Rarely in big name movie franchises, you get certain movies that change the outlook of the entire series. When Darth Vader revealed himself as Luke’s father in “Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back,” that changed the outlook of the franchise. While “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” doesn’t possess a moment like that, the film possesses a series of moments that will have resounding effects on all Marvel related films going forward.

Chris Evans puts on the suit for a third time in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.” This time he brings Natasha Romanoff, also known as the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) with him for this crazy adventure.

For this movie, Captain America faces his biggest threat yet in the Winter Soldier, a Terminator-like assassin who is well known in comic book lore. We are also introduced to new characters to the film franchise such as S.H.I.E.L.D. executive Alexander Pierce (Robert Redford) and Sam Wilson as The Falcon (Anthony Mackie).

Now that we got the plot mentions and new characters out of the way, let’s discuss what made this movie great. First of all, Chris Evans’ truly owns the role of Captain America. In the first Captain America film, Evans was only tasked to play this upstanding American hero who seemingly trusted everyone around him at all times. That’s not the case at all in this film. Evans needed to convey that Captain America was in truly grave danger and could trust absolutely no one around him, and he succeeded in doing that.

Another bright spot in this move is how Scarlett Johansson has embedded herself into the role of the Black Widow. While she was underutilized in 2012’s “The Avengers,” we get even more of her which allows us to learn more about her. She holds her own throughout the actions scenes, which was expected, and her lines are delivered in a way that pulls you in and makes you focus on her character.

As far as the Winter Soldier aspect of the film, he is everything comic book fans needed him to be. When he first appears on screen, you find yourself clamoring to find out more about him and his purpose throughout the film. While his true identity is possibly the worst kept secret in the history of all comic books, it was amazing to see how they tied it into the bigger storyline and he only makes the film better.

There are truly some dark moments throughout that test these characters like we haven’t seen before not only in this franchise, but any super hero movie before. And to that, all credit should go to the directors of the film, Anthony and Joe Russo. Considering they were mainly known for directing various episodes of the television shows “Community” and “Arrested Development,” they hit this film out of the park.

Some of the action scenes were some of the best to be put on screen and everything was put in its appropriate place. Since the story is so complex, it would have been easy for some intricacies of the story to get lost in the shuffle. But luckily the Russo brothers were able to tell a complex story with various levels in a simple way for the audience to understand.

Overall, “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” serves itself as a great stand alone film that works as a classic political thriller. At certain points of the film, you forget that this is considered a “superhero” movie and you find yourself focused solely on this very layered and complex plot. This is an essential movie for fans of the Marvel franchise, both old and new.

While you won’t find any spoilers here, I’ll just say this; be prepared to have your mind blown. As a side note, stay until after the credits, you won’t be disappointed.