Anthony Mackie and Carl Lumbly starred in the show that should have been.
Everyone else starred in a Civil War rehash.
Yeesh, that costume.
Chuck Zlotnick/Marvel Studios
You kept on glimpsing the great showThe Falcon and the Winter Soldiercould have been.
Lumby starred in the one-season wonderM.A.N.T.I.S.back in the mid-90s, playing a paralyzed scientist with a high-tech exo-suit.
That was also the era ofMeteor Man,Spawn, andBlade.
Marvel Studios
Sam and Isaiah: Two good men, two different generations, two different perspectives.
But this unmarvelous Disney+ quagmire buried its best instincts underneath uninspired cameos, geopolitical stupidity, and spin-off teases.
Creator Malcolm Spellman struggled to keep Sam in the foreground, but the sprawling tale lost focus.
(“The app says it’s this way!”
said one Flag Smasher, walking right into the Uber version of a trap.
)Madripoorlooked like a whole city based on the night club scene fromX-Men: Apocalypse.
Zemo (Daniel Bruhl) returned fromCaptain America: Civil Waras a different (briefly fun!)
character, and Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp) returned as a different (boring) character.
It was a kickto see Ayo (Florence Kasumba) swing by.
It was not a kick to seeJulia Lous-Dreyfus hamming it up as Contessa Whatever.
Kindly un-handcuff the ever-charmingSebastian Stanfrom this dull character.
Every Winter Soldier scene depends on a fundamental flaw in motivation.
He is sorry for decades of brainwashed murder.
But:He was brainwashed, like sci-fi brainwashed, with no control over his actions.
It’s not his fault Iron Man’s parents died.
It’s not his fault he killed the bystander son of Yori (Ken Takemoto).
The tougher interpretation of a character like this would necessitate a sharper view the 20th century.
I don’t blameThe Falcon and the Winter Soldierfor not keeping track of history.
It couldn’t even keep track of itself.
The first episode established Sam as a post-Blip government contractor, basically a one-man private army.
I loved that boat, though, and kept waiting for the show to get back to it.
How would the Wilson kids save their legacy?
It was a relatable, financial drama.
Turns out all they had to do was call family friends.
If it was that easy, we’d all have boats.
Their buddy act foregrounded limp action storytelling.
Sam kept his cellphone on during a meeting with a dangerous crimelord.
The finale needed one kidnapped diplomat in a helicopter to be a Philippine Air Force vet with flight training.
This is lazy plotting, as unforgivable as assuming we didn’t immediatelyknow who the Power Broker was.
it’s possible for you to put quote marks around bad writing and pretend it’s all a laugh.
Marvel is the kind of universe where a random barfly on Crime Island jokes about Bucky’s new haircut.
Viewers freaked out aboutone and a half seconds of Zemo dancing.
Sam’s Captain America outfit looked so so uncool, but ridiculousness isn’t always a bad thing.
It could have been worse, anotherDark Knighty conglomeration of kevlar.
Those ski goggles, though….
Were you moved by the new Cap’s big speech to the Global Repatriation Council?
Personally, I was still reeling from the show’s utter inability to see a monster in its midst.
John Walker was not a good guy.
He killed a man in cold blood in front of cameras, in front of the world.
This week of all weeks, that’s a potent storyline: Law enforcement run amok.
I thought the first five episodes clearly realized he was an unwieldy vehicle for what Captain America represented.
But you could feel a strong Disney influence towards back-pedaling moderation, and then outright retrograde behavior.
Wasn’t he justified?
And can’t we forgive our renegade guardsmen their occasional excesses?
Walker wound up cheekily quoting Abraham Lincoln as a bit of heroic banter.
Go to hell, U.S.
Agent, and take the 1980s with you.
“They become symbols, icons, and then we start to forget about their flaws.”
Complicated heroes are not Marvel’s bag.
“Steve didn’t put you in jail!”
Did Steve Rogerseverdo anything wrong?
Nobody could think of anything.
After all, hedidsave the universe.
The irony, of course, is that Stevediddo something wrong.
Sorry, sorry: Hiswife’s great-niece, whooo, time travel!
That wild romantic mishap sure showssomethinga bit off in the Boy Scout act.
ButThe Falcon and the Winter Soldierwas more interested in retreading the megafranchise’s greatest hits.
Batroc (Georges St-Pierre) was back, who cares.
There were squirrel suits, and I know squirrel suits are so dangerous, but they always look dumb.
Bucky told Yori he killed his son, and then the scene ended right when it should have started.
thing the Contessa represents.
But right here, at a moment of triumph,The Falcon and the Winter Soldiershowed all its cards.
Heroes and symbols can be flawed.
The actual nightclub scene was inX-Men: Apocalypse.
I’ve never regretted an error more.
