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Author Topic: The Falcon and the Winter soldier  (Read 24018 times)
Khaldun
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Reply #35 on: March 20, 2021, 07:28:52 AM

I thought the stuff with the Winter Soldier was good character work. Actually with the Falcon too. I think the only Blip related stuff that didn't work so well for me was Sam and his sister not getting the loan. Garden-variety racism is fine (I completely assume the Blip wouldn't do anything to that), but it seems idiotic that a loan officer would say "well, you don't have any revenue in the last five years". I mean, if you were going in right now to finance a new restaurant after closing your old one in July 2020, no bank manager would say "look, you didn't have any business between March and July 2020, I think that means you personally are a bad risk for this new loan, because I can't understand why your business failed otherwise." I like that they're continuing to take the Blip seriously, but Feige needs to hand out a sort of MCU background document that reminds script writers and directors of what happened--half the people on the planet disappeared for five years, and for the most part, people had little to no understanding of why and little to no reason to think that it wouldn't happen again. More than WandaVision, this should be the show that really digs in to how that felt and how hard it is to get things back to normal. I assume any government that was still somewhat intact after people came back would be pressing super-hard for loans and financial assistance to anyone and everyone trying to get a business or a life back up and running. This just felt more like "we need to create conflict between Sam and his sister", which I think they could do simply by having her absolutely refuse to seek a loan because she's tired and depressed and doesn't trust him to be a part of this going forward.
Threash
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Reply #36 on: March 20, 2021, 08:09:36 AM

I thought the stuff with the Winter Soldier was good character work. Actually with the Falcon too. I think the only Blip related stuff that didn't work so well for me was Sam and his sister not getting the loan. Garden-variety racism is fine (I completely assume the Blip wouldn't do anything to that), but it seems idiotic that a loan officer would say "well, you don't have any revenue in the last five years".

That part actually made the most sense to me. It hasn't been long since everyone came back, that the bank would have no updated policies for returnees is absolutely believable.

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Velorath
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Reply #37 on: March 20, 2021, 09:44:51 AM

Yeah, I think it kind of made sense in that as the guy at the bank described it, when everyone came back there were a lot of people who needed loans to rebuild/get back on their feet, and the banks just literally don't have the resources to handle it all.
Velorath
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Reply #38 on: March 20, 2021, 09:48:52 AM

The "broke superhero" thing just doesn't make any sense, it's barely reasonable when it's a teenager like Spiderman, but Falcon should be pretty loaded from the work he does.

I would think he would have something as a result of his military service, but he was an Avenger for like half a movie before he joined Cap's team of vigilantes on the run from the law.
Khaldun
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Reply #39 on: March 20, 2021, 11:43:09 AM

I was kind of surprised and pleased that they're doing two old Cap storylines--the "fake Cap/replacement Cap" thing that has come up repeatedly in the comics plus they're actually using the Flag-Smashers in a much less goofy form than they had at first--I guess that'll be Zemo behind it all. Plus some kind of power-up that mimicks the Super-Soldier formula, possibly. (I keep forgetting that in the MCU it's canon that the Hulk is a consequence of a later attempt to recreate the formula.)
SurfD
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Reply #40 on: March 20, 2021, 06:52:15 PM

I was kind of surprised and pleased that they're doing two old Cap storylines--the "fake Cap/replacement Cap" thing that has come up repeatedly in the comics plus they're actually using the Flag-Smashers in a much less goofy form than they had at first--I guess that'll be Zemo behind it all. Plus some kind of power-up that mimicks the Super-Soldier formula, possibly. (I keep forgetting that in the MCU it's canon that the Hulk is a consequence of a later attempt to recreate the formula.)

Not the Hulk.  I am pretty sure Banner was still a pure Gamma Radiation experiment accident and was not Formula related at all.  The Abomination was Formula related, as Ross uses one of their Formula Recreation attempts as the catalyst for the Abomination if memory serves.

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SurfD
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Reply #41 on: March 20, 2021, 07:01:27 PM

The "broke superhero" thing just doesn't make any sense, it's barely reasonable when it's a teenager like Spiderman, but Falcon should be pretty loaded from the work he does.

I would think he would have something as a result of his military service, but he was an Avenger for like half a movie before he joined Cap's team of vigilantes on the run from the law.
No idea what the relative timeline between movies is, but his first Appearance is in Winter Soldier, and he makes a cameo appearance in Ant Man before going fugitive in Civil War, so there was at least maybe a year or more where he was operating as an Avenger.  You would have to balance that vs how long the gap between Civil War and the blip was, because Cap and friends are still basically operating off the radar right from the end of Civil War until they come out of hiding to team up against Thanos.   Pretty easy to assume Sam would be financially tapped out after a year or more of living off the grid with Cap.

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Khaldun
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Reply #42 on: March 20, 2021, 07:52:47 PM

I think in The Incredible Hulk, which is MCU canon apparently (esp. now that Blonsky is actually coming back in one of these shows), they revealed that Thunderbolt Ross deceived Bruce Banner about what they were experimenting with, so Banner didn't realize that what he was working with was a variant of the Super-Soldier Formula. But I haven't seen the flick for a long time so I don't remember the infodumping. There's some shit from Agents of SHIELD about this too but I don't even vaguely remember it.
Velorath
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Reply #43 on: March 20, 2021, 07:58:10 PM

The "broke superhero" thing just doesn't make any sense, it's barely reasonable when it's a teenager like Spiderman, but Falcon should be pretty loaded from the work he does.

I would think he would have something as a result of his military service, but he was an Avenger for like half a movie before he joined Cap's team of vigilantes on the run from the law.
No idea what the relative timeline between movies is, but his first Appearance is in Winter Soldier, and he makes a cameo appearance in Ant Man before going fugitive in Civil War, so there was at least maybe a year or more where he was operating as an Avenger.  You would have to balance that vs how long the gap between Civil War and the blip was, because Cap and friends are still basically operating off the radar right from the end of Civil War until they come out of hiding to team up against Thanos.   Pretty easy to assume Sam would be financially tapped out after a year or more of living off the grid with Cap.

His first appearance is in Winter Soldier but he isn’t an Avenger until the closing scene of Age Of Ultron.

In regards to Khaldun’s mention of Blonsky, Blonsky gets injected with a replicated Super Soldier Serum at first which seems functional albeit imperfect.
Khaldun
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Reply #44 on: March 20, 2021, 09:27:58 PM

In Marvel comics proper, the way that the backstory of the Super-Soldier Formula has developed has been very interesting--there's the fake Caps (a couple of them) who were deranged by it, there's a kind of cheap-ass steroid version of it that's very bad for you that some mad scientist gives people who want to get powered up if they've got a lot of cash on hand but it usually kills or deforms them, there's the Tuskegee Black Cap version of it, there's the John Walker version of it (that I think is the cheap-ass version with a bit of extra government money in it), there's continuing US government experiments with it that kill tons of subjects and produce Nuke, there was a Nazi version that was taken by Master Man and the Destroyer (but not the Red Skull), the Black Widow and other Soviet agents got a version of it, Nick Cage got a whack-ass version of it (I think? in the comics? been real long since I read his origin). I'm sure there's more--it's one of those ur-origins that's been badly overused but it also makes a kind of sense. If you knew a scientist had been able to do something in the past, why not be able to figure it out again? Kind of goes for the guy who made the android Human Torch too--if he did that once, surely folks would have kept trying.
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Reply #45 on: March 20, 2021, 11:36:25 PM

In the comics John Walker got his super strength from the Power Broker rather than any sort of Super Soldier variant. Doubt they're going that route here in the MCU, but it was notable in the comics because Walker actually had super human strength as opposed to Steve Rogers who was at "peak human". When Walker is getting trained by Taskmaster on how to throw Cap's shield he has to learn not to put too much force into the throw because he decapitates the training dummies.
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Reply #46 on: March 21, 2021, 12:12:00 AM

Don't remember if it was from one of the animated TV serieses, but I am almost positive that I remember at least one incarnation of Felicia Hardy (Black Cat in Spiderman) having received her abilities from one of the few versions of the Serum that didn't have any side effects.

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Khaldun
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Reply #47 on: March 21, 2021, 07:53:01 AM

The Power Broker/Karl Malus is basically a mad scientist who gets a hold of shitty counterfeit copies of various power-up serums etc.--he had some Pym particles that he got a hold of somehow, and then he works for a company that does that kind of work for a fee (that's the Power Broker). I always got the impression that some of the shit he was giving people was a bad copy of the Super-Soldier Formula, the one that the US government kept experimenting with that created Nuke and killed lots and lots of other people.
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Reply #48 on: March 21, 2021, 08:23:51 AM

There isn't anyone walking around with the skills to repair and maintain Stark tech who is lacking a good paycheck if they want it. It was such a good chance to tell a story of bootstrapping vs debt culture. I liked what they were trying to do with both storylines, but the execution was a mess. The pacing was a nightmare, it was vaguely unpleasant to watch, going from ultraviolence (albeit extremely brief, I just despise graphic violence, it's cheap) to slooow and forced character scenes.

But I'm down for weekly Marvel shows, they're not all going to be top-shelf. The ol Henny Youngman (and ofc Rodney Dangerfield) technique, just keep em coming and they average out to a good time.

Why did fake Cap look so weird? That was maybe the most disturbing thing in the show.
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Reply #49 on: March 21, 2021, 09:43:56 AM

The "broke superhero" thing just doesn't make any sense, it's barely reasonable when it's a teenager like Spiderman, but Falcon should be pretty loaded from the work he does.

I think the point was that he really wasn't getting paid. If it's the government paying, that makes total sense.

It was also trying to tie into the racial aspect that was intrinsic to the character at his creation, when he was I think doing legal aid/community work in Harlem, which is very different from what it would be today. Some of the same racial themes of prejudice unfortunately work today with just a slight bit of tweaking, which is what they've done here. Reading the Wikipedia on his original origin (he was a criminal before the Red Skull changed his timeline to be a community worker with the Cosmic Cube), there's parts of that I didn't know as I hadn't read the earliest appearances.

One thing I noticed was they had no problem with the good guys straight up killing the bad guys, so this is going to be a distinct shift from the comics version in that respect. I liked the character work, and the set piece at the beginning was movie quality.

This is never going to be as good as WandaVision because it's not even going to bother coloring much outside the lines. That's ok, not everything can be innovative. It just has to execute well and I think they are starting well.

Khaldun
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Reply #50 on: March 21, 2021, 01:56:51 PM

Fake Cap definitely looked like an incel doofus, but that may well be quite on purpose--I am guessing that both the Falcon and the Winter Soldier are not gonna stand for it but also that Fake Cap is going to prove to be completely fucking unacceptable at it, which is always the case with Fake Caps (there have been a bunch, not just John Walker).
HaemishM
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Reply #51 on: March 21, 2021, 02:14:47 PM

Dat chin, doh.  why so serious?

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Reply #52 on: March 21, 2021, 05:54:39 PM

WandaVision was carried by expectations, the actual content was meh outside of the speculation of where the show is going. It was more a origin story for the Scarlet Witch persona that they never really established in the 3-4 movies she's in. Which is fine, still better than Thor 2 or Iron man 2 and I'd rather watch episodes 4-9 of Wanda Vision over Captain Marvel and captain marvel is leagues better than most DC movies.

Falcon x Winter Soldier is giving me the origin story behind the Falcon. Which again another avenger never really given his own explanation since the his introduction. I am motivated to watch episode 2, which is waaay more than i can say about Wanda but on the other hand I am concerned that they didn't think some things through on some of the details. Not enough to sink the boat, Sam has never really been banked rolled by a Stark and missed out on being a Shield Agent, so he is broke by comparison of an average Avenger who has the full support of say retired mad scientist, Wakanda, international shadow governments, or tony stark himself... but on the other hand he should be making 250k a year based on what we pay army contractors who show up for 3 months and gets paid hazard pay. I mean even when he was just an Avenger at Avengers tower he probably getting paid that much by Stark who is probably throwing 75k at janitors. Again not enough to sink the series.

Then there is the winter soldier stuff and i have to say...why isn't he in Wakanda? Like really, what's the point in being in America currently considering your barely allowed to live in the country and everyone you knew is either dead or a work associate from another planet. I understand the desire to make amends but I'd like it better if they started him there (found out about fake cap and rushed back to the states to handle business). His parts are still good though.
MahrinSkel
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Reply #53 on: March 21, 2021, 08:58:39 PM

Quote
Then there is the winter soldier stuff and i have to say...why isn't he in Wakanda? Like really, what's the point in being in America currently considering your barely allowed to live in the country and everyone you knew is either dead or a work associate from another planet. I understand the desire to make amends but I'd like it better if they started him there (found out about fake cap and rushed back to the states to handle business). His parts are still good though.
His sabbatical in Wakanda ended with back to back boss battles for the fate of the planet, neither of which he actually made a difference in. He might be done with Africa.

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Reply #54 on: March 22, 2021, 09:18:40 AM

Quote
Then there is the winter soldier stuff and i have to say...why isn't he in Wakanda? Like really, what's the point in being in America currently considering your barely allowed to live in the country and everyone you knew is either dead or a work associate from another planet. I understand the desire to make amends but I'd like it better if they started him there (found out about fake cap and rushed back to the states to handle business). His parts are still good though.
His sabbatical in Wakanda ended with back to back boss battles for the fate of the planet, neither of which he actually made a difference in. He might be done with Africa.

--Dave

True but he has a better chance of building a life there than in the states.
Raguel
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Reply #55 on: March 26, 2021, 03:43:39 AM

So I guess me not being able to sleep Thursday night/Friday morning is just a thing now and I should embrace it.  why so serious?

I think this episode is much better than the first. I don't think the Sam/Bucky banter works for me though.

I hope the first 40 min. are going to be the status quo and swerve us. It's a much more interesting story than if they went the other way.

I think the show  goes off the rails in the last 10 min or so but other than that I strong episode.

« Last Edit: March 26, 2021, 03:48:51 AM by Raguel »
Threash
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Reply #56 on: March 26, 2021, 10:31:33 AM

BTW, Supersoldiers? literally not one of the big three.

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Reply #57 on: March 26, 2021, 11:56:13 AM

BTW, Supersoldiers? literally not one of the big three.

I think everyone thinks that the serum was either lost or the the inferior versions aren't much of a threat compared to say Iron Man.

2nd episode is worth a re-watch. Definitely picks up a stride once the plot is revealed.

So I guess me not being able to sleep Thursday night/Friday morning is just a thing now and I should embrace it.  why so serious?

I think this episode is much better than the first. I don't think the Sam/Bucky banter works for me though.

I hope the first 40 min. are going to be the status quo and swerve us. It's a much more interesting story than if they went the other way.

I think the show  goes off the rails in the last 10 min or so but other than that I strong episode.


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Reply #58 on: March 26, 2021, 03:57:24 PM


Not spoilering because this is speculation on my part: I am betting that John Walker is going to turn out to be a psycho spec ops guy with a dodgy version of the super soldier serum. He'll be full on My Lai, black ops wetwork type who the military picked because they wanted the 'best' and he had the perfect face to sell to the press (dat chin). I don't think this is going to colouring outside the lines as others have said and so he's probably going to have some connection to the bad guys. Fake caps are always bad news and unless they're being tone deaf I think they've set him up a devil with the face of an angel.

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eldaec
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Reply #59 on: March 26, 2021, 06:02:51 PM

I kind hope he turns out to be a good guy. But I'd guess the serum has to make everyone crazy.
« Last Edit: March 27, 2021, 12:48:14 AM by eldaec »

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Velorath
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Reply #60 on: March 27, 2021, 01:06:27 AM

So I guess Hulkling and Iron Lad are the only Young Avengers unaccounted for now (with Kate Bishop coming in Hawkeye)?
Khaldun
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Reply #61 on: March 27, 2021, 11:55:24 AM

Yes--Young Avengers sure does look like a go.

I was pleasantly surprised by this episode. They're doing a great job of dumpster diving in old Marvel stories and coming up with stuff that fits the MCU and is better than the source material.

I think the analysis of Bucky and Sam is basically right. It's not just that Bucky idolizes Steve, it's that he was Steve's friend *before* he became Cap and Steve was also his only anchor to the world that the two of them grew up in. I suspect he also knows there's something wrong about Walker and his partner (I was literally telling my daughter, "Yeah, there was a black Bucky and w/Walker and fans told them that wasn't a good look, so they changed his name to the dorkiest thing possible, 'Battlestar'" and then five minutes later Bucky confirms my opinion of the name) in that he knows that there have been many attempts to recreate the Super-Soldier Formula and all of them are messed-up. So he's doubly unhappy to see the shield with Walker. He probably wasn't entirely happy with Steve giving to Sam either, but he plainly doesn't feel worthy of it himself either.

I would guess that the formula does pretty bad damage to most of the people who take it; I would not be surprised if that's where Walker and his partner end up.

I was struck that Karli Morgenthau is
I did like the thought that there would be people from the Blip who actually preferred the world that way--folks who built other relationships or moved on to a new situation or found their services really needed, and yeah, folks who preferred a weak global government to competing nation-states. On some level that actually seems potentially reasonable. I wonder if the Hawkeye series will follow up on him having personally murdered most of the remaining criminals on the planet...
Threash
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Reply #62 on: March 27, 2021, 06:04:37 PM

Has it been confirmed that Walker actually got the serum? he seemed to get pretty fucked up by those guys with actual serum and uses a gun.

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HaemishM
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Reply #63 on: March 27, 2021, 08:44:03 PM

I expect Walker will get the serum at some point in the show. I don't think he was painted as a deliberate bad guy in the comics, more of "takes patriotism to the extreme in really uncomfortable ways" sort of dude. Making him a more sympathetic character from the start in this allows some room for the character to grow or change. As for why Sam doesn't want to work with him, I think a lot of it may be hurt pride as much as anything. The government, despite having him do all these dangerous missions on the sly, doesn't feel like asking a black man to wear the shield and take the name Captain America, but they sure as shit will ask a slab-chinned, blonde white dude to do it without even consulting the guy who surrendered the shield in the first place. There's a lot of inherent racism just in the very act of giving it to John Walker even if the guys making the decisions didn't make that decision with race in mind. I'm not familiar enough with the original Flag Smasher storyline to be able to predict where this is going, but the show has so far done a good job of pointing out some inherent racial biases without actually having to explain any of them.

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Reply #64 on: March 27, 2021, 09:26:58 PM

Has it been confirmed that Walker actually got the serum? he seemed to get pretty fucked up by those guys with actual serum and uses a gun.

He hasn’t, but since the Power Broker has been mentioned and that’s where Walker got his strength from in the comic I wouldn’t be surprised to see it coming. I don’t see it necessarily turning him into a bad guy though unless they’re kinda merging his story with the ‘50s Cap and Bucky (which iirc was a story done to retcon the over the top anti-communist Cap stuff that was published back in the 50s).
DevilsAdvocate25
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Reply #65 on: March 29, 2021, 11:25:58 AM

I liked the flipped script with the white guy getting arrested for the warrant and the sheer annoyance on Sam's face when they initially profiled him.

Also, I instantly recognized the redhead as the leader of the pirates/rebels in Solo.
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Reply #66 on: March 29, 2021, 07:03:37 PM

I could be miss-remembering this, but I thought the original implication in the First Captain America film was that the serum was effected by the persons personality.  Steve came out perfect because he was a good guy to the core, while Red Skull came out super messed up because he was a nazi.  It works if you look at the other few instances in the MCU it's shown.  In Winter Soldier, it turned a bunch of Hydra Assassins into barely controllable psychos.  And Banner into Hulk because of his messed anger management issues and split personality.  And then of course Abomination.  Though I may be crossing that with stuff from the comics.

Anyways, if that sort of holds true, then I could see Walker (who yes, will almost certainly get the serum from the broker in order to take out the flag smashers, whom he is also chasing) getting it and having his worst traits magnified.  I think he is a legit good guy right now, but as a special ops person with a lot of combat experience, maybe some dark parts/ptsd that come back to make him unstable once he takes it.

Interested to the story of Tuskegee Cap.

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Khaldun
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Reply #67 on: March 29, 2021, 07:26:58 PM

I need to rewatch, but wasn't Walker (and his partner) trading blows in a way that made it clear they were super-strengthed?
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Reply #68 on: March 30, 2021, 12:07:53 AM

I need to rewatch, but wasn't Walker (and his partner) trading blows in a way that made it clear they were super-strengthed?

No, they get a few good attacks in early because of the element of surprise but I think Bucky is the only one that briefly goes toe to toe with any of the super soldiers.
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Reply #69 on: March 30, 2021, 12:19:35 AM

Yeah, they make a point they are way out powered by these guys.  Particularly the last bit where New Cap says 'that was a big mistake' or something like that, and she just casually grabs his fist and knocks his has 50 feet away.  Literally made to showcase that.

Now, how the fuck he is able to throw his shield so hard and accurately without super soldier serum is another question, but I'm guessing show writers just want to make it like anybody can throw a giant metal shield 50 yards in a perfect line with no issue so everybody can use it.

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