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Yeah, I barely remember Battlestar from the comics, so it's not like I'm really broken up about him, in particular. And nah, not that they should have given Walker a white sidekick, but more that he didn't really need one, in the first place.
You know, especially considering that the very next episode after his "going dark" has him redeem himself and become US Agent? You didn't really need a whole thing about him turning, so much as just failing as Captain America, so Sam could pick up the shield.
Lol SAM is a non-powered dude, often (in the movies) with a gun! Fine, count the wings, and now the shield ... but you still have Hawkeye with a ridiculous medieval weapon somehow living through countless battles with super-powered things, and Black Widow, usually with -- what, metal sticks? Point is, there's plenty of plot armor to go around, in the MCU.
And no, I wouldn't want to have seen his wife killed instead, either. The whole point in the criticism about fridging people is that it's cheap and exploitative to kill people from demographics deemed as less important in society, to prop up or further the stories of a white male character. If you can't make Walker interesting without doing that, then he's just not an interesting character -- or, you're just a shitty writer.
Really, when you consider how the final episode played out? You didn't need Battlestar in this at all (especially not just to have him killed off in a cringey, cliche manner). It would have been a tighter story, and made his being on team Sam and Bucky in the finale seem less jarring, if they'd just not been as completely dismissive of him, from the start.
He joins them at the fight with the Flag Smashers on top of the trucks. The exposition about his past and his PTSD, doubts, etc is with Sam and Bucky instead of with Lemar, establishing relationships with them that would make the battle when they take the shield more dramatic, and likewise make it more believable when they allow him to rejoin them in the finale battle, since he would have been a teammate through most of the show already, at that point. The audience still gets to know him and sympathize with him, through his conversations with Sam/Bucky, and you don't introduce an extraneous black character just to kill him off in a problematic tropey fashion.
Sure, if you just really wanted to have Battlestar appear, then yeah, I'd say having him survive so he can be the one to bring Walker back to the good side in episode six would be better. But being included as nothing but a helpful non-entity for Walker kind of plays into the magical negro trope itself, so ... I guess, again, wondering if it would have been better to just leave the character out, if you didn't have plans to use him in any later capacity, and possibly raise the character's profile in comics.
If you did just leave Hoskins out, and let Walker team with Sam and Bucky from the start, you could really just lead into his breakdown by showing his PTSD along with having him continually coming in last/needing to be helped or saved by Bucky or Sam in battle after battle, throughout the show. This wouldn't really be hard to buy, given you've shown the two main characters to be seasoned veterans of many super-powered battles throughout the MCU, while even though Walker may be a veteran of regular combat, he is absolutely a rookie in this arena.
You have him unraveling because he is absolutely failing to live up to being Captain America, meanwhile what he views as two past sidekicks of the original Cap are regularly out-performing him. He's likewise getting pressure from his superiors to resolve the whole Flag Smashers thing, while on the ground of it all, he is aware that he's completely just tagging along behind Sam and Bucky, with nothing much to contribute at all -- not only not helping, but even getting in the way or seeming to mess things up, instead.
The incident where he kills someone didn't have to be because someone personally important to him was killed -- again, that's a tired trope. It could instead have been a gray area where he maybe sincerely thought someone was about to be killed, and used lethal force to stop it. You can then have Sam and Bucky arguing that the situation was under control, there was no need for what he did -- the audience can have their take on it, as the story does not need to make it completely clear if they did have it under control or not. Like, maybe someone was already killed and more could have been if he didn't do what he did, but on the other hand, maybe he should have trusted the more experienced guys to handle the matter and not have been so desperate to prove himself, regardless of how he's been getting his ass kicked through the whole show.
I mean, maybe a newly-made super soldier killing someone out of frustration, insecurity, and a situation where the right action was just not clear would have made him less a character that some would have related to so much ... I don't know though, I did read the original run with John Walker way back when it was originally done, and I don't think this would have been far off, from his initial characterization.
Last edited by Adam Allen; 04-29-2021 at 04:27 PM.
Be kind to me, or treat me mean
I'll make the most of it, I'm an extraordinary machine
True enough. But you could work your way around that if you wanted to. Lemar gets brutally injured and gets to a hospital, but is in critical condition, maybe going to die or in danger of being paralyzed, and Walker leaves when he knows he's safe only to get angrier and angrier during a fight and then kill Nico in broad daylight at full froth. Or maybe an already injured Lemar is being attacked by a super soldier, and John tackles the guy out the window, and does the lethal beat down so quickly that there’s no break or pause.
Or you don’t even have to kill Lemar. Have his parents be introduced at the GMA show, have him call them a few times, then have Karli threaten them like she did Sam’s sister, and have someone blow their house up... and maybe you get clever and have it ambiguous as to who blew the house up until the end, where if you want Sharon to be Ms. Evil, she did it so that Walker would turn the pressure up on the Flag Smashers.
Last edited by godisawesome; 04-29-2021 at 04:15 PM.
Like action, adventure, rogues, and outlaws? Like anti-heroes, femme fatales, mysteries and thrillers?
I wrote a book with them. Outlaw’s Shadow: A Sherwood Noir. Robin Hood’s evil counterpart, Guy of Gisbourne, is the main character. Feel free to give it a look: https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asi...E2PKBNJFH76GQP
They didn't team up with him man... he showed up and started beating ass/helping. It was conincidental.
aNd they still didn't trust him... Sam made sure Bucky went with Walker when they split up. They never hated the dude, they even tried to show him that killing the guy is probably not a big deal lol. Buck/Sam didn't give two shits about the dead dude... they just didn't want the dude with Cap's shield being the executioner. They only wanted the shield.
this just seems like a lot of extra stuff in a show that didnt' have timet o do what they wanted (flag smashers needed a whole nother hour lol) when... killin the brother off works much more quickly.
He needed a big boost to why he would go from decorated medal of honor soldier to executioner. A gradually decline wasn't going to do it... we saw the gradual decline. The serum + lemar gives him an "out" for still being grey and not a totally shitty dude. It needed to be dramatic... and concise.
Now completely throw the flag smashers out and make it a full 6 shows JUST documenting Walker and you can take this slower, more windy path to him breaking. But they did it in three episodes (he wasn't introduced really until ep 2, and ep4 he broke, ep5 needed the fight for the shield).
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december 21st has passed where are my superpowers?
Just confirmed that Sersi (Celestial-engineered immortal and one of Marvel’s top tier matter manipulators) played by Gemma Chan will be the main/viewpoint character of the Eternals film.
Last edited by Ragged Maw; 04-30-2021 at 08:16 AM.
I mean, maybe they should have just made it a little longer? It's like how the last season of Game of Thrones got so much criticism for how abrupt Khaleesi's heel turn was -- also just six episodes, and I don't see how either show would have been hurt by at least a couple more episodes, so fans don't get such extreme whiplash when a character just switches sides seeming totally out of the blue.
Anyway, my point was that maybe just having Walker with Sam and Bucky the whole time could have taken less time for showing what happens with Walker. You basically just have him kind of background through most of it ... let him be largely ignored, dismissed, beat up and made fun of through most of what's going on. He obviously has a hard time dealing with that, since he's supposed to be Captain America, and that treatment is obviously the exact opposite of how Steve would be treated, if he was a part of the mix.
Then, you have this character who hasn't been taken seriously enough come out of the blue and straight murder somebody, probably in part because he's been ignored and has felt powerless throughout. You still get to have Sam and Bucky (justifiably) take the shield from him, you still get to have the government strip him of the title for using the shield to murder somebody in broad daylight, only now the commentary is about how giving him such high responsibility with nowhere near enough support led to a tragedy.
This again lets him come back to help in a non-homicidal way, and still leaves the character open for the MCU to use as a morally grey character on a redemption arc. I mean, obviously I can only speculate if this route might have been better, at this point, but it at least would have avoided the problem of needing to give him a helpful black buddy to get killed off, to motivate his heel turn.
Be kind to me, or treat me mean
I'll make the most of it, I'm an extraordinary machine
In addition to the titular black samurai character being voiced by Lakeith Stanfield, Yasuke's Japanese voice actor will be Jun Soejima, who is African-Japanese. This will be Soejima's first voice acting role, as he previously played MC Che.ck-It-Out in Kamen Rider Zero-One. The Washington Post did an interview with him in December among other famous African-Japanese folks living in Japan.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...y-naomi-osaka/
His late African-American father, Willie Dorsey, was also an actor in the 1970s Japanese film industry.
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0233446/
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