Eh, while I agree that it’s a bit reductionist trying to fit people into good and bad - in this case we’re talking about a comic book-based storyline. The dichotomy between heroes and villains is a pretty fundamental aspect, even more so when dealing with ‘different shades of grey’ levels of morality.

On that note, clearly the real villains of the show are the Wakandan Dora Milaje. Covertly infiltrating a neutral country to carry out a revenge assassination, attacking two innocent GRC employees carrying out their duties, and declaring “we have jurisdiction wherever we happen to be” after their nation was one of the biggest supporters of the Sokovia accords. The Flagsmashers are small time in comparison.

On a different note, something interesting I heard recently was that there was a planned pandemic plot line that got cut when coronavirus started getting big. Apparently mostly the first few episodes were changed up - I think there’s still some remnants like the Flagsmashers going after vaccines for no evident reason. It was apparently about a virus being released upon the population as a weapon, if I had to guess by the Flagsmashers as a way of getting things back to like they were during the 5 years post-Snap.

Pretty crazy shit if true, imagine what the person who wrote that must have been thinking last year.

 

@Fatality our DnDLP group was trying to cure a massive plague that hit Neverwinter right as covid started to hit

 

Haha sounds like it would have been similarly disconcerting. I’ll have to look into DnDLP - always been curious but it’s not much of a thing down under. Hope you guys went better at curing Neverwinter’s plague than we’re doing IRL.

 

Well... one of our party members ended up sending a known infected individual to another party member's home town to relay a message, resulting in the death of half(or more?) of the residents of said home town. Also, due to temporal and planar shenanigans, we ended up arriving back at Neverwinter around half a decade after we left, despite only spending a few months of time for us. So... a lot of people died while we were gone.

Good News is the [Magical] Plague was cured in the end.

 

The problem with Karli and the Flag Smashers isn't that they aren't clear cut good or bad, but that there's just no consistency with them. And not in a "it's complicated" sort of way, but in a contradictory way that just doesn't add up to a coherent whole. I (think I) know how the show wants us to see them. They're supposed to be well-intentioned people with a good cause, but are willing to do bad things in pursuit of it. But they do such a bad job of outlining her morals and ethics, and really just getting a grasp on her character in general, that "I don't know if I'm supposed to like her or not" is a pretty fair question to ask when the show isn't doing a good job at giving you the information you'd use to make that decision.

Let's just look at this most recent episode.

Spoiler: E4

Karli threatens Sam's sister, then later insists to Sam that she would never actually follow through with it... but would she? I think that scene wants me to believe she wouldn't do it, but that's in contradiction to past scenes that make Karli out to be the person who very much would. She's pretty willing to blow up buildings of people without remorse, but why does she treat Battlestar's death like "oh man, we fucked up, let's get out of here". I know it's to give Walker that execution scene, but she just took out one of her four opponents and the other three are just kinda standing there. If Karli's a terrorist who's willing to do whatever she must, this is the moment where she strikes. If Karli's really just a good person who doesn't actually want to hurt people and thinks that this accidental kill was a step too far, then where the hell were these feelings before? I get that you want to - and have to - honor Battlestar's death dramatically. Do that. But this was just a bad way of handling it.

Then there's just issues with the Flag Smashers' portrayal in general. We're introduced to them as though they are a broader movement, or at the very least an ingrained militia movement... but ever since their first appearance they've felt more like a group of maybe a dozen super-serumed terrorists with some street-level connections. We're told they have global reach but it's only ever Karli and her henchmen doing things! We're told that they're some "thanos did nothing wrong" folks who want to get rid of borders but borders have since factored into nothing but like a throwaway line somewhere. I get that they wanted to use the Flag Smashers name, but there's a better way to justify it that still ties into this story. We're told they're angry with the GRP - an organization meant to help the displaced refugees from the blip - but not because the GRP is bad at their job but because they want to help the people who weren't blipped for some reason, but at the same time I think all these refugees who need help and are at these facilities are blipped people? I dunno. Look, we really needed a scene in the first two episodes that basically showed us why the Flag Smashers exist and why they fight, rather than a bunch of scenes talking about it, especially when a bunch of those scenes are Karli talking to nobodies. Show don't tell and all that.

And it's not like any of this is intentional to make us feel uncertain about what Karli and the Flag Smashers believe and what they're willing to do. Or at least, if that is the intention, they're not doing it right. I get that we're supposed to sympathize with Karli. We're supposed to sympathize with everyone in this series to an extent. And I do sympathize with her at least, like, in theory, but the series has fumbled its articulation of her viewpoint and morality and whatnot, and so any sympathy I have is gonna be limited because I'm just not really all that sure who she is. What I'm told does not always match up with what I'm shown, which also doesn't always match up with what I was shown before. Part of it is a poor handling of violence, but a lot of it is just a poor handling of character.

Granted, she is an MCU villain, so we can't be all that surprised, even if they have been getting better at it recently. At least they've got a handle on Walker.

 

@Stealthy I think you're getting their motivations wrong. We only really got their motivations defined here in episode 4. Things got better for them after the snap and then they got forced out of jobs and everything when people returned.

Their motives aren't clearly defined in the show because that's not the kind of villains they are. They aren't Zemo with his clearly articulated reason for villainly. THey aren't Walker with his innate character flaws.

They are regular people who are trying to make the best of a horrible situation and strike back at those who hurt them. You're not gonna get a clearer manifesto because it doesn't exist.

Sam's convo with Karli showed this. He easily got her to contradict herself. She's not some leader wtih a logical and thought out plan. She's a charismatic person offering help and revenge.

 

I think it would’ve been good to show a scene or two of the oppression the Flag Smashers are so angry about. Something like Karli getting kicked out of her house because it belonged to someone who got blipped, losing her job because the company is rehiring people who got blipped, etc. The show’s been telling us about the flaws of the GRC more than showing it.

 

I think they all have an oh shit moment when Battlestar dies because Sam and Bucky very obviously were not going for the kill. It was very reminiscent of the Civil War airport fight scene where War Machine was actually hurt.

 

Well now, episode 6. One more episode left.

Spoiler

Walker has gone off the deep end. Wanted to kill Sam for nothing, screamed like a madman.

I actually don't think he can be fully at fault here, to be honest. It's clear from his words and from the scene with the military that he's simply a product of years of following orders and doing missions. He just lost it. And the serum amplified all his fears and character flaws.

Good on Sam for finally picking up the shield though. About time.

 

Since the TV shows aren't canon, that does mean Coulson has been canonically dead since the first Avengers Movie, right?

 

Possibly? Or all the non D+ shows will eventually get handwaved as a divergent timeline / extant piece of the multiverse.

I'm betting on them fully establishing multple continuities in the next Spiderman / Doctor Strange. Movies and D+ Shows will be the main timeline. X-men will be it's own universe with some limited crossover. The Sony Spiderverse. Then there will be a branch universe from main continuity to explain all the old non-canon shows.

 

Yes. However, that doesn't mean they can't bring him back another way.

For example, they're re-using Charlie Cox as Daredevil even though the Netflix shows aren't canon anymore.

 

Is Agents if shield worth watching all the way? I dropped it part way into season two.

 

As someone who was thoroughly uninterested with the concept of the show and wasn't impressed by the bits I saw when it was first coming out, I ended up really enjoying it when I binged watching it for the first time a year or two ago per my brother's recommendation.

First couple of seasons are the weakest and the show generally just gets better over time.

 

I liked it, it had its moments. Some things here and there but overall a positive. Too bad it was decanonized, it had several interesting concepts.

 

This looks so much better than Iron Fist lol



Excited for it.

 

I'm kind meh about it.

It's not bad, but nothing in this trailer excites me.

The settings and costumes are generic. The action, especially what little of fights we get, rather mediocre. The characters not very charismatic in these few scenes. We don't even get a good explanation what this films will be about.

If it wasn't Marvel I probably wouldn't bother with it.

 

Yeesh. Not a particularly good trailer.

I'm still optimistic about it, but really only because kung-fu movies are my bread and butter. As long as they don't pull a Mulan and have a stupid amount of gravity-defying B-movie chinese cinema air leaps, I think I'll come away pretty happy.

 

Doesn't everything?

Though to be fair, Iron Fist Season 2 was better than S1 by a lot.

EDIT: 5000th post. Figures it would be in the MCU thread, heh.

 

Yo, there are some cool wuxia movies