The Falcon and the Winter Soldier

What's the other 13?

Centrists terrorists.?

Edited by miraculous on Mar 16th 2021 at 3:24:00 AM

Islamists, I wager.

According to the report, the reminder were “religious” (of any religion) and “other”.

I could very well see a situation where the Flag Smashers have a relatively sympatric core ideology, but have been driven to violence due to circumstance. Possibly because they were attacked first, likely by John Walker (who may of been manipulated by Zemo).

We get a small hint of this in the final trailer when Falcon says "Doesn't have to be a war" and Songbird replies "It already is".

Sam probably wouldn't say that if he thought their core ideology was incapable of peacefully coexisting with his own. Likewise Songbird believes they are past the point of no return in a way that Sam does not, and not being the original instigators of the violence unbeknownst to Sam could of created that perception.

And to follow this theory to it's conclusion, I think Zemo is trying to undermine the public's perception of superheroes. Get everyone to think this John Walker guy is some great hero, Captain America come again, and then have the other shoe drop to reveal that these "anarchist terrorists" he is protecting the American people from never would of made the news, and might not of even been an organization, if he hadn't forced them to take increasingly desperate measures to protect themselves.

John Walker would either realize he's been played and voluntarily surrender his claim to the mantle of Captain America to Sam. Or he won't be able to accept that he's been played, and the climactic battle will involve the Falcon and the Winter Soldier and the Flag Smashers all effectively fighting on the same side against John Walker and Zemo.

Small bit of pedantry here: it's may've (as in "may have"), not "may of."

But as for the rest, I agree. From what I've read, the Flag-Smashers (of which Karli is the leader, I don't think she's meant to be an adaptation of Songbird here, they just took the Flag-Smasher name and expanded it to the group instead)) aren't going to be straight villains, but more people who could easily be heroes with a few tweaks. Likewise, Walker is probably going to be someone who could very easily be considered a hero, but will still be antagonistic for some or most of the series.

Could probably just group religious in with right wing.

I definitely would not be all that surprised if Karli ends up being a composite with Songbird and/or Diamondback in terms of redeemed female villain who starts out as an ally of Zemo (Songbird) or member of a Nebulous Evil Organization (Diamondback).

Also, this might be super-obvious, but I wonder if Sam is "over-compensating" with the daredevil (not that one) kind of things he's shown doing in the trailers. Especially because the jumping out of a plane like that was literally something Steve did in Winter Soldier, I wonder if Sam is trying to fill Steve's shoes and compensate for not having powers like Bucky by being kind of reckless. Trolling Bucky is just a perk.

Or to put it simply, Sam is acting like he's the one with the super-soldier serum.

Tangentially related, I also remembered that Sam was introduced providing counseling to veterans. Which does make it kind of funny that he's fairly antagonistic with Bucky and the two appear to need counseling themselves. I expect there will be a breakthrough at some point.

Edit - I also remembered the detail about Sam being a counselor because of an interview where the showrunner(?) referred to John Walker acting on his experience as a veteran in a different way.

Edited by Hodor2 on Mar 17th 2021 at 11:01:29 AM

The stunt with the plane doesn't seem odd to me at all. Steve Jumped sans Parachute, however SAM CAN FLY, Sam has no problem jumping out of planes. Bucky however has no parachute and cannot fly. Ergo he can't follow Sam. Result...annoyed Bucky.

And thanks to the Snap, the Blip and all...doesn't shock me that EVERYBODY needs therapy now.

I hope there's more to Zemo's motives than that because "superhero" isn't really a thing. I mean, it sort of is? Iron Man was the closest thing the MCU had to a traditional superhero: a person with powers/tech/talents and a colorful outfit that travels around fighting miscellaneous bad dudes wherever there are bad dudes to fight in huge explosive public spectacles.

But he was kind of unique in his traditional-ness. Captain America was a soldier and briefly a S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent, Thor is an alien whose bullshit sometimes lands on Earth, Black Widow and Hawkeye are spies, etc. Even the Avengers were reframed as a paramilitary organization focused on combatting a secret conspiracy of Nazis and also preparing for alien invasion.

They weren't out there fighting bank robbers and thwarting muggings. They didn't patrol the streets of New York, duking it out with the Shocker and Sandman every other week. There's Spider-Man now, but what is commonly considered to be a superhero is still pretty scarce in the MCU. It's hard to write a story for the MCU around the generic idea of superheroes as a whole because that's not a concept that's ever really been defined. The word gets thrown around; Tony self-identifies as a superhero as early as Iron Man 1. But he uses it the same way we use it: in reference to the fictional concept.

Trying to actually pin a definition to what even is a "superhero" and a "supervillain" has always been difficult in the comics. No matter what definition you come up with, you're wrong; there are superheroes and supervillains that defy it. These terms are only really defined by their narrative purpose; a superhero is the main character of a superhero comic, and a supervillain is a bad guy that a superhero fights. It's a genre aesthetic; the words have no in-universe meaning, despite being frequently used by characters in-universe anyway. And that gets greatly magnified by the MCU's limited cast and emphasis on Big Event Moments instead of day-to-day crime-fighting.

This is why Civil War pinned Zemo's vendetta to the Avengers specifically; because the Avengers were a concrete organization, not a nebulous concept with no real definition that barely even exists in this universe anyway. I don't know what they're going to do with Zemo now that the Avengers' continued existence is seriously in question, but I do hope it's a bit more than "He just hates all superheroes now, even though there's barely even any superheroes for him to hate."

Edited by TobiasDrake on Mar 17th 2021 at 9:49:07 AM

Yeah, Sam jumping out of planes is normal for him, or at least normal-ish. It doesn't feel like "over the top, I have to prove myself stuff." Sam's not really that kind of guy.

One of the things that hasn't been leaned into much with Sam yet (simply due to lack of time), but I know they'll discuss in the show because they've mentioned it; is how Sam's background is different from someone like Walker or even Bucky. He was Pararescue, which has a different dynamic than what we know about Bucky and what I assume we'll get from Walker.

They've mentioned that's part of the show's overall theme.

Sam was trained as a paratrooper (specifically para-rescue?), so it would be weird if he didn't have the ability to nonchalantly walk out of a plane mid-flight.

Wonder how many mid-air stunts they can pull off.

Presumably Sam's wingsuit still has the built-in parachute we saw him use in The Winter Soldier, so he didn't jump out of the plane without one.

While there are probably some modest parallels to the paradrop scene in Winter Soldier intended, the main point is that Sam likes to screw with Bucky by doing things like jumping out of a plane without saying what the plan is.

Yup...I took that smirk to Bucky as 'Sam has a plan...it just doesn't include Bucky' Which again annoys Bucky.

I don't know--Sam seems like the sort to... *ahem* wing it. ;P

Reviews are slowly coming in, and so far Rotten Tomatoes has it at 96% out of 53 reviews.

Not surprised. WandaVision was very experimental, though it still pulled off the experiment well enough to earn a 91% freshness. Loki, similarly, is a risky premise going to unclear places.

But this is Captain America 4. Like, no bones about it, Cap 4. The only thing risky about it is handing the protagonist torch to Steve's supporting characters and letting Steve go. In terms of writing and story structure, this is going to be the most typical MCU film of the shows that have been announced.

Marvel already knows how to make products like The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

A review by someone very involved in Cap fandom, about the show's pro-military themes

Edited by Synchronicity on Mar 18th 2021 at 5:37:40 AM

I mean isn't "The Left wants open borders" a strawman anyways?

Edited by Forenperser on Mar 18th 2021 at 12:33:02 PM

Depends on which part of the left you ask, and there are many parts.

Yeah, and even a totally open boarder is a boarder. It just means anyone can cross it at any time for any reason. Plenty of boarders between European countries are like that, but those boarders still exist on a map and matter for a lot of reasons.

I wouldn't really call Hydra a bad apple. Only inasmuch as it relates to the original meaning of the phrase "too many bad apples spoil the barrel". Steve decides to tear down SHIELD because the rot has become so intrinsic. That's antithetical to the way right-wingers use the bad apple metaphor.

Edited by jjjj2 on Mar 18th 2021 at 7:41:30 AM

Cap deciding that the whole S.H.I.E.L.D. organization is bad is kind of unusual for how the rest of the franchise depicts corrupt military bad guys like General Ross or Director Hayward.

And even then, the rest of the franchise pretty stubbornly refused to jump off that bridge with Cap. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was like, "Okay but actually Nick Fury did shenanigans to ensure S.H.I.E.L.D. would live on and be resurrected as soon as Cap's back is turned because the organization is super important and has value despite the Hydra thing." Age of Ultron featured Fury showing up in a S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier as the eleventh-hour save. And now we have S.W.O.R.D. playing the role of S.H.I.E.L.D. by another name.

They even changed S.W.O.R.D.'s scope to fit the role of being S.H.I.E.L.D. II. Instead of the Sentient World Observation and Response Department, they're now the Sentient Weapon Observation and Response Department. Sentient World was what distinguished them from S.H.I.E.L.D. in the first place; S.H.I.E.L.D. are basically global super-police while S.W.O.R.D. is basically the M.I.B., monitoring alien activity for threats to the Earth.

As Darcy actually points out in an episode of WandaVision: Sentient Weapon? What even is that? The Observation and Response Division for monitoring Vision, specifically? How many Sentient Fucking Weapons do these people think are actually running around right now? And in what way does this naturally follow as something Fury and the Skrulls would think is necessary in the wake of Thanos's attacks?

In any case, Steve made the decision to hold the entire organization responsible for Hydra, and almost immediately, the entire MCU franchise as a whole jerked up and went NOOOOOOOOOOPE!!!

Given that Agents of SHIELD was in it's own little corner of continuity, and maybe on the way to being officially decanonized, I wouldn't really hold to that too much. I will agree we didn't see the consequences of his decision as much as we should've, but I maintain that Hydra does not count as a bad apple the way right-wingers talk about it. He decided to tear down the entire organization because the rot was infesting it.