I agree with the lack of character arc, or at least a retread. We’ve already seen the same “can I really hold up the mantle of Steve Roger” in FaWS, and so it’s kind of the same here.The issue is that Sam Wilson has no character arc in this movie.
He doesn't face anything that changes him and makes him able to reach Ross in the climax. The win is unearned. Like, literally anyone could have said, "Think of your daughter."
I'm not sure what the movie should have done instead, but it needed Sam to change somehow so he has to be the one to talk Ross down.
I do think this is a fair point. While I just said in a previous post that the new movie was a fine popcorn flick, on the other hand it’s completely unneeded as well. The momtenum of marvel is gone, there’s nothing left i really need to see.There's an awful lot of hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars being aggressively spent on mediocrity.
That's just rose-colored glasses. The MCU had several missteps before Infinity War. It's just a more convenient narrative to support the fact that "The MCU is dead" now to overlook those. There was also more than a bit of clemency given to the movies in their critical scores and that has worn off.But that wasn’t the case with the MCU up through Infinity War, which is remarkable. Though I agree that it is now just another franchise.
Sam did have an arc in this movie, which was one of the reasons Bucky showed up and it was shown in his talk with Torres at the end. He had the same doubt that many have about him, i.e. he should have taken the serum. And I'd argue that he didn't need anything to change, as that was the point- he had everything he needed within him. Not his shield, not the serum, not his wings. It's who he is, and who he's been portrayed to be.
Sam’s going to love the Thunderbolts. “Serum, serum, serum, Widow, dimensional phasing, skill duplication. (Looks directly at Bucky) You’re so full of sh*t.”
We don’t really know what the Widow process involves - it takes (kidnaps?) girls from a young age from a wide variety of backgrounds and moulds them into obedient efficient assassins. How does that moulding occur and does it involve more than real-world indoctrination and terrorist training?I'm not sold Sam is any worse trained than a Widow. The particular background training he has is an elite, even it doesn't tend to stand out in the superhuman world, and he's had years of experience dealing with both conventional military and superhumans.