Entry tags:
The Falcon & the Winter Soldier
I had almost forgotten that I had a Bucky icon!
We watched it this past week, but I'm just now finding time to write something about it. My feelings are mixed, but there was a lot that I liked.
Things I liked:
- ZEMO. Okay, so there's something![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart wrote in a post a little while back that has stuck with me because it's so me, which was - paraphrased from memory - something like "I find the worst character in a canon and make a beeline for them." It me. It so me. Also, as well as being super weak for a redemption arc, I am weak for the trope of a villain working with the heroes for reasons and being reluctantly dragged into liking them and doing good things even when they just want to go on being villains. I saw it described on Tumblr once as villains being domesticated and that made me laugh and is also ... yep. And this came with a whole side order of domesticity and cohabiting/space-sharing, and that was how this show came for me. I CAN'T BELIEVE I FELL LIKE THIS FOR HELMUT FUCKING ZEMO, a character I didn't care about in the slightest in Civil War and in fact had largely forgotten. While I was watching the show, sheron was the recipient of many sobbing emoji in Discord as I tried to cope with my newly discovered Zemosexuality. I swear every time I have found the worst possible character to fall for, my brain is like "hold my beer, I've found someone worse."
Also, I have fallen for characters in the past who had terrible names for writing about (Yon-Rogg; the Raza crew; everyone on Dragonball Z) but ... Helmut. HELMUT. Pity me.
It's really not Zemo by himself; it's the entire Zemo + Sam + Bucky (+ sometimes Sharon) thing that the show had going on. I loved it. I would have watched 400 episodes of it.
- Sam & Bucky's everything. They had a lovely arc, individually and together, and were also astonishingly similar to how I used to write them when I was writing them. The voices are a little different, especially Bucky's, and there's more overt abrasiveness as opposed to the way I used to write them, which was more understated and cautious, but in general they were really close to my headcanon, and that was great to see onscreen. And Sam taking up the shield was gloriously triumphant, something I wasn't sure they were going to be able to pull off given the mixed feelings leading up to that, but they did and it was great.
- Sam's family. They were delightful, and so was all the family domestic stuff.
- Dark Sharon. The final plot twist about being the Power Broker made zero sense plotwise, and I wish they'd left her as a shady art dealer in Madripoor because I liked her best that way, but it was basically love from start to finish. I obstinately liked her before because the fandom hated her and I'm stubborn that way, but I flat-out love her like this.
I have gathered that fans generally hate this and want goodguy!Sharon back (too bad, you should have appreciated her more, she's evil now) but I've also seen a truly incomprehensible and stupid take, which is that this somehow retroactively taints Peggy. Okay, first of all, THEY'RE DIFFERENT PEOPLE. I think fandom has always struggled with this (see also: the "Steve dating her is incest" thing), but the idea that anything Sharon does reflects on Peggy, a woman who is dead in canon and had her active working years decades before Sharon came of age, is just bonkers to me.
But also, it's like people are discovering for the first time that Peggy was an espionage agent during the Cold War who we KNOW was involved with Operation Paperclip and presumably got up to other shady shit, and ... yes?? The Agent Carter fandom has been talking about this for years. Where were you? I mean, it is true that the MCU wants to have its cake and eat it too with Peggy, and SHIELD in general, who are sometimes the super-shady Men In Black and sometimes Our Heroes, but this isn't exactly new. I don't know why evil!Sharon is suddenly a bridge too far after SHIELD was used to cushion Hydra, tried to nuke New York, etc. You can argue that it doesn't fit Sharon's past characterization, but I mean!! She worked for the CIA! They're not known for being soft and fluffy! And unlike some retcons where it does kind of retroactively ruin the character, I could very easily see most of Sharon's previous canon as playing nice to climb the power ladder and then going a little bit off the deep end after the running series of betrayals and moral crises she's had to deal with.
Anyway, I love her.
- Seeing the Dora Milaje was great! The fight scene with the Dora and Walker with Bucky's running commentary and Zemo sipping a drink in the background was amazing.
- I really liked that nearly everyone (except the Flag-Smashers, RIP, I don't care, and I guess Lemar) got a happy or at least satisfying and appropriate ending. The show ended on a note that just felt good. I was totally expecting Torres to die and was amazed that he lived. He's sweet and he should come hang out at Sam's place with everybody else. I was also fully expecting Zemo to die, and while I didn't get my dream ending for him (on the loose, capable of popping up again at any time to cause trouble) I have no doubt that he could be broken out of the Raft VERY easily, I'm just saying.
Things I didn't like:
- The entire Flag-Smashers plot was total nonsense on every level. I heard that they had to cut some of it because the pandemic happened during production and parts of it were too similar to real life events, so I can only assume that they cut the parts that would have made the rest make sense. There was one particular point when I felt like there was a visible hand of writerly meddling, and that was Karli & co. blowing up the warehouse with the workers inside. Based on how casually they did it and how everyone else reacted, I felt like there was supposed to be a whole lot shadier stuff going on inside that warehouse than some random workers at a refugee supply storage depot. Unfortunately after that point, every time someone who should know better (usually Sam) would say something about how she was just misguided and we need to listen to her, I'd yell at the screen, "She literally killed a bunch of innocent people! She's basically Zemo! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU."
Orion said that it was like they took Greta Thunberg and made her evil, and that was kind of what it felt like. SO that was a choice.
The Flag-Smashers being way more murdery than the show appeared to recognize also meant that Walker spent a lot of time actually being right, which I don't think was what they were going for.
- The political stuff in general was like ... gold star for effort, the show nailed some things and missed others completely and was massively ham-handed about some of the things they sort of got right. Basically, I'm glad they tried to go there, and some of it actually did work (everything with Isaiah was very well handled, imho, and I also really liked that he and Sam had differing viewpoints on the entire shield/Cap/etc thing, and the show gave weight to both POVs with neither of them being presented as wholly right or wrong). Stopping the show for Sam to give a 5-minute Very Special Lesson after a giant bombastic fight scene ... maybe not so much. The clumsy attempt to comment on the refugee crisis using superheroes ... please don't. But I mean, You Tried™. And in general the show had a lot of characters of color doing stuff and being central and heroic and having inner lives, to a much greater extent than I was expecting, so props to them for that. YMMV on all of this, obviously.
- I guessed the Sharon-as-Power-Broker twist a couple episodes ahead of time because it was clearly important and she was literally the only suspect not otherwise accounted for, but I am just going to try not to think about what that does to the rest of the plot.
Basically, the show did what it said on the tin, and I enjoyed it a lot as long as I didn't think about it too much, and came out of it mainly wanting fic about Zemo and Sharon, which was really not what I was expecting. (Not together, necessarily, although now I'm imagining the two of them teaming up for some purpose without the relatively moderating influence of Sam and Bucky, and the mind boggles. Just for my own tastes, though, I don't think I'd want that much unrestrained villainny in one place without some hero moderation to balance it out.) Mostly I just want the Sam-Bucky-Zemo road trip to go on FOREVER.
It occurs to me based on a conversation withsnickfic on Discord that the main thing is that to me, everything else feels tied up, and it's the Zemo and Sharon parts of the show that feel the most unresolved (to me). Apparently a big part of me getting fannishly invested is feeling that something is missing - unresolved, open-ended, just not there enough for me - and this show basically gave me all of it in canon. I mean, there is still "further adventures of" (or getting together fic, etc) and I may want it later, but I think right now I just feel kind of satisfied with where the show left most of it.
Narratively, of course, this is good! This is what a show should do! It makes me wonder if I would have gotten as heavily invested in some of my other major fandoms (Agent Carter, say) if they'd actually had an opportunity to wrap things up in canon. Maybe sudden cancellations can be a blessing in disguise.
We watched it this past week, but I'm just now finding time to write something about it. My feelings are mixed, but there was a lot that I liked.
Things I liked:
- ZEMO. Okay, so there's something
rionaleonhart wrote in a post a little while back that has stuck with me because it's so me, which was - paraphrased from memory - something like "I find the worst character in a canon and make a beeline for them." It me. It so me. Also, as well as being super weak for a redemption arc, I am weak for the trope of a villain working with the heroes for reasons and being reluctantly dragged into liking them and doing good things even when they just want to go on being villains. I saw it described on Tumblr once as villains being domesticated and that made me laugh and is also ... yep. And this came with a whole side order of domesticity and cohabiting/space-sharing, and that was how this show came for me. I CAN'T BELIEVE I FELL LIKE THIS FOR HELMUT FUCKING ZEMO, a character I didn't care about in the slightest in Civil War and in fact had largely forgotten. While I was watching the show, sheron was the recipient of many sobbing emoji in Discord as I tried to cope with my newly discovered Zemosexuality. I swear every time I have found the worst possible character to fall for, my brain is like "hold my beer, I've found someone worse."Also, I have fallen for characters in the past who had terrible names for writing about (Yon-Rogg; the Raza crew; everyone on Dragonball Z) but ... Helmut. HELMUT. Pity me.
It's really not Zemo by himself; it's the entire Zemo + Sam + Bucky (+ sometimes Sharon) thing that the show had going on. I loved it. I would have watched 400 episodes of it.
- Sam & Bucky's everything. They had a lovely arc, individually and together, and were also astonishingly similar to how I used to write them when I was writing them. The voices are a little different, especially Bucky's, and there's more overt abrasiveness as opposed to the way I used to write them, which was more understated and cautious, but in general they were really close to my headcanon, and that was great to see onscreen. And Sam taking up the shield was gloriously triumphant, something I wasn't sure they were going to be able to pull off given the mixed feelings leading up to that, but they did and it was great.
- Sam's family. They were delightful, and so was all the family domestic stuff.
- Dark Sharon. The final plot twist about being the Power Broker made zero sense plotwise, and I wish they'd left her as a shady art dealer in Madripoor because I liked her best that way, but it was basically love from start to finish. I obstinately liked her before because the fandom hated her and I'm stubborn that way, but I flat-out love her like this.
I have gathered that fans generally hate this and want goodguy!Sharon back (too bad, you should have appreciated her more, she's evil now) but I've also seen a truly incomprehensible and stupid take, which is that this somehow retroactively taints Peggy. Okay, first of all, THEY'RE DIFFERENT PEOPLE. I think fandom has always struggled with this (see also: the "Steve dating her is incest" thing), but the idea that anything Sharon does reflects on Peggy, a woman who is dead in canon and had her active working years decades before Sharon came of age, is just bonkers to me.
But also, it's like people are discovering for the first time that Peggy was an espionage agent during the Cold War who we KNOW was involved with Operation Paperclip and presumably got up to other shady shit, and ... yes?? The Agent Carter fandom has been talking about this for years. Where were you? I mean, it is true that the MCU wants to have its cake and eat it too with Peggy, and SHIELD in general, who are sometimes the super-shady Men In Black and sometimes Our Heroes, but this isn't exactly new. I don't know why evil!Sharon is suddenly a bridge too far after SHIELD was used to cushion Hydra, tried to nuke New York, etc. You can argue that it doesn't fit Sharon's past characterization, but I mean!! She worked for the CIA! They're not known for being soft and fluffy! And unlike some retcons where it does kind of retroactively ruin the character, I could very easily see most of Sharon's previous canon as playing nice to climb the power ladder and then going a little bit off the deep end after the running series of betrayals and moral crises she's had to deal with.
Anyway, I love her.
- Seeing the Dora Milaje was great! The fight scene with the Dora and Walker with Bucky's running commentary and Zemo sipping a drink in the background was amazing.
- I really liked that nearly everyone (except the Flag-Smashers, RIP, I don't care, and I guess Lemar) got a happy or at least satisfying and appropriate ending. The show ended on a note that just felt good. I was totally expecting Torres to die and was amazed that he lived. He's sweet and he should come hang out at Sam's place with everybody else. I was also fully expecting Zemo to die, and while I didn't get my dream ending for him (on the loose, capable of popping up again at any time to cause trouble) I have no doubt that he could be broken out of the Raft VERY easily, I'm just saying.
Things I didn't like:
- The entire Flag-Smashers plot was total nonsense on every level. I heard that they had to cut some of it because the pandemic happened during production and parts of it were too similar to real life events, so I can only assume that they cut the parts that would have made the rest make sense. There was one particular point when I felt like there was a visible hand of writerly meddling, and that was Karli & co. blowing up the warehouse with the workers inside. Based on how casually they did it and how everyone else reacted, I felt like there was supposed to be a whole lot shadier stuff going on inside that warehouse than some random workers at a refugee supply storage depot. Unfortunately after that point, every time someone who should know better (usually Sam) would say something about how she was just misguided and we need to listen to her, I'd yell at the screen, "She literally killed a bunch of innocent people! She's basically Zemo! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU."
Orion said that it was like they took Greta Thunberg and made her evil, and that was kind of what it felt like. SO that was a choice.
The Flag-Smashers being way more murdery than the show appeared to recognize also meant that Walker spent a lot of time actually being right, which I don't think was what they were going for.
- The political stuff in general was like ... gold star for effort, the show nailed some things and missed others completely and was massively ham-handed about some of the things they sort of got right. Basically, I'm glad they tried to go there, and some of it actually did work (everything with Isaiah was very well handled, imho, and I also really liked that he and Sam had differing viewpoints on the entire shield/Cap/etc thing, and the show gave weight to both POVs with neither of them being presented as wholly right or wrong). Stopping the show for Sam to give a 5-minute Very Special Lesson after a giant bombastic fight scene ... maybe not so much. The clumsy attempt to comment on the refugee crisis using superheroes ... please don't. But I mean, You Tried™. And in general the show had a lot of characters of color doing stuff and being central and heroic and having inner lives, to a much greater extent than I was expecting, so props to them for that. YMMV on all of this, obviously.
- I guessed the Sharon-as-Power-Broker twist a couple episodes ahead of time because it was clearly important and she was literally the only suspect not otherwise accounted for, but I am just going to try not to think about what that does to the rest of the plot.
Basically, the show did what it said on the tin, and I enjoyed it a lot as long as I didn't think about it too much, and came out of it mainly wanting fic about Zemo and Sharon, which was really not what I was expecting. (Not together, necessarily, although now I'm imagining the two of them teaming up for some purpose without the relatively moderating influence of Sam and Bucky, and the mind boggles. Just for my own tastes, though, I don't think I'd want that much unrestrained villainny in one place without some hero moderation to balance it out.) Mostly I just want the Sam-Bucky-Zemo road trip to go on FOREVER.
It occurs to me based on a conversation with
snickfic on Discord that the main thing is that to me, everything else feels tied up, and it's the Zemo and Sharon parts of the show that feel the most unresolved (to me). Apparently a big part of me getting fannishly invested is feeling that something is missing - unresolved, open-ended, just not there enough for me - and this show basically gave me all of it in canon. I mean, there is still "further adventures of" (or getting together fic, etc) and I may want it later, but I think right now I just feel kind of satisfied with where the show left most of it. Narratively, of course, this is good! This is what a show should do! It makes me wonder if I would have gotten as heavily invested in some of my other major fandoms (Agent Carter, say) if they'd actually had an opportunity to wrap things up in canon. Maybe sudden cancellations can be a blessing in disguise.
no subject
If I ever throw myself on to this show, which for assorted reasons is not likely any time soon, I fully expect Zemo to be my favorite character and not just because of the resemblance to (and the fact that in some ways he sounds like a character who would be played by) Denholm Elliott.
no subject
no subject
Obviously, confirmed.
Sharon as an embittered ultra-competent illegal antiques dealer is a joy to watch and fits nicely with the show's sub-theme of people discarded or destroyed by their governments and fending for themselves; Sharon as the Power Broker comes so far from beyond left field that it actually feels like the show must have lied slightly to the audience in order not to foreshadow her in any way. I feel like I need to see how the Marvelverse handles her going forward to decide whether the character works as the kingpin of a criminal island rather than one of its more highly placed hustlers, which I guess means I have at least vaguely committed to the future of this gargantuan steamroller of a franchise, God damn it.
no subject
I am so sorry.
Sharon as the Power Broker comes so far from beyond left field that it actually feels like the show must have lied slightly to the audience in order not to foreshadow her in any way.
Rachel suggested that there was some kind of editorial meddling going on which caused Sharon to be retconned as the Power Broker when it was neither written nor acted that way in the earlier episodes. Which makes as much sense as anything else. I do know that there was quite a bit of 11th-hour rewriting of the plot due to the pandemic, since some of the plot elements were too similar to it - apparently an entire thread of the Flag Smashers plot involving an epidemic and a fake vaccine was yanked out, which might not excuse everything about it but does at least explain some of the incoherence.
I feel like I need to see how the Marvelverse handles her going forward to decide whether the character works as the kingpin of a criminal island rather than one of its more highly placed hustlers, which I guess means I have at least vaguely committed to the future of this gargantuan steamroller of a franchise, God damn it.
I KNOW! ME TOO! HELP ME! I had escaped its gravitational pull due to everything I loved in the universe being canceled or over, and now this has happened.
no subject
I am willing to believe it, although I have no idea what it profited the show. They saved on casting the Power Broker?
(Sharon as embittered ultra-competent illegal antiques dealer was also the most characterization she'd gotten in the MCU so far, which is on the one hand terrible and on the other a very good argument for leaving her in that role. I was looking forward to finding out what she did with a pardon from the U.S. in one hand and an international assortment of criminal connections in the other and going full black market mole was just about the least interesting option the show could have chosen.)
I do know that there was quite a bit of 11th-hour rewriting of the plot due to the pandemic, since some of the plot elements were too similar to it - apparently an entire thread of the Flag Smashers plot involving an epidemic and a fake vaccine was yanked out, which might not excuse everything about it but does at least explain some of the incoherence.
I've heard that also! I don't know the details, and I understand that a lot of people are still not exactly the target audience for plague stories, but if the GRC had been doing something as nefarious as withholding medical treatment from refugees during an epidemic, then the audience might have been more on board with Karli's no-quarter approach to them. I agree with you that as it stands, the show doesn't quite seem to register where on the murder scale the Flag Smashers actually fall.
I had escaped its gravitational pull due to everything I loved in the universe being canceled or over, and now this has happened.
I mean, it's noir in the meta extreme, but who asked for that?
no subject
I loved everything Sam got to do, and Bucky is like the world's best and most loyal sidekick (to Cap, to Ayo, to Sam!) and Zemo was a surprise hit for me, too. I knew Daniel Bruhl hadn't got much to do in Civil War which was a waste, but that's the case for a lot of minor MCU roles, and doesn't necessarily lead anywhere. But him wandering around with the Turkish Delight was just great.
no subject
Hahaha. SAME. *fistbump*
Sharon going dark(er) was super great because she got to be so damn competent.
Oh YES, that's a really good point! I think competence is part of the appeal with me for Zemo as well, as well as just Daniel Bruhl's general charmingness.
no subject
To be honest there was a lot of the FAWS that didn’t make sense— largely it was a wee bit ropey, but I liked what they were trying to do, possibly inadvertently; I understand that there was a lot of post-production editing as a function of Covid.
I clocked Sharon as a bad guy, however, I have to wonder if it is actually Sharon (mask or Kree?). The character was in it for the profit-capitalism, which was clearly identified enemy in the series.
I thought that they were trying to show that life is really, really complex and--dare I say it--the clean cut divide between good-evil/ terrorist-rebels is an artefact of Superhero comics or Westerns, and really the nuance is whether or not you deliberately hurt people. But there was some genuinely creepy imagery, strength-makes-things-right, and evil-doer apologism in this series that made the skin crawl up the back of my neck.
no subject
(I also think the comics got away with having a wider variety of viewpoints and more directly taking on some of these issues because a) they were more niche to begin with, and b) there was so much more variety in creative teams and less top-down control - and Marvel comics were pretty top-down! This is my biggest problem with the entire MCU being all one universe and Feige running it as such a tight ship. With the comics, if something ended up slipping under the radar that TPTB hated, they could just kind of write it out of continuity and/or pretend it didn't exist.)
Getting back to TFATWS, I actually did really like that they were presenting these issues without a clear right answer and with well-intentioned people on both sides. I liked that the characters in general weren't good and evil caricatures. It's just too bad that the show didn't seem to understand some of its own implications sometimes.
no subject
no subject
The Flagsmashers were the weakest part, for certain, and Orion's take that Karli was like Evil Greta Thunberg is exactly right. My guilty pleasure NY publishing world soap, Younger, did a joking take on Thunberg this season, so I'm not sure what's up with that, entertainment industry.
Also, with Zemo on the Raft, I wish I had more fanfic energy at present, as Zemo/Trish Walker sprung immediately to mind. Now there's a rarepair request . . . .
no subject
But yes, lots of good, lots of bad, lots of wonderful little moments and lots of terribly ham-fisted moments, but they did Try, and I kept going... Disney is making this. DISNEY. Is this like... when cigarette companies made anti-smoking ads but they were so sneaky about it that the ads actually made more people want to smoke? Is that what's going on here??
Just happy to see more of Bucky and Sam being Bucky and Sam, tbh. Even if they got the worst therapist in the history of all time.
no subject
Also I did not know fandom hated Sharon. That makes me so very very sad.
You liked the parts I liked and I especially love how you explicates so clearly everything that was bothering me about the show and its contradictions and collisions but I couldn't do anything but flail and be emotional about it. (Except you love Zemo way more than I did but I totally get why.)
Thanks so much for the review. I got all choked up when Sam became the Captain.
no subject
I am somewhat indifferent to Zemo, but he played off so well when paired up with Sam and Bucky. I totally get it now that you mentioned the whole "villain gets pulled into helping out the hero" trope, as it's one I really enjoy as well. :D
I am still not convinced about Sharon as a villain. I love Emily VanCamp in general, and liked her fine in the movies, but it just feels like I missed a whole season worth of episodes where she went from good guy to bad guy. I wish the FATWS creators would have walked us through it better. But hey, maybe this is where Fandom comes in and does what it does best! *g*
no subject
Basically this is how I feel about Bucky: <3. And this is how I feel about Sam: <3.
I also love Sharon but I want canon to give us the development that they are not doing. In TWS, Fury handpicks her to guard Steve - she's not a random agent, she's clearly extremely good at what she does and is loyal enough to pass Fury's requirements. I want to see that journey between that (and her stint in the CIA in CW) to Power Broker - that's quite a jump. I loved the final confrontation and the revelation that Karli and Sharon know each other, though.
But I'm pleased about her being Power Broker, first off, the competence thing, jeez. Second, with her as PB and playing the two sides, it's way more likely the MCU will give her more interesting stuff to do. Also, I want to see her brawl her way through fights more, please!
That one moment where Walker said, "three medals to make sure I never forget the worst day of my life", that was so good. In general I think Russell played Walker beautifully - always on the verge of being sympathetic and then ruining it.
Agreed on the Flag Smashers and I've already written reams about it on meme and elsewhere, but I think they were most closely tied to the political aspect, which was (and is) a huge MCU weakness IMO. Plus, I just never quite bought into Karli herself, which I was really sad about. She never comes off as charismatic or powerful enough to hold them to her quest, and her dialogue is just too by the book without that extra charisma to carry it.
I absolutely hate the big speeches generally - I think Quill's why-do-I-want-to-save-the-galaxy "because I'm one of the idiots that lives in it!" is one of my only exceptions, and I still cringed through most of it - so Sam's speech was just, ahhhghh, but I appreciate he spoke to the camera knowing that the country was watching. He accepts and wants to be Captain America and there's certainly a big component, especially now, to be a symbol and an example. I also hated when the crowd of people clapped. Ahhh!
On a Sharon and Zemo note, someone mentioned a scenario and I ended up writing Sharon/Zemo noncon with Zemo in prison, lol.
no subject
I think the thing that makes me really dislike Sharon as the Power Broker is not that it taints Peggy in any way (and not even that comics!Sharon is super dedicated to the mission/Fury/SHIELD), but what the hell were Steve and Natasha doing in those 5 blipped years* that they couldn't get Sharon a pardon after she stuck her neck out for him in Civil War? It piles onto the many issues around the writing of Steve in Endgame for me. And also makes that whole episode in Madripoor even more nonsensical.
*I also feel like they would have helped Sarah Wilson out during that time? It's that lack of real connectedness and consistent characterization that bugs me.
no subject
Helping out Sarah is a little less bothersome for me, mostly because it's one degree more removed (we don't have any detail on how much Sam told Steve about his family, though I agree that I feel Steve's characterization before IW/EG feels like he'd have tried to find out and help out if needed.) But Sharon really did stick her neck out for Steve in CW as you said. I just, it makes no sense characterization wise. Though it does make Sharon's PB move a lot more reasonable...
no subject
Despite the pretense of the Sokovia Accords (pretty relevant to this show as well, given it's where Zemo comes from) the decisions made in Endgame were entirely done by an unregulated band of people (and we've no idea what the governmental systems of nations have been like during these 5 years). Some major decisions, such as the fact that everything wasn't going to be reset to 5 years earlier -- which would have been the only logical choice -- were taken solely because of one person. At no time was there apparently any consideration about what the impact was going to be for the planet if it went through another wrenching change in such a short time, especially since presumably production of foodstuffs and other necessary things had been cut far back and would be in a tremendous shortage for years. The pandemic, with its partial shutdowns for a period of months created panic buying and shortages just because of distribution methods rather than actual products. To imagine what everyone would have gone through over 5 years, frankly losing loved ones would only be the half of it.
All along there was more of a feeling that collecting the stones was all about reversing a personal loss than because it would be what was best for the remaining people. After all, Thanos was dead and the stones destroyed so it wasn't like anyone else was going to be making universal changes on that scale anymore.
Ever since Endgame what I longed for was a text addressing what a horrifying decision it had been. The show at least tangled with the implications, but the fact that otherwise everything seemed to be functioning smoothly was a disappointment. (Of course, it would also have been difficult to reconcile any real catastrophes with the blithe 'moving on' aspect of Spider Man Far From Home).
no subject
Ahem... sorry... but why would that have been the only logical choice? Don't all the other children born in those 5 years (not only Morgan) the right to keep living?
And it wasn't even necessary to raise this point even within Endgame, i.e. making Tony seem selfish by wanting to keep his family, because *in-movie* they explain that erasing the last 5 years isn't even possible. Never understood that little "pact" of Tony and Cap's. And if Tony's stipulation's a problem, then why not criticize Hawkeye for *not* bringing up returning to 2018 and undo the Snap there and then (or even snapping away Thanos et al before he does the Snap etc)... maybe because he understood that that wouldn't change his own reality.
But if we're talking about major decisions: You're right: Where was oversight when the decision to recover the stones was made?
no subject
So mostly my point was that we have a handful of people deciding among themselves not only to take any action at all, but also by deciding the particular point at which the reversal would be made, who would live and who would die (or stay dead) as a result of those actions. All of which I'm sure Zemo would argue makes them no different from Thanos who also saw his intent as beneficial.
no subject
Reversing everything would have made sense, of course - but that should have applied to the Avengers then as well. Because why should they have to live with the memory of those 5 years? But if they reverse everything, then they'd also sort of erase themselves from existence (because their past selves take a different path without Thanos/the loss caused by Thanos etc) - which was unfortunately made impossible by the in-movie explanation of time travel.
But you're right: Where do you stop? And why was it possible to reverse the Snap but not, as you so eloquently point out, erase all the damage/death caused indirectly by the Snap, or go further into the past and save the Asgardians or other planets from Thanos.
And I absolutely agree about your take on Zemo's reaction. Actually, I found his point of view very refreshing especially when, in the plane, Bucky and Sam started to reminisce.
no subject
no subject
The political stuff in general was like ... gold star for effort, the show nailed some things and missed others completely and was massively ham-handed about some of the things they sort of got right.
Yeah. For instance they did the Flag Smashers ALL WRONG (still pisses me off that they used the Red Hand of Indigenous Women Are People Too and made it evil) and wasted an actresss capable of great charisma (her breakout role was in _Solo_ and she was amazing there) but in the episodes where actual writers of color tackled Sam, Isaiah, Sarah, and racism there was so much that just RESONATED with me as a Black woman in the US. (The five minute Inspirational Speech was unfortunately not one of those times, I found out.)
I am a terrible person and I like Evil!Sharon. It made no sense plot wise but I love it in a Doylistic way, or at least an emotional way. I felt like Sharon said, "In universe Steve left me to take his fall (WTF, writers) and out of universe so many fans hate me, so Let Me Be Evil"
Anyway, thank you for writing this. :)
no subject
SAME. Let’s be terrible together!
no subject
That was definitely uncool.
no subject
But your review did help me appreciate it at a different level, so thanks for that.
Agreed that the flag smashers storyline was the weakest in execution, which is a shame.
I did like Sam's speech near the end. It was TOO MUCH, and therefore perfect. (Disney is fortunate to have Sam Mackie deliver those lines; it would have fallen like a lead balloon with a lesser actor.)
I laughed a lot at your appallingly awful taste in characters.
no subject
Okay, mostly I'm impressed that you thought Zemo was worse than John Walker. 😂
no subject
The Sam and Isiah scenes were A-MAZ-ING. By the end I was bawling my eyes out.
The moment where Bucky is with Ayo and he realizes that he’s finally free of those trigger words! Sebastian Stan NAILED that scene.
no subject
I would watch any amount of Ayo doing ANYTHING. I heart that character.
no subject
Hahaha that's EXACTLY what it feels like! Yes. I don't want him redeemed, I want him "domesticated" by Sam & Bucky hahahahaha excellent!
>a whole side order of domesticity and cohabiting/space-sharing
I also really enjoyed that (as you know) because it kind made everything feel more...real? What an fun Madripoor episode.
I loved Sam & Bucky getting their show on the road!
And yes the way you wrote them is so similar to their characterization here (especially at the start of the show)
I really liked the Power Broker thing for Sharon! I like it way more than her being some kind of a pawn/middle man in the bigger fish game. I love her being the big fish and being underhanded about it! I was completely indifferent to her before but I enjoyed her a lot in this show!
no subject
Didn't like Sam in the movies, simply because he wasn't allowed to grow a personality ("I do everything he (Steve) does, just slower" isn't much of a character-reference). But he's grown on me, the process up to the moment of him taking up the shield including the conversations with Bradley, Bucky and his family was well shown - and yes I cheered as he finally became Cap. I also appreciated him not taking the serum. The speech was cringe-worthy, though.
Loved Bucky in this, his journey (although we didn't get to see the entire conversation with his victim's father), that final realization that the words don't work anymore. Great stuff!
Flagsmashers: Wouldn't compare Karli to Thunberg-turned-evil. I'd compare her with Wanda... and at least at the starting point Karli would have some kind of higher goal from which she devolved. When had Wanda ever had a higher goal other than revenge? She still doesn't, and she's still a hero in some people's eyes...
Sharon: Honestly, never cared much for her, so I could have done without her, especially since her actions in Civil War never made much sense for me.
But what if she managed to deceive everyone and was evil (Hydra or whatever) from the get-go? Then it would make sense to provide Cap et al with weapons and intel and thus sow dissent and distrust. That angle would make her infinitely more interesting to me.
But let's wait and see - I'm eagerly looking forward to seeing more from Sam, Bucky (and if possible Zemo).