I thought Episode 3 was better, but not surprising since the guy who wrote this episode also wrote the three John Wick movies.
Agreed. Episode 3 was a lot better. The show seems to be finding it's footing in the underworld/espionage territory. Spoiler If they insist on making Anthony Mackie the new Cap, he MUST get one of those remaining SS serums. It makes zero sense to have an unpowered Captain America. They face off against cosmic threats. He needs to be powered. It's one thing to have Black Widow and Hawkeye unpowered since they typically aren't front and center when battling these big bads. But if they are going to have Captain America leading them again, Captain America needs to be powered. I still think it should be Bucky since he is Cap's oldest friend and he's powered. But most of all Sam already has a thing. He's the Falcon. I feel like it makes more sense to make Bucky a Superhero (rather than his current outsider status), and add him to the Avengers rather than change the name and style of a current Avenger.
Episode 4 sealed loving this show for me. That was dark as hell, I don’t even know who to root for, and I love that. Things being pure black and white can get boring. Some of the scenes in this one were incredibly moving, a lot of others had me on the edge of my seat.
I don't love it, but I don't hate it either by any stretch. So much will depend on how they end it. I really liked Wandavision up until the final episode...and then it became one of the worst things Marvel ever made.
Falcon and the Winter Soldier ended up being pretty terrible. Spoiler They did essentially what they did in Wandavision. Someone was obviously bad, but they made excuses for why she did it. With Thanos, they made his plight relatable and gave him a reason for what he was doing, but at no point did they make it seem like he could be justified in his actions. Falcon tried to not fight her, and he even sort of stood up for a freaking terrorist that killed hundreds of innocent people. I mean, they had him fly down holding her in his arms at the end as if she was a hero that was tragically lost. And then he tells people in power to "do better" and offers zero insight of his own on how that might work. Just tells people dealing with the most insane situation in human history (half the world disappearing then reappearing 5 years later) to do better. And once again, I completely disagree with Sam being Cap if they are not going to give him the serum. It makes zero sense. Falcon wasn't on the front lines fighting Thanos or Ultron. He would have died...quickly. And all he is now is the Falcon with a shield. I'm extremely worried about the future of the MCU.
Well, let's just call it was it is... Disney is trying to make the story about leftist nonsense. First Black Captain America, uhm, okay? Why feel the need to explain that other than to push a 'social injustice' storyline? It never once came to my mind that there was going to be someone black being Captain America so the constant reminder that he's black and being Captain America was inorganic and came out as forced. The story about the refugees being resettled is a lot like the illegal immigration issue and all Sam talks about is 'doing better.' Doing better isn't a solution... it's a blanket statement. There is zero emotional attachment to this show because they are too focused on the social impact of the show rather than building on the character and their story. The 'fake' Captain America all of a sudden is best pals with them at the end of the show? Horrible storyline that is too focused on the race and societal impact than an actual plot to the entire thing. My favorite part is when he states that 'I won't fight you' to the girl. Uhm, you're not trying to kill her. You're just trying to immobilize her so she can stop threatening people and holding them hostage. Sam was acting like that was his daughter or something when she has made it quite evident that she was willing to kill people to achieve her goal(s). So his definition of doing better is letting the girl do whatever she wanted and then telling the Senators that they have to do better because....? I mean, what a total joke. And no offense to Sam because I do like his role as a supporting actor but him being a lead actor is just... meh. The constant need for him to be 'sarcastic' and then put on some annoying face happens 3-4x every episode and it's never funny.
Yeah, the series started out with a lot of potential. The showrunner / writers fumbled the ball in the last couple of episodes. Agree with most of your takes. There were other issues that just fell flat. Bucky fully resolves his Winter Soldier past torment by simply following the 12 step program for alchoholics. Isaiah Bradley (who I thought could be a great recurring character), who a couple of episodes back was deeply bitter toward the USA because you know they actually tortured him-imprisoned him-used him as a lab rat, suddenly is all good with things because they gave him a statue in a museum. US Agent, who is a murderer, is joking around with Sam and Bucky at the end. Agree completely with the ridiculousness of the Flag Smasher girl, who is a mass-murderer, being portrayed as a hero.
Spoiler Seriously?!?! EDIT: Also, this has been bothering me too. Remember what Steve Rodgers looked like before the serum? Why is it all these people who took the serum look like average joe at the mall? Where are they getting their super strength from? Steve Rodgers actually looked like he could punch through a wall. Where is Karli getting the strength from? She's 5'1" and 100 pounds. And she looks like she hasn't been to a gym in 5 years. Where is this super strength she has being generated from? It was a serum that gave her power, not a freaking Infinity Stone. I know you have to suspend disbelief with comic book movies and shows, but the serum now doesn't seem to be maximizing the human body. It's now magic. This show and Wandavision just seem super cheap and lazy. They spend money on a bunch of effects and throw the Marvel name on it, and it has none of what has made Marvel special. Great Breakdown. There are spoilers.
The majority of the plot makes no sense and doesn't have that 'story' that people fall in love with regarding Disney's content. I guess if you're a kid, this show is great because you don't really care to follow the story but for others, it's just a huge disappointment for a show with high expectations. And you are totally right... That little girl was beating up the Winter Soldier on her own and this was the same Winter Soldier that the Avengers had some trouble catching? Like you have stated... Marvel and Disney wanted to capitalize on the superhero craze going on and likely created too much content with poor storylines. That pic you posted is hilarious because it's a great depiction of how silly the show is. Hopefully it will get better but for now, I will say it's a 0/2 for the Marvel shows.
I think there might be two things at play here. Number 1, and it can't be understated, is they seemed more concerned about getting to a point where they could have Sam deliver the social justice speech at the end. Like, that was the main purpose of this show; to set up that moment. The story didn't make sense because they had to end up in a place where he can make that speech. We have seen Sam in several movies now and at no point was his race even considered. He was just a guy fighting with Cap and Bucky against threats. Falcon was his own character and his own hero. But apparently being a great character that everyone loved wasn't enough. The second issue is the Marvel Formula everyone talks about. They seem to have perfected telling a two hour story that is relatively self contained. When asked to tell a long-form story of 6 hours or more, they don't know how. They need to fill it with a bunch of nonsense. The best part of this show was Zemo. His character got a nice arc that really made me appreciate him even more as a formidable villain.
Decided to re-watch all of the MCU (minus The Incredible Hulk, I know it's technically canon but wouldn't feel right to see Norton instead of Ruffalo again, and it's not easy to find on streaming) in preparation of watching The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. For some of the first few movies, my impression was biased from nostalgia. For example, Iron Man 2 was one of the first midnight premieres I was able to attend in high school soon after getting my license, so that has a special place even if the movie was mediocre. For most of the last few phases, most of my experiences watching these movies had been meeting up with some friends at a bar to catch a Laker game, and then head over to the theater next door afterwards. Who would've thought that getting drunk is not the best way to retain information about 2.5 hour movies?! So now having gone through it all in totality and actually having had paid attention, here is my ranking (obviously a lot of this is flexible and I'd probably shuffle some around if I had to redo the list in a few weeks). Avengers: Infinity War Avengers: Endgame Black Panther The Avengers Iron Man Guardians of the Galaxy Thor: Ragnarok Captain America: The Winter Soldier Captain America: Civil War Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol 2 Spider-Man: Far From Home Captain America Spider-Man: Homecoming Antman and the Wasp Antman Captain Marvel Doctor Strange Avengers: Age of Ultron Ironman 2 Thor: The Dark World Thor Ironman 3 So once I finished Spider-Man: Far From Home a few days ago, I did start The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and am currently on Episode 5. Disclaimer, I had already checked this thread and skimmed through some of the previous posts and picked up on the criticisms. But a lot of the criticisms here seemed to be on the showing trying too hard to be "woke", so I figured I wouldn't mind as much because I assumed I would tend to agree with the underlying "woke" messages... but naw, I see what you guys are talking about. Some of the social commentary so far has been distractingly heavy handed. Not a fan of that. Almost feels lazy, like the writer's started off brainstorming some woke points and then worked to fit a MCU plot around that. Problem is, the rest of the show's plot hasn't been engaging enough to make up for it. So my expectations for the last 2 episodes is not particularly high. But with that said, I feel like I'll have gotten enough entertainment out of this to continue looking forward to more of these Disney Plus mini-series. Will probably finish it up tonight or tomorrow, and then to complete the Marvel marathon I just picked up the Avengers game on PS5 and going to give that a try.
Good ranking. Here's mine: Cap: The Winter Soldier Avengers: Infinity War Avengers: Endgame Cap: Civil War Captain America (I think I liked it more than anyone else) Iron Man Guardians of the Galaxy Doctor Strange Thor: Ragnarok Antman Avengers: Age of Ultron Antman and the Wasp Black Panther The Avengers Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol 2 Thor: Dark World Thor Iron Man 2 Captain Marvel Iron Man 3 Spider-Man: Far From Home Spider-Man: Homecoming
Wow. So if there was any doubt Marvel was going totally woke...straight from the head man's mouth. “Some people might say, ‘Oh, it would’ve been so cool to see Dr. Strange,’” says Feige. “But it would have taken away from Wanda, which is what we didn’t want to do. We didn’t want the end of the show to be commoditized to go to the next movie — here’s the white guy, ‘Let me show you how power works.’” https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-...l-dr-strange-written-out-wandavision-1164455/ So they didn't want to put Dr. Strange in the movie (even though that makes perfect sense with him being the Sorcerer Supreme and there's massive magic happening) cause he's a white man? They're not even trying to hide it now. And the excuse that they didn't want the end of the show to be commoditized to the next movie? This coming from the man who made the end credits scene a massive part of the Marvel experience.
Yeah, that quote from Feige was lame. He could’ve made that point without saying anything about Dr. Strange being a “white man”, and it would have made sense. “We wanted the conclusion to focus on Wanda’s character arc and felt including another major character there would have taken away from it”. The race/gender of that major character is irrelevant. Like in Feige’s view, would it have been acceptable to have Shuri from Black Panther come in at the end and steal Wanda’s thunder because she’s a black woman? That’s not even touching on the fact that Wandavision’s ending was mediocre anyways... But I just finished The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and now my gripes about the end of Wandavision have disappeared. Wandavision was a masterpiece in comparison to the mediocrity of this show. Finally read through the entirety of the past several posts on this page, and I don’t really have much more to add. Everyone already hit the nail on the head of the many problems with the show. With that said ... eh, overall I got a decent amount of entertainment out of it. I did enjoy a lot of the action sequences and shots of Sam in his new costume were pretty dope. I did like the subversion of Walker not being all that bad and interested to see how he plays a role going forward. Zemo had some cool moments. Definitely helps that I was able to marathon through it in a few days though, if I was watching this week to week, I might have lost interest completely by like Episode 3. And on the “woke” point, I’m not too concerned about that necessarily being this heavy handed in future MCU content. I think the premise of this show and Sam’s character inherently bring some of the social commentary to the forefront (just wish they did it in a more nuanced manner). But for example, I doubt the Loki show is going to be too political.
The top and bottom of your list is very interesting to me, The Winter Soldier is actually probably what prompted me to re-watch everything. A coworker had just re-watched it a few weeks ago and raving about how great it was, but I didn’t remember being all that blown away by it so figured I had missed out and might as well re-watch everything and hopefully be able to appreciate it more this time. But I still didn’t get all they hype this time around. It was definitely cool to see a more modern take on the MCU than we were used to, gritty realistic action sequences as opposed to the typical flash superhero stuff. But I had heard people describe it as a “political thriller”, and honestly all the Hydra deception stuff was still pretty underwhelming. And I don’t think Bucky’s character gets interesting until some of the later movies. Definitely a better movie than I remember, but the top of the MCU rankings for it is crazy to me! No offense lol, would love to hear your thoughts on what puts TWS at the top of your rankings. With Spider-Man, I had some difficulties placing it on my list. I had a very strong distaste for how they essentially made him into Iron Man, too much of a reliance on high tech suits and equipment. So there were moments where I couldn’t look past that and I could’ve seen myself putting it much lower on my list. But overall, I just love Tom Holland’s portrayal of Spider-Man and really all the characters are so likeable, that I had to put it up towards the middle of my list because they were relatively enjoyable movies on their own merits.
My preference for Winter Soldier is shaded by Cap being my all time favorite superhero, and WS being the best of the three Cap movies. I just thought it had a super coherent story arc + character arcs with Cap being conflicted about Bucky, while dealing with the growing realization of the decades long influence of Hydra. Also loved the way they introduced and developed Sam as Cap's loyal partner. Some of the scenes just were perfect for me, like the "On your left" running scene, Cap's book of things to catch up on, and Winter Soldier catching Cap's shield with his robot arm. I posted somewhere back in this thread my issues with the new Spidey movies. I love Holland as Spidey. He is the best so far in that role. But I hate how they retconned everything else. Young hot Aunt May, new best friend, lame Flash, lame emo Mary Jane, no J Jonah Jameson, Mysterio is just a really good special effects guy, etc. Plus, it felt like those movies were aimed at a 12-15 year old crowd. I also did not like the Iron Spider thing which you mentioned.
Yeah. If he would have said that, I wouldn't have given it a second thought and totally understood it. But mentioning he didn't want to do it partly because he's a white male is terrible. But it sort of highlights why so many people are upset about "woke" messaging in movies. It's not that we disagree with the underlying message. It's the fact that it's heavy handed. It's the fact that they are allowing it to influence the story to where they actually didn't do what they wanted to do in order to make sure they don't upset the woke mob. There are plenty of examples of a movie with a strong message against racism that work great. American History X is a powerful movie because the characters and story are compelling. And from that story, a powerful message is told. The message supports the story. It flows from the story. Like you said in another post, too much of our content these days starts with the woke idea they are going to try and get across, and they try to write the story around that. The story should not be written to support their message. You run into all sorts of narrative problems when you try to construct a story that way. If all you care about is giving a message, do a documentary.
I had stopped reading comics by the time the Eternals were introduced so I have no attachment to them at all except for the Black Knight who was his own character before that. But the Director is really good, and there is buzz that she may have made the best Marvel movie so far. So, l'll see it with an open mind.
Me thinks they may have made this so boring on purpose, and will show us more and more of the good stuff in the following trailers. Hope so at least...
