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


Corvinus85

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1 minute ago, john said:

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

But that's not really a breakthrough.  The entire final act of Civil War hinges on Iron Man being mad about his parents being murdered.  Bucky is hanging out with Sam, a dude the Winter Soldier tried to murder. His entire time in Wakanda is spent with people who, briefly, thought he murdered their king.  Bucky was the subject of an international manhunt and avengers adjacent.  His picture is literally on the wall at the Captain American exhibit.  The whole world is aware of his story.  The world and Bucky Barnes are both hugely aware of what the Winter Soldier did.

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4 hours 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.

Well, I think we're clearly supposed to sympathize with Bucky just as we're supposed to sympathize with Wanda.  While I certainly agree the latter's "redemption" is very poorly done, in that way it's consistent.  Regardless, the point is Bucky feels guilty about the things he did as Winter Soldier.  Whether the viewer judges him for those actions is obviously up to the viewer.

2 hours ago, Lord of Rhinos said:

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

His first scene in the series is literally having nightmares about killing an innocent bystander, I think the show makes it plenty clear.

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40 minutes ago, DMC said:

Well, I think we're clearly supposed to sympathize with Bucky just as we're supposed to sympathize with Wanda.  While I certainly agree the latter's "redemption" is very poorly done, in that way it's consistent.  Regardless, the point is Bucky feels guilty about the things he did as Winter Soldier.  Whether the viewer judges him for those actions is obviously up to the viewer.

His first scene in the series is literally having nightmares about killing an innocent bystander, I think the show makes it plenty clear.

Again, Bucky being wrecked with guilt for the things the Winter Soldier did is fine for a character beat, but isn't a position the show should take. I think the only logical way to view things is that Bucky is not responsible for what he did as the Winter Soldier. Yet, the show is using a sobriety program model for his therapy and has his therapist worried he might relapse. It has Sam telling him he needs to make amends.  The show has three different characters expressing that Bucky needs to make amends and zero characters expressing that he doesn't.

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22 minutes ago, Lord of Rhinos said:

Yet, the show is using a sobriety program model for his therapy and has his therapist worried he might relapse. It has Sam telling him he needs to make amends.  The show has three different characters expressing that Bucky needs to make amends and zero characters expressing that he doesn't.

Exactly - both Sam and the therapist encourage Bucky to make amends so Bucky can recover.  Neither is saying he's responsible and/or blames him for what he did, they're trying to help him deal with the trauma.  I'm not sure how the show could be any more clear that Bucky's arc is about accepting and forgiving himself - just as Sam, the US government, the Wakandans, and Rogers already have.

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8 hours ago, Lord of Rhinos said:

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

So you assume, anyway. But, to play Devil's Advocate, Sam has been un-snapped for a matter of months at most. Assuming he has the inclination to write a book, for example, and that various NDAs don't prevent him from writing one, and that he's found an agent and received an offer and signed a contract and received the payment already and the payment was not eaten up by existing debts and is sufficient to cover the costs and, well, you take the point. Even with some sort of social media endorsement deal, contracts etc. come into play (and so does inclination: Sam doesn't seem like that kind of person, to me). And personally, I'd rather not have the writers spell all this out on screen. I'm happy to let them make their point and say 'ok, let's go with this, it isn't wildly incredible and it matters to the story'.

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8 hours ago, Lord of Rhinos said:

But that's not really a breakthrough.  The entire final act of Civil War hinges on Iron Man being mad about his parents being murdered.  Bucky is hanging out with Sam, a dude the Winter Soldier tried to murder. His entire time in Wakanda is spent with people who, briefly, thought he murdered their king.  Bucky was the subject of an international manhunt and avengers adjacent.  His picture is literally on the wall at the Captain American exhibit.  The whole world is aware of his story.  The world and Bucky Barnes are both hugely aware of what the Winter Soldier did.

We don’t know whether any of his victims know who he is. Maybe they know he’s a superhero guy from the 40s, maybe they know he’s the Winter Soldier. What they don’t know is that he killed their loved one specifically.

As I understood it, previously Bucky had been crossing people off by finding them and making a connection with them, helping them out but not actually telling them what happened. So he had to take that final step to get over his trauma, represented by nightmares.

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If you can understand why in Civil War Tony would say "I don't care, he killed my mom" even after finding out Bucky was brainwashed, you should be able to understand why Bucky can't just be like "I was brainwashed therefore none of my actions where my fault so I don't have to feel guilty." And if you can't understand that... honestly I don't know how it could possibly be explained to you beyond saying trauma doesn't work that way and you accepting that despite not getting it.

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20 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

If you can understand why in Civil War Tony would say "I don't care, he killed my mom" even after finding out Bucky was brainwashed, you should be able to understand why Bucky can't just be like "I was brainwashed therefore none of my actions where my fault so I don't have to feel guilty." And if you can't understand that... honestly I don't know how it could possibly be explained to you beyond saying trauma doesn't work that way and you accepting that despite not getting it.

I can't understand Tony in Civil War though. That movie makes him out to be the biggest hypocrite in the series. Steve as well, for not telling Tony the truth sooner. Like I've said in the past, T'Challa is the only character in that film who acts like a true hero.

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18 minutes ago, sifth said:

I can't understand Tony in Civil War though. That movie makes him out to be the biggest hypocrite in the series. Steve as well, for not telling Tony the truth sooner. Like I've said in the past, T'Challa is the only character in that film who acts like a true hero.

Tony was always a gigantic hypocrite.  A genius emotional manchild.  How did you not pick up on that?

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1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Tony was always a gigantic hypocrite.  A genius emotional manchild.  How did you not pick up on that?

I know, but he’s that to the 11th degree in that film; almost to the point that feels like a different character. The only time he ever acts like the Tony Stark from the past films are when he’s recruiting Spider Man, IMO


It’s one of the reasons I hate Civil War as a film. The other being that it really feels like Cap got robbed out of a third film to give us Avengers 2.5.

By the end of the movie I ended up hating nearly everyone aside from T’Challa and Bucky. 

 

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10 hours ago, DMC said:

Exactly - both Sam and the therapist encourage Bucky to make amends so Bucky can recover.  Neither is saying he's responsible and/or blames him for what he did, they're trying to help him deal with the trauma.  I'm not sure how the show could be any more clear that Bucky's arc is about accepting and forgiving himself - just as Sam, the US government, the Wakandans, and Rogers already have.

But Bucky is not really choosing how he makes amends. It's other people telling him how to go about it. What if another way would work better for Bucky psychologically? I honestly got the impression from that session in episode 1 with his therapist that it wasn't really working (after apparently months of therapy). If Bucky personally feels he has to make amends to achieve peace of mind then it should be his choice in what way he does it. He should try more than one way. The way that was chosen for him clearly didn't work and I didn't appreciate how the show tried to paper over it in the last episode.

3 hours ago, TrueMetis said:

If you can understand why in Civil War Tony would say "I don't care, he killed my mom" even after finding out Bucky was brainwashed, you should be able to understand why Bucky can't just be like "I was brainwashed therefore none of my actions where my fault so I don't have to feel guilty." And if you can't understand that... honestly I don't know how it could possibly be explained to you beyond saying trauma doesn't work that way and you accepting that despite not getting it.

Look I'm a huge Angel (the Buffy character but more so on his own spin-off show) fan and Bucky is very similar so I perfectly understand where Bucky is coming from. My problem is that people assign blame to his situation and ask that he makes amends. And only a few of those who ask it of him think it would help him personally (like Sam). Others make it a requirement of his pardon. But no one thinks whether that is the right way for Bucky personally to deal with his trauma nor is he allowed to find his own way of dealing with it. And that's what I meant with my original post on the previous page. Marvel clearly thinks he is to blame for his actions somehow precisely because they decided on the only way to make amends/redeem himself is related to his former victims. So if Marvel blames someone like Bucky and insists he makes amends to his victims then this should be the case for all of their heroes.

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13 minutes ago, Mystical said:

Marvel clearly thinks he is to blame for his actions somehow precisely because they decided on the only way to make amends/redeem himself is related to his former victims. So if Marvel blames someone like Bucky and insists he makes amends to his victims then this should be the case for all of their heroes.

The problem with this is, it's not easy to divine what 'Marvel' thinks. There's the writer, who might have had a view: the showrunner, who might agree with that view or might push to go another way: and then Marvel as a corporate entity, who probably don't have a view but probably are interested in second-guessing what the audience's view is. If Marvel want Bucky to be accepted by the audience, they may push an angle that they think achieves that aim, whether it's fair to the character or not. So if Marvel think the audience need to feel (and this is an emotional thing, not a rational one) that Bucky has redeemed himself for his actions as the Winter Soldier, that's what he'll do, whether or not you think he is really to blame for them in the first place.

I tend to the view that Bucky would feel responsible, despite the brainwashing/mind control. That fits with human nature in my experience. But my main point is, this is to some degree a larger narrative issue, setting the character up for future appearances.

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I just interpreted it that Bucky had expressed that he needed to make amends in other to process his trauma, and that everyone's comments to the effect of him needing to do so are taking this need of his as a prior. I don't think there was any requirement in his pardon for him to specifically make amends, it was that he go through counseling until he got sign off as ok to go back to normal life, and that the book was a treatment he'd agreed upon with his therapist.

Having identified what he needed to do, he still found it incredibly hard and was emotionally flinching away which is where the encouragement comes in. No amount of friendship and shared meals was going to give the old guy the closure he needed, but it's really hard to look someone in the eye and tell them their son was murdered and it was your hands that did it even if it wasn't your fault.

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The thing about Bucky and how he wanted make amends, it seemed everyone on the list, except maybe the old man he befriended, were people he knew to be active in Hydra once upon a time and he sought to bring them down.  It seemed a key point in the idea of how Bucky himself hadn't come to terms with his being used as a killing machine...he was consciously avoiding the one person to whom he needed to actually apologize to, the old man, and instead tried to assuage his guilt by doing "right" against old Hydra peeps...now, they didn't hit the mark very well once he did go and do what he needed to do, and the scene may have been a little too short...but I think part of that was they needed Sam to give him the encouraging Captain America talk first...

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16 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

If they ever give Bucky his own show, helping the people on his list could be an interesting premise. Like he said, there are probably a dozen others after Yori who could benefit from it.

It’s why I called it his “My Name is Earl” list.

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3 hours ago, Mystical said:

Look I'm a huge Angel (the Buffy character but more so on his own spin-off show) fan and Bucky is very similar so I perfectly understand where Bucky is coming from. My problem is that people assign blame to his situation and ask that he makes amends. And only a few of those who ask it of him think it would help him personally (like Sam). Others make it a requirement of his pardon. But no one thinks whether that is the right way for Bucky personally to deal with his trauma nor is he allowed to find his own way of dealing with it. And that's what I meant with my original post on the previous page. Marvel clearly thinks he is to blame for his actions somehow precisely because they decided on the only way to make amends/redeem himself is related to his former victims. So if Marvel blames someone like Bucky and insists he makes amends to his victims then this should be the case for all of their heroes.

What are you talking about? The only people pushing Bucky to make amends are his therapist and Sam. Making amends is only a condition of his pardon in so far as going to therapy is and his therapist has concluded that trying to make amends, real amends not you know trying to track down the people who benefited from his actions as the Winter Soldier cause we all know what that kind of thing did for the mental health of Tony Stark, is the best way for him to overcome his trauma. And the thing is Bucky seems to agree, it's just it's hard for him to do so.

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4 hours ago, Mystical said:

But Bucky is not really choosing how he makes amends. It's other people telling him how to go about it. What if another way would work better for Bucky psychologically? I honestly got the impression from that session in episode 1 with his therapist that it wasn't really working (after apparently months of therapy). If Bucky personally feels he has to make amends to achieve peace of mind then it should be his choice in what way he does it. He should try more than one way. The way that was chosen for him clearly didn't work and I didn't appreciate how the show tried to paper over it in the last episode.

Look I'm a huge Angel (the Buffy character but more so on his own spin-off show) fan and Bucky is very similar so I perfectly understand where Bucky is coming from. My problem is that people assign blame to his situation and ask that he makes amends. And only a few of those who ask it of him think it would help him personally (like Sam). Others make it a requirement of his pardon. But no one thinks whether that is the right way for Bucky personally to deal with his trauma nor is he allowed to find his own way of dealing with it.

Yeah as others have already said I don't get this impression at all.  In the case of Sam, it seems rather obvious he's not "assigning blame" to Bucky or telling him how to go about making amends - and obviously the book wasn't his idea considering Bucky was ducking Sam's calls/texts up to the beginning of the series.

The book (and subsequent process) may well have been the therapist's idea, but that's kind of what any therapy is about (in terms of seeking professional help to address one's problems).  It is highly unlikely that is a "requirement" of his pardon.  Rather, attending therapy is a condition of his pardon, which seems a prudent condition for someone with superhuman powers that was brainwashed into assassinating people for half a century.  If the book/process was the therapist's idea, my interpretation is it's in an effort to get Bucky to deal with trauma and move on - just as she emphasizes that he's ignoring others/isolating himself in episode 1 and he won't be able to recover that way.

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I enjoyed this series. Overall its definitely a more enjoyable six episodes than the six part JL:SC binged watched last month. I heard a review saying it felt better watching TFaTWS series in one sitting, so I look forward to doing the same in future.   

Its clear the story suffered some with the rejig around a virus plot, since the Flag Smashers and Power Broker story felt underwhelming. It was Sharon all along should've had more emphasis imho.     

I loved the time spent at the Wilson home and what the broken fishing boat represented. Sam tried to fix it on his own and fails. He and Bucky together make some progress but still struggle, and then Sarah tells them to step away as some things are not always for them to fix. It takes a community working together to fix that boat.  

I don't think Bucky's journey is anywhere near finished and I hope they explore that in whatever future the MCU has for him. It's great seeing the kids play with him and are comfortable with his arm. We never see Sam's nephews playing around as Falcon, yet they gravitated to playing with The Shield.

I have not read the comics where Sam gets his new suit but its basically what we get in live action and I'm OK with that. Those bemoaning the white high collar of the suit should understand that the plumage around the heads of immature Bald Eagles are brown and then turn white when fully adult. Sam is no longer a Falcon, he's an Eagle. I think they have to keep the white collar going forward, but the white shoulders could be blue. Whether that was by instruction from Bucky or the Wakandans did their research when asked to make the suit is something to ponder.   

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15 hours ago, mormont said:

So you assume, anyway. But, to play Devil's Advocate, Sam has been un-snapped for a matter of months at most. Assuming he has the inclination to write a book, for example, and that various NDAs don't prevent him from writing one, and that he's found an agent and received an offer and signed a contract and received the payment already and the payment was not eaten up by existing debts and is sufficient to cover the costs and, well, you take the point. Even with some sort of social media endorsement deal, contracts etc. come into play (and so does inclination: Sam doesn't seem like that kind of person, to me). And personally, I'd rather not have the writers spell all this out on screen. I'm happy to let them make their point and say 'ok, let's go with this, it isn't wildly incredible and it matters to the story'.

There's no ticking clock.  Sara's been thinking of selling the boat for seven years.  And it is actually wildly incredible. The banker can't figure out who Falcon is?  When being in the Falcon's home town, working at the bank he knows has been the Falcon's family bank for "generations", and having an appointment with Sam Wilson?  C'mon!

13 hours ago, john said:

We don’t know whether any of his victims know who he is. Maybe they know he’s a superhero guy from the 40s, maybe they know he’s the Winter Soldier. What they don’t know is that he killed their loved one specifically.

As I understood it, previously Bucky had been crossing people off by finding them and making a connection with them, helping them out but not actually telling them what happened. So he had to take that final step to get over his trauma, represented by nightmares.

I mean the whole being framed for the murder of a head of state, the resulting international manhunt, and it ended with half of the Avengers becoming fugitives, would indicate that the world is pretty familiar with Bucky Barnes.

The only amends we see Bucky make is evil senator, Zemo, and Yoki.  Obviously, the Yoki model is not really reproducible geographically or time wise.

13 hours ago, TrueMetis said:

If you can understand why in Civil War Tony would say "I don't care, he killed my mom" even after finding out Bucky was brainwashed, you should be able to understand why Bucky can't just be like "I was brainwashed therefore none of my actions where my fault so I don't have to feel guilty." And if you can't understand that... honestly I don't know how it could possibly be explained to you beyond saying trauma doesn't work that way and you accepting that despite not getting it.

Again, perfectly fine with Bucky as a character feeling he needs to make amends. Not fine with the show agreeing with him. Tony being an emotional, egotistical jerk is a fine character beat.  If Civil War had agreed with Tony I would have had a problem with it.

7 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

If they ever give Bucky his own show, helping the people on his list could be an interesting premise. Like he said, there are probably a dozen others after Yori who could benefit from it.

Except Bucky finished the book and gave it to Dr. Ranier.

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