Streaming Saturday #18: Captain Falcon
Welcome to the end of Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Ticketholders!
That rhymes!
It was a ride of sorts, and I'm a little disappointed that Marvel went with "One World, One People" (the motto of the Flag-Smashers, which rings a little too close to the QAnon slogan, "Where We Go One, We Go All," but that is not a thought worth indulging for any further time) for the episode title, instead of "Justice and the American Way" as I guessed last week.
Leave your comments and Flag-Smash those social appreciation buttons down below, and get ready for a SPOILER Warning!
Karli's goal regarding the GRC has thus far been for the Flag-Smashers to send a radical message powerful enough that the Council will change their vote on how the repatriation is implemented...I think. Honestly, as important of a motivation as it was built up to be, it ends up as just another misguided social revolution against yet another convoluted bureaucracy where nobody on either side really knows what they want, how to get it, or--if they do get it--whether they really wanted it or the means were worth the price when all was said and done. Again, for everything else, there's MasterCard.
On a more recent, smaller scale (and speaking of unjustifiable means), I forgot to mention last time that Batroc joined forces with the Flag-Smashers to share information and resources. It goes about as well as anything else "the Leaper" has done in an MCU property to date, and amounts to little more than extra-extreme Flag-Smasher violence and another fight for him to lose. Oh, and a reason for Sam to use a sinnable, racist quip about getting him a baguette and French fries. First of all, did I mention this is a racist line delivered by the purported symbol of racial inclusiveness while he is covered head to toe in America? Second, French fries are not French, they were invented in Denmark, and the pastry we call a Danish came from Austria, so I hope TVSins is reading this.
Sam is no longer the Falcon. Following his montage from the last episode, he has donned the unnecessary cliffhanger (that we all knew what it would be from the word, "favor") from the Wakandan briefcase, and accepted Cap's shield and mantle as his own. The new suit is a mixed bag of varying CGI quality, cool moments, and a color scheme that is accurate to the comics (which were in print about the time Iron Man 3 hit theaters), but is alternately goofy as hell, excessively white for a black superhero, and screams "JESUS ALLEGORY!!!" louder than an image of SnyderVerse Superman.
John Walker is also there with his inferior shield, questionable priorities, and his--by now--played out "not MY Captain America!" symbolism, so he can perpetuate an already entirely unnecessary endangerment of human life, get his weaksauce revenge on Karli Morgenthau before Sharon Carter shoots her out of nowhere, and make the "Sam Wilson is a JESUS ALLEGORY!!!" imagery scream even louder. Then Sam, Bucky, and Walker stand shoulder-to-shoulder as if it was all meant to be a team effort to begin with (it wasn't), and Sam gives the surviving members of the GRC a rousing, "Get your shit together" speech on live television. Never mind the whole "baguettes and French fries" comment or the previously mentioned fact that Sam helped reverse the "Blip"--God, I hate that term!--thereby perpetuating the state of massively shit-apartedness that the world of the MCU has found itself in. But he's a righteously indignant man of color! And an American! And a superhero! So it's okay!?
Falcon and the Winter Soldier was cut down in episode count from eight to six, and it shows here, badly. Karli's premature death, the wordless, meaningless reconciliation between Walker and our two leads, Sharon being "revealed" as the Power Broker, a seconds-long reminder shot of Zemo in prison (on "The Raft," not in Wakanda as I said in my last post), Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Madame Hydra backing Walker (now officially going by "US Agent" and wearing a new costume of his own) because reasons, a shoehorned-in clip show of the previous episode, all of the loose end characters either being shot dead or blown up en masse, even Bucky's long-awaited amends-making..., it all feels hollow and rushed. Bucky just tells the old man, "the Winter Soldier killed your son, it was me, I had no choice," and walks out on him. The waitress he was supposed to date just gets a nod through a glass window. His therapist? "I finished my journal, bye!" And don't get me started on the Isaiah Bradley Memorial and how "meaningful," "memorable," and panderingly tokenized it feels.
I liked how they called the series, "Captain America and the Winter Soldier" in the credits, though. It's confusing, given the second Captain America movie was also titled that, but it shows character progression and speaks louder and more effectively than the aforementioned JESUS ALLEGORY!!! screamagery. An engaging series while it lasted, but it needed to last a bit longer for everything to land with meaning.
Bring on Loki!
Ticketmaster,
Out.
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