Captain America: How I make sense of the Winter Soldier
I've been reading a lot of Captain America fic recently, but I'd say about 90% of the fanon about how Bucky was turned into the Winter Soldier makes absolutely no sense to me. I'm wondering how Marvel is actually going to handle it in future movies, but until then my personal theory is as follows:
My number one assumption about the Winter Soldier is that he is an extremely effective operative which would require him to be very intelligent, adaptive, versatile, etc. If he were purely a blunt instrument, the whole WS program wouldn't be cost effective. If he were the trained animal/unthinking weapon/point-and-shoot robot that he is often made out to be there would be no justification for the expense of cryo/bionics/mind control. They could easily recruit/train dozens of dumb thugs for a fraction of the price to do the same job if that were all there was to the WS. For the WS to make fiscal sense, he'd have to be the kind of operative that could be handed an extremely difficult if not seemingly impossible task and be counted on to gather intelligence, plan, and execute on his own initiative.
Although the action sequences in CA:WS could be seen as evidence of the blunt instrument interpretation, I think it's far from conclusive. There wasn't a scene showing him receiving his orders or being told exactly where to go and what weapons to use. Maybe his orders were simply, "Kill Nick Fury and make it a spectacle," and then he had to figure out when and where and the best way to arrange his support to get the job done. It had to take some intel and planning to be in position to blow up Fury's vehicle and to track him to Steve's apartment. And, he was the one giving the orders to the rest of the Hydra team. I'd guess he has at least as much authority within Hydra as he once had as a Sergeant in the Army.
So that leads me to my second assumption, that the Winter Soldier wasn't tortured into loyalty. Yes, a person can be broken through torture and made to be extremely loyal to his captors. However, afterwards there wouldn't be enough personal autonomy left for him to be capable of the things which the WS would need to be capable. Mindless obedience is by its nature, mindless. That's fine for cannon fodder, but it wouldn't work for someone who has to think on his feet and be able to adapt in the field.
I think the Winter Soldier was brainwashed, not through torture, but with technology that took away his real memories and replaced them with false memories that convinced him he chose Hydra of his own free will. And any time the amnesia or fake memories started to breakdown, or he just saw something particularly evil that might motivate him to defect, back into the chair for a reapplication. With him not remembering enough to be suspicious of them, they just had to give him some bullshit explanation of it being a medical treatment to help or something necessary to maintain OpSec and he'd go right along with it.
My pet theory is that Bucky thinks he was recruited out of the Russian Army, thinks the gaps in his memory are either the result of an unfortunate accident or a necessary evil for the sake of compartmentalization, is skeptical of the Hydra party-line but from the bits and pieces he knows doesn't think they're any better or worse than SHIELD, KGB, CIA, or any other shady alphabet agency, and he probably thinks it was the highly advanced experimental replacement arm that convinced him to sign on in the first place. That scene where Pierce is sermonizing to him about shaping the century and Bucky just doesn't seem to give a shit would fit. It was like every awkward team building work meeting ever where the boss is trying to really motivate the staff and the staff could give a rat's ass about the company mission statement and are all thinking, "Let me out of this damn meeting so I can just go do my job."
I know a lot of mileage for the physical abuse interpretation has been gotten out of the backhanding scene, but personally I read that as an aberration. Pierce tried talking to him first, but Bucky was kind of in a fugue state and not really responding to questions. I think it was intended as basically like slapping someone who is hysterical to snap them out of it. It's not a good idea but it's not indicative of frequent beatings either.
Post-CA:WS!Bucky, having remembered Steve and seen the Smithsonian display, has suddenly realized that the people he was working for had completely fucked him over. He isn't who he thought he was. He'd been working for the wrong people for years and didn't know it. This realization could lead to any number of potential issues. Trust issues, an existential crisis, paranoia, anger, guilt, identity issues, would all be totally plausible. An inability to speak, bathe or feed himself, those I have a harder time buying.
As for what he does after finding out who he was, there are all kinds of good options. Revenge would make sense. Or maybe doing good to clear some of the red from his ledger. Some kind of journey of self discovery. He could wash his hands of the killing/spy/soldier business and find somewhere to hide and become a regular civilian. However, voluntarily consigning himself to SHIELD care seems totally wack-a-doodle in my book. After the number Hydra and its doctors did on him, I think it'd be a cold day in hell before he let any kind of medical personnel even slightly affiliated with any agency anywhere near him.
My number one assumption about the Winter Soldier is that he is an extremely effective operative which would require him to be very intelligent, adaptive, versatile, etc. If he were purely a blunt instrument, the whole WS program wouldn't be cost effective. If he were the trained animal/unthinking weapon/point-and-shoot robot that he is often made out to be there would be no justification for the expense of cryo/bionics/mind control. They could easily recruit/train dozens of dumb thugs for a fraction of the price to do the same job if that were all there was to the WS. For the WS to make fiscal sense, he'd have to be the kind of operative that could be handed an extremely difficult if not seemingly impossible task and be counted on to gather intelligence, plan, and execute on his own initiative.
Although the action sequences in CA:WS could be seen as evidence of the blunt instrument interpretation, I think it's far from conclusive. There wasn't a scene showing him receiving his orders or being told exactly where to go and what weapons to use. Maybe his orders were simply, "Kill Nick Fury and make it a spectacle," and then he had to figure out when and where and the best way to arrange his support to get the job done. It had to take some intel and planning to be in position to blow up Fury's vehicle and to track him to Steve's apartment. And, he was the one giving the orders to the rest of the Hydra team. I'd guess he has at least as much authority within Hydra as he once had as a Sergeant in the Army.
So that leads me to my second assumption, that the Winter Soldier wasn't tortured into loyalty. Yes, a person can be broken through torture and made to be extremely loyal to his captors. However, afterwards there wouldn't be enough personal autonomy left for him to be capable of the things which the WS would need to be capable. Mindless obedience is by its nature, mindless. That's fine for cannon fodder, but it wouldn't work for someone who has to think on his feet and be able to adapt in the field.
I think the Winter Soldier was brainwashed, not through torture, but with technology that took away his real memories and replaced them with false memories that convinced him he chose Hydra of his own free will. And any time the amnesia or fake memories started to breakdown, or he just saw something particularly evil that might motivate him to defect, back into the chair for a reapplication. With him not remembering enough to be suspicious of them, they just had to give him some bullshit explanation of it being a medical treatment to help or something necessary to maintain OpSec and he'd go right along with it.
My pet theory is that Bucky thinks he was recruited out of the Russian Army, thinks the gaps in his memory are either the result of an unfortunate accident or a necessary evil for the sake of compartmentalization, is skeptical of the Hydra party-line but from the bits and pieces he knows doesn't think they're any better or worse than SHIELD, KGB, CIA, or any other shady alphabet agency, and he probably thinks it was the highly advanced experimental replacement arm that convinced him to sign on in the first place. That scene where Pierce is sermonizing to him about shaping the century and Bucky just doesn't seem to give a shit would fit. It was like every awkward team building work meeting ever where the boss is trying to really motivate the staff and the staff could give a rat's ass about the company mission statement and are all thinking, "Let me out of this damn meeting so I can just go do my job."
I know a lot of mileage for the physical abuse interpretation has been gotten out of the backhanding scene, but personally I read that as an aberration. Pierce tried talking to him first, but Bucky was kind of in a fugue state and not really responding to questions. I think it was intended as basically like slapping someone who is hysterical to snap them out of it. It's not a good idea but it's not indicative of frequent beatings either.
Post-CA:WS!Bucky, having remembered Steve and seen the Smithsonian display, has suddenly realized that the people he was working for had completely fucked him over. He isn't who he thought he was. He'd been working for the wrong people for years and didn't know it. This realization could lead to any number of potential issues. Trust issues, an existential crisis, paranoia, anger, guilt, identity issues, would all be totally plausible. An inability to speak, bathe or feed himself, those I have a harder time buying.
As for what he does after finding out who he was, there are all kinds of good options. Revenge would make sense. Or maybe doing good to clear some of the red from his ledger. Some kind of journey of self discovery. He could wash his hands of the killing/spy/soldier business and find somewhere to hide and become a regular civilian. However, voluntarily consigning himself to SHIELD care seems totally wack-a-doodle in my book. After the number Hydra and its doctors did on him, I think it'd be a cold day in hell before he let any kind of medical personnel even slightly affiliated with any agency anywhere near him.