442 - Captain America Brave New World w/ Trevor Beaulieu

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[00:01:33] What's up y'all? Welcome back to Struggle Session. I am your host Leslie Lee III. Thank you so much for tuning in. On today's episode I'm joined by special guest Trevor Beaulieu of Champagne Sharks and the White Cannon. We're talking about Captain America Brave New World. We had a wonderful conversation about that. Trevor is one of my favorite guests to talk to.

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[00:05:44] where we talk about the ring and the grudge and the grudge is hilarious. It's hilarious. I promise you. But that's enough preamble. That's enough rambling. Up next is my discussion with Trevor. Have a good one. Peace. What do you think Captain America represents today? When Julius Ona, our director and I met every day, the same two words kept coming up. Empathy and compassion.

[00:06:12] And I think that's who Sam Wilson is. I think that's why Steve Rogers gave him the shield. I think when he was at his lowest and his most difficult point, he went to Sam for help. He's a soldier. He's a member of the 58th Airborne. He's a counselor. He's selfless. And I think that's why he's such an important character in the MCU. Yeah. Well, you know, I'm going to say this. Um, I came in with really, really low expectations.

[00:06:40] Like I had no plans to see this movie until you asked me to. So, um, like I would have been fine never seeing this movie. So I got to say it beat the expectations that I had for it. But those were like beyond, uh, low. Like it was better to me than Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which I thought was abysmal. Uh, but like it was marginally better. Like, like marginally.

[00:07:09] So Captain America, Brave New World, the fourth Captain America film, the first with Blackton America. Anthony Mackie, um, as Sam Wilson, the most boring, one of the most boring black superheroes that's ever existed since the comics. I've always felt this way about Falcon. I've never liked him.

[00:07:37] He's just like a soldier who hates crime. And this is, this is our Captain America for some reason. Um, this is, this film came out. It made some money, uh, maybe not a ton. It made like 401 million, you know, I'm sure they were hoping for half a billion.

[00:07:57] It was a follow up to Captain America and excuse me, um, not Captain Falcon and Winter Soldier, a Disney plus TV series, which you kind of had to watch to under, to really get like the core heart of this movie. And, uh, it was, strangely enough, which I don't think a lot of people did, even though that series cost like $200 million to shoot.

[00:08:22] It was one of those Disney, when Disney was just throwing like, you know, all those huge budgets, budgets out at every single property they had before they pulled it out. That's when the money was cheap all over entertainment. Like every streaming service was just throwing money at, and just seeing what, what stuck and the interest rates were low. Uh, nobody cared. Uh, those days are gone, but yeah, the money was flowing. Yeah.

[00:08:49] For a while it seemed like maybe Anthony Mackie wouldn't even get his movie because that wouldn't have money started to constrict. But hey, they made it happen. Yeah. Captain America, Brave New World. They're still making these MCU movies, uh, folks. I wanted to talk with, about this one because we haven't talked in a while T and we've talked, we've talked about, you know, black superhero movies before. I think the first episode you were on, uh, was when we, uh, talked with Brie about Black Panther.

[00:09:17] So I wanted to loop back and see where the black superhero is now. Where is it? Where is it going? Where has it been? And I want to kind of talk about this because not specifically because not a lot of people talked about this as a black superhero movie. They kind of deliberately in the marketing kind of tried to down play some elements of it and some particular, uh, specific, uh, political elements of it.

[00:09:41] They really downplayed because this is a film where the villain is the president, right? Yeah. And there's a black Captain America fighting him, uh, at least from the commercials. You know, when you get into the film, they kind of complicate it a little bit, uh, soften the blow a little bit. But the film itself is like, you would think it would be really like a big deal politically.

[00:10:06] You got a black Captain America fighting, you know, a red, a giant red, uh, right leaning president, you know, obvious Trump analog. But I think like a lot of the other big Trump analogs that are out there, like Baron Harkonnen and Dune. And there's a couple others, like the filmmakers themselves don't really like talking about it and don't really highlight it and say, that's not really what they're going for.

[00:10:33] Even though this is a film called new world order, the director, the director and producers of the movie were like, no, we just want people to have a good time and not think so much about politics. Yeah. Well, uh, a couple of things that you mentioned, right? Um, I'm surprised that the movie came out from what I understand. This movie was, it actually was started during the, uh, glory days of flowing money.

[00:11:02] And we're going all in on, on wokeness post George Floyd, whatever. And it just has been screen testing so badly that it keeps, um, getting reshot and pushed back. So apparently from what I read, this was supposed to have come out like a while before. And it's actually contradicting other Marvel stuff that I haven't seen precisely because it's out of order.

[00:11:30] Like, I think this was supposed to come out before secret invasion and some other stuff. And that's why there's some stuff that should have been happening with the scrolls that is not mentioned anymore and all this weird, weird stuff. So this thing was originally by, um, the writer, um, I think Malcolm Spellman, the same writer who wrote, um, who wrote Falcon, the winter soldier.

[00:11:56] For what I understand, it was originally supposed to have a lot more, um, politics. And the original name of it was new. Was it, I think it was new world order, which was, um, yes, it's called brave new world, but originally it was new world order. Yeah. For what I understand, it was a lot more, um, political. And now it has, I think a total of five or six writers.

[00:12:22] So that's a lot of rewrites, uh, like five extra people were brought on. So, and there were multiple rounds of reshoots. So what I suspect is it was probably originally a lot more political, like Falcon, the winter soldier. Um, the pendulum is kind of swung back on anything woke.

[00:12:43] So I feel like there's some hints of racial stuff left in the movie that they kind of skirt around, uh, that might've been left from old scripts or whatever. But I have a feeling they extremely sanitized the movie. They were like, look, people are tired of this stuff. We have a lot of flops in a row. Uh, cause in general, I feel like there's a lot of capitulation.

[00:13:06] Like we see it a lot post Trump with all these people who were, you know, down with the post George Floyd agenda. Now, you know, being anti-woke, you have Facebook and, and, and meta, um, after, um, Biden won and all that stuff, they were all about having fact checkers. And, uh, you know, we're not gonna do fake news anymore.

[00:13:32] And now he's got a gold chain and he's doing mixed martial arts and talking about masculinity and wokeness. Like everyone's kind of read the writing on the wall. Like, like, um, it's, it's a new, um, like that's the brave new world. Like the anti-wokeness is the brave new world. Like either you're being explicitly like anti-woke or you're downplaying, um, divisiveness.

[00:13:57] So this, this was one of the least woke, um, for lack of a better word, I hate using that word. But when you, when you say it, everyone knows exactly what you mean, unfortunately. Uh, this was the least woke post end game project that Marvel has done in a while. And they were clearly trying to avoid any third rails and it might've saved them from some cringier moments. Like you need to do better, uh, Senator, like, you know, stuff like that.

[00:14:27] But it also took away anything potentially interesting to me. Yeah. So I, I'm going to drop the clip in here, but, uh, so just to briefly recap Falcon and Winter Soldier was about Sam Wilson becoming Captain America by crushing, by proving that he earned, he, he earns it by crushing a, uh, uprising of third world super, super powered, uh, teenagers who

[00:14:55] are trying to topple the world governments, uh, for, and, you know, redistribute wealth and all that. Uh, so they are the villains, the flags, flag smashers is what they're called. And he has to stop them. Um, and at the end, he does admit that they kind of have a point and he tells all these world leaders literally in the speech that they have to do better. And that's how, that's who he is as Captain America.

[00:15:23] Just this very, very weak sauce. I like him to compare him. Actually, he's like if a train from the boys was like a serious character, you know, that's basically what this Sam Wilson, Captain America is. And Anthony Mackie himself as an actor, I've tried T, I've tried to like him. He's whack. I'm so glad you're bringing this up. He's whack. Yeah. He just doesn't have it.

[00:15:49] But, but let me ask you, cause I've had this problem with him and it resurfaced with this movie. What is he missing? Like he's, he's slightly above average in a lot of categories. So somehow it should work. Like he's not scrawny. His body looks like he works out. Uh, he has, he has a type of charisma, a type of lack, like ability.

[00:16:15] Like I don't dislike him, but nothing adds up to a leading man somehow. And I can't figure out what it is. At least it's just some, some guys just don't have it. Like when he was paired, when he was just a sidekick, it was fine. It worked. But him being the main guy, the guy, it just does. He just does not have something to him. He just lacks a certain level of, I think credibility maybe, or yeah, the realness to, he comes across.

[00:16:44] He always feels like he's acting and you very rarely feel like he's actually playing, you know, he's actually the person that he's embodied. And to be fair to him, this character is a nothing character. He doesn't believe in anything, at least in this iteration of the script, what they ended up at, at, as you said, after all the rewrites and reshoots that costs tens of millions of dollars. I love to point out that they, they'd spend all this damn money and they can't get a script together.

[00:17:14] It's just amazing to me. But yeah, you know, he's not given much of the character. In fact, he's not even the protagonist of this movie. The villain of the movie, the leader is the protagonist, actual protagonist of the movie. He's the person who actually wants something and going after something. The only thing this Captain America does is react to stuff and oddly whine about the fact

[00:17:41] that he doesn't have superpowers when he could have them. What did you think about that? That seemed very strange to me. First of all, to have this black Captain America, not have him have powers and then make that kind of like the only character beat that he has. The only defining thing about his personality is that he doesn't have superpowers because he doesn't want regular people to be enviable of him.

[00:18:08] They want, he wants them to think that they can get on his level while Steve Rogers never has a problem showing off his superpowers and how is his superiority. I mean, one thing that's kind of weird with the MCU, well not weird, just different. I don't know if a lot of people notice if you haven't read the comics, but the Captain America in the comics is not as strong as the one in the movies.

[00:18:38] Like the super soldier serum in the comics just makes you a peak human condition. So he's as powerful as a human being can naturally be. He's like a maximized human. But the one in the MCU, he can do things like hold a helicopter in place with one hand. He does insane things.

[00:19:07] And they've never like explicitly spelled it out, but he's clearly, so I think the Falcon not having powers in as Captain America in the comics is not as big a deal because it's like, okay, you just have to work a little bit harder than Steve did. But in theory, you can close some of the gap. You'll never be as good as him, but you can close some of the gap. But the gap is way more outrageous in the MCU.

[00:19:37] And to me, I'm like, the only reason they're probably keeping without power is some weird sense of loyalty to the comic. But you've already juiced up the original Steve Rogers. So why not just give him a super soldier too? Like, who cares? Like, I don't understand why they feel this loyalty, like you said, to keep him unpowered. It's not really adding to the narrative. And you end up making him do all the stuff that a superpower, like there's no way.

[00:20:06] He goes hand to hand with the Hulk, bruh. He goes hand to hand with the Hulk. Like they... And they try to make an excuse about the Wakandan armor. I'm convinced that was a retcon that they put in later because they were already watching the movie and they're like, this makes no sense. And you know why I think that? Because he's still doing crazy stuff when he doesn't have the armor on. So I don't think it was really the armor in the original draft that gave him all those powers. Because they had him doing crazy stuff with and without the armor.

[00:20:35] Then they have this scene in the beginning where it's like, he has the Wakandan armor or the vibranium that gives him extra powers. And then I'm like, okay, I guess you're explaining it. And I saw him do stuff later with no costume, surviving. Like, you know, another example I think that was like that, Sidewinder like stabs him in the guy, the explicit scene later. Wow, you're still okay. Yeah, I had Kevlar. I'm like, yeah, get the fuck out of here. That was a... Yeah. Yeah, you see him stab. You see it go in.

[00:21:05] But I do want to say, we're kind of jumping all over the place. But folks, you know, the plot of this movie is fairly straightforward. It tries to have like a somewhat of like a political thriller tone where like you do know from the beginning, like, yes, there's something wrong with this president, Thunderbrow, Ross, and his calls for unity might or might not be bullshit. And he is on the outs with Captain America, Anthony Mackie, who just hang hanging out at

[00:21:33] a bar watching the inauguration, which they really missed the trick given what the actual inauguration was like in the real world. Like, Thunderbolt Ross would have had like, he would have forced Captain America to come down there. Like, he would have had all the whack-ass superheroes too that he could get. All the right-wing superheroes would have been out there like with him. They kind of missed the trick there. But... I think they didn't want to make him too Trumpish because I guess they wanted to redeem him at the end.

[00:22:03] So they were kind of stuck. Yeah. So didn't Thunderbolt Ross, nevertheless, even though he doesn't get along with Captain America, Sam Wilson, because he tried to put... He did put him in jail, right? Didn't he put him and a couple of others because they sided with Steve Rogers during... To protect the Winter Soldier because he was an assassin who killed a bunch of people, I guess. That was the plot of that movie. And now he's running for Congress. Now he's running for Senate.

[00:22:32] As we find out in this movie, this 100-year-old Russian assassin. I guess stranger things have happened. Yeah. But so they have to send Captain America to Mexico to do a mission, right? And the action scene is whack. It's whack. It's no good. It's no good. A couple of them are decent, but this one, the opening one is very, very bad.

[00:23:01] And you know, that's one of the things that happened with Anthony Mackie's credibility. I can't tell if he's part of the problem with the action scenes or if they're just choreographed so badly. Anybody would have been... He looks slow. Yeah. Especially in the first one, but in a lot of them, he just looks slow and lengthy and like he doesn't know what he's doing. And it's hard to blame unless you know, like usually they can work around the bad actor.

[00:23:29] And he's done like this before, you know, so I don't know. If I made a note when I was watching lesser CW action, like some of the worst CW seasons of like Arrow where, you know, it was already in decline, stuff like that. It felt like that. Oh, and I have to say the suits, because I talked about this with the Marvels, the suits in the MCU, they look awful now. They look awful.

[00:23:56] They look cheaper literally than the porn parody versions of the suits. I swear to God, if you look them up and they look worse than the ECW suits. I don't know what they're... I think they're... And it's not hyperbole. Yeah, there's no... That's very true. They're not hyperbole. I think they... I tried to look and see exactly. I think what I saw was they don't have texture anymore or something for some reason. And some of them are CGI. I think his is mostly real in this one. Kind of hard to tell. But it's like, it's ill-fitting.

[00:24:26] It's like overly puffy. Like you see like it fold and bend. Whereas, you know, fucking they had Chris Evans in there, like that skin tight shit. He looked like a fucking Rob Liefeld drawing in this. And they got Anthony Mackie. Like they need the menswear guy to help out the MCU. Because it's... He looks whack in it, unfortunately. It does not help the bad fight scenes. But we do learn that he has a new psychic, a Falcon. What's his name?

[00:24:56] Joaquin Torres. Joaquin. And it feels like they add... It felt like he was added in after how successful Top Gun was. Top Gun 2 was. It almost felt like that kind of an insert character. But he kind of works as a partner for him. And he was set up in Falcon and Winter Soldier. He was there for a couple of minutes. Yeah, he was there.

[00:25:25] He's actually not brand new to the MCU. He was helping him out a little bit in Falcon and Winter Soldier. And they were foreshadowing him. Because I guess this character, from what I read, has been in the Falcon and Captain America comics. But that's one of the problems with this movie is... This movie should have been called Captain America Dangling Plot Threads.

[00:25:50] Because there's plot threads from Celestials from five minutes of Captain America and the Falcon and Winter Soldier here. From the Incredible Hulk 15 years ago. Yes. I forgot to mention Harrison Ford is playing Thunderbolt Ross. Who is the same Thunderbolt Ross that I think William Hurt played. But William Hurt passed away a couple of years back. And it's the same character.

[00:26:17] And they're talking about Betsy Ross from that film. How many people saw that movie and remember that film? And that's the emotional core of this movie is from the Hulk that Edward Norton played. And they don't even have the Hulk in this one. They didn't get Mark Ruffalo. Yeah. And an increasing problem with Mark Ruffalo, I feel. I thought he was okay in the first couple of appearances.

[00:26:44] But he's gradually just become Mark Ruffalo in the movies. Yes. Like, he does not feel anything remotely. He never felt like what Ed Norton felt like. But now he's so far and apart that I think if you put him with Betty Ross now, it would just... The chemistry would be all... It wouldn't feel right. Yeah, it would be strange. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you would have a different Thunderbolt Ross and a different Bruce Banner who's played totally different than Ed Norton.

[00:27:14] And it wouldn't even work anyway. Like, they need to let the MCU go and just reboot it. But they just don't want to. It's like an aging athlete who's just going out sad. Yeah. Who retired five seasons too late. Going out sad, but I have to say Harrison Ford brings his A-game to this. They must have had him on that good Zaza. Yeah. He is bringing his all.

[00:27:42] He is way more into this than he was in Star Wars. Like, he is trying to... He is acting like he is in a movie. Movie. He is giving it his all. I actually feel kind of sad for him. Like, I just want him to sit home and be able to relax and smoke weed. We don't have to bring him out for this. They are younger actors to play the president. He can just... I don't know what's going on with him, but he's letting himself be trotted out for everything. He was in the new Blade Runner.

[00:28:08] He was trotted out in the latest Indiana Jones. And I don't think any of these movies they trotted him out for particularly good. He says openly he does it for the money. Yeah, he has to. And I actually have to say, the whole Red Hulk thing, it seemed completely ridiculous, especially with the tone of the commercials like it was a political thriller. It kind of works.

[00:28:34] It kind of works in this movie because of the way they plot it and the way they tell the story. In a better movie, it would be a decent arc. It would be decent. Yeah. I mean, my problem is I'm against the idea of a Red Hulk just as a concept. I just don't like the idea of a Red Hulk. I don't like the idea of changing Thunderbolt Ross into a Red Hulk. It just takes away a Hulk's uniqueness.

[00:29:04] And also, I like the idea of the army and the humans trying to stop the Hulk and creating things like the Abomination. The idea of Thunderbolt Ross doing it himself, it just changes him too much. That's my personal thing. I hate the Red Hulk. Yeah, I understand that. I was a little bit more soft on it because they were thoughtful enough to make it like, I thought he was deliberately doing it from the commercial, but it's not.

[00:29:33] He's kind of tricked into doing it. And his tease that the movie goes on, it actually probably would have been more effective if they didn't put the Red Hulk in the commercial at all, which they didn't do in some of the early ones. But, you know, I can give him kind of a pass on it. I like some of the kind of espionage stuff. It feels like, you know, a really cheap Mission Impossible at times, which, you know, I can take. I can tolerate at times.

[00:30:02] I made a note that this was the Wish.com Winter Soldier. Yes. Like, it was just a poor man's Winter Soldier because it has a lot of the same beats, except Sam is now Captain America. Joaquin is the Falcon. And Sabra is now the Natasha Black Widow. Like, beat by beat, even the running through the corridors, chasing somebody, jumps out the window,

[00:30:29] the brainwashed ex-ally that you have to clear their name or figure out what's up with their mind control. Like, it was just weirdly analogous, step-by-step to Winter Soldier. It was very, very bizarre to me that they played it so note-for-note the same, except everything was worse. Like, the fight season with the soldier was very well choreographed. You go from having...

[00:30:59] Not the airport one. Not the airport. Oh, that's Civil War. My bad. Yeah, that's Civil War. No, no. With Civil War, the fight choreography wasn't as good. But, like, when Chris Evans is fighting that MMA... Oh, George St. Pierre. I think his name is... Bat Rock. Yeah, George St. Pierre. Yeah, that was great.

[00:31:18] And you go from that to ported, choreographed Anthony Mackie fighting a senior citizen in Giancarlo Esposito. And Giancarlo Esposito is a great actor. He's very good at being menacing, but he's here as just a 60-something-year-old man without powers. Yeah, I... Who looks like a 60-something-year-old man. Yeah, I dug him as a character. It felt like a different movie every time he showed up.

[00:31:46] It felt more like a, you know, like a heat or something like that. And if that was more the tone of it and the level of it, and we're just talking guys and guns, like, I think that's a much better movie. And I think that's part of the movie that sort of got cut out, because he was supposed to have, like, a mercenary crew. Like, the pro wrestler Seth Rollins was supposed to film scenes for this. But he ended up completely cut out.

[00:32:12] So I would have liked a version of this film that, like, maybe you don't have the Red Hulk, you just have a bunch of guys shooting and shit. Like, okay, then... Yeah. Maybe they could have super advanced weapons to make up for the fact that he's 66 years old. Yes. But instead you have Captain America with Wakandan armor fighting a senior citizen with a revolver. And I still think that's the best fight scene in the movie. I actually... It is. It is, like, just because of how it's pacing as well.

[00:32:41] And, like, the movie should have been a little bit more than that. And I like that Captain America, he gets stabbed and he stabbed the guys back. But the movie doesn't really... Like, it has some of those Jack Reacher, Jack Ryan, Jason Bourne sort of moments. But then it's back into the AI scripted plot almost. And then the Marvel stuff almost immediately. Like, it loses any sort of tension.

[00:33:10] It goes to the comedy. And then... Yeah. One great example of that is, like, Bucky gives a speech to Sam. And then it's like, did your speech writers write for that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What you think? What you think? It's like, oh, come on. Like, it's okay to let... You know what I mean? Imagine those guys who think anything that shows vulnerability is gay. So they always gotta, like, say, pause or something. That's how Marvel does drama. It's like, oh, someone might think this is gay.

[00:33:39] Let me make a joke out of it. It feels like that. Yeah. Kind of immature guy. All right. So one thing I was absolutely horrified in this film. And rumored to be one of the reasons for the reshoots. Sabra, the IDF super soldier, played by... Let me get this actress's name completely right. Just to make sure I get this right. Because people...

[00:34:09] I think it was three names. I think it was Ruth Behat something. Yeah, so... I'll find it. Ruth Ben... I don't know how to pronounce it. Ben Giat. Oh, no, no. That's someone else. That's a historian. Forget it. Shira Haas. Shira Haas. Okay. Where did I get Ruth from? I was way off. Yeah, so Shira Haas, she's an Israeli actress. And she plays Sabra, who is from the comics.

[00:34:39] She was a super-powered IDF soldier. She was actually appeared in the Hulk comic as... She was the antagonist in the comic. She ends up... Her actions ends up getting the Palestinian child killed. And the Hulk is madder. And it was kind of weird that they would put this character in the movie in the first place. I remember when it was announced, it was controversial. People have been protesting this movie because of this character's inclusion since then.

[00:35:08] It really didn't make sense why we bring in this particular small-time character with the name that evokes a massacre of Palestinians, Sabra. And then I watched this film, finally. And she is awful in this movie. She is... People are saying that Gal Gadot is the worst actress in the world. Shira Haas is even worse. She is terrible.

[00:35:34] And unlike Gal, she doesn't even have the benefit of looking like a superhero. She's like five feet tall. Not good. Looks ridiculous next to Anthony Mackie, who's jacked. And she's trying to go toe-to-toe with him. Yeah. And they don't specify that she has any type of power. No. She's just a black widow, which is just really good training. And, you know, it was kind of ridiculous with Scarlett Johansson, too.

[00:36:04] But they had a way of making Scarlett Johansson's fighting very, like, judo-ish and leverage-based. That kind of worked. Like, she would kind of helicopter around your neck or use your weight against you. Using some lucha libre, some head scissors, what have you. Yeah. Yeah. Whereas here, they basically just fight like a jacked man. She just, like, plows through people. Like, she's 300 pounds. Lifts them up and slams them in the ground.

[00:36:30] Like, they didn't give her a unique to being small fighting style at all. And she's really, really, really small. Like, noticeably on the screen. I am not talking about red carpet pictures. I'm just saying when you see the movie, it's shocking. Yeah. And I read her backstory, and it's kind of sad. Like, she, as a child, got cancer. And it stunted her growth. And that's really, you know, a sad story.

[00:36:58] I don't want to hold that against her as a human being. But that's not the kind of person that needs to be in this role as far as what you're asking the character to do when you're trying to sell the character doing. She plays the same character that the women play opposite, like, Tom Cruise in all the Mission Impossible movies. Yeah, or more specifically, what Scarlett Johansson was doing in Winter Soldier. I feel like she was about down to literally being a black widow.

[00:37:27] And it just pales a comparison. Like, whether you like Scarlett Johansson or not, I think she's a million times more charming than this woman was. And she has way more chemistry with Chris Evans. Yeah. One thing I do want to say, one character I liked, and one actor who, again, also took this very seriously, Carl Lumbly as Isaiah Bradley. Oh, it was great. The original Captain America.

[00:37:54] Now, if you don't know this story, this is actually kind of deep. And it's actually fairly interesting. So, I think around 90, was it 96? Or was it maybe a little bit later? It was in the 2000s. Yeah, I think it was a little bit later. It was during the Joe Quesada years. I forgot when he took over. I feel like it was post-2000. Yeah. But early 2000s. Yeah, so it was, yes, 2003. So, there was a comic book called Truth, Red, White, and Black.

[00:38:23] It was written by a writer who's no longer with us, Robert Morales, who was a serious cat when he passed away. Alan Moore wrote a tribute to him. He was, before he passed away, he was supposed to be the executor of Samuel Delaney's estate. So, this is a serious, yeah, this is a serious cat, serious writer. And he pitched this comic book to Marvel.

[00:38:51] And he was shocked that they took it because it was so radical and political. And it was called Truth, Red, White, and Black. And just to break it down, essentially, it's basically bringing the Tuskegee experiments into the world of Marvel Comics and the world of Captain America,

[00:39:11] making it essential to his origin story because it suggests that a Tuskegee-like study is how they were able to come up with the super soldier serum that they eventually gave to Steve Rogers. And also, I think this is in the comics books as well, but even before Truth, Red, White, and Black,

[00:39:32] that it was actually Nazis who helped, that the United States recruited, who helped do these experiments. And what we didn't know before this comic was that black men who died and were horrifically scarred by these experiments, all of them died except for Isaiah Bradley. And he was the original Captain America.

[00:39:59] And he got abandoned behind enemy lines. And, you know, he just has this awful backstory. And it was on his suffering that they created Captain America. And that's how the comic frames it. It frames it as like a secret history of, you know, racial oppression, you know, as a parallel to the Tuskegee experiments. And, you know, Robert Morales was, it was very political.

[00:40:28] And when he wrote Captain America, the mainline Captain America after this, he actually ended up getting kicked off because he was too political and the fans got mad. But it was a great, he was a great writer, great series, Truth, Red, White, and Black. Very shockingly, you know, political. Like, they would not put out, I feel like they would never put out a comic book like this today. This is more radical than the stuff Ta-Nehisi Coates was writing.

[00:40:56] And it's actually surprising that they included this into the MCU. I gotta give some props for the writers for that, for bringing Isaiah Bradley into it. And the Isaiah Bradley character gets more of a voice, I think, in the MCU. And he's always right, but he's never allowed to be right within the context of the movie, right? Like, everything he says about, like, Captain America shouldn't be working for the government. What are you doing? Why are you listening to them? Don't trust that president.

[00:41:25] But he's always put off by our Anthony Mackie character. He's never really given a reason why he's wrong, but we just assume that, you know, Anthony Mackie's way of capitulation is better. He's also wildly, like, inconsistent because he acts like he's bitter and hates this stuff. But he also acts like he believes in...

[00:41:53] He's, like, one of those representation black people at the end of the day. Like, he's always saying stuff like, you know, you got to be the best. He's saying stuff like, we need you as an example. Like, okay, do you believe in institutions or do you not? Like, you gotta make up your mind. It depends on what the plot needs him to say is what he says. When I say I like the... What I feel like is the real character, just this old, pissed off, angry black man with superpowers, I would like to watch that movie.

[00:42:22] I would rather watch a movie about that Captain America than the Anthony Mackie one. But the reason, and, you know, I really want to talk about this because it's kind of a meta commentary who's playing him. He's played by Carl Lumbly, who played a superhero called Mantis on a TV show in 1994. Had you ever seen it, T? Had you ever heard of it? Oh, I have heard of it.

[00:42:52] I don't think I've ever actually, like, seen it. Well, let me tell you something. So you only got to watch the pilot. And it's on YouTube. It's actually on YouTube in HD. So it's great to watch. It was created by Sam Raimi, who I think at that point done Darkman and would go on to do Spider-Man. And Sam Hamm, who wrote Batman by Tim Burton.

[00:43:17] You know, big hits, big guys in Hollywood at the time, especially in the burgeoning world of superheroes. And they thought at the time when you go back and look at the press, they thought superheroes were taken over then. They had no idea how big it would be, you know, eventually. But when this when the TV show Mantis came out, the original pilot came out on Fox. It was so interesting because it was super black, like almost all the characters were black.

[00:43:47] It was black superhero. You didn't really see that. He had these weird, interesting powers. It had, you know, this amazing cast. Carl Lumbly, Roger Rees, Gina Torres, who who I was absolutely positively in love with at the as a as when I first saw on the screen. Yeah, I never knew she was on that show. Well, here's the thing. She was only in the pilot because all the complexity, all the racial politics.

[00:44:17] Again, Mantis, I forgot to mention, Mantis is a superhero who was a brilliant black scientist who was nevertheless disconnected from his community. He was actually one of the people who were describing, you know, kind of this, you know, representation type Negroes. And he but he ends up getting shot by a police, by a police off police sniper. And it paralyzes him.

[00:44:43] And he builds a super suit in order to overcome this because he's a brilliant inventor. So it's like Iron Man, but police violence built in like this fairly, you know, radical idea. And the plot of the show was about how there was a conspiracy from the police, you know, to I forget exactly what it was. But like the overarching plot in that pilot episode was like, we need to take down the police in this fictional city. They're all corrupt.

[00:45:09] And like he worked with the gangs, you know, like to try. Oh, wow. Imagine that in 1994, like trying to, you know, say like the gangs are like a symptom of a larger issue. Like very, you know, radical thinking show, especially for written by like Sam Raimi, who was like a conservative, you know, like it's a very interesting take on it. The show comes out is popular. People loved it. It got great ratings. The black people were.

[00:45:37] I remember black people being excited for the show. We got black superhero. The show is good. It's hot. It's great. After the pilot episode, the from high up. Word came down that they need to change a few things around. They got rid of every single character on the show, except for Carl Lumbly.

[00:46:02] And all of them were black and replaced them with all white characters, except for one. Except for one. Even got rid of Gina Torres. I've been mad about that since then. Explicitly, you know, there was new articles coming out. And at the time where it was basically said that like they thought the show was too black to be a long running show, even though it was extremely popular when it came out.

[00:46:28] Sam Raimi and Sam Hamm actually quit, walked away from the show after it got picked up for pilot, which you rarely hear of. But like, yeah, it was like one of the most obviously racist things like you would see in TV history. Like a black, a really cool black superhero, one of the first superhero shows. And like it was well received. It was very good.

[00:46:54] And they killed it essentially and made and the show went to crap like as soon as they ended the pilot, like the show got sillier and nobody really liked it. And it got so bad that in the last episode, they actually just killed off the main character, Mantis. They even they killed him off. But he was eaten. But he was killed by an invisible dinosaur. Actually, he was killed trying to stop an invisible dinosaur.

[00:47:19] So you go from one of the first really good TV superhero shows, I guess, besides Batman to, you know, being killed by an invisible dinosaur, all because like literally the executives were racist. That's a damn shame. I didn't know the pilot was that was that good. So it is kind of meta in that he's kind of like the first Captain America. Yes, exactly. Carl Lumley's he should be bitter about superhero movies himself.

[00:47:49] You know, he's he kind of said like he when he was on the red carpet, he's like, I'm glad to be here. This is a moment, you know, kind of waiting for. Now, thankfully, Carl Lumley, he's never he's never been out of work. I don't think he's. No, I don't think so. He's been. He's good. Yeah. But it was it was of all the things it is nice to see him, you know, in that role at the very least. Is he wearing padding or something like he is a very imposing figure in this? Yeah.

[00:48:15] I was I remember him being tall, but I don't remember him looking this imposing. No, I think he has some padding on because he's not that big in real life. OK, good. He feels more like a physical threat to me than Anthony Mackie. Something about the way he carries the mask works for me. Like if that's a suit, he's carrying it very convincingly. Like he looks like a tank. He feels like a tank.

[00:48:42] Like he's very convincing throwing around all the props and everything. Like he there's a way in which Anthony Mackie just doesn't sell the action for me or doesn't sell the threat. Like I just can't figure out what Anthony Mackie is missing, but they put him in so much stuff and it bothers me because there's a lot of stuff where I'm like, I want to see stuff with more of a black lead. But oh, it's Anthony Mackie again. Yeah, Anthony Mackie again. Like, damn.

[00:49:13] Like, yeah. And I want to root for him, but I just I just I just can't. I mean, this this movie was it has all the bad stuff that Marvel's had from the beginning, minus any of the stuff that Marvel was good at. Because, you know, unlike a lot of Marvel haters, I will admit that the MCU did do some things well.

[00:49:41] You know, like if you look at the CGI in the first Iron Man, it's great CGI. It looks way better than what they do today. Like the CGI was not always crap. They used to hire good actors who did good performances, even when the material was subpar. I mean, this this one did have some good actors, but some of them were very bad as well.

[00:50:07] Like it was the same undercutting of all seriousness with jokes was annoying. The Joaquin guy, I thought he could have been good, but his jokes has got to be too much. Like he just got on my nerves. Yeah, too much, especially since the he gets injured at a certain point. You're supposed to feel super sorry for him.

[00:50:32] But given what you've seen in this being the 35th or 6th Marvel movie is like, who takes it seriously? You know, like there's no I guess there's one problem before and we've been running a little bit long. We can wrap up soon because this movie is it's kind of bland. It's not really. Yeah, it's not much to. Like even my notes, I'm looking at my notes and there's not much in the notes. Yeah, I think we cover most.

[00:50:58] I really just wanted to kind of talk about Mantis because I really love the show. And where does this fit in the pantheon of black superheroes? You would think a black Captain America is going toe to toe with Red Hulk in Washington, D.C. would be cool. But it's just kind of you're kind of waiting for it to get over with because the fight doesn't seem realistic. Oh, yeah, it doesn't. Here's something else, too. Right.

[00:51:26] Hulk's used to be so badass that regular Iron Man couldn't fight a Hulk. Iron Man had to put an extra armor on top of his armor called the Hulkbuster armor to fight. Like they were smart enough to never try to pretend that Steve Rogers could fight the Hulk, which is a problem I used to have in the comics. That was one thing they did better in the comics.

[00:51:53] In the comics, they have Steve Rogers fight the Hulk and hit a pressure point behind his knee. It's dumb stuff like that. Yeah, Batman did the same thing too. Batman took out the Hulk one time. Oh, yeah, kicked him in the stomach or something. Dumb stuff, pressure point. I hate when comics do that. And they used to not do that with the MCU. That was an example of something that they did well. And this time, they're doing that dumb logic. Like with this vibranium armor, he's able to pierce his skin.

[00:52:22] He's shooting these little feathers that... I mean, the Hulk's supposed to be bulletproof. So why can these feathers pierce his skin? And he's landing blows that make him scream. And I was like, oh, get the fuck out of here. Yeah. It gets silly season. And you could tell like a lot of that stuff is just re-shot, re-shot, re-shot. Because it looks super cheap. The cherry blossom trees do not look good at all. No. No. Oh, my God. They look terrible.

[00:52:50] The fight scenes against the missiles and the planes look terrible. It looks like a video game. It was so boring. Like it was really boring. Like there is this Top Gun inspired scene where the Captain America and the two Falcons are flying. And they're trying to stop the American and Japanese jets from fighting over Antimantium that's been left by the Celestial, which is more powerful now than Vibranium.

[00:53:21] Anyway, the scene is not engaging at all. It's just dull. It's like if you try to recreate Top Gun without actually going back and watching Top Gun. It's like, oh, no. There's like two jets go this way and two jets come that way and they do this and they do this. But you have to know like specifically the visual language to how that works. And the MCU don't do that.

[00:53:47] The MCU, even though this is one of the better looking for the non-reshoot stuff, this is one of the better looking MCU movies lately. It looks like a movie mostly, which is where we started. Like it is kind of a movie except when it's not. Carl Lumbly is good and the character is good except when it's not. And, you know, it's just kind of there.

[00:54:12] I know one thing I want to ask you, even though I know we're running long, was what were your thoughts about the leader? Because I thought he was very disappointing and weird. So, again, I at least give them points for the coherency of the plot.

[00:54:31] If you lay out the plot, it actually makes sense mostly with even with some of the complications of the president has kept the leader locked away in prison for 15 years. I don't know how he thought that was going to end up. But, you know, I'll go with it. But also it says that they blamed him for what happened in Harlem. But I want to know more about how. Yeah. He was knocked out on the grass last time we saw him. Yeah.

[00:55:00] And apparently they blamed him for a Hulk rampage. Yeah. Like from 15 years ago. Even though the Hulks had several rampages since then. Yeah. And he's like just walking around like taking pictures. It is funny. Yeah. He's part. Yeah. Makes no sense. Like the leaders in jail. Okay. I take I guess I got to take back the plot making some sense. But once you get really into it, it's like. Yeah. Okay. The president did something wrong. And now his sins are now he's got to pay for it. Or the movie.

[00:55:30] And I like the leader in that role. But he and I like kind of the mind control gimmick. Yeah. It works at least. It doesn't make sense why he only does it to certain people. You know? Like why does he never mind control Captain America? I was wondering that too. The image looked terrible. I wish they had the old school big head leader. And they showed production art where he was supposed to have the old school big forehead. I don't know where they went for like the broccoli head.

[00:56:00] I don't know what that. He has like. Yeah. He has a broccoli head. And I can understand if this was a movie that kept it closer. To reality. But this is a movie of a red Hulk. So why not? Yeah. Also have him be the leader at least by the end. It's a strange choice. Like I. And again. That's Tim Blake Nelson. I actually don't think his performance in this is that good. Was he the actor? The good actor. You said maybe doesn't have a good performance. I think he felt phoned in.

[00:56:29] It feels like he's phoned shit in now. I mean he also wasn't written very well. No. But I don't know. Like I was very surprised by how disappointed I was by him. But you know what's very funny? It's the last thing I'll say. This I thought was very funny. They made him into more like a cat. A different Marvel character called the Mad Thinker. The Mad Thinker was the probability guy. Oh yeah. The leader wasn't. Yeah. The Mad Thinker's always been like. There was a 96.4 chance you would happen to walk down that street.

[00:56:58] It was very like funny how ridiculous he was in the silver age. Whereas the leader was just more of a mad scientist, master planner. He wasn't so much into probabilities. But this one they made him very much the probability guy. Like there was a 74.9% chance you were going to do this. He knows all the probabilities. Right? And he still keeps getting everything wrong anyway.

[00:57:26] Not because Sam Wilson outsmarts him. Like Sam Wilson doesn't know that he's growing up against a probability guy. Right? So it's not like Sam Wilson's like, oh this guy is into probabilities. Let me play 12 degree chess and do what he doesn't expect. Sam Wilson just does what he thinks is best. Yes. And it just always happens to be the exact thing that the leader wasn't expecting.

[00:57:52] But the leader acts like Sam Wilson did something like brilliant. And it's like, no, Sam Wilson wasn't doing anything brilliant. You just predicted wrong. So they kept undermining the character over and over again. And at least they had it be like Sam Wilson was deliberately trying to outsmart him. I mean that was still kind of undermining the character. But it would be better than just the character just being wrong. You know? It was just very, very bizarre how they talked up this character.

[00:58:22] And they kept having him conveniently fuck up the probabilities only against Sam Wilson. Yeah. He was able to coordinate an assassination attempt on the president as well as an international incident from a CIA black site prison. But he can't outsmart just one, you know, overconfident Negro liberal. Yeah. Yeah. And Sam Wilson wasn't even trying to outsmart him.

[00:58:51] Like he made something where he had Isaiah Bradley get attacked in prison. And the probability was supposed to be like 80% that he turned back. Yeah. Right? And he did the opposite. But he didn't do it to outsmart him. He didn't realize. He never realized that that was part of a plot. He just said, oh, he's fine. Yeah. He'll be able to take care of himself. Yeah. Yeah. So it wasn't even like outsmarting.

[00:59:18] He just predicted badly that of what the guy was going to do. It was just so weird. All right. So that was Captain America, Brave New World. I guess the question we asked at the end of these ones, T, is would you tell someone to bother watching this if it was on TNT? If you're cleaning your house, yeah. Okay. Like if you want something that's on in the background, but you don't have to pay 100% attention to, yeah.

[00:59:47] If you want to give your undivided attention to it, I would say no. Yeah. Look up for the Giancarlo scenes. He gives you what you want. He's playing himself. But other than that, you could probably skip this one. All right. So T, thank you so much for coming on the show once again. Always a pleasure. I think you're almost at the top of the leaderboard for guests over the years, but we haven't had you on for a couple of years. But I'm happy to have you back. So where can people find you? Yeah. Check out Champagne Sharks.

[01:00:17] You can go to ChampagneSharks.com and get all the links or Patreon.com forward slash Champagne Sharks. Which I was talking about over there. Yeah. We're talking about, well, it's kind of funny. Lately, it's usually about politics, race, pop culture, particularly kind of out-the-box thinking about race relations and cultural analysis and media analysis.

[01:00:44] But lately, we've been really talking about how everything's a scam. That's basically our recent theme has been like, we're living in scam world. And yeah, you should check it out. Also, there's a new podcast that I'm doing with Josh Olson. It just started. The White Cannon. We're probably going to have you on it. Yeah, White Cannon. We're going to have you on it soon. Oh, awesome. Yeah, yeah. But The White Cannon.

[01:01:10] Basically, we analyze a movie that's very iconic in the white community, but not really with any other community. And we have white people, non-white people discuss and analyze the movie. But it's not, it's in a fun way. It's not a dour, sociological type of thing. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on, everyone. Yeah, yeah. Thanks for having me on. And yeah, let's do it again soon. All right.

[01:01:40] Thank you so much, everyone. Have a good one. Peace. Take care. Thank you all so much for supporting the show, for subscribing at patreon.com slash struggle session. The website is sesh.show. Hit us up on email, thestrugglesession at gmail.com.