The Falcon & The Winter Soldier: How John Walker was framed
The Falcon & The Winter Soldier is an interesting examination of Captain America’s legacy and his impact on a number of different characters. Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes fought alongside Steve Rogers. They understood the strength of Captain America wasn’t the shield, the super-soldier serum or the costume but the man underneath.
There’s a moment in the fifth episode of the series where Sam tries to talk down the increasingly problematic Karli as her Flag Smashers continue to strike fear into the establishment as they fight a war for the disenfranchised and displaced people who are suffering in an unjust system. Karli asks Sam why he’s still shilling for a power structure that continues to disappoint him.
He doesn’t have an answer, not simply because the character is experiencing an existential conflict, but because Marvel plays fast and loose with the concept of deadly force and what justifies ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ in their Cinematic Universe.
All the characters in The Falcon & The Winter Soldier have blood on their hands. Karli, the leader of the Flag Smashers kills, but it’s justified because “She’s a kid”. Sharon Carter kills, but she’s a victim of circumstance living in the hedonistic hellhole that is Madripoor. Zemo kills… but he’s portrayed as a charismatic anti-hero with a morally gray mindset. John Walker kills one super-soldier terrorist, and he’s framed as the villain.
The murder committed by Walker is the most violent of the show and drenched in emotion. A character dealing with the loss of his best friend, the amplification of his aggression due to super-soldier serum and potentially PTSD from his years of service. But the death was so brutal. The man he kills, certainly not an innocent, but no longer in a position to fight back.
The other deaths in The Falcon & The Winter Soldier are so quick and bereft of emotional impact. Faceless terrorists and criminals whose backstory and ideologies are never explored. The only thing that separates the one terrorist John Walker kills and all the other killings in the show are how they are framed.
Marvel has made one thing abundantly clear throughout their 13-year cinematic history: the past doesn’t matter. They are about creating moments. Characters will defy logic and swing like a pendulum back and forth on a moral or ideological spectrum in order to create entertaining and memable moments. This is why we ended up with a Zemo who goes from suicidal at the end of Civil War to dancing like a drunk frat-boy in The Falcon & The Winter Soldier.
History has shown us that Sam Wilson will break the law and openly defy authority in one movie before transforming into the voice of wisdom in his own show. He will kill enemies that stand in the way of his objective but then try to talk down another because ‘she’s a kid’. Mental gymnastics to position the character as someone who embodies the virtues of Steve Rogers. Sam is willing to risk the lives of further innocents because he believes Karli is a well-intentioned wayward soul that could be reasoned with.
What is unfortunate about The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is how Sam, in spite of being on the receiving end of countless indignities is not allowed a true voice in his own story. Not only is he burdened by legacy, but burdened with the inevitable task of becoming Captain America, which according to this version of the story is about protecting the status quo and working within the system. Sam telling Karli that there’s a right way and a wrong way to fight for justice is the same kind of tired rhetoric that conservatives use when people protest abuse and murder by law enforcement.
These words coming from Sam Wilson’s mouth feel forced. He’s a principled man who has sacrificed for what he believes to be right. Ostracized by a Government who turned their back on him the moment he took a stand against something he believed to be unjust. Consistently rebuked by the status quo society he lives in, whether he’s being racially profiled by Police Officers or denied a bank loan to help his family’s struggling business.
The entire series has shown Sam how unfair this world can be. And yet, here he is espousing the idea that Karli is waging an unfair fight against the global powers seeking to restore the world to it’s pre-blip state. It doesn’t reflect Sam’s journey in any believable way. Nor does it reflect the ideology of Steve Rogers who always remembered the words of Abraham Erskine and understood the value of being a good man over the perfect soldier.
John Walker embodies the inverse opposite of that idea. He wants to be the perfect soldier. He believes that pursuit will help save lives. After watching his friend die by the hand of the Flag Smashers, he snaps and unleashes a brutal beating
Why is Sam better than John? Why are his killings less reviled?
Because the creative team did a good job of taking time with Walker’s meltdown. We see the anger and the rage. The boiling blood of a man who consumed with unleashing retribution for the loss of his friends. And because he did it with the same shield worn by Captain America; a symbol of purity that has now been sullied. But that’s the thing about propaganda; it’s intentionally engineered to make you feel a certain way.
It’s all about how John Walker was framed.
When Sam was dispatching enemies in Episode One, they were quick and bloodless. Fast explosions engulfing helmeted automatons without an identity or backstory. We didn’t see their faces as they were consumed in fire and eviscerated before cutting to a shot of a grinning Sam Wilson all too proud of his ability to execute while performing aerial acrobatics.
The execution at the hand of John Walker had so many iconic flourishes. To see someone in that costume committing an act of barbarism with a shield that so many viewed as an inspirational symbol of what America could be. Even though it was just one person that was killed, the way it was presented makes it seem so much worse. Even though both Sam and Bucky have a death toll that far exceeds John Walker.
It’s this kind of hypocrisy which makes The Falcon and The Winter Soldier such a strange experience. It’s a show obsessed more with the iconography of symbols and those who represented them than their own experiences within that story. Sam as the moral center AND the avatar for the status quo gives that these characters so often have to become in order to qualify as escapist entertainment.
In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, to be ‘Captain America’ is to walk a fine line between standing up for what is right and not challenging the tenets of American society that could lead into an ideological quagmire that might not mesh well with Disney’s corporate mindset.
Where deadly force is justifiable so long as the killings are fast & bloodless. Where the heroes and villains are not separated by what they do… but how they’re framed.
