osprey_archer: (Winter Soldier)
[personal profile] osprey_archer
I’ve finally finished The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and boy, do I have mixed emotions about it. Some parts of it I loved! Some parts did not come together at all! Really a bit of a mess, but mostly a mess I enjoyed? Although the last episode in particular seemed EXTREMELY rushed and choppy.



First, the things I liked. I loved the way that the show dug into Sam’s backstory, his sister and his nephews, and the way that the show tied his struggle over taking the SHIELD to Isaiah Bradley’s story. (I’ve seen complaints that it would have been a more powerful statement if Sam refused the shield entirely, but look, this is a Marvel movie. “Character decides not to superhero and sticks to it” was never an option and we all know it.)

I also enjoyed Bucky’s scenes, particularly once the show allowed Bucky and Sam to get along. (Not sure we needed to spend quite so much time with them at each other’s throats, but such is life in TVland.) And Zemo was a revelation. I’ve seen Daniel Bruhl in non-Marvel movies (most notably Goodbye, Lenin!) so I knew he could act, but God! Now that Marvel finally gave Zemo some characterization other than VENGEANCE, Bruhl just went to town! Probably my favorite character in this series, which I did NOT expect when I went in.

(I also enormously enjoyed the scene where Zemo is pretending to sell the Winter Soldier, and he sort of wiggles Bucky’s chin with his fingertip as he says, “He will do a-ny-thing you want.” It’s so creepy and I’m here for it.)

My feelings about Sharon’s characterization are more mixed. I like that she’d carved out a badass niche for herself, and I like that the show actually pointed out that she’d just been more or less abandoned to her fate after helping Steve in Civil War (also, WTF, Steve)... but I’m not thrilled that she’s maybe being set up as a big bad for future installments. Although who knows! If it’s well done, that characterization might win me over. Even though her characterization has been a little all over the place, Sharon would still be a more richly characterized villains than most of the MCU’s baddies.

This brings me, of course, to the baddies of this show, the Flag Smashers, and OH BOY. This plotline was not thought through at all, which is unfortunate, given that it’s the A-plot of the whole season. We get a very lightly sketched view of what the Flag Smashers want, an even more thinly sketched view of the governmental body they’re fighting against, and no particular explanation for why they have decided that the best way to achieve their objectives is “blow up innocent people.” Have they considered, say, contacting the ACLU?

Of course they haven’t. That wouldn’t be conducive to thrilling fight scenes.

Really, though, the show could have blown past this problem if Karli Morgenthau, the lead Flag Smasher, had a stronger screen presence - if she had the aura of charismatic leadership that suggests large groups of people really would follow her as she uses questionable means to achieve poorly-defined ends. But she doesn’t.

The show also doesn’t manage to establish a sense of connection between Karli and Sam. In fact, it falls down on this so hard that I didn’t even realize that it was trying until the fight scene in the final episode, when Sam, in classic Captain America style, tells Karli “I’m not going to fight you” (although unlike Steve Rogers, he retains enough sense of self-preservation to at least block her punches).

Obviously this is meant to be a callback to the helicarrier scene in The Winter Soldier. For it to work, the show needed to establish a deep sense of identification between Sam and Karli - deep enough to overcome Sam’s knowledge that Karli has blown up buildings knowing full well that there are people inside, and probably will again if she gets away.

At very least, we needed Sam and Karli’s one scene together before their fight to establish a connection between them as swiftly and strongly as Sam and Steve’s scene at the beginning of The Winter Soldier (although obviously a more antagonistic connection than Steve and Sam’s). But it doesn’t - it can’t; Karli’s characterization is simply too weak to support it.

So in the climactic fight scene, when Sam tells Karli “I’m not going to fight you,” it doesn’t feel organic. The moment exists to call back that earlier iconic moment and establish Sam as the true Captain America, but it makes no sense in-universe. There’s no reason for Sam to do this for a girl he barely knows.

Date: 2021-05-08 01:32 am (UTC)
kore: (Default)
From: [personal profile] kore
YES, YES! TO ALL THIS, JUST, YES. I mean I know I was hoping for it from the comics, but just even in the context of the show, it seems weird that the person Sam winds up fighting is Karli, because he's totally going to pull his punches. (Which Steve actually wasn't doing when he fought Bucky for the chip, IMO. He doesn't say "I'm not going to fight you" until the helicarriers are firing on each other.) Walker seems like the kind of racist asshat who would TOTALLY decide all his problems stem from the Black guy who took My Shield Which Is Rightfully Mine (which ties in with his general Trumpian character) and yeah, "I can do this all day" would've been perfect as a callback line! because at that moment Sam IS asserting why he should be Cap. Hell, if they wanted a moment to go back to, have Sam APPEAR to be ready to kill Walker with the shield, just like Cap seemed about to kill Tony in CW, and then back down. ....it's just never a good sign when fans spitballing can come up with more compelling ideas. I know the whole theory that fanfic works best in the liminal spaces and loves filling in the holes (that's what she said) in less-than-perfect canons, but this show didn't even feel inviting like that, just sort of....tattered. "I don't want to fight you" would have worked for me with Eli, and maybe Sharon. The Karli storyline just couldn't bear the weight of the reference.

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