Review Tuesday: The Falcon & The Winter Soldier

 

The Falcon & The Winter Soldier

After the events of AVENGERS: ENDGAME, the world is having a hard time dealing with half the population reappearing. 

At first I had no interest in watching any of these Marvel mini-series. But one friend recommended WANDAVISION. So I watched it and enjoyed it. Then when I saw all the hubbub around Loki I started watching that one, too. Ultimately I decided, let me go back and see what the talk about The Falcon and The Winter Soldier was all about. 

 

Another series that directly follows the events of Avengers: Endgame, we are dealing with a time that is post-blip. During the five years of the blip, people had to be movies around where populations were needed for work, and suddenly there was much more housing with half the people gone. However, when people returned, they expected to return to their previous lives. Afterall, what happened was by no fault of their own. So a major terror group called the Flag Smashers fought to help the newly displaced people and want to move back to the way it was during the blip. In other words, screw everyone who wanted to return to their old lives, these new people took it over. 

 

With this going on, The Winter Soldier was dealing with his own demons, the people he hurt while being a puppet of hydra and The Falcon refused to accept Captain America's sheild. He wanted to just remain The Falcon and help his family when he could. 

 

Since Falcon wouldn't take the job, the government selected their own Captain America. 

 

So, with all these opposing forces at work, it made for a pretty entertaining mini-series. The problems that people described were clearly there. The never ending systemic racism, and belittlement of the refugees did get old after a while. But the action sequences, you know, the REAL reason people watch stuff like this, not the SJW message embedded, were quite excellent.  

 

Unlike Wanda Vision, these episodes ran much longer. You really feel like you are getting mini-movies each episode. The cast was a great help as well. The good guys all come off as really swell people. The bad guys, however, had to be made to be victims worthy of your sympathy. 

 

In summary, I guess I would call this mostly watchable. There were some groan and gringe moments, but between Sebastian Stan and Anthony Mackie, they made a good team and were a lot of fun to watch.    

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