Since this is starting up on Friday, March 19th, I figured we should have a dedicated thread to discuss it with spoilers.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Thread – SPOILERS INSIDE!!!
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Didn’t old Steve just return to his alternate reality, though?
Note: Steve died on the way back to his alternate reality
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(with those theories mentioned in episode one that he’s in a base on the moon).
He’s in the Summer House, and this is how they’re getting the X-Men into the MCU
Something something Mephisto
It was Agatha all along.
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The thing with Steve is that his actor is now out of contract and you just shouldn’t ask any questions. Simple.
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It’s not like Evans left in a huff or anything though. I wouldn’t be shocked if we see some kind of small scene with old Steve in the finale, maybe reacting to Sam taking up the shield or sailing away on the boat at the end.
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Old Steve and Isaiah doing something about those damn kids.
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Honestly though, did he go back? All I remember from Endgame is him giving Sam the shield and then buggering off.
Well, from what I understood he went back in time and lived in a different timeline, so he somehow got back to the main one at the end there, and I’m assuming he buggered off again to that other timeline where presumably Peggy was still alive? I don’t know, it’s kind of a mess what they did with Endgame
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It’s not like Evans left in a huff or anything though. I wouldn’t be shocked if we see some kind of small scene with old Steve in the finale, maybe reacting to Sam taking up the shield or sailing away on the boat at the end.
Not in a huff, no, but I imagine his price is a heck of a lot higher now than it was when Marvel first locked him in. Not outside Disney’s financial reach, admittedly, but enough that you wouldn’t want to do it unnecessarily.
Though to be honest, I think it’s more just story reasons than financial ones that’ll keep him away indefinitely.
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That was… pretty much what I expected. The big action scene had some good moments, but didn’t make much sense and lacked stakes. I never had any of idea of the geography of where anyone was or how close they were to each other. People cheering Sam downing a helicopter feet away from them was odd too. They were so close to death!
No fight between Walker and Sam/Bucky was disappointing. The show really let him off the hook for that whole murder thing. I’m glad he’ll be back though.
The Sharon stuff was dumb. Is she going to be revealed to be a Skrull in Secret Invasion? That would also be dumb.
Sam’s big speech was fine, but I don’t buy at all that it would change the GRC’s minds. Again, it hurts that we’ve seen almost nothing about the displaced people, or the GRC, or any of this. The Flag Smashers were all we got of it, and even they were completely inconsistent.
I did not need to see Bucky’s therapist again.
I liked the Isaiah scenes. Could we read any of the display on his monument? I don’t see the military being honest about the awful way he was treated.
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The show is reminding me a lot of Picard at this point. A strong opening let down by a flabby middle and an ending that couldn’t fulfill the ideological and storytelling setup while maintaining itself inside a larger storytelling universe.
All the dialogue was good, the acting was good, most of the action was enjoyable, but it winds up being less than the sum of its parts in the end.
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Looking up casting info, Danny Ramirez (Torres) was only added to the show post-COVID, back in October. It’s pretty obvious he was only there to spout exposition to replace scenes they had to cut, right? I know producing something on this scale is tough, but it was very inelegant, and a real waste of a character.
Looking forward, the one advantage the MCU has over the comics in making Sam Captain America is that we know they aren’t going to just bring Chris Evans back in two years. For those unfamiliar with the run, this article gives a good overview of the problems:
My Secret History With Secret Empire: Looking Back At Nick Spencer’s Captain America
[T]he intended conclusion is obvious – Sam shouldn’t push that hard. According to Nick Spencer, there will always be a bad actor, an immovable impediment to progress led by a Black man. Sam needs Steve Rogers to save him, because people will listen to Steve Rogers. And the worst part of this message is that it claims that more people will listen to Steve because he’s a moderate. Everything I read as affirming my own struggles as a minority in America was a construct in my own mind – the run was entirely about how Steve Rogers was the best man for the job.
I hope we find out soon when Cap will appear next. There doesn’t seem to be an obvious next place for him to show up. Black Panther II?
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I thought that was a bit of a mess really. The action scenes felt very fake (possibly due to the night shooting? possibly due to my smart TV’s internet connection being a bit shit and making it jerkier than it was?). Was the reveal of Sharon being the Power Broker supposed to be a surprise? It certainly didn’t land as one, but it didn’t really land as anything else, either. Honestly couldn’t tell you if Batroc died or got away. It’s been, what, three episodes since we saw Zemo’s butler, so a bit of help to recognise him in the car at the end would have been nice. It’s bizarre how ok literally everyone was with John Walker running around as Cosplay Cap during the fights, given he brutally decapitated someone a few days(?) earlier. And he was just allowed to walk off past the crowd with no problem at the end? They made that statue of Isaiah damn quick. Sam’s speech to the GRC (which is apparently mainly run by a US Senator?) people was all over the place.
“You don’t understand the complexities of global politics.”
“I’m a black man who’s been wearing a Captain America costume in public for half an hour, I understand everything!”Tying the issues of identity around Sam as a black American becoming Captain America with the post-Blip refugee stuff just feels mismatched and crass, frankly. They don’t align as much as the writers think they do, or certainly not as much in how they’ve presented it. And apparently the refugee camps have been there since the snap (the GRC woman says five years), which doesn’t make sense. Why did they all move and live in camps then and how did that mean people who came back from the Blip found people living in their houses if the refugees were stuck in camps the whole time. How was that a better world they want to go back to? It’s one line that muddies all that, but it shows the writing staff haven’t really been able to clearly articulate to themselves, let alone the viewers, what the actual situation is, what the GRC are doing specifically and what Karlie’s problem is.
Oh and changing the name of the show for the end credits was a nice gesture immediately undermined by leaving the Winter Soldier name there. Is that what we’re supposed to take away from Bucky’s closure, that he’s ok with using the name Winter Soldier? Cos that’s not really what I got from it.
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I hope Lady Flag Smasher doesn’t die simply because that would be boring and predictable.
I will stake money on her dying, along with a vain attempt to make us feel sympathy for her.
Wow, I’m like a prophet or something.
Or maybe the show was really badly written and predictable. Yeah, not much to say about that finale other than… bring on Loki!
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Looking up casting info, Danny Ramirez (Torres) was only added to the show post-COVID, back in October. It’s pretty obvious he was only there to spout exposition to replace scenes they had to cut, right? I know producing something on this scale is tough, but it was very inelegant, and a real waste of a character.
I just saw a comment, backed up by a news article (admittedly on a site I’d never heard of) from last year saying that the show had to undergo extensive rewrites to remove a plot thread about a manufactured virus, which was presumably the Flag-Smashers’ original scheme and the GRC nonsense is a hasty replacement for that? Doesn’t excuse it being rubbish, but it would be interesting to find out how much the show had to junk because of Covid.
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Looking up casting info, Danny Ramirez (Torres) was only added to the show post-COVID, back in October. It’s pretty obvious he was only there to spout exposition to replace scenes they had to cut, right? I know producing something on this scale is tough, but it was very inelegant, and a real waste of a character.
I just saw a comment, backed up by a news article (admittedly on a site I’d never heard of) from last year saying that the show had to undergo extensive rewrites to remove a plot thread about a manufactured virus, which was presumably the Flag-Smashers’ original scheme and the GRC nonsense is a hasty replacement for that? Doesn’t excuse it being rubbish, but it would be interesting to find out how much the show had to junk because of Covid.
This video goes through a lot of it (up to ep 4), it seems a lot of of the Power Broker references are added in ADR:
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Never thought of it before but it is rather neat in this post Civil War turn of events that Sam’s tech effectively brings together Iron Man and Captain America. Of course, Tony Stark could at least instantly get all that goofy crap off his face for his Big Important Dialogue scenes.
Expected the name change of the show but slightly disappointed that it wasn’t Captain America and Bucky (or even White Wolf). The show did a fairly decent job of Sam growing into his new role but really not so good with Bucky moving on from being the Winter Soldier.
Sharon fared even worse. It’s been so long that I don’t even remember why the US government was so pissed off at her, why it was so impossible to clear her name before now or what she was trying to do in this show. I guess when she was getting shot at by assassins she had hired that was all part of her master plan?
Lots of confusing writing in this show. Karli was already directly responsible for several deaths, was determined to kill more people and was about to try to murder Sam and yet the show portrayed her death as some tragedy that we’re meant to be conflicted about… well, no. Besides, does she really think Sam’s shiny new suit is not bulletproof? Meanwhile, Sam is carrying her corpse out in angel mode and leaving Sharon to bleed out after being shot in the stomach. Priorities.
Not to mention a complete absence of Sam and Bucky having any meaningful interaction with Walker after all the crap they’ve been through with him of late.
Mercury vapour? Fucking hell, Sharon.
Batroc, we hardly knew ye.
I must admit the show got me with the reveal of Isaiah’s memorial. Powerful stuff. If only he had been invited to the boat party.
I am now hopeful that the Raimi Spider-Man movies can cross over with the MCU so that Harry Osborne’s creepy butler can team up with Zemo’s creepy butler to travel the world and commit quiet creepiness together.
Why on earth did Walker wind up back in the courtroom where he was expelled from the military just to try on his new clothes? That said, Val is an absolute pleasure. As intriguing as a Sam Captain America movie sounds, Val is honestly the character from this show that I most want to see more of going forward.
Overall, again, the show had so much potential and showed glimpses of greatness (or being pretty decent at least) but suffocated itself with a nonsensical set of villains and a real lack of focus on tightening shit up.
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I thought it was okay. It was pretty much a mid level Marvel movie, done as a TV series. I honestly didn’t expect it to be great, just decent. And it lived up to expectations.
The one thing that irks me about superhero movies in general is the fairly constant killing of villains. I know that they have hundreds of bad guys to use but it really makes it difficult for heroes to have rogue’s galleries. I loved that they brought Batroc back but was disappointed they killed him in the end. (Maybe he somehow lives?) I would love to see a Zemo-led Thunderbolts down the line with villains from previous projects.
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I did get a chuckle out of the line “it’s the same thing but in black.”
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That was all right – neater than I expected it to be.
Karli was laughable. Note to Karli: When you have people trapped in a vehicle and you deliberately set it on fire to save your arse, you are the fucking villain.
Though, it did work as a means of contrasting to Walker, who could have made the same call, to go after Karli instead of saving people, but didn’t.
Batroc, ehhhhhh. French fried? Seems that way.
I quite liked that having the done the Bucky and Sam vs Bad Cap Walker a couple of eps back, they didn’t repeat it again.
I liked Sam’s speech as a hell of a lot of politicians are disconnected from the effects of what they did, they spin, they misdirect. Similarly Sam getting some recognition for Isaiah also worked.
Good to hear there’s work on a Cap 4.
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So that is the perfect way to introduce the X men to the MCU. A group of time traveling spacefaring degenerate swingers.
I dunno, they already have Jeff Goldblum’s Grandmaster for that.
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My guess is that it had more to do with the gas they release at the council meeting, which was kinda glossed over in the last episode… maybe?
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Finally watched the finale. I thought the action was fine, everything else… meh. Just as everybody else, the main thing I really hated was Karli once more, mostly because Sam keeps treating her as if he understands her position when she’s just tried to kill a car full of hostages. When she says, “fight me!”, who wasn’t going “Yeah, fucking kick her butt already!”. What a terribly, terribly lame villain. Same thing with Sharon, who is already a horrible villain now.
It’s been, what, three episodes since we saw Zemo’s butler, so a bit of help to recognise him in the car at the end would have been nice.
Well, we do see Zemo directly after the scene, and then Val says “So Zemo got the last laugh”. That seems like it should be enough help, really?
“You don’t understand the complexities of global politics.”
“I’m a black man who’s been wearing a Captain America costume in public for half an hour, I understand everything!”Tying the issues of identity around Sam as a black American becoming Captain America with the post-Blip refugee stuff just feels mismatched and crass, frankly. They don’t align as much as the writers think they do, or certainly not as much in how they’ve presented it. And apparently the refugee camps have been there since the snap (the GRC woman says five years), which doesn’t make sense. Why did they all move and live in camps then and how did that mean people who came back from the Blip found people living in their houses if the refugees were stuck in camps the whole time. How was that a better world they want to go back to? It’s one line that muddies all that, but it shows the writing staff haven’t really been able to clearly articulate to themselves, let alone the viewers, what the actual situation is, what the GRC are doing specifically and what Karlie’s problem is.
Yeah, that whole scene with the senator was just so terrible. Everything Sam said just amounted to, “Stop doing the bad stuff and do the good stuff instead!”, with the writers themselves clearly failing to understand any of the issues they chose to make the basis for the plot of their series. Just terrible. And the episode really wasn’t helped by all the sentimentality.
Overall, it wasn’t a bad show, but it also wasn’t a good one. They’ve clearly shown they can go big on TV though, and make this kind of action superhero show look almost as good as the movies. Now they just need better writers, but since instead it seems like they’re putting the people who wrote on made this into their movies, um… well.
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I read most of the postings here and I won’t rehash, but the Flag Smasher group had a few good points. I actually agreed with some of them.
I liked it overall, but I had to read some of the Wiki fandom files to fill in things in the story I didn’t catch.
https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/The_Falcon_and_The_Winter_Soldier
I won’t nitpick and overanalyze. It was entertaining, but:
How were Sam and Bucky able to hold their own in hand to hand fights with super soldiers?
How was Sam able to fly and lift that truck in the end? Almost like Superman.
I really liked the Isaiah storyline.
Sam’s speech at the end was a little too long and preachy but I understand.
There is this guy on YouTube who calls himself the Martial Actor. He has a black belt and he gives his own commentary and realistic opinions on the fight scenes in some shows:
Oh, and I got dibs on Karli, the freckled leader.
Next: Jupiter’s Legacy
PS – Years ago, when we were all watching the reboot of Battlestar Galactica, I felt that those who patiently watched from week to week were better than those who watched all at once. Now, with the streaming services, everyone binge watches so it doesn’t matter, and never did. WTF was I thinking?
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How were Sam and Bucky able to hold their own in hand to hand fights with super soldiers?
Bucky is super. I’m assuming the Russians gave him their version of the super-soldier serum, although I don’t recall if it’s ever been explicitly stated. It makes sense, since I’m guessing putting a bionic arm on a non-enhanced body wouldn’t work too well.
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https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-falcon-and-the-winter-soldiers-head-writer-tries-to-1846772211
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This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by .
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This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by .
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This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by
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Well congratulations on actually figuring out even one point that they wanted to make, I am still at a loss as to what they actually wanted (and how blowing shit up was going to get them there).
Ok then:
https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Flag_Smashers
I liked the distribution of food and medicine, having no borders, going after corrupt corporate executives.
On a side note, I have been listening to some college students who have gotten very political on TikTok. They have been railing against the Western capitalist society, the patriachy order of things, the legacy of colonialism, and other things. One of their main notions is that the structure of capitalism puts the power to an elite ruling circle of people, while socialism promises to give more power to the people. (AOC anyone?)
Watching the show, what the Flag Smashers were trying to do reminded me of the TikTok dialogue.
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Ok then:
https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Flag_Smashers%5B/quote%5D
>>They believe the world was better during the extermination of half of the universe’s population, and hate the state of the world after the other half of the universe’s population was brought back to life.<<
That’s the part I got from the show. They hate that those people are now back from the blip, sure. And now?
I liked the distribution of food and medicine, having no borders, going after corrupt corporate executives.
Only I don’t think they did the medicine thing or go after corrupt executives on the show? When was that supposed to be happening?
Also, neither of those things are “points”. It’s just nice stuff you do, but again, what are their “points”?I did see them blow up innocent guards and kidnap politicians and try to light them on fire. Also, try to kill Captain America. And no list of demands, weirdly enough, even after capturing all those politicians.
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The villain Killmonger had the idea of distributing the Wakandan tech and vibranium to all the black people in the world to give them some power to fight back in their struggle for respect and equality. Some of the black viewers watching the movie said afterwards that it wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
He didn’t just want black people to fight back, he wanted them to rise up and take over. He was a black supremacist, which is why he was the villain.
Where he was right was in his belief that the Wakandans were also morally corrupt by hoarding their resources rather than helping out their less well-off neighbours, which is why the film ended with T’Challa starting their outreach program.
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@Christian … fellow.
I believe this article link is for you:
Ah, cheers, mate, but I think we all drove the point of how badly written the flagsmashers were home often enough after each ep. The article does summarise a lot of it nicely, though.
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Finished the last three episodes last night – I Had low expectations since even though I was impressed by the first three I’d caught wind that the mass of opinion had shifted and it was deemed a failure. Maybe my lowered expectations affected things, but I was still really impressed overall.
The Flag Smashers plot was garbage, confusing, misguided – but as a conduit to deliver the rest of the show I’ll forgive it. John Walker’s anger at his hearing – “I AM Captain America!”, and the long conversation between Sam and Isaiah were non-action highlights of the season, really well done, touching, affecting stuff.
I think it was as good and maybe slightly stronger than WandaVision, and as a package as good as at least an average MCU film, but couldn’t have been as effective in a single film.
Well done gang!
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How to settle that disagreement then? Go for a big brawl with optional CGI or do you two know of the Ship of Theseus?
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How to settle that disagreement then? Go for a big brawl with optional CGI or do you two know of the Ship of Theseus?
Nah, I’m just going to tell a Senator that the whole argument is really complicated and he needs to do a better job finding a solution to it.
Sorted!
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Do your mothers happen to have the same name?
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WHY DID YOU SAY THAT NAME??? WHY DID YOU SAY HELGA???!!!
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I think it was as good and maybe slightly stronger than WandaVision
Well that’s just crazy.
There were three episodes of WandaVision where it was impressive pastiches, really impressive in a technical sense, but it did drag on a bit. The acting was all very good, but F/WS was tighter – helped by being shorter – funnier, and more exciting.
Neither show ended well, but F/WS had more touching moments (I never really felt much from WandaVision, in terms of the expression of grief and whatnot).
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I felt like neither of them quite managed to be as good as they could have been.
Wandavision tried my patience with its slow start and never really recovered from that for me – it spun out mysteries and remained ambiguous as to what was really going on for so long that there was little to really get your teeth into, with all the really emotional content coming too late for me to really care by that point. And then the finale was largely a big empty Marvel CGI-fest battle.
FAWS started a lot stronger for me – decent characters and premise and a lot of potential. But then it pissed a lot of that away with stupid or incoherent plotting and motivations, weak villains, and a sense that it was biting off more than it could chew in terms of the big ideas it tried to address.
I’m hoping Loki is better than both of them.
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Im not a fan of could have been because whatever was thought of by the use of could does not exist in the end because of the use of the word been and if it doesn’t exist how does it help the reader learn more about what it actually is. Both WV and FAWS had no precedent. Marvel studios have not made tv shows before so what fueled your expectations.
My expectations of their potential were based on the premise, the talent, the comics stories available to adapt, promotional interviews, the impressions I got from the early episodes, stuff like that.
I know that these are the first MCU shows (Shush, Agents of SHIELD and Agent Carter! Quiet, Netflix! Silence, all those other ones that we’ve all forgotten almost immediately anyway!) but as much as Disney+ wanted to make their debut a big deal and make them seem special, I don’t think they are particularly unprecendented.
There are plenty of superhero TV shows and there are even more in the broader fantasy/sci-fi realm. I think it’s fine to judge them against their peers and against their own inherent potential.
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I can’t really go with the idea that expectations should be reset to zero, just because a studio that has produced 20-odd successful blockbusters has switched from film to TV.
What the chatter does perhaps show is there is equal or greater scrutiny applied to TV. That I don’t think Marvel was prepared for. You see a film, it’s done as a complete piece, even as a piece of a larger mosaic.
In contrast, an ep comes out and gets attention, then a week later, which adds up to more scrutiny. Would doing a Netflix and dumping the series out work better? I don’t know.
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There were three episodes of WandaVision where it was impressive pastiches, really impressive in a technical sense, but it did drag on a bit. The acting was all very good, but F/WS was tighter – helped by being shorter – funnier, and more exciting.
It’s the opposite for me. I enjoyed every second of WandaVision; I thought it was clever, well-executed and touching.
F/WS on the other hand rarely worked; a lot of the time, it felt like it was treading water, people did a lot of stupid things and I never cared about the main plot.Also, one of the main things here is: One show made my eyes roll a lot, the other almost didn’t at all. WandaVision had really sharp dialogue where F/WS too often veered off into bad exposition.
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There are various different sides to the MCU. There’s the cosmic side of things, which I find the most fun. There’s the mystic side of things, which still interests me, as does Wakanda. Spider-Man and Ant-Man have their own little worlds going on, with plenty left to explore in them. The military-industrial complex, super-soldier serum obsessed, SHIELD-esque, shadowy government agency side of the MCU is, however, starting to bore me. The moments of this show that focused on the more personal stories, like Isaiah’s struggles, worked well. I simply do not give a shit about senators and arms deals and policies and accords and blah, blah, blah any more, though.
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