Falcon and the Winter Soldier: Yea or nah?

The problems with “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” start with its name. As I hope you don’t know, there is also a movie called “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” and whenever I talk about the show I always say the name of the movie by accident.

What I’m trying to get at here is this show has baggage (oh so much baggage!) because it’s a Marvel movie. I mean show. It’s a Marvel show. To vaguely understand “WandaVision,” you have to see “Infinity War” and “Endgame.” It’s still 6 hours of your life you’re never going to get back.

But if you want to understand “Falcon,” add “Civil War” and all the Captain America movies and—it’s a lot. “Falcon and the Winter Soldier” likes to have as many of these characters as possible in the same scene—in the same shot, even.

It’s tough because these are the DoD’s biggest super zeros. For example, Falcon himself can’t get a bank loan. In the Snyder Cut of “Justice League,” Cyborg can set monetary policy! The main four heroes are all mid-to-late 30s, except Anthony Mackie (Falcon), at 42. Whatever the heck they are, they aren’t soldiers. Young soldiers these days get obsessed with anime, military hardware and gaming. They go on benders. They make early and short marriages. Often, they commit suicide.

They’re not usually old enough to have middle school-age kids. I’m not totally sure if the heroes in “Falcon” are even attached to a chain of command anywhere. Wyatt Russel’s performance as a “new,” out of control Captain America is very hate-able. He’s done reasonably well. Yes, it does Go There, and Captain America does at least one Very Bad Thing. This was already done two years ago with Homelander in “The Boys.”

There’s a reluctance on Disney’s part to feed us red meat. The baddies are a mask-wearing Antifa stand-in which never existed before in the comics. The grizzled super-soldiers get to bash in the heads of those Antifa thugs! I think I know who this is aimed at, but if that’s what you’re going for, I got to ask, why the kiddy gloves? It’s not till the third or fourth episode Falcon starts asking questions I want to know the answer to. Shame.