The MCU Spoiler Thread ('free' on Disney+ UK pace) - The Bear and Badger

Minkymu

Yeah just finished watching ep 2 and im with Boris, i thought it was really good.

We all know the new caps a wrong un. Lovely acting by mr russell.

Also am i the only one who finds sebastian stan ridiculously good looking? Lordy he is a looker

b0r1s

I would.

monkey

Sam can't afford to fix his boat but has a plane on standby that can fly him to 200ft above a terrorist base.

b0r1s

monkey wrote:

Sam can't afford to fix his boat because he has a plane on standby that can fly him to 200ft above a terrorist base.

monkey

They were right to turn him down for that loan.

b0r1s

Don’t hate the player

cosmicjellybean

b0r1s wrote:

I thought that was really good. The chemistry between Winter Soldier and Falcon was spot on and the new Cap was suitably gung-ho for us to know he’s not the one.

It’s basically a buddy cop Marvel story and it works so far. The bad guys motives are just window dressing.

And I like how they don’t shy away from the race issue. The bit where the kid says my dad calls you “Black Falcon” and the police stop were both spot on and relevant imo.

Yeah after they met with Isaiah Bradley and Sam screams about there having been a secret black super soldier who just ends up in prison... it reminded me of the backlash when they were going to cast Will Smith as Cap, or even recently when people didn’t like that the shield went to Falcon (and not Bucky) and called it ‘forced diversity’.

It is super relevant and I applaud them for including this stuff, it’s important to highlight I think.

b0r1s

The way the police acted. “Is be bothering you sir?” Until he spots who he is.

Unlikely

That bit was fine. It was the endless bickering I found tiresome. Especially the "therapy" scene.

hylian_elf

Ohhh Isaiah. I thought they called him Azair or something.

superflyninja

The therapy scene....cringe. Meh overall it was ok. I do really like the interplay between the two lads. And yep Bucky! *swoon*

Diluted Dante

I love their endless bickering.

poprock

Yeah, me too. If you remove the endless bickering there’s fuck all else there. It’s … okay. I guess. Bit of a nothing series so far.

EvilRedEye

I feel like what it's missing is each episode having its own identity. If it was more like Mando, where each episode feels like a miniature standalone movie that feeds into an ongoing story then that would work even if it was quite vanilla MCU-type content (in the same way Mando is pretty vanilla OT-style Star Wars content).

It feels like one of the Netflix shows with a bigger budget or a movie pointlessly split into episodes at the moment.

I don't think WandaVision was perfect in figuring out the balance of serialised vs episodic but the fact they tried to buck convention a tiny bit with the ongoing storyline and gave most of the episodes a strong weekly theme just about pulled it through and made it a bit more interesting than this.

LivDiv

Yeah I think that is a good take.

Diluted Dante

Yeah, there's less of a feeling of individual stories per episode, it's all about the series arc.

tin_robot

superflyninja wrote:

The therapy scene....cringe. Meh overall it was ok. I do really like the interplay between the two lads. And yep Bucky! *swoon*

My daughter pointed out that her biggest issue with the therapy scene is that in the movies Falcon is literally introduced providing support to veterans with PTSD and yet he appears to have little or no understanding of, or appreciation for, how messed up Bucky is.

monkey

It’s a completely different beast, which is disappointing. It would have been good if they’d tried for something slightly more ambitious than dumb fun. Like in the film, Cap does that huge 200ft jump out of the lift, out of complete desperation and has to steel himself before hand. And no one can quite believe it when he walks away from it. Here Bucky does the same thing out of a plane just to try and save face and it’s played for laughs and he’s like “ow my butt”.

It is dumb. But it is fun.

g.man

So tonight I have watched the first two episodes of The Fister and The Flying Black Man.
So far this really isn't very good at all. It just about gets by on the chemistry of the leads, but really everything else so far is absolute bollocks. The plot is the usual sort of under-written garbage, where nothing really happens other than some fight scenes, and you don't really know what is going on, but hopefully that means you'll tune in next week to find out what is actually going on (you won't).
So the leads are good, but the real world stuff like race issues and debt, while commendable, rather jars with the asinine comic book story, that so far reads more like bad fan-fiction than anything else. I'm all for the inclusion of this sort of subject matter, but it really has to be more in keeping with the rest of the story imo. The way it's integrated here, it just makes the viewer ask questions of the rest of the story, to which there are no logical answers, and that in turn just makes it harder to suspend disbelief.
Hopefully it'll get better, but I'm really beginning to suspect that a great many of these Marvel Disney+ shows are just going to be movie length plots, but stretched out to interminable lengths to keep subscriptions going.

EvilRedEye

g.man wrote:

I'm all for the inclusion of this sort of subject matter, but it really has to be more in keeping with the rest of the story imo. The way it's integrated here, it just makes the viewer ask questions of the rest of the story, to which there are no logical answers, and that in turn just makes it harder to suspend disbelief.

I feel like it's worth highlighting, for the sake of people wot are not as familiar with the comics (and I'm no expert myself but have read the comics relating to some of the future projects) that the Isaiah Bradley stuff will become highly relevant to later projects down the line so fits into that category of lumpy-feeling content setting up stuff not immediately relevant that WandaVision had a lot of.

g.man

I didn't have a problem with the introduction of that guy tbh, it's more the scenes with the racist cops, and the apparently poor black folk who can't get a loan, jarring with the overall comic book tone. It just makes the viewer ask how the fuck does this guy have no money when he appears to be a PMC with unlimited access to super-weapons technology, doing black-ops for the American Government?
There's absolutely a place for these sort of issues in comic book stuff, but this just felt badly written and shoehorned in here, which I thought was a pity.

b0r1s

I think the cop stop stuff was on the nail, especially for an American audience. The loan stuff seemed odd and not really needed

g.man

I'm just saying that stuff like that could perhaps be integrated better into the overall story.
Maybe the US Government could be seen to suggest to FBM that he should give up Cap's shield.
Honest gov, we're going to put it in a museum.
No wait, we've changed our minds and given it to some white guy with a black sidekick.
Boom! Racism! It all connects.

LivDiv

I'm struggling a bit to read what the show is.
Its a buddy cop thing one minute then attempts discussions on race, equality and PTSD but only really scrapes the surface. It does neither particularly well.

Bits of the action look like they could be the warm up fights from the movies which is just fine, it is just a TV show im not expecting full helicarrier destruction scenes but then others seem pulled straight out of Knight Rider.
Fisticuffs on top of a lorry with a gang of hockey mask wearing goons has been done and some. I'm pretty sure it happens in an episode of Monk ffs.

Old guy may link into some story but because this is a TV show and not a movie his introduction isnt going to be in any way important here. It will be forgotten or picked up better in a movie down the line.

So far I just think its a bit basic.

g.man

Aye.

b0r1s

I dunno. I think a lot of the time now we are a bit harsh (me included) on new TV shows. I look back at some of the best shows I’ve loved in the past and some of the first seasons have been ropey af. In general the quality of a lot of new shows is much better than stuff back in the day. Or just different people like different stuff. I’m generally enjoying this so far a bit more than Wandavision.

LivDiv

Its not so much that I think its bad. I think its perfectly OK, I get why people may like it, its perfectly serviceable and at times fun.

I think I probably expect a bit more from a mini series though. Your point about shows starting slow I absolutely get but this is going to be done and dusted in a couple of weeks time. Most mini series are very tightly written in comparison.

Its hard to say how far into this we are without knowing episode lengths but we have had an hour of actual show (minus credits), there won't be much more than a couple more hours left and its not really done anything yet.

b0r1s

I don’t know what the plan is but I guess it all feeds h to a film at some point. I like the Bucky reparations stuff which has added to his character arc. I think the misstep for Falcon was the sister, but I like his resigned response to letting the shield go. He understood that America wouldn’t accept a black Cap and that leads into...

I just read 5 pages of RT viewer votes and majority of 1 star reviews all bring up the racism as a negative. Depressing that people react negatively to something that is a big issue in America. I’m not a comic fan but I’m guessing social injustice was dealt with in that medium the way it has been in sci-fi?

EvilRedEye

I mean I guess Sam gets upgraded to Captain America movies after this so I can't see this getting a second season (IIRC it's been advertised as a limited miniseries not an ongoing). I do think it's a good point that sometimes TV series need to bed in but given this is a one-and-done mini series, there's no excuse for it not being focused.

monkey

I’m assuming the race stuff is there because Sam will realise the world needs a black Cap. Hundreds of super-soldiers crawling out the wood work suggest he’s going to get a dose of that so he can be an equal to white Cap. It’s an origin movie, extended to be four hours long.

Howdy, Stranger!

Categories