我们现在已经走了一半The Falcon and the Winter Soldierand man can you feel the gears grinding on this one.Wandavisiontook a second to get going, but once it got there, it took off and hit some really interesting and heady highs in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.Falcon,在the other hand, is 50% over and still feels like it’s setting the table—the pacing is HORRIBLE—and while each episode features one or two standout moments, overall, the elements ofFalcon不要在一起。Wandavisionhad one central conflict: Wanda Is Sad. Almost everything that happened in that series stemmed directly from that conflict, and the few things that did not spring from that were noticeably creakier and weaker than the central conflict.Falcon不过，有多次冲突，没有一个真正的冲突。并不是说这些作品并不是个别有趣的，而是他们不一起工作的方式就是陷入演出并积极地与好东西抗衡。
在中点，我们已经离开了山姆·威尔逊（Sam Wilson）的家庭戏剧，尽管种族主义在整个系列中仍然是一个巨大的主题。第二集“星际串人的人”探访了约翰·沃克（Wyatt Russell），成为美国新任队长，这是一个完整的工具袋，没人喜欢。Sam（Anthony Mackie）和Bucky（Sebastian Stan）拒绝与他合作，这使Walker离开了（可能是因为他意识到让史蒂夫·罗杰斯（Steve Rogers）的前中尉站在他的身边，将进一步使他在美国队长的角色中使他合法化）。同时，他们与沃克（Walker）竞争，山姆（Sam）发现了黑人超级士兵以赛亚·布拉德利（Isaiah Bradley）（经验丰富的角色演员卡尔·卢姆布尔（Carl Lumbly），绝对压碎了它）。Bucky知道以赛亚的存在是因为他在朝鲜战争期间与冬季士兵纠缠在一起，但Bucky保留了史蒂夫的知识。以赛亚（Isaiah）摘自出色的漫画书《真相：红色，白色和黑色》，是美国军事工业综合体数十年来，以“科学”的名义滥用了黑体（另见：Tuskegee实验）。萨姆（Sam）理所当然地了解以赛亚（Isaiah）发生了什么事，对巴基（Bucky）的秘密感到愤怒（即使以赛亚（Isaiah）的创伤并不是巴基（Bucky）的剥削）。
可以肯定的是，这里有丰富的主题 - 空军资深人士Nicque Marina is on TikTok打破该节目如何回应今天军队中种族和退伍军人问题的现实问题，但是Falconstruggles to connect the dots. Sam’s struggle with Steve’s legacy, represented by his rejection of the shield, doesn’t quite mesh with Bucky’s struggles to reacclimate to civilian life, and no one is considering how the military industrial complex is currently chewing up and about to spit out John Walker. The only part of this that really connects is the built-in hypocrisy of turning SOME people into symbols while leaving others in the dust, something Zemo (Daniel Brühl) and Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp) both speak directly to. Sam and Bucky find themselves in the middle of that hypocrisy, but every time the show approaches going somewhere interesting with it, a fight breaks out and the story momentum stops, and too often, it doesn’t restart. We just jump tracks to a different plot problem.
The plot revolves around the Flag Smashers, a group of super-soldiers using their new strength to…be Robin Hood? We’re three episodes in and I am still not totally clear on what the villains’ goal is. It seems that post-blip, the world of the MCU is struggling to repatriate the three and a half billion people who returned, which makes sense, but there is a strange reticence to just dive into the specifics of what is happening, what the conflicts are, and who are the main players. That might be down to an unwillingness to overcommit to details that might muck up future movies, et cetera, but that is the burden carried by an interconnected universe. You can’t shortchange a story because it might back something else into a corner. You just have to work through it. But we’re not really working through it here, so all we’ve got are the Flag Smashers hijacking supply trucks and robbing depots controlled by the “Global Repatriation Council” (I just ASSUME they’re secretly Hydra), and then randomly killing a bunch of people to reinforce that they are the bad guys. Otherwise, they’re actually sympathetic actors and I don’t know why Sam and Bucky would even be invested in stopping them, except Bucky is freaked out by potential Hydra connections.
But so far, we’re not headed in Hydra directions (even if the GRC is HIGHLY suspicious). The big bad being teased behind the curtain is the Power Broker, a person or persons administrating a new generation of super-soldier serum to anyone who wants it. We started with a strong premise in episode one: Sam is struggling with Steve’s bequest and his family’s own legacy, while Bucky struggles to reintegrate into society. But we’ve long since left those conflicts behind. Sam is tangentially still dealing with the Steve/shield issue, but he has leapt from, “I think that belongs to Steve and Steve alone,” to, “I should destroy the shield,” VERY quickly. Too quickly, frankly. It feels like we’re missing an entire episode between two and three that would allow everyone to arrive at their moments of desperation in more believable fashion. Instead, Sam goes right to “burn the shield”, John Walker is screaming “Do you know who I am?” at people—dude, you’ve been on the job for a week, no one knows who you are—and Bucky is busting Zemo out of prison. These are BIG moves with paper thin justifications in the story.
This is not to sayFalcon完全没有优点。与往常一样，很高兴观看好演员做得好，这里的每个人都是一个好演员，有一些好事，或者至少很有趣。艾米丽·范坎普（Emily Vancamp）实际上在沙龙·卡特（Sharon Carter）扮演个性，怀亚特·罗素（Wyatt Russell）进行了A+ Douchebag的表演，而Anthony Mackie和Sebastian Stan每周将其淘汰出公园。斯坦（Stan）特别好，体现了巴基（Bucky）作为一个人，他同时年纪太大了，无法对自己的身体，情感上的某个他从未真正享受过的年轻人。Bucky Springs从老人到喜怒无常的少年，然后像橡皮筋一样再次回来，这真是太好了。丹尼尔·布鲁尔（DanielBrühl）又回到了Zemo男爵，至少为Bucky带来了道德上的困境和潜在的赌注，他还没有准备好与他在Wakanda的盟友一起准备的。我只是希望这一切都更好地挂在一起The Falcon and the Winter Soldierfelt more like a cohesive story and less like a series of disjointed fetch quests.
