Ten years is a pretty long time, yes. But time passes a little differently for Captain America. In the original comics, Cap was frozen in time as 20 years passed without him; in the movies, nearly 70 years went by, bringing him from World War II to the 2010s. He waited plenty off-screen, too: It took the character 50 years to be featured in a full-length theatrically released live-action film (there were serials, TV movies, and animation before then), and another 21 years after that to appear in one that people actually saw or liked. By comparison, the decade that has now passed since Captain America: The Winter Soldier, his second solo outing in the MCU, feels like practically nothing. The more daunting number that’s passed is Marvel movies. The Winter Soldier was the ninth MCU feature in 2014 – six years into the studio’s project. Since then, there have been two-dozen more.

It’s all the more impressive, then, that Captain America: The Winter Soldier remains a gold standard of sorts among that ever-growing list of Marvel projects. Nearly every mainstream entertainment website is obligated to rank MCU movies (and re-rank them, and explain how to watch them in timeline order, and re-explain how to watch them in theatrically released order, and so on), and it’s hard to find a list where The Winter Soldier doesn’t land near the top. Its directors, Joe and Anthony Russo, did such a great job that they were promoted to the big time; not only did they make a sequel do this movie, they made the sequels to end all Marvel movies (if not quite literally), with Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, both of which were also written by The Winter Soldier’s screenwriters. The MCU was essentially remade in this movie’s image – which is why it’s also partially responsible for the series’ many shortcomings.

Taken on its own, a decade later, Captain America: The Winter Soldier holds up as well as the Captain himself. In telling the story of Steve Rogers (Evans) uncovering an evil conspiracy at the heart of his employers at S.H.I.E.L.D. and grappling with his place in the modern crimefighting world, it manages the neat trick of remaining focused on Cap himself, with Chris Evans giving one of his best and most steadfast performances, while also shining a spotlight on MCU supporting characters. Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow gets more to do than ever, and this is up there with her solo movie and the first Avengers movie as the best showcase for this enigmatic character; Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury also gets more notes to play than sardonic authority, and the movie ably introduces an MCU staple in the form of Anthony Mackie’s Falcon. For a look at far afield this balancing act can wander, you need only check out Captain America: Civil War, the follow-up to Winter Soldier, which is plenty of fun but so overstuffed that it feels like a de facto Avengers sequel more than a Cap adventure.

This well-honed ensemble full of charming movie-star performances makes it easy to see why Winter Soldier crossed over to the less comics-devoted crowd in a way that, say, earlier Thor movies, or even the first Cap film, did not. Like the Iron Man series and The Avengers (the rising tide that lifted all MCU sequels going forward), The Winter Soldier is set in the present-day, on Earth, in recognizable settings – even more so, really, than the Stark-related outings where Tony’s life of wealth and luxury is always there to lend a helping hand. The ground-level action – shoot-outs and fights on a highway overpass; Nick Fury escaping an attack on his SUV; Captain America kicking ass inside an elevator – hides the digital trickery often involved in depicting superhuman feats, forming a bridge from TNT-style cable-rewatch classics of yore, like the Jack Ryan or Jason Bourne movies, to FX-era endless Sunday-afternoon superhero marathons.

And while the Russos may have overstated the movie’s connection to “paranoid ’70s conspiracy thrillers” in the press – casting Robert Redford does not make you Three Days of the Condor – as far as PR-based claims about MCU genre work, it’s one of the more plausible ones. There’s lower-fi charm in scenes where Cap and Black Widow skulk around a mall, using internet access at a tech store to do some on-the-fly research, and kissing to avoid detection. It’s just about a perfect mix of superhero fantasy bullshit and characters who keep human concerns in sight.

So why would future Marvel movies imitating Winter Soldier represent any kind of problem? As is often the case with latter-day MCU, the answer comes down to style. The Winter Soldier was the dreariest and most overcast-looking entry in the series through this point, and its muted color palette makes sense for the grayish murk of its quasi-political intrigue. It’s not a swashbuckling adventure; it’s a concrete-level chases-and-shootings action-thriller. Yet somehow this cloudy, white-sky aesthetic became a dominating one within the MCU. Perhaps woozy from the praise of its artistic success on Winter Soldier, the producers seemed to intentionally cast a pall over some of its most potentially splashy productions: Doctor Strange, the Jon Watts Spider-Man movies, even the momentarily lush Shang-Chi all inspiring mutterings of “why does it all have to look like this?” It’s particularly galling in the Russos’ own Infinity War, where galaxy-traversing adventures still manage to retain that Winter Soldier concrete-and-glass coloring. What made sense for one particular movie became a nonsensical house style, right down to the falling-airship climax that so many later MCU movies copied, whether more literally or in spirit.

Though The Winter Soldier has story ramifications for future MCU installments, it isn’t larded up with Easter eggs and stealth trailers for the next thing. Yet even its creative triumphs became commodified in the decade since its release. By virtue of having some perfect little bits of called-back dialogue (“On your left!”), the movie seemed to do its part in convincing later-2010s Disney that every satisfying moment of screenwriting should get milked into an apparel-ready character-defining catchphrase. (They could, in fact, do this all day.) It’s the kind of branding that makes the world of these movies seem smaller, more insular, more fake – and to feed it, superhero screenplays became increasingly dotted with mechanical, unfunny laugh lines, like catchphrase insurance.

Maybe that’s a silly complaint about a movie where a brainwashed robot-armed assassin fights his unfrozen supersoldier bestie while a former KGB agent keeps her hair looking impeccable throughout urban combat. But Captain America: The Winter Soldier is such satisfying popcorn entertainment that to rewatch it can induce nostalgia for the zippier Marvel adventures crushed by all that big-franchise machinery. Marvel has made plenty of good stuff in the past decade – including Black Panther, which arguably dethroned Winter Soldier for the title of Consensus Best. What’s harder to picture now is a pair of directors known mostly for high-quality sitcoms heading up to majors and upping their action-movie game. For the time being, Marvel looks, more than ever, like S.H.I.E.L.D.: Not evil itself, but too big and powerful to recognize when it’s going wrong.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.

Stream Captain America: The Winter Soldier on Disney+