Finally! This scene is insufficiently giffed, seeing as Sam is in fact the sex here.
OH
YES thank you
Also I must flail once again with even more love for how Sam, despite being unpowered, just goes right in there, going after a guy armed with a machine gun with a two-inch knife and nothing else. <3 <3 <3
Dinky little knife? No problemo. He goes in stone cold and just made of fucking awesome. HELLS BELLS YEAH SAM WILSON FOUR FOR YOU SAM WILSON.
I also love how Sam’s style is much less refined than like, Bucky or Steve or Natasha’s. It’s skilled, for sure, bc he’s had training, but it’s not this crazy fancy ballerina gymnast fucking dance shit like those guys do. It’s like “dude i’m gonna fucking kick you in the knee gimme that gun.”
This and every action scene with Natasha exemplify how competent these people are. Not flashy, but so badass down to every detail. They can’t match the destructive levels of Thor, Iron Man, or the Hulk, but the lower power levels add a grounding and physicality that makes the combat in Cap 2 feel very different, and I appreciate the variety. (My fantasy AU is that the Cap Crew stays together and remains relatively unpowered for this reason.)
When it comes to new-fangled fisticuffs, you can rely on Sam, Natasha, Fury, and Hill to deliver Bourne-style beatdowns and intrigue, then you drop in Steve and Bucky when it’s time to go The Raid and Raid 2 on some assholes.
That last post reminds me that I had this sitting in my drafts.
I love how personalized their fighting styles are (and rightly so!).
Sam here is using good old-fashioned commando moves. Rangers, Green Berets and other US special forces get formally trained in a custom military-designed style of hand-to-hand that focuses on the down-and-dirty stuff from a number of classical fighting styles—the quick, to-the-point moves that will most efficiently disable an enemy while putting the combatant in the least amount of danger. Short knives like Sam’s using here are a classic addition, as it extends his reach slightly and provides him with a cutting edge without requiring any real modification of the attacks and blocks involved.
Natasha’s foundation is krav maga, a truly brutal martial art developed and made (in)famous by the Israeli Defense Force. It emphasizes speed, joint locks, leverage and—as with American military combat—getting in and out most efficiently with least danger. Krav maga is considered by many to be the pinnacle of military styles. Natasha has been taught to disassemble the human body like a cook going after a Thanksgiving turkey. She can literally tear apart a human being at the joints (and we’ve seen her do it).
But Natasha is a small woman, and while that doesn’t necessarily mean she’s weaker (do not underestimate the muscle strength a woman can build up just because she doesn’t get bulky; given what we’ve seen her do, she could undoubtedly throw Steve over her shoulder and lug him out of a burning building), it does mean that she doesn’t have the sheer weight and reach a man can throw into a punch. Furthermore, it’s obvious that her greatest strength is coordination. A person who is not as physically strong can still do as much or more damage by knowing how to combine their muscle groups for power.
As such, Nat compensates by using more acrobatic moves that put momentum and coordination to work for her. Any martial artist is taught to build force not only with the most obvious muscles—e.g. biceps, pectorals—but using the core to build torque and force. Natasha’s spins and leaps are an implementation of this. When she jumps up and grabs someone with her legs, she is using her entire body weight, as well as the momentum generated by her move AND the power of her core (see how she twists her hips into the takedown? and we’re talking a ballerina’s core power here, which is monstrous) to create truly crushing force.
Bucky is exquisitely trained, drilled and equipped, and he fights like Special Ops. The pattern is distinctive to all special ops I’ve ever heard of: the goal is for no one to ever even know you’re there. Ranged attacks are preferred (ideally from a hidden vantage), followed by stealth close-in attacks, with aggressive, deadly hand-to-hand the least favored but very effective option. His special advantage (and it counts for more than you’d think) is that he’s learned how to use that metal arm for both offense and defense.
Reasonably speaking, he probably can’t lift a car with it. You need a lot more than just a resilient shoulder for that kind of full-body super-strength. But fighting hand to hand, that thing is a real boon because even blocking or attacking Bucky on his left side (the side most people will favor since usually they’re right-handed—PS: Note how Steve switched to leading with his left in that fight) is going to hurt like hell as you batter yourself black and blue on that thing. His reaction speeds in any left-hand attack could be more than human (which someone who hasn’t fought him before would be unprepared for and could spell their doom with the first shot). And then of course there’s what he can do to you if he catches you with it. The sheer intimidation factor of that would lead to tiny but fatal hesitations from many people in a fight with him (another thing that makes Steve’s unflinching, unhesitating skirmish with him so impressive). Bucky doesn’t display the lithe acrobatics of Steve or Widow, but he’s strong and fast and has undoubtedly had some gymnast training to improve his coordination and flexibility.
Now, Steve is something unique. Back in his day, infantry were trained to fight, sure, but not with the scientific fighting systems we have today. Surely he’s picked up some SHIELD training since he woke up, but a lot of what Steve does is the back-alley brawling he learned in Brooklyn’s streets, some old-school boxing (not to diminish boxing; it’s a horrifically effective martial art and unlike many martial artists, boxers are still trained to hurt people), and terrifying levels of raw athleticism. The stuff we saw him doing in The First Avenger? Nobody taught him that shit. He spontaneously manifested a combat style nearly as acrobatic as Natasha’s—and then he went out and sought further training.
Also worth noting: a thing that makes Steve that much more alarming is that I’m pretty sure that in addition to speed, strength, reflexes, coordination and endurance that exist at the upper edge of human ability, Steve also possesses a remarkable gift for physical learning. Musicians, dancers and martial artists know that you have to keep repeating a move in order to drill it literally into your muscles, until the fascia lining your muscles know the move so well your brain doesn’t have to bother processing it. In Steve, this along with everything else exists at the peak of human performance, meaning that when it comes to physical skills, he learns damn fast. (I’m not saying he’s Taskmaster, but we’ve seen that he only has to repeat something once or twice in order to be able to use it.) So on top of everything else, given the way he fights, I think he just goes around slurping up moves he likes that he sees somebody else use. He is, in essence, an Irish Bruce Lee.
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