Saw the film on Friday. I agree with Emergency Awesome on YT who describes it as “aggressively fine.” I actually thought Ford was the strongest part of the movie. He was definitely way better in this than Dial of Destiny, and also the only character in the film who had any sort of character arc whatsoever.
I like Mackie as an actor, but going back to the ending of Endgame, it really was a big fumble to make him the new Cap over Bucky. For one, they kind of treat it like Steve was closer to Sam than Bucky (his lifelong childhood friend) by the events of Endgame, which I never bought at all. Besides that, there’s just really nothing interesting about Sam Wilson’s character or background, nor any real conflict in his life that would make for an interesting film. Bucky, on the other hand, would have made for a much more interesting main character to follow—trying to redeem himself and atone for his past actions by trying to do good as Cap, and hell, think about how easily they could mine having interesting villains/characters show up from his past as Winter Soldier, characters that we haven’t seen or heard about yet as the audience. Instead, he’s just this boring dude that doesn’t really want conflict anymore, because the MCU writers decided he should feel that way. Bucky also had and continues to have no conflicted feelings about Steve wanting Sam to be the new Cap and his choice to carry on his legacy, because again the writers decided that Bucky should just be fine with it.
Also, why is it such a negative for Sam to take the super serum? Oh right, because the writers again arbitrarily decided that they wanted him to stay a normal dude for some reason. They even have Bucky show up for a scene to reiterate that Sam was right not to take the super serum, like it was some sort of moral test that he passed. But…why??? I guess so they can continue to make Sam’s core conflict be that he is a black man that is representing the USA, because him be a super soldier would take that focus away. And the systemic racism angle could be interesting if done well, but it’s just not very compelling and extremely surface level stuff here.
It also just stretches one’s suspension of belief that Sam could use the shield in the way he does. You’re telling me some random military dude could throw a shield hard enough and with enough precision to destroy multiple missiles that are rocketing through mid-air?
