Originally Posted by
Sharpandpointies
I would have zero problems with Bucky having a good chance of winning against the melee fighters alone. Here, he's against a group that's backed up by an archer with absolutely stellar accuracy feats, who also happens to be faster - reflex-wise - than Bucky himself. As Bucky has no feats for moving faster than the eye can follow. And Bucky would need to cross 100' distance between the two groups, then deal with the fight while the archer continues to plunk arrows into unfortunate places. But against the melee fighters alone, he'll make it into melee. He'll have a rough go of it once he arrives there, based on his performance against name-level characters of any skill, but should have a decent chance.
What I disagree with is some of your assessment, which requires clarifying.
I would disagree with the 'more skilled' part. The second Bucky goes up against someone who is physically his equal, and not a perfectly normal human, he gets hit. A LOT. As an example, look at his fight with Walker. Walker basically beats all hell out of him - Bucky is flat-out losing that fight, with Walker landing more hits than he does.
In this case, his skill is getting compared against:
1. A dude who has about 70 years of experience/training, who fights his way across a battlefield over the course of several hours and doesn't take a single injury;
2. A dude who has probably at least as much experience, who fights his way through a pitched battle explicitly cutting heads off his enemies, kills some 50 of them this way, and gets hit once in that entire mess.
3. A dude who, lightly armored, casually stomps a group of 'dozens' of enemies before the rest flee, then gets attacked by over a hundred enemies loosing a 'rain' of arrows at him, and manages to avoid most of said rain. And when he's sitting there full of arrows his enemies leave over twenty more of their people behind to finish him, he then gets up and proceeds to murder all of that group.
That thanks to the detail of television we get to see a lot of acrobatic martial arts and fancy knife use from Bucky doesn't change the fact that again, Bucky eats a lot of hits. He powers through them, but let's have a look at his fights.
1. Fighting Tony Stark, he tussles with Tony. Sure, he has been hit with some blinding stuff before this, but it's explicit in the film this barely affects him. Tony and he do a little tussle for the gun, which is fun, then when he and Stark are standing facing each other after Stark disarms him, Tony backfists him across the face from a standing start - hit lands;
2. Sharon Carter and Widow fight him next, and land hits on him. That's in a two-on-one situation, and if we're going with the idea that Bucky is faster than normals (he is), it's not a great showing for Bucky with regards to skill. Had this been, for example, Boromir and Gimli, Bucky would be potentially missing parts of his body (including his head, which sounds outlandish until one realizes Gimli decapitates between 40 and 50 orcs in a single battle, and those dudes were armored);
3. The 'super-soldiers' in Falcon and Winter Soldier are civilians, essentially, who have been enhanced. They seem to be at least somewhat trained, but they're not 'super-special trained villains' or anything. In groups (and alone) they land all kinds of hits on Bucky.
4. John Walker, Super-Soldier, beats the living crap out of Bucky.
Bucky takes a whole lot of hits, in contrast to a group of guys whose feats are basically 'annihilate everyone they face in battle, only losing when there's over a hundred guys with a large contingent of archers who are noted to loose "rains" of arrows at them...and despite being shot full of arrows, still win against twenty enemies'.
I am absolutely not convinced on the point of Bucky being 'more skilled' than they are. I would actually tend more toward the idea that there's an argument to be made in the opposite direction. Just because there isn't fancy choreography in the actual writing of the Lord of the Rings does not invalidate the feats of the characters, just as fancy choreography doesn't automatically make for fantastic skill.
Second, your assertion that Bucky will 'trivially' break any of the weapons here falls flat when it comes face to face with Andúril. The Flame of the West was originally forged by Telchar of Nogrod, a guy who makes knives that 'cut iron like rude cloth'. It takes Sauron to bust this sword, at a time where Sauron is putting off enough heat to incinerate people he's fighting against. It gets reforged by the immortal smiths of Imladris. Aragorn, for example, uses it to split an iron helmet in half (and the skull beneath said iron helmet). No big deal, sword fine.
This is not something Bucky is 'trivially' breaking.
Lastly, the idea that he's casually one-shotting these people through armor and even a shield. Let's take Boromir as an example. Boromir is a guy who literally forces his way through packed snow that's to the height of his chest in order to make a trail for people behind him. He does this for an extended length of time, while carrying all kinds of stuff as well. He eats a whole whack of arrows (many) in the books, and proceeds to kill his way through twenty+ more enemies after that, stopping because there are no more enemies to kill. He then sits around and waits a while for Aragorn to show up before kicking off.
Given that Bucky hits normals with his arm and they don't die or explode, I'm having problems seeing him casually one-shotting Boromir. Through his shield.
Mileage may vary.