The Winter Soldier - A solid entry into the MCU but not Marvel's Dark Knight

Winter Soldier is a henchman in the comics so...I dno what you expected. He's the muscle. Not the schemer.

Frank Grillo said this was an origin of sorts for Crossbones. If he just appeared out of nowhere with a mask it would be weird. We have reason to see him in one now as he's severely burnt.
Also there was no betrayal as he was Hydra from the beginning.

Black Widow fits into this storyline more than Sharon Carter as she lives in the gray area. The complete opposite to Steve. She learns some tough lessons about herself and we learn some interesting ones about her. Giving Sharon her role would be really dull.

those villian you listed like vader had free will the winter soldier was a brain washed killing machine that only cared about his mission.

I don't think screen time really matters. WS served his purpose. He was a formidable foe and dragged Steve back to the past. And paved the path for future films.

I do agree I wish I saw more of him, but that's because I enjoyed him so much not because I felt he was underused.

10/10 for me, I just saw it maybe an hour ago. When watching movies i tend to not look for some bad so i didn't notice anything wrong with the explosions at all. They all looked fine to me so had no issue.

And like someone said, the Winter Soldier is indeed a henchman. He wasn't doing his own thing at all, was just following orders. I absolutely loved him, every scene he was involved in was great. Less was definately better with him because we knew sh*t was about to go down whenever he was on screen. The fight scenes in the movie were amazing, i found it awesome that Cap actually looked like a Super Soldier due to him kicking guys and hurling guys all over the place.

I agree 100% about how the Winter Soldier was used-every area of the marketing, including the bloody subtitle, chalked him up to be integral to the plot and terrifying, but I feel like he was (as you so rightly put) insignificant to the plot. Rumlow and friends were much more relevant antagonists. On that subject, I really liked Rumlow and I feel that the fact he and STRIKE were 'pretending' to be Cap's allies all along is even more intriguing-no idea how they are going to turn him into Crossbones now though. I do agree on Sharon Carter as well-criminally underused, with not a single reference made to her connection to Peggy.
Tbh I think the film was quite overrated. But eh. You get that.

@Transforminator I second that motion

@76cidgrad
The Winter Soldier...more BELIEVABLE than Bane? Maybe. More INTERESTING. C'mon son. Yes one may be more personally connected to their hero than the other, but to become invested in a character said character must actually have...character. Not just shoot some guns, say maybe a page or two's worth of lines, and have a hand-to-hand-slugfest with the hero (though badass this tops neither Cap vs. Batroc nor either Batman vs. Bane fights). Bane truly had a purpose, a reason for being, and was entirely threatening-Winter Soldier was merely a weapon. A weapon incorrectly utilised by the Russos.

Nerdykid,
Bane the comic book character is multi-faceted. Bane in TDKR was one dimensional. He spends more time gripping his vest than anything else.
And you're saying Winter Soldier had no purpose or wasn't threatening? You must have watched another movie.
Bet you loved Green Lantern, too.
Give credit where credit is due.

Oh, and I would appreciate it if you wouldn't call me son...

@76cidgrad Fair enough, no to the 'son' thing then.
I didn't really 'love' 'Green Lantern' at all-it has many, MANY problems. It screwed around with the lore in places it wasn't necessary to do so-eg. the reinvention of Parallax-and in short made things HARDER for itself to bring page to screen in potential future instalments. Also Hammond was an annoying bitch. But moving on.
I found Bane to be a fantastic villain. He was a villain who inflicted pain wherever he went, and who set out to take Gotham from Bruce-and he SUCCEEDED. I loved Stan as Bucky in the first film but in this I simply felt like he exhibited no character. He was a presence sure, a badass for certain, yet another 'kill anyone in the way' type of mission-focused bad guy. And again, I simply don't believe he was relevant. If Bucky had died after falling off that train, here is what would have happened:
1. HYDRA would still have infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. from its beginnings, and secretly utilised other hired assassins to 'shape the century'.
2. Alexander Pierce would still be head of both HYDRA and S.H.I.E.L.D.
3. Fury would still have escaped the assassins assaulting his SUV, but one would still have found and assassinated him at Cap's apartment.
4. Cap would still have gone with Widow to find the secret installation.
5. Rumlow and STRIKE, who were essentially all the places Winter Soldier was in the movie anyway, would have had the opportunity to better develop into side-villains.
6. Cap, Widow and Falcon would still be captured by S.H.I.E.L.D., freed by Hill and taken to Fury.
7. We STILL would have gotten the final sequence except Rumlow would be able to get his payoff in the film and meaningfully fight Cap instead of being relegated to fighting Falcon.
8. With Falcon's wings presumably not getting broken that would make up for the lack of Winter Soldier to save Cap, as Falcon would be able to take his place.
See what I mean about irrelevance? We still have 85-90% the same movie.

compare winter soldier to The Terminator. Great film, great villain. what makes winter soldier great is his transformation for unfeeling robotic killing machine to trying to grasp his origins and past. His origins in the comics was that he was always the weapon while others made the decisions who/when he pulled the trigger. The movie captured that perfectly.

What would you have liked to have seen, Elib?

He was handled perfectly in my opinion.

For someone who has supposedly read the comic, you don't really understand the character at all.

I mean have a mastermind behind the whole scheme, don't make it so Bucky is calling all the shots but make him the focus of the narrative. The story happened around the Winter Soldier, rather than because of him. Also, I haven't read more than the Winter Soldier Ultimate Collection so there may be some elements of the character that I'm unaware of. But in terms of what I was lead to expect, this movie let me down in some regards. I wouldn't call it a bad movie thought, I still thought it was awesome