I’m a Batman fan. I root for Batman at every turn. I loved the serials, the Adam West series, the 80s and 90s comics, the Burton films, the Animated Series and the Nolanverse. My Batman love even extends to other DC products. I think Man of Steel is criminally underrated. I think Zack Snyder’s director’s cut of Batman V. Superman is a totally successful and worthwhile movie compared to the theatrical cut.
I am not a “Marvel fan.” I do enjoy many of the MCU films though. Winter Soldier, Civil War and Infinity War are some of my all-time favorite superhero movies. But I’m not a diehard. I haven’t even watched WandaVision yet.
I watched both the 4 hour Snyder Cut and the less than 1 hour first episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier this weekend. Despite all the insane hype for the former, it doesn’t come close to the quality of the Disney+ offering.
I didn’t hate Snyder Cut. I thought it was a vast improvement over the theatrical release. I loved Cyborg as the fleshed-out protagonist. I loved getting more Alfred. I thought every main character was well-written & given real purpose in the film. What did I dislike? The slomo was, in fact, too much. The CG was overbearing. Steppenwolf (even if he looks much more impressive) is still not a compelling villain. And, oh yeah, it was 4 HOURS LONG! I could’ve gone for 3 hours. Or even 3.5.
But this really isn’t about what I didn’t like about Snyder Cut.
This is about HOW GOOD Falcon/Winter Soldier Episode 1 is.
I have no investment in these characters. The Chris Evans/Cap mini-universe is perhaps my favorite subset of the MCEU, but I don’t go to bat for these characters (see what I did there?) like I do for Batman. This piece of television is just THAT GOOD.
From the opening action scene, my jaw was on the floor wondering how this was a TV show and not a movie? That’s saying a lot considering how far we’ve come in the prestige streaming television era. The showrunners somehow made Falcon, who, on paper is a pretty silly character, the most badass and charismatic action hero to grace my screen this weekend.
But the real MVP of this episode is Bucky/Winter Soldier. I really like Sebastian Stan. If you haven’t seen him in I, Tonya, check it out. This dude can act. His Bucky has such depth. What happens to a guy that wakes up from 75 years of being a zombie killing machine and suddenly has to live in the real world without his best friend and protector? What a hell of a question to answer.
I was legitimately surprised at how good Falcon/Winter soldier was. And I say that having walked in with the full assumption that anything Marvel does is at least going to be GOOD. I can’t wait to see where this show goes from here.
For this DC fan, less than 1 hour of Falcon/Winter Soldier totally outdid 4 hours of Zack Snyder’s Justice League.
-JT