Cap 2 Thoughts (spoilers, if anyone cares)
HYDRA started out as a Nazi offshoot, but by CA:TWS they seem to be more like a nebulous totalitarian conspiracy version of the Auditors of Reality. It's subtext, and I don't even know if Pierce and co. see it that way, but this bunch seems to really resent human messiness. It's all about order through dehumanization. Project Insight is really the high point of that - none of that fussing about with flesh-and-blood assassins or waiting for your potential victims to actually do something to tick you off. Just run the numbers and let the orbiting death lasers do the rest!
And in the good guys' corner, we have the Power Of Friendship. Really. With the bonds of institutional loyalty strained due to NAZI MOLES (and not the fun kind, i.e. little burrowing mammals in SS uniforms), and the enemy too big for one person to punch out by themselves, the good guys have to work together based on more personal kinds of trust and mutual regard. And here is where Sam Wilson is really thematically important, since Sam proves himself a strong contender for Best Fictional Friend To Have Your Back In A Crisis.
And poor Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier is the hapless battlefield on which the ideas of friendship versus dehumanizing control clash in the most overt way.
And in the good guys' corner, we have the Power Of Friendship. Really. With the bonds of institutional loyalty strained due to NAZI MOLES (and not the fun kind, i.e. little burrowing mammals in SS uniforms), and the enemy too big for one person to punch out by themselves, the good guys have to work together based on more personal kinds of trust and mutual regard. And here is where Sam Wilson is really thematically important, since Sam proves himself a strong contender for Best Fictional Friend To Have Your Back In A Crisis.
And poor Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier is the hapless battlefield on which the ideas of friendship versus dehumanizing control clash in the most overt way.