Cap Wears No Cap

The finale of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier came last night with a few nice qualities but, overall, it left me feeling empty.

I like Sam's (Anthony Mackie) Captain America costume. The shoulder pads look cool and something about all of the white on it reminds me of Elvis Presley. I don't understand the open spot on the top of the head, though, particularly since, whenever I'd see Falcon flying around, I'd often think, "Shouldn't he be wearing a helmet?" It's weird that he'd cut out a part of the Captain America costume that seems like it would be especially useful for him.

I guess the suit was made in Wakanda. Yet another American product that had to be outsourced to overseas labour.

The action scenes were cool, though, especially when he was flying around the helicopter.

Still, it can't quite make up for the fact that the writing is a mess. I'm okay with the fact that Karli's (Erin Kellyman) goals weren't very clear--Sam even puts it to her point blank in the episode--what does she hope to accomplish? That's normal with terrorists. They know how to do big violence, but they're not so good at being constructive. But there's an overall vagueness about what's going on. It makes the speech at the end embarrassing--the senator points out how complicated the situation is and, to Sam's credit, he says the guy's right. So what was the point of his speechifying, though? He talks about how feeling powerless should give the senators perspective. That may be true but we really needed to see how that applied. We saw refugees but it was never really clear what their stories were.

Sam chides the group of officials for using the word "terrorist". Is "terrorist" politically incorrect now? Didn't we just use it in January to describe the Capital Hill mob? What do we call people who use violence for the purpose of inspiring terror, then? People Who Terrorise?

Sam actually mentioning that he's adopting the Captain America title without being a super soldier is a little awkward. It's hard to give him points for that when he's doing things that aren't humanly possible anyway. The normal result of putting a man between a jet engine and a falling van is not what we saw on the show.

I just to-day learned there was a whole pandemic subplot that had to be cut from the series due to its resemblance to Covid. I guess it may explain a lot of the sense of vagueness on he show. I'm not sure it accounts for all of it.

How does it help the old guy for Bucky (Sebastian Stan) to tell him that he killed his son while he was brainwashed? Maybe it grants some kind of closure, I don't know. It kind of felt like the Ben Horne plot at the end of season two of Twin Peaks, though, when it suddenly becomes clear that Horne's crusade to tell the truth at all costs isn't always such a good idea--and may be more about his own selfish need to feel good about himself. That said, it's kind of funny the final title card for the show says "Captain America and the Winter Soldier", honouring Sam's new identity but reminding us we're never going to let Bucky move beyond his past.

I feel absolutely nothing about Sharon (Emily VanCamp) being the Power Broker. Sharon herself never developed a strong enough hold on my interest and what, exactly, the Power Broker was up to was never terribly clear.

John Walker (Wyatt Russell) taking on the title of US Agent, used by his comic book counterpart, wasn't bad and I like that he remained a morally ambiguous character in the end. I wonder if the part where he quoted Lincoln was written before or after Lincoln was cancelled.

The series also suffers for me personally because I watched Captain America: The Winter Soldier again last week. My God, what a tightly constructed, brilliant action film it is. And how refreshing it was to watch a movie that didn't assume I was stupid. How sexy is Black Widow in that movie? It's hard to believe that was only seven years ago. It made me reflect on how the MCU has diminished in quality since Disney bought Marvel. Thor: Ragnarok was great and the Guardians of the Galaxy movies are good but Black Panther, Avengers Infinity War, Endgame, and Spider-Man: Homecoming were just okay. Ant-Man 2, Captain Marvel, the first Doctor Strange, and Spider-Man: Far from Home were completely dull and lifeless. Now The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is another one dead on arrival. I mean, as a TV show, it's okay, but it has the budget and expectations of a movie. I guess it's good on Disney they can experiment with that kind of money.

And I will say, in retrospect, I like the risks taken by WandaVision a lot more, even if there are still aspects of it I really didn't like. Hopefully the upcoming Loki will be more in that vein.

Soldiers on a Boat

A change of writer brought a big change of tone in last night's new The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. A mostly mellow, contemplative episode, it had some good ideas on display and one or two tragically silly ones.

The episode picks up where the previous left off, John Walker (Wyatt Russell) still raging about his friend's killer. This episode becomes very much about the war veteran experience, something that was central to Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and I like how they still refrain from making John a two dimensional loony. In fact, he's arguably been the most interesting character on the series. His hearing scene and the scene where he talks to Lemar's family are loaded with tension.

Except when Julie-Louis Dreyfus unexpectedly shows up. It was kind of amusing but felt like a scene from another movie. I've never seen Veep but even so I feel like Dreyfus may be carrying too much over from that comedy series to gain traction with a character that's supposed to be really threatening. I guess time will tell. As it is, it kind of feels like Carol Burnett randomly popping up in Full Metal Jacket to do shtick.

The second best part of the episode was Sam (Anthony Mackie) meeting with Isaiah (Carl Lumbly). Lumbly gives another searing performance, giving Sam some historical context on how black soldiers have been treated in contrast to their white comrades.

It led to a nice dichotomy between the pessimism and resentment of Isaiah's perspective and the positive environment Sam finds himself in when a whole community rallies around his family. It was nice because it seemed like the writers really thought about what would make Sam a good Captain America--he can acknowledge the demons of America's past while also recognising and embracing the great things in the heart of the country. Sadly, this culminated in a scene between Sam and Bucky (Sebastian Stan) redolent of phoney Twitter racial politics. The last thing Bucky should be apologising to Sam for is telling him he shouldn't have given up the shield. The whole series has made it abundantly clear Bucky was right.

The episode was written by Dalan Musson, a man with a very short resume. He wrote Iron Sky 2, of all things. I saw the first Iron Sky, an appreciably bananas Sci-Fi action comedy about Nazis from the moon. The president in it is a Sarah Palin parody whom my European friends assumed was a Hillary Clinton parody. It looks like Iron Sky 2 was more of the same kind of humour, nothing to suggest the likes of last night's Falcon and the Winter Soldier. He seems to be a versatile young man.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is available on Disney+.

A Super Soldier's Place in the World

Themes about government and military were touched upon in an action heavy new episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier last night. The fourth episode of the series, "The Whole World is Watching" is the second from John Wick creator Derek Kolstad and was a big improvement on his previous episode.

It seems Bucky's (Sebastian Stan) first impression of Karli (Erin Kellyman) wasn't so wrong after all. He first assumed she was an innocent hostage on the basis of her physical appearance--a young girl with a perpetually worried expression. Now, Sam (Anthony Mackie) gets an interview with her and she turns out to be a young girl who doesn't have a clear idea of what she's doing and why. She knows there are big, powerful forces she sees as her enemy but she doesn't really have a good idea of how to fight them effectively so she uses violence.

I just realised Erin Kellyman also played a leader of ragtag renegades in Solo: A Star Wars Story, too. She only briefly appears in that movie and her eyebrows help quickly establish her as a troubled, innocent soul. Meanwhile, Wyatt Russell as John Walker has a perpetual grimace/smirk. The two have resting hero and villain faces. They also mirror each other--John Walker also chooses violence as a solution because he can't see any rational way forward. The difference is that John is older than Karli and should know better.

One wonders if there was any psychological testing before the U.S. chose its new Captain America. There must have been and it mustn't have been terribly competent. The chip on John's shoulder isn't just the frustration he and Lemar (Cle Bennett) felt about being unable to save more lives in Afghanistan. When the Dora Milaje quickly beat him, he bitterly observes that they weren't even super soldiers. If he'd been thinking rationally, he'd have realised that he was one man fighting against a team of Wakada's elite military. Of course he was going to lose.

I like how he talks about being Captain America as the first thing that's actually felt good. The frustration he feels about not being able to solve problems is more than just lives he can't save, it's his inability to breathe life into a symbol he believes in. Ironically, the episode ends with him tarnishing that symbol when he beats to death one of the terrorists. Once again, I was reminded of Dark of the Sun and without getting into spoilers for that movie, plot points in this episode closely mirror the climax of that film.

Ultimately, the message of the episode is that might only makes right if the person wielding it knows what they're doing. Once again, Zemo (Daniel Bruhl) is shown to be the most effective player because he understands his own goals and he understands people. Only he thinks to talk to the kids--and he knows how to talk to them--and his decision to execute Karli is much swifter than John's because he knows that the power of creating super soldiers is too dangerous to take any chances on the caprices of volatile people, something John demonstrates all too clearly.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is available on Disney+.

The Road to Madripoor

A thoroughly ridiculous but enjoyable new episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier last night. The plot didn't make sense, it was often predictable, and ran neatly along the lines of familiar action film tropes. But Sebastian Stan and Anthony Mackie continue to build good chemistry.

Daniel Bruhl brings a lot of charisma as Baron Zemo and Sam and Bucky are basically Danny Glover and Mel Gibson from the Lethal Weapon films. Sam is the straight arrow who's forced to go along with Bucky's crazy, dangerous ideas while Bucky is the loose cannon with the guilty conscience. Mostly I found myself thinking of Dark of the Sun, though, another black man and white man buddy action film from 1968.

Again, the black man, Jim Brown, represents the voice of reason to the wild white man, Rod Taylor. That film also forced them to team up with a Nazi. Every time the Nazi did something questionable there was the line, "We need him!" which is what I constantly heard last night about Zemo.

I guess Zemo's not a Nazi, but Daniel Bruhl's best known for playing one in Inglourious Basterds, a movie I happened to have rewatched recently (and one in which Tarantino uses a portion of the Dark of the Sun soundtrack).

Not only do they need to break Zemo out of prison, they need to use Zemo's private jet to get around, Sam and Bucky apparently feeling perfectly at ease in Zemo's domain. It all feels very natural. The trio end up in disguise on the fictional island of Madripoor, for some reason walking in the middle of the road on a suspension bridge, and again Sam is amusingly outside his comfort zone. Now he's posing as some flashy gangster called "Smiling Tiger". I liked how Zemo pointed out it was only Sam's American perspective that would cause him to think he was dressing as a pimp.

We're still not getting a lot of depth on Sam, but that's okay, there's nothing wrong with someone being the comic relief. Certainly him being forced to drink Smiling Tiger's preferred beverage was worth it.

Madripoor is an island mostly associated with X-Men in the comics. I hope this doesn't somehow end up being another boner joke.

It was kind of nice seeing Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp) again and her action sequence, beating up bounty hunters while the boys do their business, was excellent. The interrogation of the former HYDRA scientist, meanwhile, was perfectly predictable. I knew from the beginning how it would end--Zemo would suddenly kill him and then Sam and Bucky would be upset about it. And what did they learn? That someone secretly reproduced the super soldier serum, which is pretty much what we knew already.

I wonder why Karli Morgenthau (Erin Kellyman) didn't get really bulky when she took the serum, the way Steve Rogers did. Then again, I didn't see her before she took the serum, maybe she's really six years old or something.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is available on Disney+.