eye scan
since, quite recently, Fury changed the eyescan picture from the picture
of his working eye to the picture of his damaged eye. Romanoff then
spreads classified documents with all of her and his secrets on the net.
Pierce tries to escape, activating the devices on the
WSC members'
collars that kills them and holds Romanoff hostage. Romanoff disables
the device momentarily giving Fury the chance to shoot Pierce dead.
They manage to put the chips, with some hardship, for two of the
Helicarriers in the right place, but when Falcon is going for the last
one his jet-pack is damaged by the
Winter Soldier and he is forced to
skydive down to the Triskelion where he gets caught up in a fistfight
with Agent Rumlow. Now it's all on Cap. He is about to put the chip in
place before he is confronted by Bucky. They fight and during the fight
Cap tries to convince Bucky that he where good once upon a time. As he
tries to get the chip in place with only seconds left before Project
Insight will initiate he gets shot multiple times by Bucky. He manages
though and Agent Hill can take control of the other Helicarriers and
shoots down the Project Insight ones. Before Steve passes out he
promises Bucky to be with him until the end, a promise Bucky gave Steve
decades ago. Then Cap falls into the water beneath and is about to drown
when a hand grabs him and drags him out of the water. It is Bucky who
then disappears.
They enlist the help of former
Para Jumper Wilson, and subsequently acquire the classified "Falcon" flight-exoskeleton he once harnessed. After deducing Jasper Sitwell is a HYDRA member and coercing him to reveal Pierce's plan, the trio is ambushed by the Winter Soldier — whom
Rogers believes is James "Bucky" Barnes, his best friend who was presumed KIA during WWII. They are captured by S.H.I.E.L.D. and its S.T.R.I.K.E. team but rescued by a disguised Hill. She leads them to a hideout where they discover Fury is alive and planning a mission to prevent Pierce from launching Operation: Insight by replacing a chip within each Helicarrier to override their satellite control.
After members of the World Security Council arrive for the Helicarriers' launch, Pierce holds them hostage and reveals HYDRA's true motives.
