“Even a man who is pure in heart…”
Captain America: Civil War isn’t perfect, but one of the things I love about it is how much Bucky’s story frames him as a classic tragic wolfman figure. It’s a story trope that elicits such profound pathos to me because, at its core, it’s a story of a good man doomed with an inner darkness that is so against his true nature that when he loses control to it and becomes a danger to those around him, he’s as much a victim as they are.
We get a glimpse early on of a Bucky who has, to some degree, found himself again, a reconnection we know he must have fought hard for. Even during the simple act of shopping in a market you get a sense of his friendliness and warmth, something we haven’t seen in him since before his fall in Captain America: The First Avenger. When Steve worries that he might take things too far when trying to escape arrest, Sebastian delivers his assurance that he won’t with such gentle restraint in his voice that, despite the desperate throws and punches, you really feel just how much Bucky is trying to keep himself distanced from his Winter Soldier alter ego.
The actual triggering of the Winter Soldier is played so much like a werewolf transformation - Zemo’s codewords serving as Bucky’s full moon - that it’s hard to imagine Sebastian didn’t have this in mind when giving his performance**. Teeth bared, snarling, and increasingly animalistic, when eventually he rises up before Zemo looking, frankly, huge, it’s clear that Bucky the person is gone, and in his place stands HYDRA’s monster, ready to kill.
And in stark contrast to his earlier assertions and fighting style, he does go in for the kill, and ferociously so. Both Tony and Natasha come close to being killed, with Sam, Sharon, and T’Challa hardly coming out from the encounter unscathed either. Natasha’s line delivered to a frighteningly unrecognisable Bucky I know has generated much discussion as to its broader meaning, but for me its primary purpose is to emphasise that this isn’t Bucky anymore, that he doesn’t recognise her from previous encounters because there’s currently nothing of the man there to recognise her. Such is the case in the classic werewolf tale that there’s no reaching through the monster to the man trapped inside.
When Steve is eventually able to stop Bucky and restrain him, we get the obligatory post-transformation scene typical of the genre. Bucky wakes dazed, confused, and bloodied, with no memory of his actions and only horror and guilt when he realises his worst fears have come true and he’s still cursed with HYDRA’s own version of lycanthropy.
Despite its arguable faults, Civil War really did take great care in emphasising the psychological horror of Bucky’s situation. By drawing parallels to one of Hollywood’s most sympathetic monsters, by having Steve fully understand the helplessness of his friend’s situation and consistently defend him against characters who don’t, Bucky is framed as one of Marvel’s most tragic characters who you can’t help but long for a cure for almost as much as he does. Which is why, in part, his eventual cure shown in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier hits as hard as it does: because we know how much this has taken from him, taken over him, and we see and feel through Sebastian’s performance just how much it means to him to be freed from it and share that joy. Where the classic werewolf story typically ends in a merciful death, this one instead ends mercifully in freedom and a chance at a second life. One begun in TFATWS and which I personally hope is still to be further explored.
**It really isn’t much of a stretch either if you look to his Instagram where he’s shown his appreciation for Jack Nicholson’s performance in Wolf. There’s striking similarities in the feral mannerisms of both performances that you can’t help but suspect Sebastian drew inspiration from this.