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The Falcon and the Winter Soldier episode 3
Hmmmm… I’m enjoying a lot of this show but bits of it make no sense to me and honestly leave a bad taste in my mouth. We had one episode of “Maybe the Flag-Smashers have a point” but this episode we see them committing an act of terrorism just to make it clear that nope, they’re supposed to be evvvvvvil despite them having done, uh, pretty much no real evil prior to that IIRC. Sigh. You deserve better, Erin Kellyman.
I’m still very interested in this show’s actual characters (Sam, Bucky, Sharon and more inexplicably Zemo) but the plot and the politics just seem all over the place?
Gah, anyway…
Hooray Wakanda is involved now! Nice to see Ayo again. Wow Bucky that whole country took you in and helped you and you repaid them by freeing the guy who killed their last monarch, geez.
I had literally never heard of Madripoor before but apparently it’s connected with the X-Men? The MCU sure are throwing in a lot of X-Men related stuff without actually showing any X-Men.
I loved the callback to the Civil War “move your seat” moment, heh. Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan have such good chemistry and I hope they do many more movies together, not even necessarily MCU ones.
Halfway through this episode I had the stray thought, “I wonder what non-Americans make of this show” before remembering I was, in fact, not American. Make of that what you will I guess.
Wandavision Fan Teaser Trailer – I’ve Got No Strings
Over the past week or two I’ve been working on this!
It’s based on the 2015 “no strings” teaser trailer for Age of Ultron, as you can probably tell. I love that version of the song and how creepy it is, so it just seemed perfect to put together with footage from Wandavision.
The music is by L’Orchestra Cinématique: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LK-UnZqiFlI&list=LL&t=0s
And the footage is, of course, copyrighted to Disney! This is for fan purposes only.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier episode 2
This episode didn’t shy away from showing life as a black superhero in America, oh man. That one scene with the racist cops was agonising, but it’s supposed to be.
I didn’t know anything about the character of Isaiah Bradley so I looked him up after the episode. He was created in part as a comment on the Tuskegee experiments, oh god. I assume we’ll be seeing him again before the end, as a walking talking representative of well, everything mentioned in the previous paragraph and more.
I loved how John Walker’s introduction was a dark mirror of Steve’s experiences when he first became Captain America, right down to the dancing girls.
I was amused by the scene with Bucky and Sam in, as it turned out, literal couples therapy but it’s edging rather close to queerbaiting I think. (Do people still use that term? Is there even another one?) I mean you can’t sort of giggle in a “will they, won’t they” way when we know and have known for years that the answer is “They won’t.”
Oh and I also love how Sam treats Redwing like an actual bird. Also it (sorry, he) whistles and makes bird noises! Awww.
Erin Kellyman is in this one hooray!
My favourite easter eggs/details/etc in Wandavision
I screencapped it over the last week or so and I discovered lots of fun things I missed while watching it first time round.
The Stark toaster light is the only splash of colour in the whole of episode one (until the stinger anyway) but it’s subtle enough that I didn’t actually notice it at first. Red for Scarlet Witch, red for Iron Man, and of course red for danger.
Hayward is almost certainly perving on this woman I think, which is 100% in character for him.
Norm’s real name, Abilash Tandon, is given in one of the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it research scenes. And his driver’s licence is dated 2026, the year I’m pretty sure the MCU is at now taking the lost five years into account.
I love how both Wanda and Vision are looking at the camera at the end of episode four, especially since that’s the episode it’s revealed people in-universe are watching them.
Vision’s newspaper says, “More dramatic details about the lights in the sky.” That would’ve been the drones SHIELD were flying in, I think.
Wanda’s bedsheets are, of course, all hexagons…
I’ve pointed this one out before but I love this split-second message in the opening credits of episode 7. It’s a message from Agatha, perhaps, or from Wanda’s own subconcious.
The news screens at SWORD read “celebration for the returned” and “families reunited” i.e. the exact two things Wanda isn’t getting to do.
Vision’s body is being kept in room 101, appropriate seeing as his death and dissection was Wanda’s worst fear. (I put this one on Reddit, we’ll see how that works out.)
[EDIT: Not well. Despite how often it comes up in political discourse, turns out far fewer people than I thought have read 1984.]
I might have mentioned this before as well, but I love the little Wizard of Oz reference here.
“The power of mother earth” seems to sum up Agatha’s witchiness nicely. (Or what little we learned of it, I’m still not exactly sure how her magic works.)
Mr Hart’s choking foreshadows what’s to come, Wanda accidentally choking all the townspeople. Maybe she accidentally did it to Mr Hart too.
An interesting juxaposition here since essentially a “big red” thing “kidnapped” everyone in the town. And another Wizard of Oz reference… which doubles as a meta reference since Sam Raimi directed Oz the Great and Powerful and he’ll be directing the next movie Scarlet Witch appears in!
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier episode 1
This hasn’t grabbed me the same way Wandavision did but it’s pretty interesting so far. I do like that we’ve finally gotten to meet Sam’s family! Let’s get to the end without any of them dying please.
I also really like seeing some more aftermath and consequences of the Blip. (Am I the only one who still calls it “the Snap” in my head?) Really I suppose it’s surprising the world isn’t even more unstable than it is. Still weirded out even three years later that Spider-Man got to go back to school so quickly.
Seeing Sam kill people in exploding helicopters is weird and unsettling. I know he’s a soldier and thus it’s his job but… I dunno. The French guy in that sequence was Batroc the Leaper wasn’t he? One thing I do appreciate (sometimes) about the MCU is that they keep taking these absolutely ridiculous characters and making them translate to real-life settings.
It pains me that Sam now has no money, I suppose it makes sense what with him being dead for five years but still. It’s occured to me how many people would’ve had to be jerks for that to happen. Didn’t Tony leave any of his billions to the people he worked with? (Sigh, of course he didn’t. Sorry. I’m not much of an Iron Man fan these days.) But even aside from that, how on earth is there no money available for people who literally helped save the entire universe?
Go on the convention circuit maybe Sam? Charge people $100 for a selfie with you. That’ll make them change their tune.
Bucky’s friendship with that old guy was touching until I realised where it was going. Oh man. Maybe he should do the opposite and avoid the convention circuit.
I feel like this show is going to get political and that’s great! But after learning the actual US Army funds/oversees a lot of MCU stuff that sort of dampens it a bit. Well, a lot, a hell of a lot, if we’re being honest. Plus the world of the MCU right now is so far away from our one that I’m not sure they’re going to be able to make any I guess new points apart from in subtext? Does that make sense? We’ll see I guess.
Speaking of real-life stuff… sigh, I really feel like Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa should have had a cameo in this, in an ideal world.
Some great Wandavision creations
One of the other good things about Wandavision is that it seems to have unleashed a lot of creativity, so here’s some of my favourite artworks and the like that I’ve seen on Reddit!
Gosh there’s a lot of it! Sorry!
