swanpride

Yeah, same here. I mean, I didn't hate Endgame. Tony's arc was pretty much the perfect ending for the character, it was exactly what I expected. I adore what they did with Nebula. Thor's arc worked too and the fact that Scott now missed even more of Cassie's childhood just breaks my heart. I am still a little bit bitter that yet again the moment a director got to play with Tony Stark, Cap was shoved aside in favour for him. I just didn't expect that happening with this writer/director team up. I didn't expect them to handle my favourite characters that badly, especially since they were the very same people who elevated them to that status in the first place. But at least I can play around with the idea of a world in which Loki escaped with the Tessaract and Hydra thinks that Bucky is one of them and another one in which everything on earth happened the same way, but Thanos was removed from the equation in time.

I would say he has five….Bucky, Peggy, Sam, Tony and Natasha. When I emphasis the importance of Bucky, it is not like I want to take anything away from Peggy, quite the opposite. I feel that Endgame did them both a disservice. Steve/Peggy always worked for me largely because it was the missed opportunity, the relationship which could have been for the ages but wasn't meant to be. And I really enjoyed watching Peggy in Agent Carter getting over Steve and finding her place in life. I dislike the idea that this is now undone by Endgame. Speaking of Bucky not wanting to be in the war, someone once made the observation that Steve, Bucky and Sam are all representing one of the major wars the US was involved in. Steve is the WWII soldier which wanted to fight a just war, and was honoured for it. Bucky is the Soldier, who was forced to fight in Vietnam, and was branded a murderer for it. And Sam is the Soldier, who went to Afghanistan because it was part of his job, and nobody really cared what happened there.

Sebastian Stan really deserves more credit. He puts more into one look than others do into a while dialogue. I always assumed that Bucky was either drafted or felt that he had to volunteer because, well, Steve thought that this was the right thing to do and Bucky would never do anything less than him. Though I was also always wondering how Bucky got the rank of a sergeant on what apparently was his first tour (unless it wasn't). But no, the movies never clarified. This would have been a detail interesting to know… I think we have a slight communication problem here. "Bromance" doesn't mean anything sexual. It means a friendship which runs so deep that it is more than just friendship. It is like brotherhood, except that you can't pick your brother, but you can pick your friends, so it is the mixture of the best of both worlds. It simply indicates a deep emotional connection, nothing more, but also nothing less. Bucky is everything for Steve. He is his family, he is his best friend (at least until Sam came along to provide some competition), he is the one person in the world who knows Steve better than anyone else. Even Peggy, considering that Peggy doesn't have any childhood memories with Steve. And he is the person in the world who always had Steve's back, even when he was poor, scrawny and unpopular.

Just because a character isn't monologuing about something it doesn't mean that the movie itself doesn't say something about said character. Steve says that the he has no right to do less than any other man. Bucky calls him out and points out to him that he might also want to proof himself. He is shipping out, but does he show ANY excitement about this? No, he is pretty much matter the fact, focussing on enjoying his last night in the US to its fullest. That is not a guy who looks forward to war or has any illusions about it. He says it himself: Even worse than Steve getting rejected from the draft is them actually taking him. Then after the scene in the burning plant, in which Bucky refuses to leave without Steve, and him ensuring that he gets accolades after arriving back in the camp, the celebration in the bar. The Howling Commandos are all singing and bragging. Bucky isn't really part of it, though. He is telling Steve that he doesn't go back to war for Captain America, he is following the skinny guy from Brooklyn. Then there is the scene in the Winter Soldier, when Bucky starts to remember and Pierce orders to wipe him again. You have him just accepting the bit, resigned to what will happen to him, glaring at his captors but also unable to truly fight them. Don't tell me that there isn't a whole world of emotions in this one look. Or in im staring at the information about himself towards the end of the movie. Next we have him in Budapest, buying plums and trying to stay away from Steve, even pretending that he doesn't remember at all when he clearly does. Now, Bucky never outright says why he hides away from Steve, but remember how the scene ends? with this resigned "it always ends in a fight". This is clearly a man who doesn't want to fight anymore, but is still prepared for the day when violence will find him again. And do we really need to know more about Bucky's feeling about his past than "I remember all of them"? Remember that Bucky and Howard knew each other. Howard was the one who flew Steve behind enemy lines so that he could rescue Bucky. And then Bucky ended up killing him. I really don't need Bucky monologuing to understand how he feels about THAT. We get the same resignation from Bucky again when Black Panther brings him his new arm. He just looks at it with incredible sadness and finally asks "where is the fight?". Does that look like a guy who looks forward to it? To me this looks like a guy who just wants to be left alone, but feels that he has no choice than doing what has to be done. And again, I really don't need him to say it. It is all there.

Also, Bucky's "lack of agency" is literally the tragedy of his character. He doesn't "lack agency" because the writers somehow forgot, but because that is the POINT. He decides to follow Steve back into war out of friendship. And then falls from a train and spends the next decades robbed of any agency. Him reclaiming said agency by breaking Hydra's mind control but not being able to escape what he has done against his will or his need to do what has to be done (including allowing himself to get frozen and fighting in Infinity War even though he obviously doesn't want to fight) is breaking my heart every single time. In a way he is more heroic than Steve, because Steve wanted to be a soldier, he always wanted to fight. Bucky never did, he only does it because he feels that he has to.

Naturally it would have made sense to provide both Tony and Bucky with SOME kind of closure.

A young man whose most important decisions have been about Bucky. Why did a break out of the propaganda circle to become captain America for real? To Rescue Bucky. Who is the person he grieved over before his last fight against the Red Skull? Bucky. Why did he really die towards the end of The Winter Soldier? Because he couldn't bring himself to fight Bucky once the rest of the world was save. And why did Civil War happen? Because of Bucky. Who did he watch go to dust in Infinity War? Bucky. And who is he talking about to a group of "survivors" later on? Peggy. It doesn't really make that much sense. I can kind of get behind the idea that Thor is able to walk past Loki but not past his mother, since what he wants and needs the most is a good dose of sympathy. But that after everything which happened Bucky doesn't play any role in Endgame at all feels very dissatisfying. Not just in regard to Steve, btw. At the very least they could have added a scene in the battle in which Bucky and Tony share a moment. ANY kind of moment.

I kind of doubt that they even had the same weight as an actual weapon.

I kind of assumed the purpose of the fog was to hide the lack of actual guitar playing...

Oliver already covered gun control and especially the NRA, including NRA TV beforehand. I doubt that he has much more to say and I prefer him pointing out stuff I didn't know already. Perhaps if the balance of the episode would have been different, with less time spend on the crazy dictator and more on the Guinness book of Records. And yeah, the difference between US censorship (which focusses on nudity and swearword) and European censorship (which focusses on violence and hate speech) could be interesting. Not sure if he would manage to fill a whole segment with this topic, though.

Nah, I want the show end with them settling down as a nice little family with Flint.

Well, based on the bowling footage...I wouldn't bet on it. But then, I wasn't sure if Castro was still alive during the last years of his regency either. So he might be.

I have heard of it, but that is mostly because there was once this handy game on the net where you have to type in the names of all the countries in the world and they would pop up on a card. It's in the corner with the whole "stan" countries (Usbekistan, Kasachstan, Afghanistan aso), plus, we once hosted a guest student from Kirgisistan in some sort of exchange program (well, not really an exchange, we hosted, I never visited, but something is naturally nice for international interaction). Still have a photo she gave me of herself in traditional garb. Hope she is okay though, because Kirgistan hasn't exactly be a calm region either. Which is the other reason why I would have liked to learn more. It's a region of earth we tend to overlook too much, and the little I know about it points to some really interesting tradition under all the political unrest.

Honestly, one of his weaker shows. It basically boiled down to a long "haha, look how strange this dictator acts". If not for the jab at the Guinness book of records, I would call it devoid of any truly interesting content. I was actually hoping to learn a little bit about what the situation in Turkmenistan looks like and what the consequences of this guy dying would have been.

Yep, Catch me if you Can also happens to be one of my favourite movies featuring him. So much fun!

I didn't expect them to end up being a couple. In fact, I prefer them as epic bromance (just like I prefer Steve and Natasha as friends, and Clint and Natasha as friends). But there is no denying that the whole Captain America Saga has always been more about Bucky than Peggy. And I can understand why some people feel that the denying of this bromance in favour for a heteronormative ending which conforms to the really, really old idea that the hero has to get the girl in the end does both the character and the franchise a disservice.

In order to conclude the dangling plot threat of what happened to him.

You really don't need an eidetic memory to remember the red skull. Honestly, it was kind of surprising that neither Hawkeye nor Black Widow recognized him, but you can excuse that with neither of them being particularly interested in History. Though we KNOW that Natasha saw a picture of the Red Skull in the Winter Soldier. But I guess I wouldn't connect a grainy newspaper picture with some guy on a foreign planet decades later, either. But Cap or Bucky should recognize him.

Nah, DiCaprio's brand is "original movies by famous directors, preferable with a role which challenges him one way or another". You have to give it to him, he has worked with all the "big" ones by now. Question is what he will do when the last of the "famous" directors retire. They aren't many of the old school ones left, and the new well-known names, well, they are more likely to do something which isn't really in Leo's wheelhouse. I just can't imagine him starring in a Waititi movie.

Well...AoS better decides how time travel works for them. Hopefully they go with my "small changes don't matter, big ones create a new timeline" theory.

Well we don't know if Thompson

Honestly, the whole Prison Labor aspect is for me less about "giving back to society" - it's a silly notion anyway. Because either the criminal has killed/hurt someone, than nothing what he does will change what he did, or he is a thief, in which case his victims won't get anything out of them working a low paid or not paid at all job. If there is some sort of situation in which the criminal pays for damages, it would be better for the victim if said person is actually earning proper money. No, for me there are three reasons for prisoners to have jobs: 1. If they are related to the everyday running of the prison it helps to keep the cost of their own incarnation down - plus, free people also clean their own rooms and do their own laundry. 2. It keeps them busy - and if they are busy, it helps to get rid of boredom and aggression 3. It can help to prepare them for time after prison - if they manage to save some money or acquire some useful skills, it will provide them a better start and hence a better chance of rehabilitation. Plus, it's also better for the families. They shouldn't be forced to literally pay for a crime someone else committed. It's hard enough on them already. Honestly, the only way prisoners should be "giving back to society" is by working on themselves so that they will use their second chance the day they get released - provided that they are guilty in the first place, which is not a given in the US prison system at all. And in a way, it is not the prisoners who owe society something, it is society which owes them something. Because at the end of a day, every criminal is someone who has been failed by society at one point. That doesn't mean they aren't responsible for their actions too, but just like society is responsible for the ill and the poor, we are also responsible for whoever we decide we have to take away their freedom from. The least society can do is to ensure that said people are provided with basic care. And that includes phone calls and hygiene products.

The thing with the periods was angering me on so many levels. For starters, there shouldn't be ANY need for ANY prisoner to pay for basic sanitary products. Honestly, didn't we just learn that even the Taliban gave their prisoners soap? Those people are in the custody of the state and the state is responsible to ensure that they stay healthy. Ensuring that they have sanitary products is really the most basic they should do. Are they rationalising toilet paper, too? I wouldn't be surprised if they do..... Second, the whole thing with the doctors appointment. WTH? Just give them what they need. What, are they worried that they smoke the pads? And third, the way this guy reacted to having to hear about something as basic as a period. I mean, yeah, I don't exactly like to discussing it with men either, but it is still a very basic process and there is no reason to be particularly squeamish about this topic. What, does this guy think that girls have cooties or what? The woman had more reason to be nervous, considering that she had to talk to a bunch of strangers and in front of cameras about something which is usually treated as a private matter, and she was very matter of fact.

Yes, I know, the possible science behind it. I am thinking more about what makes sense for narrative purposes.

One has to keep in mind that the prison director of Shawshank's Redemption didn't make his personal money off the prison labour directly, that went into the running of the prison. He made it by taking money from other business in exchange for saying that his prisoners were "not available" for certain contracts, so that they had a chance to even stay in business. It is always worth remembering that prison labour is undermining the job market UNLESS the prisoners get exactly the same salary someone on the outside would get.