So how do you make a show about Hawkeye, the most aggressively boring and underpowered of all MCU Heroes? Surprisingly, the answer is you do it well. So this comes with a full recommendations for everyone. Even the most ardent, Marvel fatigued viewer will likely get some joy out of this show.
The title is perhaps a little confusing, in that Hawkeye (the guy we know) shares half the screen time with his new sidekick, other Hawkeye (a woman we don't know). The former Hawkeye is twenty years older than the man we saw in The Avengers, and middleage and superheroing has taken its toll on his knees, his hearing, and his mental health. The latter Hawkeye is the fresh faced, young Kate Bishop. She's a rich kid who has spent her whole life trying to emulate Hawkeye on the off chance she would need to become a superhero, and it was just as well, because in the Christmas holidays, a chain of events lead her on a mission against wacky Slavic gangsters, wacky Slavic assassins, and not-wacky, not-Slavic secret villains closer to home.
Hawkeye turned out to be a joy to watch. The tone is lighthearted and charming and Christmassy. It takes all the best parts of MCU tv series (the low scale conflict, the clever fight choreography, the emphasis on character work over big adventures), leaves out the flaws (the inflated number of episodes, boring seriousness and grittiness) and add a whole bunch of quirky humour. As to its source material, it helps that Hawkeye acknowledges the silly concept of its hero without getting stuck with eye-rolling self awareness. We get that a guy with arrows is a dumb concept, so what? Move on. The real selling point of the show is Kate Bishop, who is such a lively, gentle and friendly person that even the villains can't help but like her.
As to the villains of the story (as its always up to them to drive these things), Hawkeye lacks a single big bad guy for most of its run time, and instead gives us a motley crew of bumbling, tracksuit wearing mobsters. Their leader is Echo, a kickboxing, native American, deaf, one legged woman on a quest for revenge. And to Disney's credit, they're doing the right thing of actually hiring a native American, deaf, one legged actor for the role. It frustrates me no end when disabled actors are overlooked even for stories that purposefully feature disabled characters (I'm looking at you, The Shape of Water!), and I'm glad to see we are getting past that in movie casting.
As to the plot, it is fairly predictable. It isn't hard to guess who the secret villain is, or whether the old Hawkeye will hand the baton over to young Kate Bishop, or whether the villains will go through with their revenge plot. Its all in the nature of the Christmas spirit to give us something light and unchallenging to watch. It's only a light sprinkling of cheese, on top of whatever Christmas dish you would put cheese on.
Series How Do You Solve a Problem Like Hawkeye?
So how do you make a show about Hawkeye, the most aggressively boring and underpowered of all MCU Heroes? Surprisingly, the answer is you do it well. So this comes with a full recommendations for everyone. Even the most ardent, Marvel fatigued viewer will likely get some joy out of this show.
The title is perhaps a little confusing, in that Hawkeye (the guy we know) shares half the screen time with his new sidekick, other Hawkeye (a woman we don't know). The former Hawkeye is twenty years older than the man we saw in The Avengers, and middleage and superheroing has taken its toll on his knees, his hearing, and his mental health. The latter Hawkeye is the fresh faced, young Kate Bishop. She's a rich kid who has spent her whole life trying to emulate Hawkeye on the off chance she would need to become a superhero, and it was just as well, because in the Christmas holidays, a chain of events lead her on a mission against wacky Slavic gangsters, wacky Slavic assassins, and not-wacky, not-Slavic secret villains closer to home.
Hawkeye turned out to be a joy to watch. The tone is lighthearted and charming and Christmassy. It takes all the best parts of MCU tv series (the low scale conflict, the clever fight choreography, the emphasis on character work over big adventures), leaves out the flaws (the inflated number of episodes, boring seriousness and grittiness) and add a whole bunch of quirky humour. As to its source material, it helps that Hawkeye acknowledges the silly concept of its hero without getting stuck with eye-rolling self awareness. We get that a guy with arrows is a dumb concept, so what? Move on. The real selling point of the show is Kate Bishop, who is such a lively, gentle and friendly person that even the villains can't help but like her.
As to the villains of the story (as its always up to them to drive these things), Hawkeye lacks a single big bad guy for most of its run time, and instead gives us a motley crew of bumbling, tracksuit wearing mobsters. Their leader is Echo, a kickboxing, native American, deaf, one legged woman on a quest for revenge. And to Disney's credit, they're doing the right thing of actually hiring a native American, deaf, one legged actor for the role. It frustrates me no end when disabled actors are overlooked even for stories that purposefully feature disabled characters (I'm looking at you, The Shape of Water!), and I'm glad to see we are getting past that in movie casting.
As to the plot, it is fairly predictable. It isn't hard to guess who the secret villain is, or whether the old Hawkeye will hand the baton over to young Kate Bishop, or whether the villains will go through with their revenge plot. Its all in the nature of the Christmas spirit to give us something light and unchallenging to watch. It's only a light sprinkling of cheese, on top of whatever Christmas dish you would put cheese on.