Having now finished this, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, I believe this is the MCU's weakest offerings, easily. In fact, it was flat out bad. Embarrassing even. Iron Man 2 was orders of magnitude better, and that was also a turd.
Spoiler
It feels very much like a project that's first and foremost interested in having a justification for why a Black supporting character gets to be Captain America, because just handing him the shield was too abrupt. Everything else about it has tacked on, going as far as making some huge, meaningless statements about our common humanity with reference to the refugee crisis.
To be sure, there was a good opportunity here. There's absolutely an excellent story to be told in handing over Cap's mantle to a Black man. And it would have been incredibly timely, too. But it was told so poorly that it irritated me more than anything else.
I actually hated how it used the refugee crisis as an opportunity to flaunt the universality of Captain America's inherent goodness and values. It's so blatant and hamfisted. Completely lacking in any self-awareness.
I agree with all of the politics, but it comes across as so preachy and clumsy that I wonder if the creative team behind the show actually have anything near a firm grasp of the issues themselves.
Spoiler
What was the deal with the whole massive waste of time that was the Delacroix subplot? Was the whole point of it that the bloody fishing boat was an unalienable part of their African American identity? How limp was the Isaiah subplot? Is the key struggle that Sam needed to overcome really how the US military treated Black soldiers? Or is it actually something far more complex and deserving of some actual thought?
As I said earlier, I think a full 10-13 episode season would have given a bit more space for some of these issues to breathe. Or as someone else said, condense it into a 2 hour movie (in which case probably actually get rid of a lot of the bizarre subplots). Either way, what we got was atrocious.
Spoiler
The execution is actually so poor that I feel like the show even fails in its most basic objective, to give 'Black Falcon' credence as Captain America going forward. Don't get me wrong - I get that Captain America is meant to stand for something more, and more universal now, but they could have done just as much just giving that to me in a talking point.
It'll be interesting now to see how they follow through the character's development in future Marvel products. Now that we have a Black Captain America, will he get his own movie? Or will he be relegated to the same treatment as Daredevil and Agents of SHIELD? If we get a movie, what would the focus of the movie be? Have Marvel now addressed racial injustice in America once and for all?
Imma stop typing now because I realise the more I think about it, the more it's actually pissing me off.
