Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-28319256-20160501215558/@comment-28652915-20160630020208

That makes no sense. Bucky is the single biggest victim in the film(along possibly with Tony's mother) but Steve is a prick for defending him.

Steve is the only one who is going to defend him because he's the only one who knows what an amazing and good person Bucky Barnes was. The fact that Bucky had to be repeatedly tortured and brainwashed by Hydra to do their dirty work shows up what an essentially good person he is. There is a shoot to kill order on Bucky from the minute he is framed for blowing up the UN. So from that point on Steve is trying to just keep him alive. It's not Cap's fault they were going to kill him with no trial and no judgement from the minute they saw what they thought was him in a blurry video.

However Tony and Co are the ones who decided to side with the Accords, which took all independent control away from the Avengers and put them at the mercy of a panel which Thaddeus Ross has major influence on. Without that, Steve and Co would have caught Bucky themselves and tried to get to the bottom of what really happened. Steve would still have believed Bucky but the others would have been there to have "oversight" and make sure they were getting the real story and not just wishful thinking.

As for the film, I do feel kind of cheated out of a Captain America 3 film. This was more an Avengers movies and they didn't even really focus mostly on Steve's motivations, they focused more on Tony's continuing and eternal daddy issues(issues which were not in fact caused by his parents' deaths)  Only part of Steve's motivation was Bucky(he and Sam both were against the Accords and gave very logical reasons for it prior to the UN explosion) but even that isn't really explored. Steve's devoted to Bucky, with good reason, and when Bucky was himself he was just as devoted to Steve. But they have never really spent as much time exploring the roots of that friendship as they should given how important it has now been to the plot of two films(The Winter Soldier and Civil War). Doing so would also explore Steve Rogers because that relationship is informed by the Steve Rogers that had nothing to do with being a super soldier and in fact made him Erskine choose him in the first place, it's what made him different from everyone else. It's also what made Bucky a devoted friend to him when he was a sick, small, underweight, poor kid from Brooklyn and why Steve returns that feeling.