Yeah this looks ok but not amazing, I know nothing of the character though so that will be a big part of why it doesnt get huge hype.

Then again Guardians had almost no fan base and they nailed that...

 

Yes, and I like quite a few of them. What I don't like is the floating / air running effects. Never have, never will. It originally came about as a result of the effect limitations of early wire fighting. Despite having the tech nowadays to make beautiful fight scenes with realistic but still awesome physics, this effect still gets deliberately put into films.

 

I really wanted to like the Marvel Disney+ shows, but between the WandaVision and Falcon and the Winter Soldier endings I’m pretty thoroughly unimpressed. Keeping in mind there isn’t many Marvel movies I didn’t enjoy, I’m not sure what the cause for the discrepancy is. The shield deserved a better follow up story.

Trying to hold myself back from writing too much (edit: lol definitely failed) about all the things I didn’t like, but some of the main stuff:

Spoiler

Literally everything about the way Karli is treated. Sam saying someone who literally just blew up a building full of innocent people a few episodes ago can’t be called a terrorist, his refusal to fight her literally six episodes of this shit in. Not sure what his end game was beyond “let the supersoldier exhaust herself by letting her beat the shit out of me” cause Sharon thankfully put an end to things. When Steve did it with Bucky it made sense because of their close personal connection, with Sam I’m left perplexed as to why he cared so much (to the point he flies off with her body and leaves his ally Sharon behind bleeding?) about this one random terrorist that threatened to kill his family. Is he dangerously pacifist to the point he probably shouldn’t be getting involved in conflicts like this? Sexist? None of the other men he’s filled with bullets at the drop of a hat in previous episodes/movies got the same treatment.

Plus, the Flagsmashers get everything they wanted and Sam even suggested maybe this is a good thing because now the politicians know what it’s like to be afraid. So, I guess terrorism is a good thing now and absolutely an effective way of getting what you want. Whatever happened to we don’t negotiate with terrorists? Something about Disney pushing this image of an ostensibly left wing group pulling something startlingly similar to the Jan 6th Capitol riot feels like “both sides are the same” propaganda to me.

Between this and the complete lack of admonishment/justification of Wanda’s actions in her show, I’m left with the unavoidable impression Marvel’s Disney+ writers have a particularly twisted sense of morals.

Maybe I’d feel differently if I gave a shit about the plight of the central struggle of the whole show (people being forced to live with borders and being put into camps or something?) but since none of us have any real life experience of half the population going missing then reappearing, and they never actually bother to show us any of why what the GRC is doing is bad, I’m left completely ambivalent. I’m sure Disney was stoked they had an imaginary issue they could let their characters soapbox about without offending anyone.

Which ties into one of my biggest complaints about the MCU post-Endgame, in that there would be massive social upheaval from the Snap but as a result of a “Reed Richards is useless” style desperation to preserve the real world status quo, it can’t be done convincingly. It’s the same thing with why ~20 in universe years after it was invented, the only thing we’ve seen the arc reactor power outside a suit of armour was Stark’s tower in the first Avengers. I’m sure it will only get worse once, y’know, actual Reed Richard is introduced like is apparently happening soon.

Combine this with Disney wanting to avoid some real world politics, I’m left pretty confused about what life in the Marvel universe is actually like. An example of why this matters - during Isaiah Bradley’s speech to Sam about being an American icon and a black man at the same time, I couldn’t help but wonder - was Obama President in the MCU? Was Trump?

Iron Man has an Obama ‘Hope’ style portrait in IM2, but in the third movie we have President Ellis around 2012 - so was Obama a one term president? To confuse things further the quasi-canon Luke Cage apparently made a reference to MAGA, and Runaways a reference to “not having sex since the Obama admin” that made it sound like a recent thing. So basically it’s likely that politics and racial relations in America could be completely different in the MCU, and their previously largely ignoring the topic now makes it feel confusing more than anything to me when this show tries to dive into things. Kind of like they want to have their cake and eat it too - make hard hitting political statements but simultaneously have a product that’s vague enough about it’s politics it doesn’t offend real world figures/organisations.

I suppose it’s to be expected with Disney, but it felt especially transparent here. Everything about the shadowy evil GRC boogeyman felt like a ultra-nationalists nightmare vision of the UN, and of course they’re the ones that support bad Captain America (or is he bad? I can’t keep up, he went from trying to kill the protagonists to slapping backs with them in less than an episode’s length) because we can’t show the actual US government doing bad things. It actually made me think worse of the Winter Soldier movie because they do the same thing there less obviously - Nazis the US brought back home after the war with Operation Paperclip infiltrate the fictional international peacekeeping organisation that didn’t even exist until after the fact, but not the US government other than like one Congressman? Here we get a single mention of “the President” being involved in the shield handoff decision before the GRC steps in to take all the flak from there out.

I said earlier the one thing I wanted in regards to Zemo was someone to call out how flawed his ideology was, no dice. I’d say he felt pointless given the way he just quietly disappeared from the plot, but he was the best part of the show (especially his interactions with Bucky) so I guess instead I’ll say he was under-utilised. Should have been the primary antagonist of the show.

Sharon’s twist was ham fisted and obvious from the get go (as you can see in the post I predicted it right after the Madripoor episode) and ultimately just felt like a teaser for future Disney+ shows. I’m gonna say that’s 0/3 on her appearances throughout the MCU for me, just give it up honestly.

I wrote more than I intended, but yeah from a Marvel fan - this ain’t it. More worried about the future of the MCU than ever before. Hopefully it’s just Disney+ though, and the movies will keep up their quality.

Oh, and finally - did Sharon casually melt a dudes face somewhere in this episode or was that a fever dream? It was totally irrelevant to everything going on as well? Very weird moment.

 

I was sure Zemo was going to be like Spader in the Blacklist. I was wrong sadly.

 

Spoiler

As far as the fight with Karli goes, it seems pretty clear Sam was trying to talk her down and de-escalate the situation. Which is semi-reasonable considering nobody else seemed to be in immediate danger (sure, Sharon had been shot, but she must’ve just been grazed considering she didn’t even need medical care and was moving around just fine). I’m fine with Sam trying to find a peaceful solution and talk his opponents down: it fits his background as a guy who did therapy for veterans.

The real problem is that with how much they played up Karli’s sympathetic side, it would’ve helped to do a bit more “show, don’t tell” for the bad things that happened as a result of the GRC. They want Karli to be a sympathetic terrorist, but never really engaged with why she was a terrorist outside of some vague exposition.

It wouldn’t have been that hard to give her a couple flashbacks to flesh out her backstory: show her losing everything because of the GRC and becoming one of many displaced refugees. Show how the GRC is more interested in restoring the pre-snap status quo than adapting to the new world. Maybe even tie it into the racism theme by showing that the people getting deported to restore said status quo are non-white.

Of course, the problem with that plan is it would’ve taken a strong stand on a controversial issue. Something corporations hate doing because it might hurt their profits. Disney/Marvel wanted to make a show that really dived into heavy political themes and raised weighty questions, but hesitated to make any real statements beyond “racism is bad, mmkay?” Tying the GRC's attempt to reset the old status quo into something like the refugee crisis would've made for a stronger story, but one that might've angered a lot of people for being "too political."

Sharon was a definite weak point for the ending, since her being the Power Broker was a twist everyone saw coming a mile away, and it was all setup with no payoff. Wandavision’s ending closed off all it’s major plot threads, while the whole Power Broker plot seemed much more interested in setting things up for a future shows/films than telling a complete story.

If you’re gonna go with Karli as sympathetic and the GRC and Power Broker as the real big bads, it’s hard not to have an ending where they win and she loses feel a bit limp.

 

Spoiler

Does it fit his background though? I’m not sure I got “prefers to deescalate conflict” vibes in Cap 2 when he was flying around machine gunning people, or Ep 1 of this very show when he was throwing them out of planes. He was a special forces soldier in the Middle East long before he was a volunteer therapist.

I’m not saying he should have executed her at first opportunity or anything, just the whole “I’m refusing to fight you while you beat me up” thing felt very out of place. Like they wanted to force a moment like the end of Cap 2 without the proper backstory.

Plus, it’s not like he hasn’t already tried to talk her down multiple times to no avail. Not sure why this time he decided she needed to be beating him up while he tried and failed again. Sure, there was no one around now but if Karli disappeared again (like she did the last four/five times they fought) who knows which politicians she’d be burning alive next.

Anyway it looks like I was absolutely correct to be worried about the future of the MCU, because there’s apparently a Captain America 4 in the works by the show runner of FATWS. Happy about the Cap storyline moving back to the big screen, but by the guy behind this show? Please, please no.

 

Spoiler

I think the intent with Karli's character was to have her come across as more of a kid who's in over her head and has the pressure of the situation and the super soldier serum cranking up the worst parts of her. However, the general lack of background work on her and relegating what should've been a solid backstory to some exposition dumps really hurt her there. The hints of background we do get for her show a solid framework to build a really sympathetic character on, but the show never really used it.

On paper, she's a homeless orphan turned into a displaced, desperate, and disenfranchised refugee who suddenly got superpowers thanks to a dangerous criminal mastermind, and now she finally sees a chance to help all the other people like her. Problem is, we don't see any of her struggles, or get a clear sense of the problems she's trying to solve by turning to terrorism. Likewise, it really feels like at some point her age should've been addressed (the actress playing her was barely out of her teens during filming). There's no real exploration of why she became radicalized, which kind of destroys her whole character.

I think it makes sense for Sam to try and talk down the character that should be a scared kid who's in over her head and breaking down from the combination of a lifetime of trauma, the stress of leading the Flag Smashers, guilt over the damage she's caused, and the super soldier serum messing with her head. Problem is, the Karli they intended to write isn't the one who wound up on screen.

Writing issues aside, I imagine there's probably also out-of-universe reasoning for the fight playing out the way it did. The world being what it is, Sam pounding Karli with any serious level of violence would probably be hard to film without making it look a bit uncomfortable. Sure, in-story she's got super strength, but what we'd be seeing on-camera is a big strong guy beating up a skinny young girl. The optics of that are gonna be messy.

To give the creative crew some credit, apparently the original plan was to have a lot of problems tied into a pandemic amongst the refugees, which got shot down and the Disney execs decided had to be hastily rewritten when the actual pandemic hit. I think that was a mistake, nothing wrong with being topical and it clearly hurt the show. However, it does mean the creator kind of got dealt a bad hand, and might do better in other circumstances. Still, would've been nice if they could've produced a rock-solid product despite the problems.

 

I tend to agree, almost all the issues that are plot related stem from them quickly having to write around the change in plot due to Covid.

I think they could do it better, but who am I to judge.

The parts of the show that weren’t that are great.

 

@Chengar Qordath In short, to quote Brooklyn 99 - cool motive, still murder. I get what you’re saying though and agree it could have been done well, they just repeatedly fell short.

I know about the pandemic plot rumour (I posted about it on the last page) but ultimately we can only judge the finished product they put forward. From what I heard it was mostly changes to the beginning anyway, and they haven’t even confirmed it. Honestly if the Flagsmashers were purposely trying to release a virus or whatever the cut stuff was I’m not sure it would be much better than what we got. That course of action is only slightly less ridiculous than what they ultimately went with.

Since I’m posting again, here’s some more quick stuff I’ve thought about that I didn’t like:

Spoiler

In the midst of Sam’s bizarrely naive public lecture of random GRC delegates, telling them they “controlled the banks” felt particularly strange. The fact that he didn’t really tell them much of consequence other than “do better” and “get the opinion of people you already clearly know don’t want to leave the houses of those returned from the Snap that they moved into” had me thinking these politicians must have given the biggest eye roll of their lives the second they got off camera.

Sam’s costume looks a bit... not great. Not sure what it is but there’s too much white maybe, it reminds me of the cheesy Avengers 1 Cap suit. The fact that a vibranium-weave (or whatever material it is) suit leaves the top of his skull exposed is just so laughable I don’t know what they were thinking. Mackie’s head shape might not pull off the cowl well, like with Walker/Wyatt Russel?

Pretty much all of Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ dialogue felt painful. A waste of a good actor, felt like they were relying on her ability to sell some cheesy dialogue about becoming US Agent but she was not feeling it (understandably).

One of the most interesting arcs through the whole show, Bucky coming to terms with his victims, culminated in one of the most poorly edited weird 30 second conversation between him and the old man that skipped over everything of substance.

The fact that a series containing Bucky, Zemo, Wakanda, and the international political community didn’t mention the Sokovia Accords once. Literally there was a conversation (joke?) about having jurisdiction (with Wakandan’s and Bucky in the same goddamn room) and it didn’t come up. Has this major plot point just been completely abandoned?

Isaiah Bradley expressly tells Sam he doesn’t want to come forward to the public, so he makes a museum wing with a statue of him and surprises him with it? That shit wouldn’t fly in Worm lmao. Also “they won’t ever forget what you did for your country” - shouldn’t that be “what your country did to you”? Or are we just talking about him going behind enemy lines to rescue the other prisoners? Bradley’s sudden about face about everything and being happy about getting outed felt weird too.

“It’s the Black Falcon!” “No, it’s Captain America.” This shit made me want to never watch anything Marvel ever again, it’s so heavy handed I felt bad just writing it out.

 

Yeah, I don't think the whole Karli thing landed at all. The show kept trying treating her as if she was a sympathetic character - having the heroes try to talk her down rather than just kill her - but I can't recall any moment where we're made to feel sympathetic to her as an individual, or to her cause, which just seems to be generic terrorism. Yes, they have some talking points about wrongs done to them, and a vision for a world with a different political structure, but so do all terrorists. None of it was even close to being made sympathetic.

The result was that the finale felt like some kind of weird terrorist apologism, like Disney had taken some talking points straight from Osama bin Laden and decided to put them in the mouth of the hero. Very strange choices.

And on top of that, they decided to make the hero a bit of an idiot too. In the final conversation with the senator, the senator is raising very good points - "so what, you just want to chuck people out of their homes?". Sam doesn't have any answers in response, just vague platitudes about doing better, and we're somehow supposed to think that avoiding answering difficult questions and pretending that the problematic issues don't exist is an expression of virtue? It just feels incredibly naive.

I don't buy the idea that the change in plotline is the cause. If there had been a plotline planned where Karli had unleashed a virus on the world, that would make her even less sympathetic - just a much more successful terrorist. So it wouldn't have done anything to address the weaknesses in the ending.

 

As near as anyone can guess going off what hints we have of the original plotline, it was probably something about the virus hitting the refugee camps and the GRC not giving a damn, and the Flag Smashers would be trying to infect the GRC in the climax. Which ... well I can see why Disney didn't want to go forward with a plotline that would now come across as "What if someone was so mad about the Trump Administration's COVID response turned to terrorism?" Personally, I think that plot would've been great and pulled off what the show was aiming for with making her sympathetic, but the QAnon crowd and COVID deniers would've gone ballistic (which I see as a bonus, but Disney wants to appeal to as broad of an audience as possible to make more money).

Problem is, they didn't really use anything to replace the story beat that the pandemic should've occupied. We never really see why what the GRC is doing is so bad it drives people to terrorism. Sam's speech at the end is all about how we need to understand why people turn to terrorism, but the show itself never actually explores that topic beyond a couple bits of vague exposition.

 

There were hints of a great show here, but I have to just say it only gets a B from me. Still good but nothing great.

After seeing Zemo at play? He should’ve been the main villain. The charisma was insane.

Also,

Spoiler

Zemo is now 2 for 2 in accomplishing his goals against the Avengers

 

I’m going to stop posting complaining about this show after this because I’ve done more than enough, but I wanted to say this part of your post is of one of my main sticking points. The fact that they decided to make the new African-American Captain America’s introduction to the public - both fictional and real - lecturing a bunch of politicians to defend terrorism feels almost like purposeful sabotage of the character. The whole imagery of the shot of Sam bringing Karli down in his arms from the sky like an angel with a fallen martyr was admittedly aesthetic, but didn’t sit right with me.

Also I just saw this gif of Sam’s fight with Batroc and it definitely highlights some of the huge issues the fight choreography had. How is anyone supposed to take the shield seriously as a weapon after that? For that matter, this show made supersoldiers look lamer than ever - they’re all just throwing huge wild punches at each other. Apparently these untrained random Flagsmashers can also consistently go one on one with the Winter Soldier.

I know it’s a higher budget and everything, but try to square the fact that these fights occur in the same universe, with some of the same characters/abilities as this fight scene from the beginning of Civil War against Crossbones (bonus for Sam casually missile striking some guys lmao).

 

What the fuck was that the actual shield being knocked off course by a fucking office chair lmao.

 

Unfortunately yes, that’s the actual shield. Not being thrown by a superhuman of course, but if that’s all that happens when a normal dude throws it - maybe they should reconsider the whole “being Cap without the serum” thing. He seems a lot closer to Iron Man than Cap at this point. Honestly though I found Batroc blocking the shield with his forearms just as if not more objectionable, not to mention the nauseating amount of cuts.

 

I've always thought Civil War was one of the worst Marvel movies, but this really puts it into perspective how much better the action and fight choreography is in the movies. Even the most simple thing like Steve dropkicking that guy off the car seems more impressive than anything on this show.

 

I’m not sure if it was covid or what, but the choreography in this series was all over the place.

I give it a solid B, but the movie better be much higher quality.

 

I like Civil War on the whole but I can agree that the action scenes are by far the best aspect. That’s definitely the Russo brothers’ strength, and the movie was basically their trial run to take over the Avengers. The paintball war episodes of Community they directed shows that even on a smaller budget they’re much more talented than whoever was responsible for the fights on this show (although there was a few high points).

Anyway, Pitch Meeting guy says it best when it comes to this show. At some point Marvel should actually get him in the room during their pitch meetings to put a foot down on the stupider stuff.

 

Really? Care to elaborate on that?

I've always thought it was one of the best MCU movies, and its mainly tied to the Story they were telling. E.g The rift between Tony and Steve. Steve choosing to betray one friend to save another. The accords. Zemo. etc

 

Man, Sam needs a better outfit because that shit is fugly.