YouTube trailer screenshot of Anthony Mackie as Falcon.
The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on the film industry, but Disney Plus has capitalized on the switch to streaming by producing high-quality television.
WandaVision and
The Falcon and The Winter Soldier both proved engrossing and they built well on the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The Bad Batch has also been delightful, and Marvel fans await the
Loki series (set to debut on June 9) with great anticipation.
Yet
The Falcon and The Winter Soldier bit off far more than it could chew. If you haven’t seen the show, beware: spoilers abound in this article.
There will be spoilers for the whole series below.
When Steve Rogers’ Captain America passed the shield to Sam Wilson’s Falcon at the end of “Avengers: Endgame,” it marked the start of a new era for the star-spangled symbol.
“The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” follows Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) struggling to take up the mantle of Captain America. Along for the ride is Bucky (Sebastian Stan), who is going through his own issues from his past life as the brainwashed assassin known as the Winter Soldier.
Together, the two battle a radicalized group of super soldiers known as the Flag Smashers, the new-faux Captain America John Walker (Wyatt Russell) and Zemo (Daniel Bruhl), the methodical villain who tore the Avengers apart in “Captain America: Civil War.” Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp) returns as the former S.H.I.E.L.D. and CIA agent hiding in exile as the mysterious Power Broker. Oh, and Julia Louis-Dreyfuss makes an appearance here.
Defining The Bane Problem in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
When superhero stories try to address real-life social and political issues, conflicts of interest may occur.
Marvel Studios
Marvel’s
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is a series that really immerses itself in contemporary sociopolitical issues, namely racism and American policing. As superheroes have become increasingly ubiquitous as a genre and directors seek to fictionalize complex and multifaceted real-life matters,
“The Bane Problem” is something that media-savvy viewers will want to keep in mind, from the narratives it cultivates to the eerie convergence of factors that brings it about.
Plus, Bucky will never not have to do work, she says.
(Photo by Marvel Studios)
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier ran its last episode last week, but some questions about its finale and themes still linger: from production realities of a series made during the pandemic to whether or not John Walker (Wyatt Russell) is a hero.
Series director Kari Skogland took a few minutes this week to talk with Rotten Tomatoes about the show and some of its facets, including the thinking behind Sam’s gesture for Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) and the visual tricks used to make Walker’s disposition more ambiguous. She also addressed a rumor about a deleted storyline and outlined some of the ways the COVID-19 pandemic had an impact on completing the show.
“The Whole World Is Watching,” the fourth episode of Disney+’s “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” culminates in some of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s most arresting imagery ever: John Walker’s (Wyatt Russell) Captain America, vengefully bludgeoning a man to death with a bloodied, stars and stripes-adorned shield. It’s a scene that, for a show that repeatedly purports to be about reevaluating nationalistic symbols, could have kicked off a searing critique along those lines. Witness America’s unstable, entitled mascot, juiced up on contraband super soldier serum, murdering someone on foreign soil.
By the finale, Walker is saving a truck full of civilians and breezily quoting Abraham Lincoln. “Mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice,” he says, letting us know that he’s learned his lesson. The abrupt pivot is not only narratively and thematically dissonant it’s symptomatic of the series’ craven unwillingness to address the sociopolitical questio