Falcon & The Winter Soldier Copies Endgame's Best Thanos Trick
The Flag-Smashers, antagonists in The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, borrow a page from Avengers: Infinity War's book by having sympathetic if off-base goals, like Thanos. The Infinity Saga was populated with downright evil villains such as Ronan the Accuser and Dormammu. Their evil nature often made them one-dimensional, as was the case with Malekith, while others justified their motivations, such as Alexander Pierce's desire to have total surveillance over the world in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Helmut Zemo's quest for revenge in Captain America: Civil War. However, the MCU is arguably at its best when antagonists are right in the middle between good and evil.
Loki's nature as the God of Mischief has led him to become a supervillain and an anti-hero, but Thanos was purely motivated by a seemingly noble cause. Thanos wanted to eliminate half of all life in the universe in order to solve overpopulation and he was determined to avenge the downfall of his home planet by saving the universe from meeting the same fate. This led him to clash with the Avengers, who logically wanted to protect the universe from mass genocide. Thanos was ultimately defeated in Avengers: Endgame, but his catastrophic "Blip" ultimately unified the world.
Even after his defeat, Thanos keeps affecting the MCU, as new villains rise up and defend his ideals, whether intentionally or not. Villains like The Flag-Smashers help the MCU explore interesting themes like justice and good will. Fortunately, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier is making good use of this kind of antagonists. Here's how.
Thanos was introduced as early as the post-credits scene of The Avengers, where The Mad Titan's smile at the prospect of "courting death" painted him as a purely evil villain. It was only until Avengers: Infinity War showed who Thanos really was that the MCU portrayed Thanos as the hero of his own story. In the movie, Thanos revealed himself as a character with a stoic stance toward death, which he described as a necessary tool for the greater good. Despite being the big bad of the MCU, Thanos was the most intelligent and collected antagonist, and he could even be defined as benevolent if his desire to save the universe from itself is taken into account. All of this, plus Josh Brolin's masterful performance and the high quality of the VFX work, served to make Thanos not only one of the best villains in Marvel history but also one of the most popular villains in the history of superhero movies.
Thanos's motivations were portrayed with such nuance that "Thanos was right" became a running joke after the movie's release. This statement ignores the frightening parallels between the fictional villain and the real-life evildoers who have believed in eliminating a certain group of people in order to, supposedly, save or improve the world. Thanos's plan is inherently flawed, but since Avengers: Infinity War made him a protagonist in his own right, it was difficult for audiences not to root for him at times, or at the very least sympathize with his motivations if not his execution of them.
Although they appear to be a run-of-the-mill terrorist group due to their aggressive modus operandi, the Flag-Smashers strive for a theoretically noble cause. The 5-year span between the Snap and the Blip forced the world to work together in order to survive, and the Flag-Smashers want to maintain the world undivided after everyone who disappeared came back. The Flag-Smashers are anti-patriotic, which will lead them to confront Falcon and the Winter Soldier (and Falcon's sidekick, Torres, has already had a run-in with them), but they don't want to destroy the world. Quite the opposite, they want to unify it, creating a nationless, borderless world, which sounds great in theory but would be a terrible idea in practice. With Captain America's close friends eager to defend his legacy and the rise of the government's own Captain America, John Walker, the Flag-Smashers are likely doomed to fail. However, their disadvantage also makes them the underdogs of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, only defeated by the very patriotism they wanted to eradicate in the first place.
The Flag-Smasher's main criticism of superheroes is exemplified in the opening scene of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. In it, Falcon fights Batroc the Leaper and the LAF, but only until they get to the Libyan border. If they had crossed into a territory where Falcon and the U.S. government don't have jurisdiction, the hero would have had to let them go. Superheroes are supposed to save the world, but many lives could be lost due to arbitrary lines drawn on a map (which was partially Steve Rogers's reason for not signing the Sokovia Accords). Of course, that is not an excuse for villains to plunge society into chaos in order to reboot it, but the Flag-Smashers are sure to make audiences question the intricacies of heroism in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
One look at the most popular movie antagonists can reveal that villains are at their best when their motivations are nuanced. Some notable examples can be found in superhero movies, and more specifically, in Marvel movies. For instance, Magneto's desire to protect mutants from humans in the X-Men movies is aggressive, but it comes from a place of empathy. In Black Panther, Erik Killmonger's defense of his heritage makes him a very determined hero rather than a mustache-twirling villain. If anything, Tony Stark was a bigger villain than many before the events of the first Iron Man movie. MCU antagonists like Baron Zemo, Vulture, Killmonger, and Thanos were driven by a thirst for justice, albeit a kind of justice that was distorted by their personal pain.
The degree of nuance in an antagonist's motivations helps them become well-developed characters much more than their level of ruthlessness. It's true that the universe would be doomed once Malekith succeeded in submerging it into darkness, but Vulture's wish to provide the best for his family makes for a much more interesting conflict. That's why the former has fallen into oblivion while the latter set the scene for the best moments of Spider-Man: Homecoming. Thanos may not have been "right" in Avengers: Infinity War and the Flag-Smashers may be misguided in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, but they do shed some light on issues that the heroes don't want to examine on their own.
from ScreenRant - Feed
Join Our Email Newsletter Now!
Join over 1,897 people who get free and fresh content delivered automatically each time we publish.
