'The Falcon and The Winter Soldier' gets old in some areas and new in others
The effectiveness of Dinsey's strong writing for the Avengers franchise is beginning to wear slightly thin in familiar areas yet adamantly strong in others. The premise of Sam's struggles in the pilot episode of Falcon and The Winter Soldier (which desperately needs a catchier title) is about to get older than Bucky himself. Sam Wilson's inner turmoil with responsibility isn't compelling drama for the most part. Meanwhile, cooky Bucky Barnes is where a lot of the real meat is at.
Bucky's past as the Winter Soldier comes back to either help or harm our heroes. Being a part of Hydra never stops coming back to harm you. Where the story ends in this episode is what I'm more excited to see rather than Sam practically being a passive character. Everyone knows he's going to be Captain America. To the writers' credit, John Walker (Wyatt Russell) does a fine job filling in the shoes of a humble man who may be suitable for Steve Rogers' place after all. Are his intentions genuine, or is he in it for the fame but does a great job at hiding it? Either way, if there's one thing that Sam and Bucky can agree on, Steve's shield belongs to someone else.
Now that the pilot episode has gotten through the rehab phase, we're right into the buddy cop movie phase. Sam and Bucky don't like each other but have to work together, where we know they'll get over their differences by the end of the season, making their bond inseparable. The show's elements are predictable but intentionally so where I'm waiting for that curveball to come, I just don't know when Kevin Feige will deliver it. Before that delivery, the classic Disney superhero formula is starting to get stale.
The humor of Marvel can be annoying for anyone. As much as I love the MCU, sometimes I just wish everyone would shut up with their jokes and move on with the story. The tongue in cheek quasi fourth-wall-breaking gags feels like someone in the writer's room explicitly stated to add jokes. The whole "robots, demons, and wizards" thing or whatever it was, is Marvel saying, "Hey guys, we know you know what this is, so let's have a laugh at it!" That's great; now move on with the story, please.
I'm happy that Marvel is culturally aware of a changing world, but don't try to fool me that Disney is a firm believer in what they promote. It's good PR like anything else. Endgame didn't need that woke hero shot of their female heroes supporting Spider-Man in their final battle against Thanos. Captain Marvel already channeled what you were trying to say about sexism which, quite honestly, Wonder Woman did a far better job at doing. When Sam does the entire "black captain America" speil with the kids, you're not preaching; you're pandering.
After getting that out of my system, there's a plotline here involving race with a level of intricacy in it; you can tell no white guy put that in there. If he did, then he had some help. Marvel stumbled with Captain Marvel, but they come close to doing a backflip in this show's second episode. When you reach that point of the story, I'm curious to see if most of the audience agrees with how impressed I was with such subtext.
