“The Winter Soldier” also deals with hot-button issues. As production got under way in 2013, producer Kevin Feige announced that the movie would be a “political thriller.” But it is almost the antithesis of “The Dark Knight.” Whereas the “Batman” sequel served as a defense of American behavior in the post-9/11 world, the “Captain America” sequel is a scathing critique, lobbing rhetorical bombs at drone warfare, the surveillance state and the idea of waging a war on terror rather than regarding it as a matter for police action. …

In one of the more chilling portions of the film, a long-thought-dead scientist resurrected as a computer program informs our heroes that in the Internet age, everyone’s life is an open book. S.H.I.E.L.D.’s NSA-style surveillance capabilities and the proliferation of personal and professional information online allow an expertly crafted algorithm to predict who will make trouble for Hydra. The villains plan on using this algorithm to identify troublemakers around the world, whom the helicarriers will execute en masse.

The president’s ability to pre-emptively kill people was on the minds of the filmmakers throughout “The Winter Soldier’s” production. “The question is where do you stop?” Joe Russo, who directed the film with brother Anthony, told Mother Jones magazine. “If there are 100 people we can kill to make us safer, do we do it? What if we find out there’s 1,000? What if we find out there’s 10,000? What if it’s a million?” The Russos have obviously made up their minds: With a little help from his friends, Cap destroys S.H.I.E.L.D. entirely at the film’s close.