The Sympathetic Strawman - How Marvel Accidentally Created One of the Best MCU Characters (+ others)
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- čas přidán 14. 05. 2024
- #mcu #marvel #dc
While I think the MCU started to go downhill at the start of phase 4, I was genuinely surprised by the character of John Walker (Captain America), especially considering the writing in the rest of Falcon and the Winter Soldier. As such, I believe that he is an excellent case of The Sympathetic Strawman
A strawman character is an individual in a story that is designed to hold a set of ideals and beliefs that contrast with what the main protagonist(s) and the story itself hold as the correct opinion. Strawman characters essentially serve to hold weak arguments so that the story and the other 'correct' characters can beat them down and deconstruct them with the 'correct' answer
Unfortunately, there comes times when the story and 'correct' characters come against the strawman character and, either because the writer hasn't fully explained why we are supposed to root for the main characters and their opinions, or because they write the strawman character too sympathetically and logically, it ends up making the audience root for the strawman. This is the sympathetic strawman
After remembering my thoughts about Don in 28 Weeks Later, and with a bit of research, I have compiled a list of examples to join John Walker as an example of a Sympathetic Strawman
0:00 Intro
1:35 John Walker (FatWS)
11:45 Senators (FatWS)
12:41 Senator Kelly (X-Men)
13:19 Red Hood (Batman UTRH)
15:00 Superman (Injustice)
15:54 Logan (Fable 3)
17:25 Don (28 Weeks Later)
www.youtube.com/@TheRealLooma...
Business/messaging email - LoomarOfficial@gmail.com
Twitter - Loomar/@TheRealLoomar
Patreon - patreon.com/user?u=84549994
Twitch - TheRealLoomar
Media
28 Days Later
28 Weeks Later
Avengers (2012)
Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
Avengers: Endgame (2019)
Batman: Under The Red Hood (2010)
Captain America: Civil War (2016)
Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
Fable III - (2010)
Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021)
Injustice: Gods Among Us (2013)
Wolverine and the X-Men (2009)
X-Men (2000)
Music
Charlie Ryan - The Great Expanse
Ian Post - After Grief
Rotem Moav - Blood on the Snow - Instrumental
Shahead Mostafafar - Secret of Sozy
Stanley Gurvich - Free Radicals
Stanley Gurvich - Taking Some Inspiration
Wes Harris - Go Hard - Instrumental
Yehezkel Raz - When The Sunrise - Instrumental - Krátké a kreslené filmy
Lot of people seem to be enioying this video, wasn't expecting it to do this well. If you know of other groups on Discord/twitter/Reddit that would enjoy this video I would appreciate if you could share and spread the love. Appreciate all the support so far :)
By minute 9 I was really into the realization how much of an Anti-Punisher Walker is. And how awful Bucky and Steve are written to be for the sake of being Un-Punishers, a fantasy of "being the good guy".
When people start relising that the characters they hold dear aren't that good, they can get some great perspective. Especially when the "villain" is more of a hero then the protagonist. That's why I love this
Plus a new word to my catalog.
why you use they them pronouns for John walker?
I just got recommended your video today but did you bring up that certain weirdoes bullied the poor actor off twitter just for playing a character they disagree on?
I'm going to have to disagree with you on the batman part of the video. Batman isn't shrugging off responsibility. Batman has made the judgement call that he himself isn't mentally stable enough to know when to stop if he kills someone and is following through on that. If anything, it's Jason and his other critics who are shrugging off his concerns.
The US government blaming John for everything is the most on point writing I've ever seen.
Weren't they basically giving in to an angry Twitter mob? I can't see the real-life US government doing that.
Yeah that part didn't seem at all unusual. Walker was just in the wrong place, a public street instead of a warzone across the ocean. And the US government placed a higher standard on his PR because he needed to look perfect as the new Captain America.
So Walker looking unstable in public embarassed them and rather than stand by him, explaining Walker had just fought through five super soldiers and watched his best friend die, they threw him under the bus for cheap political points. That is EXACTLY what politicians would do.
Yep, that was 100% realistic
Agreed. Even though I didn't like John much throughout the series, he definitely gained my sympathy in that scene. The public had already made up their minds about him, so the government decided to dishonorably discharge him instead of caring about what actually happened in order to save their image.
Yeah, I actually think it was done very well. He was literally a soldier who was trained to kill people all the time, and now he can’t kill one guy because he’s Captain America. It’s hypocrisy at its finest, and I think it’s one way this show succeeded, even though it failed in others.
I like how in iron man, Tony kills a bunch of nameless human terrorists and it’s portrayed as a bad ass heroic scene but when John Walker Kills a superhuman terrorist who just murdered his friend it’s portrayed as a villainous act
Fantastic comparison
There's an even more blatant one in Age of Ultron, where Tony drops into a room with a bunch of HYDRA goons.
"Guys, let's talk."
*Everyone lowers their weapons.*
*Tony proceeds to shoot them all in the face with missiles.*
Yeah, Tony got it good due to the group literally holding hostages, so people cheered for him after being freed. Walker was literally written just to look bad because he killed a person from a terrorist goup by the writing team defaulting to givng no context to the general public that were recording what happened, also Bucky and Sam not doing anything to clear the area or just to call in help. Bucky and Sam could be shouting to clear the area and reason about that they are chasing a terrorist, given their fame people would have listened.
I don’t remember any of the terrorists Tony was dealing with surrendering in any fashion though.
@@nandoman4769 they did in age of ultron. Only difference is, one was a super soldier who couldn’t be held by handcuffs and the other was a bunch of regular humans who put down their weapons only for Tony to kill them anyway and make a joke about it before leaving
I thought for sure they were gearing him up to go after sam in the last episode. Imagine my surprise when he comes back STILL TRYING TO BE THE HERO. Man had every reason to be bitter and hateful, but he set it aside to help people. Thats a good man.
Exactly. They have this whole montage of him making his own shield, dressing back up as Captain America, and you think that he's planning to fight Sam again to try and prove that he's the rightful Captain America. Instead he continues to try and stop the Flag Smashers and _puts aside his differences to team up with Sam and Bucky_ so they can work together to do what's right. This guy threw aside every vendetta he could have had to make sure no more innocent people had to die.
He is the next Captain America
John Walker reminds of what happens when the GM tries to offer the players an ally to work with but the players reject him over and over
@@GrimTheDestroyerhe is a good man but not a good captain America
@@levicarpenter5509 so does sam.
They made Bucky and Sam act like bullies from a 90s tv show who think they're too cool to hang out with the main character.
And we all know how much Steve loved bullies.
That wasn't bullying, it was two friends trying to preserve their boys legacy. No matter who held that shield they would have treated them the same way.
@RockwellSocratese they were behaving like children, and we're meant to side with them? They acted like straight up jerks. Bullies is the right word. They weren't preserving anything. Sam gave the shield to the government.
@@DavidMartinez-ce3lp Well welcome to the military, that's just how things go. The new guy is always picked on.
@RockwellSocratese guy that's not even remotely the same thing, especially not when your on mission and the world is in danger. It was unnecessary and made no sense. Just made both Sam and Bucky look like A-holes all the way to the end.
@@DavidMartinez-ce3lp Look at it through there perspective. There guy led a team of super powered individuals who saves half the universe. Never a symbol, of The U.S.A. but more of a symbol of free will and the right to make your own choices.
Then the government shows up, takes the guy's name and status gives it to a figure head and plants him as a symbol of Merica! But not as the world and not as a symbol of hope.
They hated the fact that greedy politicians took the image of their friend and brother in arms and perverted his image. Exercising that on U.S.Agent as a byproduct of their animosity and mourning. I don't blame Falcon and Winter soldier one bit for being so rude to him.
"Everybody in the world expects me to be something. And I don't want to fail them."
Our "villain" ladies and gentlemen.
I believed this and it drove me crazy..
It's certainly a great setup for a villain arc. But that's what it'd be: an arc. He certainly isn't one in the show, he's being the hero. But I could see and enjoy something like this leading into a very good villain as John Walker. But I don't think the Marvel writers wanted or could recognize that.
@@pwh1981that would be pretty cool yeah, someone who tries to become like an idol for people as a super hero and gets more extreme every time they fail to live up to expectations, ending up just becoming a "kill all the ungrateful peasants" villain.
that’s exactly what a villain would be motivated by?
@@tonoornottono So everyone who has expectations is a villain? Pretty much all superheroes are written with the same mindset. Why is he a villain for doing the same thing as everyone else?
The craziest part to me is that Sam in WS helps vets with PTSD and Bucky himself has PTSD so what do they do when they see Walker clearly going through an unstable episode? They break his arm and beat him up 2 on 1 lol
Screenwriter!!
Continuity? What's that?
It because sam was jelly of Walker becoming captain America
Not to mention Sam and Walker are both vets themselves
This is the exact sort of thing that would have been referred back to in the MCU back in the day. It’s a big part of what made it feel like a cohesive universe. Endgame was aptly named, everything since then has been fractured and broken, it’s a real shame. By She-Hulk it was doomed.
It's so weird how John is more of a "sympathetic villain" compared to Scarlet Witch who was weirdly portrayed as sort of misunderstood in Wandavision, it's weird.
Wanda is just as sympathetic in _WandaVision_. And she wasn't "weirdly" portrayed as misunderstood; she was meant to be depicted as sympathetic and someone going through a really low period in her life.
they will never know what you sacrifed for them
When bad writers don't even keep consistency, you get a villain meant to be "misunderstood" in Wandavision, and a straight-up villain in MoM.
@@TheLewistownTrainspotter8102
Ah yes. I remember that time I tortured an entire town so they could pretend to be my neighbors in my fantasy TV family play production, despite never needing other people for my illusion or a real town to keep around because I have powerful magic and could take my illusion literally anywhere without needing to involve others. Those ungrateful bastards! They'll never know what I sacrificed for them (which was literally nothing.)
Wanda isnt a marvel hero. She isnt portrayed that way in the comics. She is a very grey character.. wandavision was if anything more true of her character in the comics. She isnt steve rogers. Or even tony stark (a narcissistic libertarian who tries to do what is right and looks to steve to know what is right). She is an average , good , person who is given superpowers and tries to do what is right... but isnt always right
John Walker is the best MCU portrait of a real-life soldier. They serve their country, get blamed for said country's incompetence, and then retire or get removed. They then deal with mental health issues and, in John's case, becomes US Agent. Kinda like a PMC.
This is the best take I've read so far. He really is a tragic hero. If only the show had leaned into that tragedy.
Huh? Where was he shown killing innocent children or raping local women? I missed that part apparently.
@@Drekromancer but he litterally killed an innocent man in a public area, yes, he was ordered to, and he was blinded by rage which led him over the line, but he is no hero, a fallen one at best
@@minestar2247 unless your referencing a different scene, that man he killed was not innocent. he was a superhuman terrorist who was relentlessly refusing surrender. it was still unnecessary and brutal, and he shouldn’t have killed him, but he wasn’t innocent.
@@roketv2 i don't think we see that guy specifically doing any bad thing, right?
and he was running away, maybe walker was just trying to incapacitate him but wasn't in the correct mind space for that
They tried to make Walker into a Homelander like vilain. Thing is Homelander is a narcissistic megaloman where as Walker is a normal guy trying to do the right thing. Bucky and Sam were clearly in the wrong throughout the show and they don’t suffer any consequences for it in contrast to walker who loses it all. His friend, his life, respect and his job.
He seems more like a more morally good soldier boy to me, which is funny because soldier boy was a more corrupt but still good captain america
@@dannyyousSoldier Boy was not good at all, wtf.
@@flashpone7910 thats why I said he was corrupted, but still miles better than homelander
I think at the end he gets re employed as a black ops operative
"You gotta do better Falcon! You got to step up!"
Yeah. Thats how i feel nowadays. 😂
The fact that the falcon neglected Walker's PTSD attack despite having previously worked with veterans flat out makes him a villain in my book. He knew what he was doing. He just did not care.
You can’t help someone that don’t want to be helped. It’s not Captain America’s place to treat John, that’s something he should get during his incarceration. Sam attempted several times to convince John to see reason but he wasn’t prepared to, what was Sam suppose to do? Allow him to continue through the episode, a dangerous killing machine that would have taken lives from anyone attempting to apprehend him? Attempting to paint Sam as a villain for the radical actions of Walker is a wild take.
@@greywarden5513Sam did nothing of the sort. During the whole show they treated him like garbage
@@greywarden5513I know you’re lying 😂
@@braxtonvincent6359 Sam not vibing with him has nothing to do with him trying to stop John from being an Asshat. He explains the plan,the situation when he goes to talk down the Flagsmashers, tells him to hang back, John of course comes in half cocked and mucks up the plan. Sam warms him not to get mouthy with the Dora, proceeds to learn what happens when he’s an idiot. After he looses his man, after publicly murdering a man in broad daylight, Sam & Bucky didn’t descend from the ceiling and blast him, Sam tried to get him to give up peacefully. It’s weird how much hubris and dimbassry you guys are willing to forgive from Walker, is he a victim? Yea, but that doesn’t excuse his actions, he was wrong. John was the architect of his own downfall.
@@jacksonsmart7849 Nah you just didn’t watch the show, or you expected Bull crap
The John Walker Effect is what happens when real-life villains try to write bad-guys, they end up writing good-guys.
That is a really good way of putting it 👍
Yeah, I get that feeling too man.
Ah yes, the good guy who killed someone seconds after he holds up his hands and says “I surrender.” I can understand ripping on Marvel writers, there was not a lot of subtlety in FafWS’s political commentary, but I cant shake the feeling that this video is copium. Going outside the law is the norm for Marvel, we saw Captain America do it plenty of times, and killing someone who has surrendered is a WARCRIME. The two main arguments for why John Walker is objectively in the right is that he has A) legal authority and B) a reason to kill terrorists, because they killed his best friend and he’s sad. The point of Walker completely goes over everyone’s head. Hes meant to represent what Captain America was on the surface level: a soldier, an executor of the law, an authority figure, a commander. What Captain America ACTUALLY was, and where the writers fumbled the ball with Sam and Bucky, is a man of near infinite power and experience and a level of control. It’s literally Optimus Prime and being “strong enough to be gentle.” Captain America was able to go against the law for his key principles and trusted individuals, not organizations or institutions. He thought himself as a good judge of character, and thus was able to prevent injustice from happening to the people he fought. He never let emotion alone drive him, he never killed anyone out of sheer rage. At his breaking point, when his best friend was on the ground and he was a global fugitive, as he was fighting Tony, he still restrains himself. Walker didn’t. Walker was everything wrong with the concept of Captain America, and I wish the writers did a better job of showing off the good parts.
@@RamenConnoirseurexcept that Tony was Steve's long time friend, whereas this is some douchbag murderous terrorist with super strength. But go ahead, continue to empathize with evil.
@@RamenConnoirseur An extremely dangerous TERRORIST who`s weapons are their body and arms and was continuously trying to murder/escape. Walker as a trained soldier first and foremost, knows the rules of engagement. Combat is chaos. The terrorist raising their weapons (arms hands as a mutant soldier) in a crowded space with innocent civilians. I (and most Military's around the world) would rather kill the terrorist and be wrong instead of letting the terrorist kill more civilians/ put them in danger. In the footage, it looks the same as when the terrorist raises their arms to fight. So within a crowded area, Walker was given 0.5 seconds to decide if the terrorist was lying (as terrorists do) or if he wanted to risk civilian lives on the off chance they were actually surrendering.
Edit: It`s not a warcrime if a vigilante does it, no? since they don`t technically belong to any one organization/group and are specifically apart from govs and such.
It`s real easy to "Warcrime this" or "Warcrime that" in the AARs and from the sideline. But in the heat of the moment in combat, 0.5 seconds of indecision could/would absolutely lead to the death of multiple civilians. So morally it`d be "maybe being wrong about surrender" or " let the terrorist we`ve been fighting and trying to stop for hours maybe murder more civilians". This is what would happen if you take a proper soldier and make them a vigilante outside of the rule of law and give them cart blanche to be Jugde, Jury and executioner. (which is what vigilantes are essentially, random people with no legal/societal checks or balances) [Who would stop Superman if he ever decides to go full Nazi? Who could stop that vigilante?]
Also, the way the other two treated Walker was also disgusting. In the military you learn to work together as an effective team. Even if you utterly despise a team mate. Why? because if you dont/ cant work as a team, then the team dies. When the team dies, then you die. (A huge difference between vigilante outside the law and soldiers.) So why would the two not at the very minimum act like adults and not children.
And Steve embodying the best side of "Cpt. America", yeah, agreed. But they picked him specifically because of those personality traits, which IMO is too black and white. Steve was the most unfit for being a soldier physically and probably to degree mentally, (and if I`m not wrong was never a real proper soldier) so they injected experimental drugs to beef him up. Someone with basically no flaws. A Gary Sue if you will. Whereas Walker is random HUMAN soldier picked out for their combat prowess first and personality second.
They unironically wrote a hero and tried to convince us he was a villain. You cannot convince me the people who wrote this series are not unironically evil
It is eerie how many "Writers" try to make evil seem noble, and nobility seem evil.
Noticing something?
he was a war criminal that accepted being the US lapdog. While steve was distrustful towards the government. Walker is at best a villain without knowing, at worst he doesnt care.
@@Psy_RoYou’re a furry. Opinion ignored.
@@Psy_Ro Bad bait.
Walker gets treated with more contempt than the people who blow up buildings, and that about says it all really.
No it doesnt
@@anjetto1Because borders and personal property rights were invented by Nazis in order to kill Jews amirite??
@anjetto1 how?
@@OkPe-ww5rs who lives? Who gets redeemed? And who gets fucking murdered and their ideology shit on?
MCU forgives red heads
"Look, I know I'm not Rogers- and I'm not trying to be. I'm just trying to be the best Captain America that I can be"
Steve himself would have shaken his hand for that.
The writers knew what they were doing with Walker. They just wrote a bad show around a good character.
He was meant to be a good man who shouldn’t have been made Captain America. The entire legacy of a brilliant man was put on the shoulders of a guy who couldn’t handle it.
I really love the idea of rogers meeting walker, cuz yeah you’re basically right where I feel like Steve is understanding enough to hear him out and be cool with him. It’s just, good god man can we please just have consistent character writing please
On a personal level, maybe the Steve Rogers of the 40’s would have. But the Steve Rogers who spent the last few years of his heroing life actively opposing a government and then seeing an actor for that government appropriating his shield? I think he’d have something to say about that. After Hydra infiltrated Shield, Steve decided that a state-sponsored Captain America could not be trusted (that view shapes a lot of phase 3). Sam and Bucky would have understood that more than anyone having spent years on the run with him. The writers don’t stick the landing, but their apprehension towards Walker is warranted when looking at the situation through that lens. If anything, Walker being hung out to dry by the government justifies their position; even if the audience sees that the man can be trusted, the organisation backing him cannot be. Walker had good intentions, but Steve would not have been able to abide the way he went about being Captain America.
@@MulletSenseiTrue, it feels like the writers had all the key elements to make a compelling story but for some reason linked them in the most nonsensical ways possible. It’s like only one of the writers knew what they were doing; maybe there were last minute script changes? Never heard anything about that but it’d make sense, like Walker was initially meant to be more sympathetic but someone higher up said he had to be a bad guy
@@WackMaDino honestly I think there’s enough subtext there for a pretty compelling story. Walker is never shown as an out and out bad guy, the show includes a bunch of scenes that really humanises him (his emotional vulnerability with his wife, the genuine care he shows his friend/partner, etc). His goal is the same as Sam and Bucky’s (stop the flag smashers) but his methods are different, which naturally invites conflict. Him going crazy with the serum is just highlighting the extreme pressure of trying to be the new Captain America. He says he doesn’t want to be the next Steve Rogers but ultimately he feels like he has to be, like he is obligated to be. He takes the serum and the serum corrupts him, just like Zemo says it would. Only after abandoning the idea of being Captain America can Walker embody the values Captain America stood for.
Watching the Wakandans show up, start a fight, and then have everyone act like it was Walker's fault gave me a brain hemmorage.
Because walker is the bad guy obviously
“Our jurisdiction is wherever we want it to be.”-The Good Guys
Unironically Sam is portraying power abuse and how officials act much better than John Walker. Sounds like the writing team mixed up their names or something.
just incompetent writers
The thing I found so stupid was the shot where they put so much emphasis on the bloody shield. Like “oooh Walker did something so horrible, Rogers would never!” But realistically every time Rogers fought people the only reason they weren’t a bloody pulp was to keep the age rating down.
Also he definitely killed a lot of people when he was an active duty soldier, which this guy was too.
@@ultraguy14 Yup, everyone ignores how he is shooting a gun in "First Avenger"during his raids of Hydra.
@@phousefilmsit's not even the gun that's the issue. Remember how Carli punched Lamar sent him flying and that killed him? We've seen Steve sent opponents flying like that like a dozen times
@@OK-yy6qz exactly. From what we saw og captain America was never pulling his punches on random guys. If they died later from a punctured lung or whatever, we werent told. But not all of those guys survived having their rib cage turned to dust after being hit with the force of a speeding car.
I agree but also I think it was supposed to be a contrast to civil war where it looked like Captain America was about to kill Iron Man, but he decided to subdue him instead. Even after Iron Man blow off Bucky’s arm, Disbanded the Avengers, and arrested his friends. But it doesn’t really work because Iron Man was overall more justified than these terrorists.
It's sad how Walker being treated that way is actually pretty realistic. Whenever the media thinks someone is bad the government who told said person to do what they did. They will still treat said person as the badguy to save their image
so the government is the real villain
@@lightyagami5972Always has been.
@@lightyagami5972 Yup that's the whole point of this story yet they put all the burden on Walker. When really governments fucked people over during The Blip. Only 5 years passed and they just let people move all over for no damn reason
The main issue with this argument is that is not the characters in story treating Walker as a villian is the story itself telling you he is in the wrong and there's no 2 ways about it.
Like when Fox Company of the Marine Raiders were betrayed in real life.
The “kill a villain makes you evil” mentality is so dumb…especially when goons are no problem for some reason. It’s why I love Batman bc he spares all goons and more importantly his no kill rule is because of the darkness he knows is inside him
"Killing is easy and I know if I go down that path, there is no coming back."
@@Shiirow Name 1 Avenger who didn't kill people.
2 Assassins, 1 SuperSOLDIER, 1 Weapons Manufacturer, 1 Conquering Prince, 1 Rage Monster, 1 Wanda, 1 Regular SOLDIER.
Hell, even Vision killed Ultron and Corvus Glaive. EVERY avenger would be a mass-killer if all we took into account was number of bodies
Surprised seeing someome praising batman's no kill rule but i agree the reason he doesn't kill makes sense and treats it equally but killing the goons but not the main bad guy is weird
@@thegreatscribbles960 batman never kills goons either
@@benjaminhartsock3281naw, batman is a special case because he knows he's a killer at heart and doesn't want to go there. It's like an alcoholic who doesn't want you to drink around them. That being said joker should have been put into an electric chair long ago. Him, scarecrow, and a few others who targeted the water supply or similar mass murder incidents.
Wanda: Enslaves an entire town so she can live out a fantasy.
“They will never know what you sacrificed for them.”
Carly: Blows up innocent people.
“You gotta stop calling them terrorist.”
John: Kills a superhuman terrorist who killed his friend.
Gets beaten up by the two protagonist, gets the rank of Captain America taken from him, and became hated by the public.
Funny thing is next doctor strange movie, is Wanda doubling down on evil.
@@brendenhawley2225 And then they want me to feel bad for her. She is written as a textbook villain with a slightly sympathetic backstory. I felt nothing for her watching that movie 😂
@@10thletter40I wouldn't even feel sympathetic for her. She literally created a fantasy world and forced everyone to play along. So we are suppose to feel bad because she lost her fake kids?
@@10thletter40you missed the part where Wanda is a woman… She can do no wrong, as long as she says the right thing in the end 😂
That Wanda remark was said by one biased person who had experienced similar losses, in the middle of the entire town justifiably glaring at Wanda, literally seconds before the feds arrive. Even Wanda doesn't forgive herself for what she did.
I believe TV Tropes calls this "Protagonist-centered Morality" or something like that. The John Walker variant happens when they try to be particularly idealistic about the protagonist, without being aware of what they're doing and how the other character's action would look like once you take it out of the protagonist's viewpoint.
A more accurate one, which usually byproduct of this trope, is "Designated Villain". Considering John Walker Effect focused their points more about the antagonist itself.
And when discussing the actual arguments, TV Tropes has "Strawman has a point" where the author intended the character to be a strawman and, therefore, wrong in the worst way but *unintentionally* gives the strawman a legitimately good point.
"Protagonist centered morality" is an accusation that gets thrown around whenever someone doesn't agree with the main characters. In those situations it just becomes "Me-centered morality."
@@xana3961 I honestly don't see why the strawman can't have a point. If you're a good enough writer you can make someone sympathetic or have a point while not being justified in the long run.
@@Spubbily01 The problem is in the name. When you create a strawman, you're creating an opponent who can't fight back. The point of the term, though often misused especially in the "internet debater" sphere, is that a strawman character or argument is close to parody in how irredeemable it's portrayed. If you're resorting to a strawman argument, you're already screwing up because you're showing that you can't show a layered argument or how a sympathetic person could take a harsh or monstrous stance. If you then accidentally give the strawman a good point, it means that you're so divorced from the common man's idea of morality that someone attempting to faithfully represent your viewpoint might subsequently be accused of creating a strawman due to just how ridiculous you are.
A good example of "Strawman Has a Point" would be Red Skull from around 2016, when comic writers started putting quotes from real-world people in his mouth just because they hated the speakers (Jordan Peterson and Donald Trump, to name two), but readers ended up confused because Red Skull was saying common-sense things like "Don't let criminals take over your community" and "take care of your family." In their desperation to paint their ideological opposition as literal Third-Reich psychopaths, the writers didn't understand that a statement doesn't become evil just because an evil person says it.
To add to the point at 8:45 (The part where Sam and Bucky beat on John), John was clearly distraught and mourning the loss of his best friend. And even in that state of mind, when the duo show up, he asks them how they are, and if they need to see a medic. His compassion and care shown to people he respects, no matter how much they disrespect him.
People accidentally creating great and admirable heroes while trying to write villains. How amusing.
I never watched falcon and the winter soldier but I remember people saying that they thought Walker was the best character in the show. So yeah, it seems the writers accidentally made a relatable hero.
I think it's because the people who write these things have warped views on what is good and right.
Ironically, they essentially ostracized and excluded him, depriving him of the guidance and mentorship that Steve showed them, when they were starting out or in need of a second chance.
I'm not convinced that he was supposed to be a villain. He was just supposed to feel wrong in the role of Captain America.
He was a better Captain America than Sam Wilson.
I actually think that we’re meant to sympathize with Walker several times over the course of the series, including the hearing where he is humiliated. The show wants you to know that the “government” created Walker, and it’s not Walker’s fault he became what he became. The expectations were too high. He didn’t deserve this treatment.
The show is confusing because it wants Walker to be sympathetic and a good man, but also a bad choice for Captain America. Which is kind of like wanting to have a cake and also eat it.
Well... not really. I think having Walker by a sympathetic, good man, is not incompatible with him not being a suitable candidate for Captain America.
Captain America's main trait, to me, was always his idealism, his yearning to do the right thing, and the strength to hold himself to that standard at the worst of times; to stand for an America better than the one we have today.
Walker wants to serve his country, and he's trying to do the best he can. He commits the extrajudicial murder we see out of grief and anger and frustration, not out of genuine malice; but it's still not what Steve Rogers would have done, and it's still not the right thing to do.
Walker may be a good man trying his best; but ultimately, HIS best isn't what we need from Captain America. And that's not his fault. Not really, anyway. It's the fault of those who put him in that position. And when they realize they picked the wrong man for the job, and he snapped under the pressure, and he couldn't meet ridiculously high standards, even for a superhero, they throw him under the bus.
It is never, under any circumstances, justified to kill an unarmed man whom you have pinned by the boot to the ground, who is holding up both empty hands in surrender.
I don't care if it's Hitler, that is not the correct thing to do.@@OhSayWhatIsTruth
@@rclipse1985 I think Walker was pretty justified in killing that Flag Smasher. They killed a ton of innocent people.
Captain America killed so many hydra soldiers in WWII. He shot at random Loki goons in Avengers. There isn’t any question that Steve was willing to kill.
@@calvinjohnson6242well the thing is Steve was a soldier during that time and he later on doesn’t really kill unless he has to. A lot of the time he does it’s when they are attacking him directly and the flag smasher was surrendering by that point he would not have killed him.
@@chupppy2086 Steve drop-kicked a dude who was just chilling off the side of a ship, with zero regard over whether that man could swim. I really think he was okay with killing people.
I didn’t even see Walker telling Lamar’s family the person responsible is dead as being figuratively true, I saw it as him providing them with closure, even if it’s closure through a lie, as he knows that they’ve been through enough pain, as well as them knowing the truth would hurt even more. He sees it as such: he should bear the blame for not protecting Lamar, so he should bear the weight of knowing Lamar’s death has gone unavenged. Lamar’s family wasn’t responsible for protecting him, so they should be given the mercy of the lie, as well as what would be the closure of said lie. Walker is the literal embodiment of Cap, and I could only see Cap doing the same thing.
I thought it was him vowing to kill Karly for what she did to Lamar.
In actuality he was the real his friend died because he literally kept him from being able to save him
Lamar is dead. Walker is having a Panic attack. Yet when Sam and Bucky show up to take the shield, HIS FIRST instinct is to ask the if they are alright and do they need medical attention.
#JusticeforJohn
#IWalkWithWalker
Especially since Sam ran a support group for soldiers dealing with ptsd
I didn't even know those tags existed, but I love them.
Especially #IWalkWithWalker
The writers forgot that both Sam and Buckie were veterans
When I first watched this series I remember being drawn to his character because of how used he was. He really wasn’t evil despite the show trying to paint him that way for some reason. What’s bizarre is he only goes rogue because Steve’s friends hang him out to dry.
I remember my sister watched this series and she expressed how much she hated US Agent and I asked her why. She said because he’s not Steve. Which to me, is a very shallow reason to dislike someone/a character.
your sister is the kind of person these stories are unfortunately written for
The hate John Walker got is so weird to me, I thought he'd just be some throw away character at first, but he ended up being super fleshed out. Ironically, he is unique in that he's actually a new character that I would like to see more from.
Sorry your sister is unable to separate the music, from reality
It's funny cause the show recognizes and treats him as very nuanced. He isn't a bad person stealing Steve's title. He's even shown doing the heroic thing in the last episode. Yet it was the fanbase that seemed to absolutely despise him as if he was some terrible villain
@@racool911 the show has some awarness of it, but just barely. It still depics him in an antagonistic light for at least 75% of the time. The fans didnt get those opinions out of nowhere, it was the show who induce them into it. Of course, they are at fault, cause its not like the show was that good at it, as the video showcased
The RWBY community also has this as well, we call it the Ironwood effect, Ironwood became the hero of the story that everyone agreed with over the main characters on accident, so much so that the writers got so butt hurt they decided to take character assassination to a whole new level, the level of contempt they had for this character that they tried and failed to make us hate was honestly pathetic.
do not remind me of poor ironwood one of the coolest characters that has a gun called Due Process and they made him look like he is a villain when he is not and even his theme is heroic
You guys clearly have a lot to say, tell me his story, why don't you?
@@tumultoustortellini My understanding is Ironwood's arc was worked out almost as the first thing they came up with about the character so claiming it's writers torpedoing things is possibly a little unfair. I understand why people might dislike the arc but the whole point of it was kinda that the best of us can become the worst if we let our worst impulses take over. Ironwood -wants- to do the right thing, but he's a massive control freak who can't stand other viewpoints. He's fantastic tactically, but horrendously bad strategically. He's laser focused on winning at any cost. And he's willing to sacrifice tremendously which can be very heroic when he's sacrificing literal limbs off his own body, but less heroic when he's sacrificing other people for the cause.
But you asked about his story so I'll try and tell that. So in the world of RWBY humanity is basically perpetually under siege by monsters called Grimm, and they have to be constantly fought back. If they are not fought back well enough humanity is in very real danger of getting wiped out. The main people who do the fighting are called huntresses and huntsman and they are basically elite highly trained and expertly equipped specialists trained by academies around the world since the time they were children to deal with the threat. The world generally shies away from dealing with them with a more traditional military because when human nations(called kingdoms) build up militaries they have a bad habit of deciding to go after each other and that just opens up humanity as a whole to get taken out by the Grimm.
Ironwood was the general of the Atlas military and didn't really buy this philosophy. He went toe to toe with the Grimm many times, at considerable cost to himself to the point where most of his body was replaced over time with cybernetics, and he concluded a well trained and disciplined military with advanced technology could hold back and Grimm and be a force for good in the world. And so he built up the Atlas military to be the best in the world for that purpose. He even unified the huntsman academy under military control so he could recruit the best of them straight into his military forces. And for the most part it worked, Atlas military forces and technology ended up being exported around the world and were actually pretty effective.
This was enough to get him noticed and inducted into a small group of people who knew what was really going on with the Grimm in the world, and was the start of everything coming apart. It turned out that the Grimm were under someone named Salem's control, and they were also being actively built up on their end to destroy the world. Now Ironwood tended to be pretty proactive in his problem solving so he didn't handle the idea of playing defense against an unseen enemy puppetmaster so well. When the rest of the group and it's leader wanted to play things cautiously and figure out a strategy Ironwood went behind their backs and deployed overwhelming military forces to guard things against any possible attacks.
This turned out to be exactly what the bad guys wanted, since they were able to infiltrate the Atlas military and hack it's technology to do things like control the legions of atlas protector bots and turn them on people. Which is exactly what they did when the first big attack came, hacking the bots to turn them on the civilian populace and broadcasting it to the world before blowing up the communications infrastructure to make it so no one could talk to anyone else. It was kinda an epic disaster.
So most of the Atlas military got wiped out, the entire world got a broadcast of what looked like Atlas turning on the people they were supposed to protect, and international communication got obliterated. Ironwood fell back to Atlas and tried to salvage what he could. Other kingdoms were obviously pretty upset with Atlas now so he cut the trade of strategic resources to them. Makes sense tactically, you don't want to be trading away potentially critical strategic resources to people who might be about to attack you. Strategically though it's terrible, it seems to confirm everyone else's suspicions about Atlas being against them and simultaneously cripples Atlas's economy.
He tries to rebuild the communications system so that kingdoms can talk to each other and figure out what's going on and how to deal with it. But with the Atlas economy crippled and internal unrest rising because of it he's not able to pull the project off in time before Salem's full Grimm forces show up to finally finish Atlas off for good. Backed into a corner by the consequences of his own actions, he elects to basically take the few military forces in his floating Atlas military academy and retreat, leaving the civilians he was supposed to protect to die horribly. In his mind he's falling back to fight another day and the civilians are dead anyway, but the heroes of the story disagree and fight to save those people. They also take something with them that Ironwood needs to be able to enact his plan to flee.
This is where Ironwood snaps. He decides he's the only one who knows what to do and everyone else is his enemy. Everyone in the way of his plan to escape becomes acceptable losses. He begins taking more and more draconian measures to maintain control, even executing people for voicing disagreement with his plans. When the heroes refuse to abandon the civilians in the city Ironwood resolves to destroy the city and all the people in it himself if that's what it takes. Anything to make his plan work. He ultimately alienates everyone around him, even his most loyal military hardliners, and is eventually taken down by his own second in command. He's locked up in containment, but security fails under Salem's minion's attacks and he escapes. He makes on last ditch effort to secure what he needs to enact his plan, but fails and is defeated. Ultimately the heroes find another way to allow everyone to evacuate, not just the floating military academy, but the cost is the academy crashing down from the sky into the now empty city with the defeated Ironwood still on it.
And that's pretty much it, that's the gist of his story. He was someone who started out as a hero but who couldn't overcome his flaws and in the end let them take over, and it led to the destruction of himself and most of the things he cared for. It's a tragic story and a sad end to someone who really was heroic for most of his life, I mean the man took so many critical injuries defending people that he was mostly cybernetic by the end. But in the end he couldn't overcome himself. He let his worst impulses take over, and it made him into a monster.
@@Vhailor2003 First of all, thanks for this, I love you.
Secondly, Fitting this in the context of character assassination, the people above would argue that his origins were good writing, but that his idea to blow up a city was forced and a spiteful re-write. W/ the way you described it, he seems fairly written. Is it as succinct as you make it, or is it pretty convoluted under the hood?
@@tumultoustortellini This is basically the cliff notes version, there is indeed a lot more going on under the hood but I kinda streamlined it and gave the most summarized version I could since the post size was getting kinda enormous. But there were certainly additional contributing factors. Probably the biggest thing I glossed over was that Ironwood was dealing with a lot of paranoia after the earlier infiltration and hacking of his beloved military, and that a few different characters at a few different points deceived Ironwood on things ranging from minor to extremely important, reinforcing him in his sense of isolation and feeling that he could only trust himself. There was also the fact that Salem's agents again infiltrated Atlas through it's civilian government and disabled a lot of the early warning and defense systems right before the main force arrived which destroyed whatever confidence he had in non-military systems. And of course there was the fact that Ironwood was not wrong in his analysis that they were facing an unwinnable battle at that point; even the heroes of the story ended up realizing that and they were honestly fortunate to be able to hold out long enough to find a solution that let most of the people escape. That Ironwood could not forsee the magical means the heroes were eventually able to use to pull that off can't really be held against him.
Ironwood was not evil. He was a desperate man under tremendous pressure who saw only one way out. He really believed if he did not take the academy and flee to save the last remnants of the Atlas military the world was doomed to be destroyed by Salem. And in that situation everything else that was not survival fell by the wayside. So if he had to execute people for disagreeing with him or bomb thousands of civilians to make that happen he was going to do it. In his mind it was all a sacrifice for the greater good, no different from the large chunks of himself he had sacrificed without a second thought on the field of battle.
Now as to character assassination, I think where people have trouble is in how abrupt Ironwood's shift in priorities was when Salem and her forces showed up on Atlas's doorstep. Because up until that point Ironwood had had his flaws but had been pretty heroic overall. He had fought to save people from the darkness his whole life. Hell, he was fresh off literally burning his own arm to cinders to catch one of the main bad guys because he was that committed. There was nothing he wouldn't do to save people... if he thought they could be saved. But when Salem showed up, he did the math in his head and realized there was no way to save them and it was like a switch flipped and he was going to do whatever ruthlessly pragmatic thing he needed to do to save Atlas academy, because to him that was the only way to keep hope alive. To him there was no more time to have a debate on the morals of the situation, and if he had to shoot people for disagreeing with him or bomb a city full of innocent people that Salem was about to wipe out anyway in order to save the world as a whole he was going to do it. The man who had sacrificed almost all of himself to the good fight sacrificed just about the only thing he had left: his morals and ideals. He became a monster, believing it was the only way.
He was wrong. But honestly, I can absolutely understand it. So no, I don't think he was character assassinated, I think he was actually a pretty amazing character who was also incredibly tragic.
I remember watching through Falcon and the Winter Soldier with my family when it was coming out every week. My brother and I felt bad for John Walker since he never once did anything wrong in the series, but was treated as an asshole and a joke from the very beginning. Bucky and Sam (who are supposed to be two likable legacy characters) treat him like he’s just a kid playing dress-up. They essentially told him multiple times “That’s a cute costume. Why don’t you and your buddy just sit over there while the REAL heroes take care of this?” I think John Walker could have been a good Captain America if they had given him a chance.
Isn't that true for most real people? People need support, so they can shine their brightest
Steve Rogers was turned on by Shield for trying to do the right thing, and John Walker was turned on by his own government and Allie’s for trying to do the right thing. He did end up being the most like Steve.
Steve's situation is a little bit different, as Shield was controlled by Hydra, but you're not completely wrong
Remember that John said he wasn’t trying to be like Steve, he’s just trying to be a captain America the best he can, if Steve was here he would’ve respected that
Could you say “betrayed” and not “turned on” please 💀
@@littlemoth4956 it’s your brain in the gutter sir, not his
With the red hood scenario, ive always seen Batman as "Good" and Jason as "Right". Being good is doing the thing that is most morally right. Being right is doing what needs to be done no matter what it means. Batman is technically right with the internal conflict, but jason is right with the external conflict.
After a certain number of deaths caused by someone choosing to stick to their morals, they stop being good.
Because they can sit up on their high horse all they want, but the bodies surrounding them of all those dying because they choose to stay up there will inevitably drown them.
And unfortunately for Batman, any one of Joker's break outs from Arkham is already too high of a body count for him to still be 'Good' because he chose to arrest him rather than kill him. Even if the mantle of Batman needs to be hung up and put away for the rest of his life, killing the Joker is the morally correct choice to make.
the issue is at some point good becomes evil naivity.
which it did with joker a long time ago he gets every week and murders at MINIMUM a dozen children and there parents this is INVOIDABLE as in even batman cant find a way to stop it.
thus by not killing joker as the only capable too the eaths the joker commits are on batmans hands just as much as if he offed em himself cause they wouldnt of died had he just acted.
Why's it Batmans responsibility to kill the Joker? Wtf is the justice system in the DC universe where the Joker doesn't get the death penalty? They gave John Wayne Gacy the death penalty in our world but Joker didn't get one?
If I was yall I'd take it up with DCs justice system instead of Batman.
@@pintolerance785 Good point. What the hell was the entire police force and SWAT doing while Joker was being all melodramatic and a particularly open target on top of that van at 14:17?
@@pintolerance785 It's Batman's responsibility BECAUSE he's Batman.
The entire reason Bruce Wayne becomes Batman is because the justice system isn't enough. Because he doesn't believe it will work, so he puts on the cowl and works outside of the law to provide consequences for the criminals of Gotham.
Buy putting on the cowl he's personally taking on all the responsibilities and burdens that come with it, and by working outside of the law and by personally choosing to get involved whenever the Joker breaks free and start killing people again it becomes his responsibility to kill him.
I believe that this show was originally written by an really competent writer, but then someone else got there and changed the main points just to make smashers and falcon more 'relatable' to the 'modern audiences' and left pieces of greatness. Imagine if we got a show, where there is no black and white, and character actions and motivations are sound instead of being just stupid. This could have been a masterpiece
From what I heard, the show was originally supposed to be about a pandemic. That had to be scrapped and rewritten quickly for obvious reasons, so I could see something like this happening
It's Hancock all over again.
Sam Wilson is literally a therapist specializing in combat-related PTSD. This was literally how his character was introduced. There were so many golden opportunities passed over and composted by the last episode.
Yeah, it's crazy how marvel just end up making their main characters unlikeable
Yeah Wandavision wasn't exactly a good start to phase 4 main characters
I agree phase 4 has bad main characters. Ok plots but bad characters.
Nowadays, that's pretty much the norm.
Agatha Harkness in WandaVision has a similar problem. While not as sympathetic as Walker, she is never shown doing anything wrong, yet she's treated like the villain. She deserves to be treated like a hero, since she was the one who successfully forced Wanda to acknowledge the pain she was causing, which led to Wanda releasing her prisoners. I think she's supposed to be in the wrong for wanting to absorb Wanda's power, but Wanda clearly can't be trusted with it and we're given no reason to assume Agatha would have committed any evil with it. Wanda would later go on to kill dozens of innocent people, so I can definitively say that Agatha taking her power would have been a happier ending.
Oh yeah definitely. I've got no idea why the fuck they put the Agatha all along song in the series because she didn't actually do anything except play along with what Wanda was doing. Makes her apathetic sure, but that's not necessarily villainous
I think Marvel knew this so they put the Salem Witch Trial in EP9 to make Agatha looks like a villain.
B-but she killed the dog tho💀🤣
I think she’s more Wanda’s enemy than a “villain” tbh
The ending with the "they don't know what you sacrificed" line really makes it seem like the writers thought nothing she did was bad.
One thing that I hated while F&tWS was coming out was that apparently people were sending Death Threats to Wyatt Russel, just because he was playing U.S. Agent/John Walker. This took me by surprise because not only is there a clear disconnect between fantasy and reality (we don't have Super Soldiers or mechanical Flying Wing Suits), but he's just an actor, he did nothing wrong as far as I know.
dude people have been sending death threats to brown actors, gay actors, and actresses of all colors and creeds for decades. this isn't a new phenomenon
This is, unfortunately, nothing new. Some people really just cannot disassociate characters from the actors. ESPECIALLY characters they don't like. It's quite disheartening.
@@Reapor234 The craziest example of this ive seen is a very, very small group of star wars fans doxxing adam driver and his wife, sending death threats and false accusations of cheating so they could have a divorce and Adam dates Daisy Ridley
@@ihabarshad4457 Jesus fuck that's insane. Absolutely mental.
@@ihabarshad4457 While that whole situation was horrible, it's actually not even the craziest for the Star Wars fandom. Look up Jake Lloyd, the former child actor who played Anakin in the Phantom Menace. People, even his schoolmates, bullied a 10 year old child for years after that movie so much that after a few cameos and voice acting for games, it ruined his career. He dropped out of acting all together, started abusing drugs and then, after a high speed chase and a stint in jail, was sent to a mental hospital.
comics john walker is quite literally one of steve's CLOSEST FRIENDS, and steve often credited walker to helping him keep on fighting as capt. america when he wanted to quit. mcu john walker is a good soldier trying to be a good man, but everyone's got nostalgia for steve and theyre not willing to give him an inch. i could seriously write an essay on why john walker is the best character in the show, and i sincerely hope thunderbolts dont try to play him down or make him out to be a shitty "anti-steve"
...Tell me you have never read the comics without telling me you have never read the comics.
US Agent in the Comics was *always* the Anti-Steve, and the few times he wasn't only came *after* Cap had managed to beat the nonsense out of his head and get him to actually try to think about his actions beyond simply just being a good little soldier. Hell, this shit is easily verifiable by a wiki walk, for fucks sake, so I have no clue why you are being allowed to spread this lie around.
@@SliderZero great argument, unfortunately: Spelling Error. hope this helps
Honestly the scene where zemo escapes is so frustrating for me. Here walker is trying to work things out, which the wakandans attack him for reason, and in doing so let zemo escape. Then they have the gall to act like it's walkers fault
It seemed to be that Wakandans are just dicks for the sake of being dicks
I was screaming at the screen when that happened. It was overly dumb
Women 😂 ☕
Well yes but they're all a bunch of yas queen black girl bosses. So anything they so is always right and justified.
Maybe don't say microaggressions and yk...touch them at all.
There was that Vietnam senior officer whose photo was taken just as he shot a man in the head. Turns out, the man being shot was a vietcong infiltrator who'd killed the family who were longtime friends of the officer (like all of the members of that family). Even the photographer had to explain the story behind the photo situation to american people who only saw the picture for what it appears to be.
The truth isn't only found in the world, but also the intent behind actions. From ancient civilizations to voiceless societies. We only know what we're given, and it'll be a lie.
@@renewalacumen1770 *_"What is the cost of lies?"_*
This show made Bucky and Sam look like total scumbags.
“Hey man, this job was thrust upon me, and I want to do the best job I possibly can. You guys have been doing this longer than me, we should team up!”
“Fuck you”
Sam giving away Cap's shield and then throwing a fit when it was given to someone else made him look incredibly childish. You were the first pick my guy. Cap himself chose you. You gave it up of your own accord.
“This man killed lamar” to me was him trying to spare the family’s feelings that his killer was still loose, even in the moment people try to fault him for being selfish, he’s trying to make other people feel better with a lie that reflects poorly on him to the viewer
John Walker has a perfect setup for a villain arc where he genuinely becomes worse then what anyone ever said he was
Boring...have a redemption arc and all the conflicts with it
@@mastertutorials3027 how do you redeem a man who has done no wrong
@@thadisturbedone1606 You can't.
Honestly I’d love if some next film deal with him still trying, outside of the confines of the law after his humiliation, with it actually recognizing that he was a good person too, and didn’t do any proper wrong. Maybe making his own name since he no longer has the shield or is with the government
But that probably won’t happen, cuz it’s marvel, and we all know how it’s doing nowadays…
@@stellathefoxgirl3648 technicly you aren't wrong.
And I say technicly, since Marvel does have plans to use him later (and maybe explore him a bit. With emphasis on "maybe"). That, said, I'm not sure how they gonna "present him as a character" since his next appierence is suppoustu be in Marvel's "Suicide Squad" aka the Thunderbolts.
While I agree with most of this, I disagree that the flag smasher John Walker killed was surrendering. He was only in a defensive position and saying he "didn't do it", while being a living weapon known to kill innocents, surrounded by civilians. It takes like 2 seconds for him to get out of that situation and start killing/taking hostages, and having no backup the only thing he realistically could do, is neutralize the threat.
Yeah but he's holding his hands up for the most part and doesn't try to fight back, so I guess he was 'surrendering'
@@TheRealLoomar he was stalling, he held his hands in front of him not up or behind his head, and wasn't saying anything that could corelate to surrendering. He was just waiting out for an opportunity to break out and start causing havoc
If only you were there in the discussion during TFATWS airing time. Everyone was saying John Walker killed an unarmes/surrendering “civilian”
@@j.jonahjoestar7924,i don't think he was waiting to break out of walkers hold. Cause when walker stepped on him and raised the shield up to slam it on his face he didn't fight back against it. Even though he could see his opponent about to attack he did nothing to defend himself. He didn't even cover his face with his hands to protect himself.
Are you a cop or something? Hands up means surrender. Don't shoot
Justice for Ironwood from RWBY. He was the most stable, supportive, and effective man in the show. Made a villain in a later season so the writers could make the heros right.
He did start to go off the deep end. When the other leaders abandoned him and turned on him.
I mean the dude wanted to take Atlas and fuck off into space and leave the rest of Remnant to die
Hell the dude wanted to fucking nuke Mantle which was supposed to be under his protection
James I think is a good character because he's a good fall from grace character
He meant well and wanted to help at first but then Salem's forces took out Beacon and Haven and his semblance didn't help with his situation and not to mention all of his soldiers were too much of militaristic bootlickers to keep him in check minus Winter but Winter noticed his declining mental state too late to save him
He's not really a sympathetic strawman because he's more of a fall from grace character
Reminds me of a verse I remember From Church growing up: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes,
and shrewd in their own sight”
Yo! Isaiah really knew what he was talking about!
@@daniellichtenstein7541and did people inevitably listen to him? Nope. 8 centuries later they do the very thing he warns them against by killing Jesus and trying and sometimes successfully killing Jesus' Disciples and Apostles.
Pride is a scary thing after all, and it is the reason why Heaven can NEVER exist on Earth.
That is a fire quote and it's more true today than ever
I remember one certain comment in particular when talking about how John killed with Cap’s shield and was treated like a cardinal sin.
“That shield has more blood on it from Steve Rogers”
Steve Rogers: Kills members of an organization that is willing and able to kill in order to attain their world damaging goals.
Wow so cool :D
John Walker: Kills members of an organization that is willing and able to kill in order to attain their world damaging goals.
Ewwww psycho >8(
and something extra that, they seriously don't need to write the script where he kill the terrorist there. From his character development, he could've become a "hero" and confiscated the dude there, but since Marvel need him to be the "villian" there, they make him kill the terrorist, in a crowd, which probably ended up protected lots of people...
@@j.a.melton2757Steve Rogers killed nazis and members of Hydra in actual war and combat. Walker killed a man he had already beat to the ground and was actively surrendering. Show me any scene of Steve killing someone who’s surrendered.
@@flashpone7910"I didn't do it" is in no way a form of surrender. Furthermore the guy who you claimed to surrender was still struggling with walker using his hands (which are his weapon because he's a supersoldier)
@@flashpone7910 to paraphrase a certain youtuber "I bet all the people Bucky and Sam (and steve) killed would have surrendered too if they hadn't died so quickly."
John is like the new guy from the New Guy comic that surfaced on twitter awhile ago. The writers clearly have a bias and what they believe are the 'correct' ways to act, but it's either so shallow or so heinous that in reality, we have sympathy and even end up liking and relating to the supposed 'bad' or 'dumb' characters who actually have more depth.
It is unfortunately a very sad dissonance that usually emerges due to bad and/or lazy writing. The writers want to push a message, but when you actually view the scenario through a real lense, it actually gives the opposite impression.
This happens a lot in drama-based media or action-based media that relies on drama to push the story between fight scenes. There will be times where an argument arises where Person A is supposed to be "wrong" is actuallly right, but is still labeled as wrong not because the story wants Person B to be biased or make the wrong judgment, but because the story needs Person A to be wrong and the writers are too lazy to concoct a consistent reason for why Person A is wrong.
This was back when we were supposed to agree with BLM rioters burning buildings.
@@danielcox7629You’re retarded
@SuiteBid FINALLY someone gets it. Lots of people seem to think that the only reason these types of characters show up is because the ideologies of the writers are wrong, when really it's because the writers are bad at expressing the message they're trying to say.
@@Spubbily01 I wouldn't say it's a "when really" situation. The writers tend to still have terrible morals and see everything through a lens of malleable morality based on who's committing the act, not the reason behind the act. These are the same kinds of people who made Red Skull seem reasonable by putting random Peterson and Trump quotes in his mouth, presuming that by having a literal Nazi say them, they become evil rather than being ordinary things like "Take care of your family" and "don't blindly trust others just because someone tells you to."
John is the bad guy for killing one superpowered terrorist. The terrorists are sympathetic after blowing up a building of innocent tied up non-powered people. That’s some logic for you.
“You have to do better Senator” is like saying, “Don’t be sad, be happy” to a depressed person.
Regarding the Red Hood situation, I think Joker himself summarized the situation perfectly in the finale. "You found a way to win.... and everyone still loses!"
In the original comic it was even worse: Bruce sliced Jason's throat open with a batarang (it was somehow supposed to be 'nonlethal') and Joker laughed his ass off while blood gushed all over the floor. Then Jason blew the building with a dead man's switch and tears pouring from his eyes.
@@Dunge0n So you're telling me batman rather risk Jason's life than Joker's? are you kidding me? like he could've tried the "non-lethal" throat slicing on Joker instead and try to deceive Jason. Jfc that's so dumb.
@@Dunge0n So Batman rather kill his son than a supervillain that has been terrorizing Gotham for years? What a hero!
It's an issue of ideals vs practicality.
--
Walker knew he couldn't be Captain America, but also had enough humility to recognize this. His choice to be him out of necessity a greater evil could take it is wonderful. His prosecution due to the same lack of oversight that got him selected, is a good full circle.
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As you outlined in this video Falcon and Bucky are responsible for not seeing he was earnest. And... I don't know... refusing to teach him how to be Captain America. They regularly leave him out to dry and screw Walker over, and Walker never really challenges this until they essentially got his friend killed.
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Great Video BTW!
Yeah there were some interesting ideas but they just didn't flesh them out/implement them well. Thanks for the support
this would have been fine if the show portrayed that they were acting irrationally due to them still grieving. But no it portrays them as being completely justified
@@stevenle9960I dunno, I felt like Bucky and Sam’s cognitive bias was intended as a character flaw. If they were supposed to 100% be in the right, then why would they go out of their way to show Walker in a sympathetic light, every single time he’s introspecting alone, speaking to Lamar, speaking to Lamar’s family, or hearing all the things people actually close to him think about him.
Good character in a bad show.
Also, I was a bit confused when they showed Walker taking the super soldier serum in a very negative light. I think that when fighting an entire team of super soldiers, it makes sense to want to even the playing field, at least a little. Especially because there weren't really any side effects except making someone 'more of what they aready are'. As far as I remember, this barely affected Walker and made Sam's refusal to take it even more confusing...
The MCU morality really boils down to "character who is a demographic that I have real-life political sympathy for feels that this thing is right/wrong, they are correct and don't question it" and so they cannot allow a US military member who follows orders to be the good guy
It didn’t used to be like that, and that’s the MCU that I miss dearly
That was literally explained in the first avenger and why Erskine picked Steve over the guy tommy Lee Jones wanted.
@@adrianhartso7060No, the other guy wasn't chosen because he was a jerk and a bully, the general wanted him because he was strong and followed orders but Erskine chose Steve over that guy because he was humble and a good person, if Erskine had to choose between John and that other guy I'm one hundred percent he would have chosen John anyways because he is also humble and a good person, just not as good as Steve obviously.
I find it damn near impossible to imagine that, after everything that has happened so far within the MCU, people would have the slightest bit of patience or tolerance, let alone sympathy, for a group like the Flag Smashers. The fact that they weren't cheering on John Walker is less believable than sentient robots, dimension hopping aliens, or talking raccoons.
John was also my favorite character of the show because he expressed that he was wasn't trying to replace Steve but become the best Captain America he could be. Sam and Bucky hated him when the government that created him and the same government that turned their backs on Steve, Bucky, and Sam respectively are the thing that they should be focusing their anger on. John was a soldier just like them, but they hated the idea of him.
John is thrust into a role he is ill prepared for. John is a mortal being told to do the work of a super soldier. Bucky and the Falcon hate him just because he is not Steve. John is in a lose lose situation, everyone is against him no mater how nice he tries to be he is constantly rejected and we are supposed to turn on him when he finally snaps? We get the final speech about race and politicians needing to do their job - it just comes out of left field - were we supposed to hate the new Capt because he is white?
I am glad to find that I am not alone in preferring the villain.
@@conniethesconnie The writers didn't do enough of a job clarifying he's supposed to be a villain. So he ended up being the shows hero instead.
Literally he was my favorite character aside from Zemo in this show. He was very compelling and frankly realistic. Because this is what would happen to anyone in this situation. He was already a broken ptsd Vet by the time he was thrust into the roll of Captain America and taken the Super Soldier serum while Steve is an unrealistic starry eyed nice man who hasn't gone thru a shred of combat and seen war before becoming a Super Soldier.
People forget that the original choice of Colonel Phillips was a soldier much like Walker. Big
fit. And willing to follow orders.
It was Dr Eakine who selected Rogers because of his own personal ethics regarding the morality of men with power
@@TheLAGopherTo be fair, Walker seemed to have both, he was the nicest person in the show from the way it looked and had the Good Soldier ethic as well.
@@isaacgirouard5924 I think a better written show would have presented him as a good soldier, and even a good man - but not a hero. It would haver been unreasonable for him to spare the flag smasher perhaps, and his motives were entirely understandable. Yet what would have made him a hero would have been sparing the man anyway. So he isn't captain America - but he doesn't need to be. It's a good allegory for the ideals of what America could be, and the reality - still great with much promise, but failing to fully live up to its lofty ideals.
@@mortuitissedai2085 Walker seems like a good candidate for a less than scrupulous antihero as well as a Byronic hero on a journey to find himself
@@TheLAGopherthe original choice was a big bully, walker is legit a genuinely nice man.
The big problem with the show is it was supposed to reboot the captain America story by passing on the mantle to someone worthy. And they wrote a true successor to Steve Rogers...His name was John Walker.
I felt pretty conflicted watching Walker in FaWS. My friends all said they disliked him but he wasn't a bad guy. It's odd how the writers wanted so badly to make us hate him but forgot to give him almost any bad qualities.
Almost like they weren't trying to villanize him, huh?
@@stephengrant4841They were. They just didn’t actually know how to do it.
@@thundojohn2355 He doesn't come off as a villain because they were not trying to make him one in the first place. They wanted to portray a flawed man thrust into a position he either wasnt ready for or didn't deserve. Despite that, he still tries to do what he feels is the right thing, even with all the missteps along the way. He wasn't the hero of the story, but neither was he the villain. That was explicitly, from the onset, the Flag Smashers.
Walker has villainous qualities. He is white and a man.
8:44 You forgot to mention that the first thing Walker said to them in this scene was for them to find medical attention and they just broke his arm.
But of course, Walker is a villain for this.
In these characters and the judgements leveled against them, I keep remembering something I once read: "Most choices are clear, when someone else has to make them."
This is one of the greatest breakdown videos I've ever watched.
Oddly enough, I never thought of the scene where Walker told Lamar's parents that the man he killed was his(Lamar's)murderer was Walker trying to shrug off blame. Really, I felt that it was Walker trying to give them some closure, so they wouldn't suffer knowing that Karly, the real killer, was still out there. He never said "its their fault only". As said in the video, he put the blame for the murder squarely on his shoulders, not on Sam or Bucky's.
John Walker was a fantastic Captain America. They did my boy wrong. Thank you for analyzing this travesty!
I liked John walkers portrayal because it got to the idea that being a patriotic symbol like Captain America means doing the right thing even when it isn’t the right thing to do. Killing that super soldier terrorist was justifiable, and yeah Steve killed plenty. But he was never caught on camera doing that kinda dirty work, and it was never so obviously done in anger. Sam’s “do better” response to the UN is self admittedly devoid of nuance or detail, because symbols like Cap don’t do that part, they just inspire (or scold) you to, well, do better.
Walker was a soldier who got picked because he made the most sense to the people in charge, who then dropped him into an impossible scenario that a symbol like Cap was never really meant to be in with way too much moral gray area. He tried his absolute best, then when that wasn’t enough he supered himself without regard to how it might affect his personality (the only thing Erskine was focused on with Steve), then lost his best friend and it all fell apart with the blame pinned on him. But in that last act when he lets the villains go to save the innocents it’s shown as heroic because he’s doing the right thing, even though it isn’t the “right” thing to do.
I think the main difference lies in killing people while trying to subdue them is far different then executing someone no longer resisting.
@znail4675 The terrorist would absolutely trip his leg the moment he turned his back and the fighting would have continued.
And what would he restrain the terrorist with? Regular cuffs might has well be made out of candy.
@@poutineausyropderable7108 Why would he turn his back? He didn't do any more fighting so could have focused entirely on taking this one guy prisoner.
@znail4675 And how would he take the guy prisonner. What would he restrain him with. How would he move him to a prison on the other side of the country (cause he can't put him in the local jail).
There's no power cancelling handcuff
How would he go after other member, how would he protect the public or check if someone needs help.
Also, there's a big crowd next to him. He could have turned to look at them. He shouldn't take more then a glance at his surrounding, but...
Let's be honest too, the writting is so bad that if he didn't kill him, john would have turned to look at other people cheering or something, the other guy would trip him and kill someone and then he'd be blamed for it or some shit.
Exactly. That terrorist will have killed him given half a chance.
the 90s cartoon version of senator kelly not only was depicted as a guy who was only acting on the information he was given, charles was really explicit on how him and others like him werent villains, but people acting out of fear and ignorance. and sure enough, as the story progresses, and he learns more about the mutants kelly forms a camradarie with the x men, while still working within the confines of the law.
The comics in the '90s treated Kelly in a similar fashion, with Kelly even occasionally providing the X-Men assistance against worse mutant-related problems.
The comics in the '90s treated Kelly in a similar fashion, with Kelly even occasionally providing the X-Men assistance against worse mutant-related problems.
yea didnt really get how senator kelly was supposed to be portrayed as a villain, like magneto was so CLEARLY the main bad guy, kelly was just another dominio falling to cause the bad events in xmen
Love how the writers of this show thought Walker executing the leader of a terrorist organization was wrong, after treating non-violence as a bad thing when he attempted it with the Wakandans.
One example that I really liked that the creators realized and wove into the narrative was from the Justice League episode "A Better World."
The idea is that an alternate version of the Justice League took over their world after lobotomizing all the major villains. The world is clean and peaceful but ruled with fear. The League rebrands themselves into the Justice Lords. The episode starts with the Justice Lords finding the heroes' world and try to do the same there, and the heroes protest.
During the episode, the two Batmen (Batmans?) get into a fight in the Batcave. During the fight, Lord Batman says "we've made a world where no eight year old boy will ever lose his parents because of some punk with a gun!" and League Batman... surrenders on the spot.
Supposedly, this was never intended when planning the episode. League Batman was supposed to win then and there. The creators were throwing ideas around for what would be said and, when the idea of Lord Batman saying that line came up, they realized that League Batman wouldn't have a comeback. Of course things didn't end there but the fact that Lord Batman was acknowledged as having a point was such a treat.
But this is also a series that had the writing chops to give us Amanda "the Wall" Waller. She was written as an antagonist until near the end where you hear her reasons. Those are some really good reasons. I've seen nothing even remotely close to the writing of that show since.
A humanising moment I remember is when Walker is confronting Karli and she tries to talk him down by saying that she doesn’t want to hurt people who don’t matter. And you can tell that it hurt Walker to have her decide that Lamar didn’t matter. The show almost forgets that his best friend had just been killed in front of him and he was lashing out in grief. And even Steve wasn’t above that, because after watching Bucky fall to his death, he swore he would kill everyone working for Hydra. Wanting to kill the bad guys for killing your friend is a very human reaction, and when Tony wanted revenge during Civil War Steve never says he’s in the wrong for wanting it; only trying to convince him that Bucky wasn’t really responsible. His final message even has him point out that he didn’t say anything because he didn’t want to believe that Bucky had killed Howard.
Another show with something similar to this is RWBY, a webseries. Our heroes just found out an immortal witch with an army of monsters is heading for the kingdom they’re in. The sensors are down, so they don’t know how big her forces are or when she’ll arrive. And their forces are worn out dealing with an attack by her agents. General Ironwood wants to take their floating city, with an important relic the witch is after and all his forces, and have it fly out of her reach. Even though it means leaving the second city behind. He argues that if they stay, they’ll lose both cities.
Our heroes, on the other hand, want to stay and rescue everyone, apparently deciding that they can hold off the army because… well, because they’re the main characters. And so they’re in the right, Ironwood is wrong, and he gets turned into a villain because he disagrees with them. And considering the event ends with using the relic to evacuate everyone to a different kingdom, the cities being destroyed, and the witch leaving with her prize, it really feels like their plan wasn’t any better.
About RWBY...yeah that kinda was the point. Everyone made subpar decisions. Kinda the whole point of Volume 9, dealing with the consequences of that.
@@handtomouth4690I'd argue if you want to show everyone making mistakes that cost them dearly, don't take sides
The difference is that Steve controls his urges and doesn't cross the line. The only moment he nearly does is when he nearly kills Iron Man but again, he doesn't. That is the difference between justified anger, grief, etc and unjustified actions comes in, even if those actions are understandable.
@@RobCooper-Bachatador I wanna point out that Thor, the one who carries Mjølnir, was literally told BY THE ANTAGONIST "should've gone for the hand" or "You let your urges control you". And he still carried stormbreaker just fine. But because the new guy is portrayed the exact same but shown in a bad light he's suddenly so different from all the good guys. Also what is justified grief if not taking revenge for the murder of your best friend?
@@VitaeLibra the grief is justified, the action is not. The action is understandable, which is an entirely different thing.
Thor is an Asgardian, they have a different set of morality. And Mjolnir is about virtues like Humility, not Morality like Good and Evil.
Consider what Odin had done previously when thinking about Asgardian morality.
"An eye for an eye is a blind man's game."
In the case of Red Hood I think it’s more a well written moral question rather than poor writing like the others
The issue comes about with Batman's argument falling flat. Bruce does not and should not kill another person if that isn't something he wants to do. It shouldn't be a situation forced upon him by someone else, Jason was wrong for demanding that Bruce kill anyone.
However Bruce is even more wrong because while he doesn't have to kill anyone, he does have to stop saving them. Joker routinely puts himself into an absolutely out of control scheme that results in him being in peril of dying as a result of his own actions, Batman constantly jumping in to save the Joker from the consequences of his planning is an insult.
At least Red Hood is (usually) acknowledged and treated with respect (as the black sheep, for understandable reasons) by the Bat Family.
Walker was wrongly mistreated and disrespected by Sam and Bucky for the entire series and consistently acted as a worthy successor to Steve Rogers in spite of what the show tries to tell you otherwise.
Yeah that's writers exploring and challenging the moral values of a character- the Walker stuff is just writers not paying attention to their implications.
@@alexandergreene461You know that's dumb right? The joker has died- I don't even think anyone has a count of how many times but he constantly dies all comic characters do. You switch universes or do a retcon or just write a new story with no explanation of why he's now alive.
@@alexandergreene461 the only one ive seen they make it seem good is when Jason met an alt reality bruce who did end up killing joker and he just became more heartless overall so jason started to see his point, Jason got to smash an alt reality joker's head in with a rock which was fun though.
This is still mixed but its better than most, honestly that time jason was becoming Dick's joker was pretty cool though.
Fable 3's message is kinda muddied by the fact you can purchase a bunch of property and just earn rent off of it, and earn enough to minimize casualties and not have to pick and "evil" options.
Specifically, the choice where you can choose to sell an expensive item and put it directly in the treasury, or keep it in your personal coffers. You use that money to make even more money off the citizens, and then you can quickly get all the money you need.
Bro was getting death threats for doing his job. Thats how you know he’s a good actor
I didn’t know what this was called so glad I watched this video. It happens a lot in movies where I definitely find myself relating more to the methods of a character who’s “wrong” but honestly is more “right” than the protagonist half the time
Yeah, I mean this is just what I'm calling it, maybe there is another term out there for it. I just think it's an interesting phenomenon in writing that doesn't get talked about a lot
Name an example
@@TheRealLoomar unintentionally sympathetic?
@@enocescalona
That's the one
@@leafyishereisdumbnameakath4259 Roarsack from watch men
They accidentally wrote a good gold hearted replacement for Steve but told you he wasn’t good. Getting strung along for the whole show then low jacked because of Bucky and Sams pride, Crazy.
I love that, even though they did beat him in the end of the fight, Walker was beating both Bucky and Sam at some point, in a 2v1 he stand his ground against a much more experienced winter soldier and falcon than Steve ever did
As someone whos read a lot of fanfiction and seen the authors rage at people not agreeing with them, i can say when this happens its one of two options.
First the writer is translating a real person/group or event they dont like into their story.
Second the writer wants to make things moraly grey and does a little too well.
Both stem from the inability to realize they need to prove their main character is not only good but superior to the other.
Always felt it was weird that the show seemingly wanted us to scoff at John and mock him, but also feel sorry for him at the same time. Not in a multifaceted way, more of a “we don’t know what we want to do” way
Kinda like how they make Karly this super sympathetic fighter for a pretty reasonable cause….and then make her blow up a hospital full of children or some shit.
I do think the “USAgent” fits him better though than Captain America.
I felt no sympathy for Karly, even before she murdered Lamar and then treated his death as unimportant. Even at the end, she was too deluded to think that she was doing the wrong thing, as she believed that the movement would continue even if she and the others died(|Zemo quickly proved it wouldn't).
Any good man asked to be great immediately will eventually break.
Even Captain America didn't do everything alone.
@@robotsix6268 Didn't he try to play nice with Sam and Bucky?
I really thought the show would try to make Walker not a bad guy, but a guy put in a tough situation where he made a few bad decisions but eventually came out a better man.
I was so wrong 😭
I feel like it's the far left thing where violence Is fine because someone speaks out against them
@@JustfullmetalEdge-rs7nl It's the cult mentality. You can't object to the 'greater good' on any ground
@@JustfullmetalEdge-rs7nlif it was a "far left thing" where "violence is fine" then he wouldn't have been portrayed as in the wrong for killing the terrorist.
@@RonnieNicholsfar left individuals say terrorists are cool, I thought this was pretty common knowledge, just like how far rights like nazis.
@@virtualwastrel289 I have not encountered anyone, far left or not, who thinks terrorists are cool. I _have_ on the other hand seen far right people agree with and associate with neo-nazis and terrorists because they're attacking "the right people."
The only reason John Walker receives the brunt of Sam & Bucky's anger is cause the showrunners didn't want it directed at the US government
Meanwhile, The Suicide Squad 2021 has the protagonists defying a direct order from the US government to fight the literal stars and stripes at the climax of the movie
Watching the video and I won't lie, Walker standing there and holding the bloody shield is a raw image that I vibe with
On first watch, I read John Walker as a good man put in an impossible situation. Bucky and Sam were both damaged individuals, and all three are struggling in the shadow of Steve Rogers. None of them can live up to Steve's legacy, and they all know it, but John is the only one who will at least give it a shot. I do hope the MCU survives long enough for us to see him get another chance for redemption.
What redemption? What has John Walker done wrong?
Redemption? For what? Redemption requires you to have done something wrong. Please elaborate
Walker is suffering from survivor guilt, and theres nothing worse is coming home alone. No matter what everyones says. Deep down inside theres something eating you from inside letting you know "You should have done more to prevent this death from happening". Even if you did everything within your power to protect, its the lingering doubt that will always drag you down. Youll never blame anyone but yourself
I’m pretty sure you can talk about this without saying “there’s nothing worse and no one can say otherwise”. There are many different forms of hardship people go through so I don’t think it’s fair to compare them this way
@littlemoth4956 I'm going to venture a guess you've never deployed. I was a Combat Medic in the Army it took me 10 years to admit I even had a problem. We didn't talk about it since it would have effected our combat readiness and effectively harm our career. In my personal experience
It's honestly so sad how far Marvel has fallen. Its not even worth giving them a chance anymore.
The last good movie they made was No Way Home. And even that was amidst a sea of mediocrity. Their winning streak ended at around Far From Home.
Honestly, the best thing about spiderman, as a character in writing, is that he will always have jonah to challenge every decision he makes. Everything spiderman does will always be shown from multiple angles so hes always being held up to multiple different standards and ideals
I've been a Spider-Man fan for 30 years and I've never considered that.
My favorite theory on why Jonah hates Spider-Man so much is that he doesn’t, he does this knowingly to hold Spider-Man to a higher standard and force him to be better.
We just get used to JJJ being constantly negative about Spider-Man, but on the occasions where he's right, it's always a "Oh shit" realization moment
eeeh, untrue. jonas is always wrong and is used as a plot device to make the public hate spiderman, not once did I see him make a good point.
@@thephoenix4093in spiderman ps4 he makes really good points
Frankly, as soon as I heard John Walker was going to appear in Falcon and the Winter Soldier, I knew better than to watch it. Walker has always walked a tightrope in terms of characterization, since he was conceived as simultaneously "The Conservative Captain America" vs. Steve Rogers as "The Liberal Captain America" and also an asshole - not because of his politics, but because he's just a very abrasive person. The thing is, the comics where he debuted still treated him with respect. He certainly never fell to the depths of poor William Burnside, the retcon-created "Commie-Puncher" Captain America of the 1950s, who ended up becoming a reactionary villain due to a combination of being too conservative to handle post-50s pre-2010s American culture and being driven insane by the faulty Super Serum in his system. The old comics treated John Walker with respect; he was a jerk in the way that DC's Guy Gardner is a jerk, but that never made him incompetent or evil for political reasons. But post-2010s Marvel isn't capable of that kind of nuance and respect anymore. And I say this as somebody who isn't in the same political party as Walker.
Warning: this has gotten insanely long, you can skip to the end you want the TLDR version.
To a degree I'd say a character's politics do reflect their morality, afterall there's no way around how ruthless and unethical the weaponization of anti communism panic was at the time of the old "commie punching" cap, and you have to forgot/lack some morality to follow certain agendas, but like you said the writers just don't trust the audience enough to understand a nuanced characters' flaws so they either strawman the fuck out of the character or just TELL the audience he's bad instead of actually showing it, and end up with a self fulfilling prophecy of making their evil strawman likeable, and hurt the message they wanted to send in the process.
It really boggles my mind how often you see writers make sympathetic villains and punish them for every little fuckup while brushing off any main character's wrongdoings because they're the protagonists, my only explanation is that they didn't want the villain in this series to feel too superficial, and tried giving them a motive to be the way they are similar to Thanos and others, which in theory is all good and well but then when they have to showcase how he morally fails compared to the heroes they completely lack or aren't interested in deepening any understanding of morality and just tell you how to feel rather than building a story to support the intended message.
Like it's no biggie when the Avengers kill people, and we're supposed to sympathise with their guilt when they accidentally cause collateral damage because they didn't mean it, while when villains like this Captain America wannabe guy do the same the morality of their actions is put through a microscope, that's not how you explore different characters' grasp on morality and their conflict, that's a poor attempt at gaslighting the esthetic of deep themes in a story that really just wants to be mundane action, it's inconvenient to call out our heroes killing people cause that gets in the way of the fun action scenes, but it's wrong for villains to do the same because they're supposed to be in the wrong I guess.
It's like they don't get that it's a character's actions that reflects their morality not their role in the story, and this isn't new it has been an underlying issue all throughout the MCU but never made itself apparent because every villain up to phase 4 was either expressively evil, or wanted to go through ridiculous world ending extremisms to reach a noble goal.
If you think about it there isn't much actual heroism in the Avengers, sure they save the world but that's not exceptionally heroic in the context of a story, it's the bare minimum expected of these guys that they don't let the planet they live in be pulverised or whatever, and their missions are more akin to those of a super strong swat team than benefactors who care about saving lives, rarely we see civilians even be a concern to these guys, they'll sacrifice their lives to prevent the end of the world or whatever but if the stakes aren't as high and world ending as they can possibly be their heroism is pretty much unperceptible, the thing that makes them "good guys" is them beating "bad guys", and half the time is spent fighting among themselves instead of the actual enemy.
But now that they're trying their hand at more "morally complex" antagonists who are supposed to think they mean well without killing half the universe this disastrous misunderstanding of heroism at full display.
The one exception I can think of at the top of my head is Spiderman, with the Avengers they had an excuse for simple mindless action due to the themes of the Avengers being more about teamwork or whatever, but Spiderman's whole "responsibility" theme being pretty much a trademark of the character forces writers to actually think of the morality of the hero in his stories because his entire character revolves around responsibility, like you can't just brush off Peter killing people like it's nothing, the responsibility of it has to be acknowledged or the story won't feel coherent with itself, and usually Spiderman doesn't kill for this exact reason.
For one we actually get to see Spiderman solving petty street level crimes, interact with civilians as well as actually going out of his way to save them, and in Spiderman Homecoming we actually get to see a very rare instance of Tony Stark using his tech to help people instead of exclusively use it for missions.
The second Spiderman film is all about him coming to terms with the responsibility of being handed Tony Stark's legacy and trying to balance his normal life with his superhero life to the point he outright rejects it only to regret it later, and while I get why people kinda dislike the whole Ironman Jr thing, the way they fleshed out the themes of responsibility through that plot point still makes it feel in character for a Spiderman story.
And in No Way Home his wish gone wrong to reset the consequences of his unmasking forces him to learn to live with the consequences of it all and let go of everyone he's ever known, and he could've still gotten his way if he just sent the other universe villains back to their home without caring about their fates like Dr Stange wanted, if it was up to the Avengers this moral dilemma wouldn't even be brought up and it would all be about them fighting the guys, I mean Captain America completely gives up his responsibilities as a the first Avenger to go back in time to live the life he never had in his time without warning to then just pass his shield and all the shit it represents to his sidekick and absolutely no one considers questioning the selfishness of such an act for even a moment.
Not to say MCU Spiderman is perfect or anything, but Peter has easily been far more heroic in his trilogy than any other character has been throughout all the MCU films, both solo and Avengers stuff.
TLDR lacking heroism has always been an issue in the MCU, only we didn't see it cause the villains and the stories themselves were simple enough distractions to cover for it, but now that they wanna make their stuff appear more "meaningful" with themes of heavy stuff like trauma or social commentary the lack of heroism in our heroes has become apparent, they got more ambitious with complex themes but haven't changed their simplistic action flick formula, the two just don't click well at all and only end up undermining each other.
@@ginogatash4030Even though the anti-Communism stuff was proven right?
@@SockieTheSockPuppet not when you consider that America still doesn't have free Healthcare, good working conditions at major companies like Amazon, and you are constantly guilt tripped into paying tips to waiters so bosses can avoid paying living wages.
Not saying the USSR was a good morally righteous government because it really wasn't, but America's extreme anti communism propaganda still hurts workers a lot to this day, that's undeniable, unless you wanna argue that Healthcare shouldn't be a universal right.
@ginogatash4030 So you're admitting that "universal healthcare", something that provably works worse than the crummy heavily government-oversighted healthcare system here - with dozens of countries to show for it - is Communist.
I find it strange that super human registration is considered a conservative agenda while gun control a liberal one.
Russell played him in a vague Ash Williams kind of way, which I really liked and went with the character, A flawed yet good man who becomes a hero despite himself. He became the hero he aspired to, just not as Captain America, but as US Agent, a role that he is well suit for. I like the concept of superhero who has flaws and makes mistakes.
Great criticism. Walkers character could have been GOATED with a few small changes imo.
1. Have public opinion split on him killing the terrorist in public. It’s realistic and interesting.
2. Have the government blaming everything on him be shown as the government using him as a patsy as opposed to a good moral thing.
Boom. Done.
So the writers essentially made a protagonist but biased the story towards sam in winter soldier
Basically yeah. Bucky and Sam were pretty much character assassinated in this show
@@TheRealLoomar Sam had the worse character assassination between him and Bucky IMO, but Bucky still regressed significantly
This show is so good at tackling
- American imperialism (while supporting Dora Milaje for using jurisdiction recklessly like attacking two American envoys on a foreign soil).
- Racism (while didn’t give af about Lemar and even overtly vilified a man who avenge Lemar’s death).
- Understanding the downtrodden class (while showing the team that we are supposed to sympathize with bombing innocent civilians. Not to mention that they have Bucky, a literal slave, apologized to Karli for not understanding her struggle or apologized to Sam for being white).
- Accountability (while showing Sam having so much fun at killing like 10 people in his opening fight scene without any remorse, in contrast to John Walker who got over the top punishment and having a mental breakdown thanks to his guilt after killing only one person).
- White privilege (while showing a black guy like Sam getting a new Vibranium jetpack suit for free thanks to his deep connection to the royal family of Wakanda that are 100% black people, in contrast to John Walker, who had to craft his own weapon alone with his broken arm because he had zero support).
- Heroism (while showing Sam being overtly sympathetic to the terrorists as a good thing, in contrast to John Walker letting go of his revenge to save people as a sign of him being unworthy of a shield).
- Consistent power dynamics (while showing Cap’s shield, which used to be able to withstand Mjolnir, got taken down easily by a chair).
- Self awareness (Falcon, the one who fought against Project Insight that Hydra used to spy on people’s personal information, is now using a technology that spies on people’s personal info in his suit).
John Walker tried to murder Sam with the shield and people defending him just kind of ignore that.
And the writers literally had a white cop scream "Black lives matter" to a black woman. The show collapsed on its own backtracking of John Walker as an unhinged violent douchebag.
@@MrBazBake I mean…Sam attacked him first
@@MrBazBakeIt's not Sam and Carli are a group of douches......
But of course, they are "better" because minorities/people with low income?
Go watch Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. That's how you wrote characters with low income/forgotten by society that tried to do the best and fall into the darkness. FaTWS is really bad.
"It's only bad when people who aren't us do it."
The moral ethos of the entire MCU.
Not to mention the fact that after John Walker was betrayed by his own government he took HIS OWN MEDALS that he got for being a hero and melted them down to forge his own Captain America shield. Sort of a mix between Tony Stark and post Winter Soldier Steve he really struggled and still showed up to save the day despite Sam and Bucky treating him like shit.
This sounds like the story of history. People are trying to do their best picking choices with the best outcome, and not realizing they’re being judged by people living in different circumstances.
I think it would interesting to see John Walker go through his own Nomad arc, having grown disillusioned with the government after they basically used him as a fall guy.
This is a very well thought out video. And a massive thing marvel fans ignore is that Captain America was a soldier who was chosen by the US government, given the super soldier serum and kill threats to the US' stability. Steve is legitimised whereas walker is a poor substitute... it made no sense for him to be lambasted for having a moral conundrum over copying steve. Great video. You're right about Jason Todd too.
I’d like to point out that Steve was not chosen by the government, he was chosen by the scientist. Walker represents the type of person the government would have chosen, had the scientist not chosen otherwise.
Also captain america wasn't supposed to fight in the war, he was supposed to be propaganda mascot or something
Steve was not chosen by the U.S Government. He was chosen by Dr Erskine because of his bravery and compassion despite being physically weak.
The U.S government most likely had several other physically fit candidates that weren’t half the men Steve Rodgers is.
@@hasthehighground8560 But the Doctor is working for the government and the government probably gave him the right to choose his test subject so Steve was technically chosen by the Government
@@ghiffaribara2949technically is a good word here, because the doctor did not reflect how the governament would've chosen
I think a lot of people miss the kind of man Walker is written as because they fill in their own biases about what they expect him to be.
You know the scene in The First Avenger, where Steve throws himself on a grenade in order to use his body to shield his fellow recruits? In real life, that's the kind of thing that earns you a Medal of Honor, because it's an act of both heroism and selflessness. In the US military, everyone, no matter their rank, salutes first when they see someone who has an MoH and has lived to tell the tale, because you're pretty much guaranteed to not. Walker has *three* Medals of Honor. Somehow I'm meant to believe a man who is at minimum three times as selfless as Steve Rogers was before he became Captain America (to say nothing of afterward, because Steve became increasingly self-interested the longer the Russos wrote him) is actually inherently selfish and self absorbed, which is patently absurd. Walker is a good man and the only realistic part of his "arc" is that he washes his hands of the "good guys" and decides to join the Thunderbolts, because the good guys have done nothing but shit on him the entire time.
I mean, it's a bit of a reach to say the Russos made Steve increasingly more self-absorbed over time only because they only had 4 movies in which to do anything with the character, and they definitely didn't do that in either Winter Soldier or Civil War, in my opinion. Which means you're talking more about Infinity War and Endgame, in which, I just don't see it until the very end of Endgame. Like, It's Tony that walks away from the Avengers in Endgame to have his kid. Steve's still out there helping people and doing what he can with the team during the time of the post-snap universe.
Really, the only majorly self-absorbed thing they have him do is abandoning Sharon Carter and deciding to stay in the 40s in the final moments of the film. And that's definitely pretty bad, but it's also such a shock because it kind of came out of nowhere because they *hadn't* mess with his character that much up until that point.
(also, I realize now that there's a whole arc they could do where Sharon and Steve *did* have a go at a serious relationship after Infinity War but before Endgame, but things ended up not working out for some reason, that they could definitely delve into if they were clever with something)
I don't think writers even know what Medal of Honor is, to be honest. They just googled "most badass medals in military" or something like that and went with the result.
They tell you to "write what you know." How many H-wood writers know what the MoH means?
@@MidlifeCrisisJoe Yeah, Steve was selfish only in the ending of Endgame, and even that felt completely OOC of the character, and a complete betrayal of his character arc up until this point. Like, you can give Cap a happy ending without betraying his entire character arc. As someone whose favorite MCU character was Steve, his ending is one of the most disappointing things about the franchise.
Thats the new world we live in. Terrorists are innocent victims and their killer is a monster.
Ironically in their attempt to turn USAgent into a joke they turned him into a compelling anti-hero which is what he is in the comics
I don’t think it’s Batman’s responsibility to kill the joker.
It’s not even his responsibility to be Batman.
@holymoly-ii6of Just because he's a vigilante dosent make him a killer, every hero is a vigilante does that mean all of them should Kill? Gotham should kill Joker if he's so evil lol.
@@z.e.d4037 He has repeatedly saved jokers life when he didnt need to. And also stopped other heroes from interfering in gotham.
Batman simply is performing a citizens arrest. He simply has no moral or legal obligation to kill the Joker any more than commissioner Gordon or the rest of Gotham City police department. You might argue the Supermam had duty to enact justice towards Zod's neck as the last son of Krypton. But some guy dressed as a bat and a clown is a different story.
@@joeyjojojrshabadoo7462 considering joker only does what he does because he wants to break batman. Its 100% on him to end it. In one of the animated JL movies joker succeeds at killing bruce and just becomes a bored guy. Batman is morally responsible for ending the cycle. The joker bears the brunt of the responsibility but he is literally insane.
It’s rough because I really want to like Sam as the new Captain, I like him and Bucky and I want to see their characters flourish. But it really feels like they unintentionally made the two more villainous than their actual “villain” due to shallow writing choices, and I really hope we see something to remedy this later on.
The real villain is Karlie(never felt any sympathy for her or belief that she might have been right, even before her murder of Lamar, but that might be personal, since I don't really like her actress(she always plays "girlboss"characters(references: "Solo", "Willow:The Series", etc;) and Sharon as the Power Broker.
sam has no reason to be the new cap though, there’s a reason his name is captain america, it’s not just whoever has a shield
Protip: it's because the real villains are the current staff writers for MCU content (I hestitate to call what they put out "films" or "shows"). They literally have no moral compasses.
These are the same writers who tried to justify Wanda mind-controlling an entire town
Some people demand perfection in a imperfect world.
Considering how super soldiers can kill people in one punch, it's possible that Walker needing multiple hits to kill Nico meant that he was holding back, if not for the fact that Nico was also a super soldier.
Sam a war therapist. Bucky a PTSD victim. both of them were soldier that fought in a war and had to deal with the after effects of it,
and Both were put into a position of responsibility that most humans can't really deal with.
They were Walking in Walker Shoes before John Walker came into the frame.
And when walker comes in...what they do? Treat him with the least amount of respect after he shows himself to be a somewhat decent guy?
Maybe trying to communicate with him,as they Both are going through this "Need to communicate phase"of their life?
After John loses his best friend,Do they show any sympathy for the man as they are literally in the same position as him?
Nope! they treat him like shit and call him garbage. Effectively calling him unworthy to be Captain America...which is Pretty Hypocritical when you think
that Sam Gave up the Shield without even trying,despite being elected directly by steve himself and Bucky knows that being a pawn under a higher power is not only very possible even without beingsaid Higher Power being Hydra,But also how damaging it can be to the Pawn.
It's kinda of sad that they ended up making this into a Black and White situation where,most of the Series deals with the Idea of Grays and Failure.
and made Sam and Bucky come off as unsympathetic jerks as a result
Agreed. Normally, in super-hero flicks you see various conventional military and such act a bit inconsistently, doing wrong things for the seemingly right reasons or wrong things for wrong reasons, while heroes go "rogue" and aim to do the right thing no matter what, often coming to odds with aforementioned military, police, three letter agencies, etc.
And Walker is exactly opposite - consistently staying the guy to take responsibility, to do the right thing (help good guys, stop bad guys with minimal casualties) and continues to do just that throughout the show, while Falcon and Bucky just being painted as heroes, because MCU.
He actually could have replaced Steve as Captain America and the audience would have cheered for him. They might have been able to make a movie or two that people liked in the last ten years.
He is my captain america