There's One Thing I Can Never Forgive Captain America: The Winter Soldier for

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a pretty good Captain America movie. It’s not my favorite Captain America movie—as I’ve written before, I have a resolute fondness for The First Avenger—but, overall, it’s a fun time and Chris Evans punches a lot of people in it. But four years on, I still can’t get over the injustice it did to one certain character.

No, not the Hydra stuff or whatever. That’s actually really good. My problem is this: Captain America: The Winter Soldier does Batroc the Leaper dirty. And I will not stand for this grievous crime.

Introduced in Tales of Suspense #75 in 1966, Batroc the Leaper—French mercenary Georges Batroc, a master of savate, a French-developed style of kickboxing—has fought many Marvel heroes over the years, but he is primarily known as a Captain America foe. He’s known for that, and three other things: 1) he has hilarious facial hair; 2) he has an equally hilarious French accent, presented on the page through butchered spellings and pronunciations in his early appearances; and 3) perhaps the most important of all things: Batroc the Leaper leaps. It’s in the name, my friends.

The first setpiece of Captain America: The Winter Soldier forgets all of these things. French-Canadian actor/MMA fighter Georges St-Pierre plays the film’s version of the legendary Batroc the Leaper in the opening scenes, which sees Captain America, Black Widow, and a SHIELD strikeforce infiltrate the Lemurian Star to rescue some SHIELD hostages captured by Batroc and his men. The scene is—once again, like a lot of The Winter Soldier—very good. The action is excellent (both in that Black Widow gets to kick serious ass and there’s some great shield-bouncing stuff for Cap), it’s got a cool stealthy vibe, and it’s an awesome way to open a movie. My beef here, and always has been, specifically with Batroc.

Not having Batroc’s amazingly pointed, gigantic pencil moustache is understandable, given this is live action and not a comic book, and Marvel’s hair and makeup team at least make a reasonable, realistic attempt at similar facial hair for St-Pierre. And honestly, having Batroc speak just in French is a much smarter, less borderline-offensive choice than having him speak in heavily accented English with a lot of added mon dieus or hon-hon-hons and whatnot.