How Honest Trailers Made 'Captain America: The Winter Soldier' A Better Movie

Screen Junkies revels in knocking films down a notch with their Honest Trailers series, but when it came to Captain America: The Winter Soldier even they had to admit the film was pretty damn good. ("What? We had to be honest.") Turns out, it was the Honest Trailers themselves that (unknowingly) helped make the film so great. Hit the jump to find out how.

What's so funny is that I'm an avid honest trailer watcher. I love it, it cracks me up. So I think we talked about it in the commentary we used to sit in the room and go, "this is not going to end up in an Honest Trailer. This logic isn't sound enough yet." We literally tried to Honest Trailer proof the movie. Because what Honest Trailers really is, and I'll say litmus test again, is "how sound is the logic in your film? How ridiculous are the buys that you're asking the audience to make?" So we would just comb through the script over and over again and go, "how do we shore up this logic? How do we shore up this logic?" So it was a very helpful exercise for us.

Personally, I still have a few nitpicks including "Why is Alexander Pierce so stingy with his milk?" and "When did Black Widow have time to blow-dry and straighten her hair?" Still, as plot-heavy movies go, Captain America: The Winter Soldier is indeed pretty coherent.

In fact, the world might be a better place if more people took a page out of the Russos' book. Imagine how much better The Dark Knight Rises would have been if the whole thing hadn't been one giant plot hole, for example.

Watch the Captain America: The Winter Soldier Honest Trailer below.