Sebastian Stan gave Marvel fans a new dream, but little does he know that it already exists on Netflix’s roster. Stan recently revealed that he had pitched a Sicario-esque thriller film centered on the Winter Soldier to Kevin Feige, who apparently humored his pitch.
While it is an interesting idea that would probably be a great street-level Marvel story, Leigh Whannell’s Upgrade has plenty of those elements in it already. It has been 8 years since the release of the film, and it is one of the best superhero-based thrillers ever made.
Netflix’s Upgrade Is Already the Winter Soldier Movie We Need
Logan Marshall-Green in Upgrade | Credits: OTL Releasing
Leigh Whannell’s 2018 sci-fi thriller Upgrade is set in 2046 and follows Grey Trace, an auto mechanic, who is left paralyzed after a mugging incident leads to violence. He loses his wife in the same incident. Grey is fitted with an AI chip called STEM, which grants him superhuman strength, speed, and reflexes.
Grey uses STEM to hunt down the men responsible, only to slowly realize he’s not fully in control of his own body anymore. Strip away the sci-fi element, and that logline is basically Bucky Barnes with a different origin story. Upgrade is about a man weaponized by outside forces, unsure where his own agency ends and his programming begins.
In the film, Grey feels like he is in control of his actions, but he is actually controlled by Eron Keen, the tech innovator who creates STEM. He thinks he is going out to avenge his wife’s killers, but he is actually being played by Eron. Similarly, the Winter Soldier is a victim of Hydra’s instructions, and that is how he kills Tony Stark’s parents.
Taylor Sheridan’s Sicario works because the film treats violence as procedural and character as compromised, never letting the audience feel safe about who’s really pulling the strings. Netflix’s Upgrade does the same thing with STEM: every upgrade Grey gains chips away at his sense of self, making it a slow-burn horror story about losing your own will.
Sebastian Stan Wants a Sicario-Styled Winter Soldier Movie in The MCU
Sebastian Stan in Captain America: The Winter Soldier | Credits: Marvel Studios
Sebastian Stan has been Bucky Barnes since The First Avenger; he was the main antagonist in The Winter Soldier, and his arc in Civil War made him part of possibly the best MCU trilogy. Despite being one of the OG cast members of the MCU, he has not received a solo movie. He was part of Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and he has now been pushed into the Thunderbolts/New Avengers.
While the MCU seems to be uninterested in giving fans of Bucky a solo shot, Sebastian Stan recently revealed that he taken on himself to pitch a Winter Soldier movie to Kevin Feige. He described the movie as a Sicario-inspired thriller, seeing the Winter Soldier as following someone from his brainwashed days.
Describing the plot idea in an interview with New York Mag, he said (via Vulture),
We keep a real small budget. It’s about a guy who thinks he recognizes someone from his past that had something to do with when, you know, he was brainwashed, and he gets obsessed with this person. He goes on a whole journey to try to figure out who this person is. It’s a thriller.
It is a pitch that leans entirely on paranoia and personal fixation rather than spectacle, which is exactly why Sicario is the right reference point rather than, say, another Bourne-style chase movie. There is a long way to go from a greenlight, but after fifteen years of playing Bucky without ever leading his own MCU movie, Stan has clearly already written the pitch deck in his head.
What do you think about Sebastian Stan’s pitch? Comment below.
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