Marvel TV shows launched in a fallow period for superhero superheroes. It wasn't meant to be this way: The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was scheduled to be released just 3 months after Black Widow, in August XNUMX. WandaVision was scheduled to follow the release of Marvel's Eternals and begin its run on Disney Plus in the last month of XNUMX.
Clearly, the pandemic meant that things did not turn out that way. And while this year hasn't been as dry for blockbuster fun as XNUMX (Godzilla Vs Kong and Mortal Kombat turned out to be a nice distraction), the Marvel TV shows have mostly felt like the only game in town. when it comes to pop culture. We've been talking about it every week because besides Oscar time, there's not much going on in the game right now. And on the surface, these shows look like blockbusters, simply because Disney Plus has spent so much money on them.
But are they good? They're genuinely entertaining, and having waited so long to see them (and thus see Disney Plus achieve its full potential after a somewhat slow opening year), it's satisfying to have new MCU harmonies to look forward to each week.
If you ask me, WandaVision was better than The Falcon and the Winter Soldier for multiple reasons. Usually that's because it felt more like a TV show, built particularly around an episodic structure, which as a viewer made watching each and every week satisfying. He helped the show develop another era of sitcoms for most of its run; It gave the show a natural TV-like setting that worked well for episodes.
Meanwhile, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, it felt like it could just have been one long movie. And I don't necessarily mean that as a compliment. The show surely features so many great MCU character snaps like WandaVision as a whole, and my affection for the two tracks hasn't waned during their run.
But it was a more disorganized show. The confusing plot, character overload, and the mystery of the ``Power Broker'', which was not very successful, made this more difficult to estimate. Certain creative resolutions didn't work out either: I'm still not done with the series with Sam Wilson, the notorious Avenger who helped stop Thanos, who implausibly infiltrated Madripoor. In particular, the series mishandled its main villains, the Flag Smashers, a group of young revolutionaries who were all too happy to blow up innocent people when it suited them. And one of the most interesting elements of the series, its new Captain America, John Walker, played by Wyatt Russell, didn't get enough screen time and development.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier felt like it could have been a thin movie about Sam coming up with the idea of being Captain America, with Bucky trying to make amends. Instead, it ended up being a somewhat overloaded TV show.
The series wanted to become a globe-trotting adventure, but that actually made the fast-paced changes in location a bit inconsistent. We would see John Walker kill one of the Flag Smashers in broad daylight in an Eastern European city, then fight Sam and Bucky in one of several warehouse-based sequences from the series early in the next episode.
Marvel is still trying to figure out what their TV shows are like
(Image credit: Disney/Marvel Studios) The Falcon and the Winter Soldier weren't a good fit for me. It felt like the 'TV show' part was more character and also story than you'd see in a Marvel movie. But it's not bad for a first attempt at telling a story in the more usual MCU style on the small screen, and it certainly didn't strike me as too difficult a task to watch; I devoured every episode every Friday. It feels like we're about to see the full potential of Marvel on the small screen, which we only really saw traces of in Netflix shows a few years back. Looking ahead, it looks like Marvel is tackling many different story genres for TV. It sounds like Loki could be a more ideal show, like WandaVision - the show's bottom line is that the God of Evil helps TVA fix the various deadlines he's messed up. The show is expected to see Loki collide with historical events from the real world, with the first trailer teasing that Loki is actually a mysterious airplane thief and the thief of DB Cooper, for example. With different realities to play in, Loki is sure to be very, very different from any of his predecessors. Meanwhile, with what we've learned about them so far, Ms. Marvel and Hawkeye look a bit more like the usual MCU-type stories: a teenage superhero origin story in the game. second. That said, there's some (reported) speculation that Hawkeye will explore Clint to treat hearing loss, which could result in something we've never seen before in Marvel's onscreen stories. Meanwhile, She-Hulk, which is filming now, looks to be a full-fledged legit superhero comedy, with plenty of potential for deep MCU cameos. Marvel then uses the televised manner to tackle more varied types of stories. And that should, ideally, these shows should tell stories that wouldn't necessarily make sense as movies, or should at least spend the extra time they're given to dig into the characters. This is one thing that WandaVision has done particularly well, adding significant dimensions to its two main leads. It's not a thing that Falcon and Winter Soldier have done enough of, though, as their two heroes have struggled for screen time with John Walker, Baron Zemo, and Flag Smashers. Tellingly, episode five was perhaps the strongest of the series, as it simply gave the audience time to enjoy Sam and Bucky repairing a boat together. If we've learned anything from the celebration sequence in Avengers: Age of Ultron, it's probably that watching Marvel's heroes hang out is pretty entertaining on its own.
Is it worth the hype?
(Image credit: Marvel Studios) The Mandalorian set such a high standard for Star Wars on the small screen that it suddenly felt like TV was the place where every single story from this fake cosmos was told. The Marvel series has yet to have that effect, despite WandaVision's obvious grandeur as a rare MCU story about heartbreak, and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is entertaining enough to keep us watching every week. But it has more to do with the consistency of the MCU on the big screen, as the quality of Star Wars movies has fluctuated wildly of late. However, WandaVision has done more to show what a TV show can do for the MCU than The Falcon and the Winter Soldier; a more experimental approach to programs would be welcome. If this sounds like a 6-part movie, it doesn't necessarily sound like the best use of the form. MCU shows are a good substitute when we don't have Marvel movies on the big screen, but we're waiting for a time when we can enjoy the two together. Today's best Disney Plus deals