Falcon and The Winter Soldier: These Turkish Delights Have Violent Ends (Spoilers)

[Jaxom 1974]

7 hours ago, DMC said:

 

OTOH, couldn't agree more with your other three points or major problems (the show tackling issues it couldn't really handle, never even really addressing what the public's perception is of Captain America, and Carter's dumbfounding role).

One thing the MCU seems to have focused on with Steve Rogers has always been based on how people felt about him during WWII.  Despite everything else he did after coming out of the ice, it still always felt like the common man around him looked at him through Greatest Generation glasses...even the Smithsonian exhibit focused on WWII. Of course it was that way in Winter Soldier, but even in TFATWS, so much of Cap's post ice life seemed to be pushed into a back area of the exhibit. 

[sifth]

36 minutes ago, mormont said:

Yeah, but this is missing the point. Sam doesn’t need to do these things. Financially, he can afford the loan. He has government contracts that should cover the repayments. The banker is not genuinely turning Sam down because he’s broke. That is the point of the scene!

If your complaint with the scene is that it doesn’t make sense that Sam didn’t get the loan, then the scene worked. You just come at it from a place of privilege.

If Sam has the money to help his sister, then why isn't he? The scene wanted to show us subtle racism, but was done in a way that doesn't make any sense.

[DaveSumm]

34 minutes ago, mormont said:

Yeah, but this is missing the point. Sam doesn’t need to do these things. Financially, he can afford the loan. He has government contracts that should cover the repayments. The banker is not genuinely turning Sam down because he’s broke. That is the point of the scene!

If your complaint with the scene is that it doesn’t make sense that Sam didn’t get the loan, then the scene worked. You just come at it from a place of privilege.

I appreciate what they’re aiming for, but Sam being an Avenger perhaps doesn’t make him the best person to demonstrate this with. Or perhaps it’s just a general problem with a fictional superhero world making points intended to be applied to our own real world; there aren’t really Avengers, and there wasn’t really a snap. It’s difficult to underestimate how stratospherically famous Sam should be for helping save untold trillions of lives, or even how famous an Avenger would be pre-Infinity War. He could set up a Patreon and do zero promotion for it, and afford 100 boats.

And the bankers comment that “you have no income over the past five years” doesn’t really make sense when 50% of the planet are in the same situation, again, maybe he’s using that as an excuse - but it’s odd to make a scene intended to have these real life parallels rely so heavily on these two non-existent elements: he’s star struck by Sam’s presence, and Sam didn’t exist for five years.

It might’ve worked better if Sam didn’t attend the meeting at all; maybe he offers and his sister is the one to tell the audience that Sam has zero income so why bother? All he’ll do is distract the guy.

[Spockydog]

42 minutes ago, RumHam said:

I wondered for a second if Shuri was making a little joke there about the whiteness of America but then I saw that's just how it looks in the comics. 

To me it looked like tryin' too hard to make a black man white. I mean, what purpose does that weird-looking headpiece serve, other than making most of his head and neck white. 

[Heartofice]

I dunno, I think its pretty close to the one from the comics from what I've seen. I think is about trying to make him look cool. They failed at that.

On top of all that it made me realise that Mackie really doesn't look like superhero, sure he's built, but hes also short (as is Sebastian Stan btw), and he's always just been better during the comedy stuff than anything else. I don't know if it bothered anyone else, but that shitty brown jacket they had him wearing most of the series was so super shit, like how could I take anyone for a dangerous man that is wearing that jacket. 

In terms of looks I thought Isiah would make a far better cap than Mackie, even as an old man I would be far more inspired and intimidated!

[sifth]

27 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

And the bankers comment that “you have no income over the past five years” doesn’t really make sense when 50% of the planet are in the same situation, again, maybe he’s using that as an excuse - but it’s odd to make a scene intended to have these real life parallels rely so heavily on these two non-existent elements: he’s star struck by Sam’s presence, and Sam didn’t exist for five years.

 

Yea, that made no sense to me as well. Even if you want to look at it as a racist looking for an excuse not to give him a loan, it doesn't make sense. Half the world was erased from existence, so therefore billions of people would have zero income for 5 years. Any sane person would simply ask to speak with a different banker at that point.

[williamjm]

I think I would agree with many of the reactions in here. Overall I did enjoy the show but it could have been a lot better than it was. In the past I've thought that the 13 episode Marvel Netflix shows usually had pacing issues and might have benefited from being shorter but I think this show is trying to do more things than most of them and either needed to try to do less or have more episodes to properly explore some of its plot points. In theory I like the idea of having lots of different people/groups all with their own conflicting agendas but it didn't always work out here.

Eventually they did explain what the flag smashers wanted but I think the explanation should have come a bit sooner and been a bit clearer and the show seemed unable to decide how sympathetic they should be. The Power Broker plotline was one of the weakest bits of the show and Sharon feels like a completely different character to her previous appearances. I thought the John Walker plotline was more successful and Zemo was a good addition to the show even if it still feels unlikely that Bucky would ever choose to ally with him.

[The Bard of Banefort]

I watched two video reviews of this series (both only a little over 10 minutes) that I found interesting. The first one was by Cosmonaut Variety Hour (who is Black), and he did a good job analyzing why Karli doesn't really work as a main villain:

 

The other is by The Critical Drinker, who's much more critical (hence his name). He did a lot of videos trashing GOT S8 which you guys would probably get a kick out of. I don't agree with everything he says, and you guys probably won't either, but it is a funny video. It also highlights what I was saying about how you really could nitpick this show as much as the Star Wars prequels.

 

[sifth]

1 hour ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I watched two video reviews of this series (both only a little over 10 minutes) that I found interesting. The first one was by Cosmonaut Variety Hour (who is Black), and he did a good job analyzing why Karli doesn't really work as a main villain:

 

The other is by The Critical Drinker, who's much more critical (hence his name). He did a lot of videos trashing GOT S8 which you guys would probably get a kick out of. I don't agree with everything he says, and you guys probably won't either, but it is a funny video. It also highlights what I was saying about how you really could nitpick this show as much as the Star Wars prequels.

 

I love Cosmonaut, and yea he mentions a lot of the issues I have with this show as well, like how Bucky's story arc pretty much sucked, when compared to Sam's and why Karli sucked as a villain. Over all his review was really good.

[Heartofice]

I liked Critical Drinkers comment that the character arcs are so good because they are circles.. pretty true. Everyone has gone back to how they were at the end of Endgame

[Mystical]

14 hours ago, DMC said:

I don't agree that it's a "Schrodinger's box."  I think the show does a good job making it clear - for the US government pardoning him, his subsequent therapist, Sam, and even himself - that while Bucky is not "responsible" IRT he didn't intend to do anything he did as Winter Soldier, he still remembers what he did and therefore will never get over it until he "makes amends" a la his 12-step-program-esque process.

If Bucky has to make amends for things he actually had no control over and was forced to do against his will, shouldn't that then be the standard for all the 'heroes'? And it should be doubly so in cases where the 'heroes' actually were not brainwashed and mind-controlled but knew full well what they were doing? Or are we supposed to infer from this that Bucky is a much better person than someone like Wanda for example? Bucky 'makes amends' for things he didn't actually do while Wanda gets off scott free without so much as an apology to the thousands of people she tortured (including children and possibly babies). Unless WandaVision was her villain origin story (which I don't think it was), then Wanda should be held to the same standard, actually a much higher standard considering she did it of her own free will, by Marvel. It's called consistency.

[felice]

6 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

And the bankers comment that “you have no income over the past five years” doesn’t really make sense when 50% of the planet are in the same situation

And works against understanding what the Flag Smashers are actually about. The returned are supposed to be privileged over the people who lived through the last five years, with the people in power wanting the world to go back to how it was pre-Blip, but the bank loan scene is the most prominent actual example of blipped/non-blipped relations and shows the reverse. It is entirely plausible that disputes between blipped and non-blipped would tend to be resolved in favour of whoever is whitest, but the show really didn't do enough to address that.

[sifth]

1 hour ago, Mystical said:

If Bucky has to make amends for things he actually had no control over and was forced to do against his will, shouldn't that then be the standard for all the 'heroes'? And it should be doubly so in cases where the 'heroes' actually were not brainwashed and mind-controlled but knew full well what they were doing? Or are we supposed to infer from this that Bucky is a much better person than someone like Wanda for example? Bucky 'makes amends' for things he didn't actually do while Wanda gets off scott free without so much as an apology to the thousands of people she tortured (including children and possibly babies). Unless WandaVision was her villain origin story (which I don't think it was), then Wanda should be held to the same standard, actually a much higher standard considering she did it of her own free will, by Marvel. It's called consistency.

I know it makes no sense at all. Bucky was basically turned into a meat puppet by Hydra, yet this show makes it out that he needs to redeem himself, for choices he had no control over.

[john]

Bucky is doing that for his own mental health, as part of a therapy program. It doesn’t matter whether his actions were his fault because he blames himself anyway.

I didn’t like that it worked out so smoothly for him in the end, as with every other storyline they were developing, but the concept itself made sense.

[TrueMetis]

Is survivors guilt and similar just completely unknown to you people? He cannot just rationalize his way out of trauma because trauma does not work that way.

[Lord of Rhinos]

8 hours ago, DMC said:

I don't agree that it's a "Schrodinger's box."  I think the show does a good job making it clear - for the US government pardoning him, his subsequent therapist, Sam, and even himself - that while Bucky is not "responsible" IRT he didn't intend to do anything he did as Winter Soldier, he still remembers what he did and therefore will never get over it until he "makes amends" a la his 12-step-program-esque process.

OTOH, couldn't agree more with your other three points or major problems (the show tackling issues it couldn't really handle, never even really addressing what the public's perception is of Captain America, and Carter's dumbfounding role).

I don't think it is clear at all. I agree that Bucky unfairly blaming himself for things that happened while under mind control makes sense for the character, but the show never makes that point and it could have:

"I helped her get into office when I was the Winter Soldier", "after Hydra disbanded she continued to abuse the power I gave her","I went from one fight to another for ninety years".  Dr. Ranier could have pushed back on any of these lines and emphasized that Bucky is not the Winter Soldier but she doesn't.  Later in the series Sam gets in on the action telling Bucky he's "avenging not amending".

Bucky's last line in the series is "he was murdered by the Winter Soldier, and that was me".  Which could be a real break through if his arch was that he's an addict who can't acknowledge the harm he caused while under the influence, but that isn't who Bucky is.  He's a character that had his entire life stolen from him by others and he bears no responsibility for that.  If the show actually wanted to show that Bucky wasn't responsible for his actions as the Winter Soldier and he needed to have a psychological breakthrough to move past his misplaced guilt than the line should have been  "he was murdered by the Winter Soldier, and that wasn't me".

8 hours ago, polishgenius said:

 

Much of your point is salient but they talked about this. They don't know and are confused and some of them think he's on the moon. But they know he's gone.

 

But what they know matters.  If the MCU public don't know what happened to Steve Rogers then every interview Wilson or Walker gives would inevitably lead to the question "where is Steve Rogers?" Forget getting the public to accept a new Captain America because if a large group of the public believes Rogers is off with the Guardians of the Galaxy (although let's be honest, him being on the moon is probably a Watchmen shout out), they're not going to accept anyone else as Cap.

1 hour ago, mormont said:

Yeah, but this is missing the point. Sam doesn’t need to do these things. Financially, he can afford the loan. He has government contracts that should cover the repayments. The banker is not genuinely turning Sam down because he’s broke. That is the point of the scene!

If your complaint with the scene is that it doesn’t make sense that Sam didn’t get the loan, then the scene worked. You just come at it from a place of privilege.

You're missing my point.  Sam shouldn't need a loan in the first place.

 

 

[RumHam]

It's never been clear to me how Bucky was controlled. In Winter Soldier he seemed to have a bit of independence and was asking questions so they zapped him again. 

Even if he was a "meat puppet" like in Possesor he'd still be traumatized if he remembered it. But that's not what was happening. I suspect the brainwashing made him obedient and loyal to Hydra, but he was not a zombie or a puppet.

Like Hydra probably told him "Kill Howard Stark and obtain the serum" I doubt they ever mentioned Tony's Mom. Same with the guy's son. 

Edit: I'm also reminded of Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation

It wasn't his fault, what he did as Locutus of Borg. But he still understandably felt horrible about it.

[The Bard of Banefort]

The bank scene didn’t work for me because it ignores the privileges that celebrities are afforded. Just look at COVID: the rest of us were publicly shamed if we left the house, but celebs were still taking vacations and throwing parties. Once the banker started fanboying over Falcon, it became much less believable that he wouldn’t get the loan.

By the way, have any of you seen Ingrid Goes West? Aside from just being a good movie, Elizabeth Olsen (Wanda) and Wyatt Russell (John Walker) play a married couple—Olsen is an Instagram influencer and Russell is her disgruntled husband : D

[The Bard of Banefort]

41 minutes ago, RumHam said:

It's never been clear to me how Bucky was controlled. In Winter Soldier he seemed to have a bit of independence and was asking questions so they zapped him again. 

Even if he was a "meat puppet" like in Possesor he'd still be traumatized if he remembered it. But that's not what was happening. I suspect the brainwashing made him obedient and loyal to Hydra, but he was not a zombie or a puppet.

Like Hydra probably told him "Kill Howard Stark and obtain the serum" I doubt they ever mentioned Tony's Mom. Same with the guy's son. 

Edit: I'm also reminded of Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation

 

  Reveal hidden contents

It wasn't his fault, what he did as Locutus of Borg. But he still understandably felt horrible about it.

 

This was kind of retconned in Civil War by having him be mind controlled with code words. 

[john]

1 hour ago, Lord of Rhinos said:

 If the show actually wanted to show that Bucky wasn't responsible for his actions as the WinterSoldier and he needed to have a psychological breakthrough to move past his misplaced guilt than the line should have been  "he was murdered by the Winter Soldier, and that wasn't me".

That’s not the breakthrough. The breakthrough is that he’s saying it to his friend/victim.