Captain America: The Winter Soldier Reviews (SPOILERS)

[JME2]

do we know when this film happens in relation to Iron Man 3? I mean didn't Stark destroy all Iron Man tech at the end of Iron Man 3(with the possible exception of War Machine/Iron Patriot), so it could be possible that Tony Stark wasn't in a condition to help either due to fighting the Mandarin, suffering PTSD or no longer possessing the Iron Man tech.

The film takes place 2 years after the Battle of New York while Tony's third film took place 6 months after New York.

So, he's been out of the game for about 1.5 years at this point.

I also assume that Steve didn't want to risk Tony getting targeted by the conspiracy as well -- much as Tony didn't call up his buddies during the Extremis fracas.

[Gandalf]

The film takes place 2 years after the Battle of New York while Tony's third film took place 6 months after New York.

So, he's been out of the game for about 1.5 years at this point.

I also assume that Steve didn't want to risk Tony getting targeted by the conspiracy as well -- much as Tony didn't call up his buddies during the Extremis fracas.

Then why did that guy make the request for Iron Man to do a party appearance? It's an odd one if he's been retired for over a year.

[ray245]

Fury's tombstone was one of the best little things in this film series.

There is a lot I liked about this film, and a few things I found odd. Making so many people consciously part of Hydra weakened the drama. Pierce was interesting as the 21st century realpolitik drone warfare type guy, because he provided a differing perspective on how SHIELD should operate in an increasingly superpowered world. That created (at first) an interesting conflict, because Pierce was just as patriotic as Cap, but taking a very differing approach to the same ends.

Instead, we just got more pseudoNazis.

I agree, making half of SHIELD Hydra agents also removes any sort of personality from them. What is so appealing about Hydra's ideology that will actually make so many people join the secret organisation so willingly? And how on earth are you able to keep this a secret for so long when you have so many personnel involved in this massive conspiracy?

[InsaneTD]

I was a little disappointed when the big bad turned out to be hydra.

[JME2]

I was a little disappointed when the big bad turned out to be hydra.

It's not surprising -- especially when it was announced longtime HYDRA character Baron Strucker was cast for a multiple-film deal.

I was also kinda expecting it given they're among Cap's 1940's foes to survive into the modern era.

Then why did that guy make the request for Iron Man to do a party appearance? It's an odd one if he's been retired for over a year.

I assume Tony's still enough of a celebrity, even without the armor.

[streetad]

Pierce specifically asked for more than just a 'fly-by' though, which does suggest that Tony still has the suit at the very least.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I appreciated that when Pierce was listing possible targets he mentioned Stephen Strange along with Bruce Banner, I'm really hoping we get to see some Marvel supernatural goodness with the Sorcerer Supreme. Lots of great little details too, I'm pretty sure the 'Valedictorian in Iowa' is Amadaeus Cho.

[JME2]

Yeah, it's like the SHIELD global map from Iron Man 2.

Nice setup and seeds for potential future films.

Pierce specifically asked for more than just a 'fly-by' though, which does suggest that Tony still has the suit at the very least.

Maybe he could have just borrowed Rhodes' suit for the event.

[Steve]

Half of the SHIELD agents at the Triskelion being Hydra isn't the same as half of all SHIELD being Hydra, especially when Insight was about to launch. I suspect Pierce spent months quietly arranging transfers to concentrate Hydra-compromised SHIELD operatives at the Triskelion as security.

I also figure people like Pierce were recruited on the grounds of "Hard Men Making Hard Decisions", to make a brighter and more secure world. It would fit Zola's manipulation very well; have Hydra discreetly foster world disorder and terrorism, creating an environment for people like Pierce to be ready to support Hydra as the necessary antidote to bring peace and stability.

[LadyTevar]

So much goodness, and so many thing that suddenly got explained. Like "The Sandbox", which seems to be just a dropoff for Hydra to grab tech from. I'll bet most of those disposal rockets we saw on Agents of SHIELD were empty, since we see the Agent in charge is certainly Hydra.

You have to also realize that when Bucky was found and operated on to become the Winter Soldier, Zola was *already* in SHEILD custody. All the new operations? Done during/after Operation Paperclip, and prior to Zola becoming reel-to-reel.

[Alkaloid]

So, I just got back from seeing this and I gotta say I'm a little stunned.

This is bad, guys. Not like IM2 or Hulk were not great movies but were still watch able/mad some sort of sense. Bad. Really, really bad.

The plot is barely holds together as a stand alone film, as part of the MCU it's nonsensical.

The obvious first, where were the rest of the Avengers? IM3 and Thor got away with not having them because they both took place over about a day and a half (in one case mostly not on Earth) and Stark and Thor had no desire to call anyone for help because they saw the whole thing as a personal issue. That's fine. You can sell them not contacting Stark because they assume that Hydra have eyes on him, but do they seriously expect me to believe that Romanov made literally no attempt to contact Barton? The guy the Avengers established as being pretty much the only person on the planet she trusts? The guy she trusts to the point where she's satisfied he's no longer brainwashed 3 seconds after she looks at him despite the fact he was attempting to kill her 30 minutes ago? Not even an "I'm worried, I cant get word from Clint". I mean sure he might be on a mission or undercover or whatever, but you get evidence the spy agency you both work for is fatally compromised you at least make the fucking effort. (Seriously the only way I see this making sense is if everyone involved in the movie forgot Hawkeye existed or they have decided they don't want him in AOU and are just not mentioning him ever again, but he's contracted for it, so I dunno)

Nick Fury. Nick Fury in a reactionary, militant idiot and with the exception of HYDRA plants all of SHIELD is staffed by incompetent boobs. Only conclusion I can draw from that. Fury knows that HYDRA have infiltrated SHIELD and does apparently sweet fuck all about it, but carries on with his plan to build enormous flying battleships that can cleanse the world of undesirables en mass, because that is so obviously not the sort of thing HYDRA want? Or am I supposed to think Fury approves of this plan, and I'm now supposed to think the fact that he's roaming the world presumed dead, entirely unsupervised and with all the resources he hid from SHIELD and who knows how many secret underground cave bases is a good thing?

Also what the fuck is SHIELD? It has an international oversight committee but US state department personnel can give SHIELD officers orders. What they fuck is that? Who runs this thing?

Howard Stark, Peggy Carter and General Tommy Lee Jones apparently recruited and happily worked with war criminals to start SHIELD. Sure, seems reasonable. Armin Zola managed to recover Bucky and turn him into the winter soldier right under their noses. Not like they knew him or anything. Also the news story reporting Howard Starks death used a photo that was at a minimum 40 years old for some reason.

Tony Stark refuses to build weapons for anyone but himself and his best friend because he doesn't trust anyone else to use them, but he's happy to consult on the design of their floating pre emptive execution platforms. He got over the whole "I nearly died because SHIELD got panicky and tried to nuke Manhattan" thing, apparently.

Also, for fucks sake writing staff. Stark telling a senate committee to fuck off because the "I no longer make weapons for the US government, you have no way to make me legal or otherwise and you can't take what I have because you have no way to stop my supersonic flying laser tank short of nuking my Miami home, also the public love me and I haven't really done anything wrong yet" argument, while not really being good or sensible at least makes sense in context. Romanovs "OK mistakes were made and our entire organisation was secretly the exact thing it was supposed to be fighting against, but we're the only people good enough to stop them so neener neener" does not.

Using Sitwell like that was a waste. He's a fairly well established minor character in the shorts and in Agents of SHIELD who appears in this movie behaving entirely differently to how he has in every other appearance and is killed. I'm pretty sure the only reason he was involved at all is to try and convince people that Agents really is part of the same universe.

The first half of the movie was good, but it smells to me like this was supposed to be the Hawkeye and Black Widow movie everyone was saying they wanted that was re scripted to a Cap film for some reason. Seriously, you change Cap to Barton for pretty much everything up to the bunker it still makes sense, then carry it on from there as a Bourne style spy/action thriller with them trying to expose the corruption in SHIELDS ranks rather than flying battleship warfare and it makes a lot more sense.

[Tsyroc]

So, I just got back from seeing this and I gotta say I'm a little stunned.

This is bad, guys. Not like IM2 or Hulk were not great movies but were still watch able/mad some sort of sense. Bad. Really, really bad.

The plot is barely holds together as a stand alone film, as part of the MCU it's nonsensical.

The obvious first, where were the rest of the Avengers? IM3 and Thor got away with not having them because they both took place over about a day and a half (in one case mostly not on Earth) and Stark and Thor had no desire to call anyone for help because they saw the whole thing as a personal issue. That's fine. You can sell them not contacting Stark because they assume that Hydra have eyes on him, but do they seriously expect me to believe that Romanov made literally no attempt to contact Barton? The guy the Avengers established as being pretty much the only person on the planet she trusts? The guy she trusts to the point where she's satisfied he's no longer brainwashed 3 seconds after she looks at him despite the fact he was attempting to kill her 30 minutes ago? Not even an "I'm worried, I cant get word from Clint". I mean sure he might be on a mission or undercover or whatever, but you get evidence the spy agency you both work for is fatally compromised you at least make the fucking effort. (Seriously the only way I see this making sense is if everyone involved in the movie forgot Hawkeye existed or they have decided they don't want him in AOU and are just not mentioning him ever again, but he's contracted for it, so I dunno)

They don't know what is really going on for a large portion of the movie. During that time they couldn't call anyone or risk being tracked. The strike team found them at the computer store in 9 minutes. It wouldn't really pay to try to drop a call to Hawkeye. It's unlikely he'd be much help anyway. Stark might have been able to help and he did come to my mind when they were talking about decripting the flash drive but who knows if he's even some place they could get to him without being caught. The last bit, where it would have been really nice to have the Avengers, they were in a time crunch and who knows how to contact the Avengers other than Tony Stark? Maybe they could have got ahold of Rodey and maybe War Machine/Iron Patriot could have helped.

Hopefully one of the Avengers movies will get them to figure out a quick way to get in touch and get together for emergencies.

Nick Fury. Nick Fury in a reactionary, militant idiot and with the exception of HYDRA plants all of SHIELD is staffed by incompetent boobs. Only conclusion I can draw from that. Fury knows that HYDRA have infiltrated SHIELD and does apparently sweet fuck all about it, but carries on with his plan to build enormous flying battleships that can cleanse the world of undesirables en mass, because that is so obviously not the sort of thing HYDRA want? Or am I supposed to think Fury approves of this plan, and I'm now supposed to think the fact that he's roaming the world presumed dead, entirely unsupervised and with all the resources he hid from SHIELD and who knows how many secret underground cave bases is a good thing?

Nick said that he recognized that Hydra had infiltrated SHIELD. He just noticed too late and didn't get far enough ahead of it. He also probably didn't expect that the guy who got him into SHIELD was part of Hydra.

Fury disappearing and roaming the Earth has been his thing off and on since the 60s. Sometimes he's mostly alone. Sometimes he has a small group. More recently he essentially had his own ex-SHEILD army, complete with a couple of helicarriers. I am really interested to see what they do with Fury and other SHEILD fallout. It could make or break the TV show. After this movie the TV show seems incredibly week to be tied so strongly to the cinematic universe and up until now I'd been enjoying it even if it was only so-so.

Also what the fuck is SHIELD? It has an international oversight committee but US state department personnel can give SHIELD officers orders. What they fuck is that? Who runs this thing?

It would be nice if they clarified what SHIELD was and that it was an arm of the UN or something. It certainly seems like it with an international security council providing oversite.

Howard Stark, Peggy Carter and General Tommy Lee Jones apparently recruited and happily worked with war criminals to start SHIELD. Sure, seems reasonable. Armin Zola managed to recover Bucky and turn him into the winter soldier right under their noses. Not like they knew him or anything. Also the news story reporting Howard Starks death used a photo that was at a minimum 40 years old for some reason.

Zola started working on Bucky twice before Zola was captured in the first movie. First Bucky was being experimented on before Cap busted him out. Then Bucky was found after falling off of the train and losing his arm. Sometime after that Zola was captured but Hydra kept him going after that.

Unfortunately the US, UK and the USSR were more than willing to use the expertise of former Nazis in real life. I expect that "General Tommy Lee Jones" was a complete dick to Zola, but he alway seemed very pragmatic to me. Howard was probably interested enough in Zola's ideas that he got over the Hydra stuff, for the most part. Peggy probably kept a wary eye on him. Plus, in the first CA movie, Zola seemed much more into being able to do his scientific stuff and not so much in being a Nazi or a hard core member of Hydra. I guess he was interested in Hydra beyond what they allowed him to do.

Tony Stark refuses to build weapons for anyone but himself and his best friend because he doesn't trust anyone else to use them, but he's happy to consult on the design of their floating pre emptive execution platforms. He got over the whole "I nearly died because SHIELD got panicky and tried to nuke Manhattan" thing, apparently.

That tends to bug me too. I think they tried to work around that by Fury's comments about working around the comments Stark made after getting a close up view of their turbo fans (or whatever). I'm not sure how much Stark really contributed to what they built. He's had a habit of saying or writing some genius stuff and thinking nothing of it and it proves useful to other people. That was a big part of Iron Man 3, and it also bit him in the ass in Iron Man 2 when Vanko took his advice about upping the cycles, so I can see something similar coming out of him spouting off about what he would do if he wanted to keep a flying fortress of death in the air.

Also, for fucks sake writing staff. Stark telling a senate committee to fuck off because the "I no longer make weapons for the US government, you have no way to make me legal or otherwise and you can't take what I have because you have no way to stop my supersonic flying laser tank short of nuking my Miami home, also the public love me and I haven't really done anything wrong yet" argument, while not really being good or sensible at least makes sense in context. Romanovs "OK mistakes were made and our entire organisation was secretly the exact thing it was supposed to be fighting against, but we're the only people good enough to stop them so neener neener" does not.

She kind of had them over a barrell at the time. Plus she's the one that sent all the information out. Technically she also helped save several hundred million lives. I'm betting it had more to do with them having way too much on their plate to stop her at the time. Presumably they were using all of their assets rounding up actual Hydra agents and trying to deal with that whole mess. Otherwise I think their response would have been to lock her up and then settle on what to do with her later. That certainly seems to be the US' m.o. these days. It would be nice if they used this in some future film, maybe a Black Widow film, where it does come back on her.

Using Sitwell like that was a waste. He's a fairly well established minor character in the shorts and in Agents of SHIELD who appears in this movie behaving entirely differently to how he has in every other appearance and is killed. I'm pretty sure the only reason he was involved at all is to try and convince people that Agents really is part of the same universe.

I'm undecided on that. I really liked him in the One-Shots he was in but I was spoiled as to him being a Hydra agent. I'm leaning slightly more towards I didn't like it. Speaking of the One-Shots. I'm really hoping that the Abomination makes another appearance. Hopefully looking more like his comic self. If he's all jacked on the power now he sure as hell could be an easy Hydra pawn if they can get him out of The Freezer.

The first half of the movie was good, but it smells to me like this was supposed to be the Hawkeye and Black Widow movie everyone was saying they wanted that was re scripted to a Cap film for some reason. Seriously, you change Cap to Barton for pretty much everything up to the bunker it still makes sense, then carry it on from there as a Bourne style spy/action thriller with them trying to expose the corruption in SHIELDS ranks rather than flying battleship warfare and it makes a lot more sense.

I disagree. I liked Jeremy Renner in his Bourne movie but I don't see that working for Hawkeye. He makes more sense to me as a member of the strike team (where was he!). In the comics Cap has a fairly significant history of political intrigue and doing what is right no matter what, so this works for me.

The one thing I didn't like is that they overdid it with The Falcon flying around through all the flack and stuff. I thought he was cool and all but I think they went overboard with it and to me it just screamed, "here's the cool 3-D part for those of you who wanted 3-D".

I got a kick out of Jenny Agutter kicking ass. I was so pleasantly surprised that I was not expecting it to be Black Window and not her, which is pretty sad on my part.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I Don't think Stark "helped design the new helicarriers" so much as "suggested a few things to improve their engines." It's entirely possible he had no idea that the new carriers would be anything more than the one from Avengers was, a mobile base. Especially after seeing the problems they had after taking damage to one engine.

[Gandalf]

Part of me likes the idea that following the events of The Avengers and IM3, Stark has moved slightly back into the military industrial complex, realising that his ego driven "privatisation of world peace" was broken. Maybe he doesn't make weapons for the US to shoot at Afghan children, but rather ones for SHIELD to shoot at assorted aliens and monsters.

[LadyTevar]

I Don't think Stark "helped design the new helicarriers" so much as "suggested a few things to improve their engines." It's entirely possible he had no idea that the new carriers would be anything more than the one from Avengers was, a mobile base. Especially after seeing the problems they had after taking damage to one engine.

I took the "Upclose look" as a reference to how Stark restarted the engine and wound up getting smacked around by the turbines. One touch shout-out, one touch "I never want to do that again, here's how to fix that engine permanently".

I excused the fact Capt & Widow never reached out to anyone simply by the fact they were on the run, and it would raise suspicions if Hawkeye, Banner or Stark suddenly relocated. We already knew they were under SHEILD observation, so that made sense to me. Cap and Widow had to go to someone "off the radar", and Falcon was it. They just got lucky that Falcon was as capable as he was.

My next question is to wonder how many times the Winter Soldier was frozen and re-thawed for a mission. There was a throw-away line about Bucky "being unfrozen too long", before they wiped him again. It made me think he'd been kept as a literal frozen asset, thawed out only long enough for a mission before thrown back until storage. Now he's out, and a whole lot of catching up to do.

[SCRawl]

My next question is to wonder how many times the Winter Soldier was frozen and re-thawed for a mission. There was a throw-away line about Bucky "being unfrozen too long", before they wiped him again. It made me think he'd been kept as a literal frozen asset, thawed out only long enough for a mission before thrown back until storage. Now he's out, and a whole lot of catching up to do.

I also found it interesting that he was well accustomed to taking the ECT treatments, which brings into question exactly what a "wipe" entailed. Clearly it can't be something like a near-complete memory wipe, or else he would have forgotten about the treatments as well. So is it supposed to be an erasure of just recent events, to remove any "confusion"?

[LadyTevar]

I think you've got the right idea SCRawl. This was to keep him controlled, focused, obedient. Cap's appearance shook Bucky badly, so a second wipe was needed, and even then, Bucky was chanting "you're my mission, you're my mission" far too much for it not to show he was breaking down again.
At least, that was my take on that scene. Then, the "end of the line" comment stopped him cold, and he finally broke programming enough to save Cap and run away to find himself.

[Replicant]

I enjoyed the movie and the overall plot was a great Hydra fairly out there kind of plot. Yes lets seize the world by killing 20 million people which will instantly cow the rest of the planet, uh huh sure.

The movie was a pretty strong damning of Fury and Shield in general. The American Director (Redford) is an agent of Hydra and the group has so much power within Shield that they have the Winter Soldier hidden away and pull him out anytime needed, Shield's elite strike teams are Hyda agents, and they seem to have no problem acquiring Loki's staff, which I would expect everyone would have been very interested in considering its mind control powers.

The plan though left a lot of questions. Sure it was going to kill a lot of people in the immediate area. But it would not kill Stark, and when he puts on his new favorite Iron Man suite he is going to make complete mincemeat of those carriers. It is also going to do shit all against Thor who is likely not on planet and will fry them as easily as he friend a couple of those Space Whales when he went all uber Lightning God on them.

Even their target list made no sense. If Steven Strange is the current Sorcerer Supreme then targeting him is only going to get his attention. The same with Bruce Banner, shooting him is not going to kill him, its just going to unleash the hulk. Either one of them has the power to obliterate a carrier.

I am thinking that if expanded on, this plan was actually a false front, Redford and computer Hydra guy, and the various Hydra agents among Shield that new this plan were being played. They were told this was to unify, pacify, and unite the world, but in reality its intended goal was to cause even more chaos and weaken Earth in general.

The fact that such a hair-brained plan was implemented after decades of Hydra hiding in the showers and playing things off quietly suggests that new influence was at work. Maybe the staff being on Earth, being "studied" by Hydra is actually there on purpose. The whole Avengers movie plan being nothing more than a way to safely get it onto Earth and into the right hands so the Red Skull, working for/with Thanos can influence things. His influence may explain why Hydra decided to be so in your face so suddenly with a flawed plan when they had done so much better from the Shadows for so long.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Well Stark did get far closer to the engines on the first helicarrier than anyone else so if anyone could suggest improvements it would be him And Hulk would only be a threat to a Helicarrier if he can jump high enough to reach one

[Havok]

Saw it last night. Thought it was great.
Technically well paced, well scored, enough for everyone to do, plenty of character development and plausible and believable bad guys.

Redford was great as Pierce and really aside from whacking his own cleaning lady, it wasn't terribly hard to understand exactly what his motives were and to almost sympathize with them.

Having Zola back was great, especially in all the tape driven banks. His exposition as to what happened to not only himself but Hydra and SHIELD felt seamless. I also have to say it is the absolute best explanation for a villain yet. I mean, yeah Hydra already existed, but the reasons fit in perfectly with what Captain America was struggling with and butting heads with Fury over: How much can you use your enemies tactics before you become just like him, or even the enemy itself.

There was a little more insight into Fury and that is always good.

I was a tad bit disappointed with the Bucky/Winter Soldier arc, not because of how it played out, that was fine, but with the fact that I felt it could have gone over two movies.

I think this was the best showing yet for the Black Widow. You felt and saw her move past espionage double/triple SHIELD agent hung up on and running from her past to superhero big player Avenger status. You can see that she is developing genuine trust and receiving it back from them and it's no longer just the mission, but the people on her team.

As for Cap, it was the perfect stepping stone for him into the modern world, ironically by confronting what his old world enemy had become. Unlike the Jedi/Sith dynamic, where the Sith adapted and the Jedi didn't and that is what caused their downfall, Hydra adapted while Cap reaffirmed his "outdated" sense of what is right and wrong and it was that that won the day while everyone around him was bending and allowing their own sense of morals and beliefs to be muddied. It reaffirms what Coulson told Cap in the first movie, that he was just what the world needed right now and now Cap really understands that now and knows he has a place in the modern world.

I liked how they introduced and used Sam and it didn't seem like they tried to force him on the audience. He provides a nice foothold for Cap into the modern world by showing him that it's still the same for soldiers no matter the era. The suit was a little silly, although it always has been, but the reasons for it and it's use make sense in universe given all the other tech.

I didn't have an issue with them not contacting the Avengers. This was an internal government/SHIELD issue. Thor is from a different country, Stark is a private business man, Hawkeye was probably off on some mission, Banner would be overkill. Captain America didn't need any more help with this than he needed in his first movie. He had Sam, Natasha and Fury. What does Iron Man do in this situation that Widow can't as far as tech? Really the only time they help is flying to each Helicarrier at the very end of the movie. Cap, Widow and Fury wanted to all be low key and be sneaky, the last three people you want to call are HULK SMASH!, FOR ASGARD TASTE THE MIGHT OF MJOLNIR! and the most famous guy in the world Tony Stark.

They make sense at the end of the movie to call in, like I said, but I presume there are sufficient reasons in-universe to not do so.

As for Hydra/SHIELD Cap makes it pretty clear that it is only the Strike and Insight specific teams that are Hydra. Basically, the SWAT guys and the carrier crews.

[JME2]

For anyone wondering if the HYDRA takeover had been planned since Iron Man, Kevin Feige confirms that it wasn't part of the plan.

They didn't come up with the idea until just before they finished shooting The Avengers.

I wonder if that's part of why Senator Stern was revealed to be an operative -- to retroactively link the HYDRA conspiracy to earlier events in the MCU (similar to what the Cadmus arc did for the DC Animated Universe).

[Block]

So I didn't know there was a second scene after the credits, did anyone catch what it was? I saw the whole Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch one.

[Gandalf]

It's Winter Soldier in a disguise visiting the Captain America exhibit at the Smithsonian and seeing the exhibit about himself.

[Havok]

For anyone wondering if the HYDRA takeover had been planned since Iron Man, Kevin Feige confirms that it wasn't part of the plan.

They didn't come up with the idea until just before they finished shooting The Avengers.

I wonder if that's part of why Senator Stern was revealed to be an operative -- to retroactively link the HYDRA conspiracy to earlier events in the MCU (similar to what the Cadmus arc did for the DC Animated Universe).

It may not have been part of the plan, but it should have been. It's the exact way Hydra would adapt. They've also already shown them adapting just this way in other media IIRC. It's a good adaptation to the facts they established.

[Havok]

Pierce specifically asked for more than just a 'fly-by' though, which does suggest that Tony still has the suit at the very least.

There's no doubt Tony still has the suit. Considering his PTSD, re-commitment to Pepper and his having to rebuild his home and workshop, that coupled with the fact that Hawkeye, Widow and Cap are running missions for SHIELD, there may simply not be much call for Iron Man at the moment.

Remember his first movie was an origin, the second was him having to deal with other arc reactor/armors and the third, the Mandarin, all personal issues. Outside of the Avengers movie, where he was called in to deal with Loki and Thor, which became an invasion of Earth, he wasn't exactly having weekly Marvel Team-Ups.

In all reality it would make far more sense to have Rhodes show up and help out, but with Fury out of action and no reason to think Pierce was anything but a good guy, why would he?