Loving ‘Falcon and Winter Soldier”s Wyatt Russell? Watch these movies now
You have to be pretty brave to follow in the footsteps of Chris Evans as Captain America. Those are some mighty big shoes to fill, and it doesn’t help that Wyatt Russell’s character in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier seems designed to fail miserably at being the new Cap. Of course, that’s what makes Russell’s John Walker so compelling to watch: it’s a Captain-America-themed trainwreck and we can’t look away!
We only have two weeks ahead of us before The Falcon and the Winter Soldier ends its run and we’re left to wonder when Wyatt Russell will show up in the MCU next – assuming he survives the next two episodes of the show. So what to do to quench this newly awakened Wyatt-thirst spreading throughout the world?
Fear not! We have a few movie recommendations that should help you cope with the time in between new John Walker appearances. Also, there’s no way they’d kill Wyatt Russell’s super soldier so soon after introducing him, right? He needs to become the USAgent and all that!
22 Jump Street
The sequel to the surprisingly popular 21 Jump Street marks Wyatt Russell’s official breakthrough into the mainstream. How do we know that? Because the young actor was nominated for the 16th Teen Choice Awards, in the category of “Choice Movie: Breakout Star”. And even though Russell ended up losing to Ansel Elgort and his two-punch of The Fault in Our Stars and Divergent, we all knew who the real winner was.
22 Jump Street gave us a Wyatt Russell who was charming enough to disrupt the friendship between Jonah Hill & Channing Tatum’s undercover detectives, and shady enough to make us wonder if he was the movie’s villain all along. In the end, while Hill & Tatum’s characters were able to mend their relationship, audiences were unable to shake off the spell Russell put them under.
Everybody Wants Some!!
Richard Linklater’s underrated nostalgia trip to the 80s gave Wyatt Russell a chance to shine among its ensemble cast. Russell’s Charlie Willoughby doesn’t even get to stick around for the whole movie (we won’t spoil why, because it’s a doozy of a reveal), but the actor makes such an impression that you’ll find yourself missing Willoughby long after he’s gone.
Everybody Wants Some!! follows the adventures of a Texas college baseball team a few days before the semester begins. It’s basically a hangout movie, a bunch of dudes chillin’, talking about girls, going to the occasional party, and doing baseball stuff every now & then. Wyatt Russell excels at playing the wiser-beyond-his-years Willoughby – a character many have interpreted as a stand-in for Linklater himself.
Goon: Last of the Enforcers
Fun fact: before dedicating his life to acting, and waaaaay before he was an MCU super soldier, Wyatt Russell was a hockey player. The future New Cap had to quit the sport due to injuries, but his hockey experiences have come in handy in a few of his film projects. Case in point, this sequel to the 2011 sports comedy Goon, in which Russell gets to play the nemesis to Seann William Scott’s protagonist.
You could argue that, being the son of Kurt Russell & Goldie Hawn, Wyatt Russell was always destined for the big screen. Still, there’s an alternate timeline where he didn’t suffer major injuries and continued playing hockey and maybe he cameoed in Goon: Last of the Enforcers for fun, but never truly pursued acting. In that timeline, it’s entirely possible John Walker would be played by Zac Efron.
Overlord
If there’s a Wyatt Russell movie that foreshadows his future role in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, it’s most definitely this zombie horror war flick. Russell plays Corporal Lewis Ford, a paratrooper and explosives expert leading a secret mission in Nazi territory during World War II. To call the character Captain-American-esque is an understatement.
The film offers plenty of thrills and opportunities for Wyatt Russell to show how much of a bad@ss he can be (did we mention there are Nazi zombies in this movie?), and we wouldn’t be surprised if this ended up working as his unofficial MCU audition. Now, will we ever see John Walker fight the undead in the Marvel Cinematic Universe? We can only hope.
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Do you have a favorite Wyatt Russell role we haven’t mentioned? Let us know in the comments!
