If you haven't seen Hawkeye yet it is worth your time.

Let's talk Hawkeye! <<<SPOILER ALERT>>>>So this latest installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe on Disney+ was a delight to enjoy over the holidays. Honestly, the entertainment choices for the holidays were premium this year, so I was a very happy camper. With regard to Hawkeye, I (at first) was wondering why the Marvel machine would want to moor this particular series so closely to a particular time of year. But after I got to watching it, I realized that it would be more than just another thing that one might view when Christmas rolls around (Home Alone, Elf, etc.). And there was more there on the screen to talk about than just trick arrows and flashing light bulbs.

First, and this one seems a bit obvious, but Disney is probably looking to replace Clint Barton soon with the much younger Kate Bishop. This seems like an excellent choice although I will miss Jeremy Renner. But people (unlike superheroes) get old, and Jeremy's contract with Disney is almost up (I think). So, as much as people like me are fans of his work, it's probably time to get ready to say goodbye to this character so that the cinematic universe can keep plodding forward. That's the neat thing about Marvel...there is an endless array of new characters that can be added to the ever-progressing storyline. And Kate Bishop was fantastic. She was charming, witty, and a really good fighter with a compelling backstory that wasn't shellacked with trauma. I'm kind of getting tired of the "superhero" that has to be varnished with trauma to get to be a sympathetic person and start saving people (looking particularly hard at Spiderman right now).

I also loved that we got to see Yelena again (from the Black Widow movie). She stole practically every scene in that show from Scarlett Johannson. That may have been a disservice script-wise to Scarlett's character, but her trailblazing performance and run as Black Widow was really good. I'm pretty much satisfied with original Widow's entire character arc minus the unpleasantness of her death, which I felt was a disservice to the character. However, I'm not a fan of Endgame. I think the only thing I like about that movie is when Scarlet Witch grabs a hold of Thanos with all her power and almost crushes him. So that's like two minutes. The Yelena/Kate frenemies fight was also spectacularly good. I adored Yelena's whole energy of, "You are out of your league, Kate Bishop, but I want to be supportive of your efforts here, even though they will not stop me." This is nothing new, since Widow and Hawkeye have always been pals. It's just fun to see that this is going to continue with these new leading ladies in their respective roles.

However, not all resolutions in Hawkeye were given the depth that I hoped for. This is a strange feeling, because I get the sense that Disney + is a place where stories should be richer, because time is not a factor. For example, Tomas (who was part of the Tracksuit Mafia) had a connection with Kate Bishop, because he asked her for advice on dealing with his girlfriend. They went to a Maroon 5 concert though, and it should have been Imagine Dragons, because he said earlier in the show, "I love Imagine Dragons."

I did like that Jack turned out to be nothing more than some comic relief. I like the actor a lot, because he plays a very intelligent, clever, and charismatic villain in the Breaking Bad spinoff called Better Call Saul. He brought some of the smarmy-ness of that role to Jack, and who knows, he could end up joining the LARPers, which weren't treated as a colossal joke. Instead, the series showed the fact that they are real, normal people who happen to have a nerdy hoppy. This was a refreshing pace over how LARP is typically portrayed: an entire society of people who never break character and that the LARP is their reality and they cannot function in the real world.

Seeing the Kingpin was great, because it was yet another confirmation that the Daredevil and other properties on Netflix (which I thought were very high quality) are now a part of the MCU. In other words, those series mattered. I also don't think that Fisk is dead. That being said, without watching Daredevil, there is no clear way to feel how much of a threat this guy really is. I mean...he's bad. However, I was a little disappointed that Kingpin was only scary to me, because I've seen Daredevil on Netflix. And wearing a Hawaiian shirt didn't help things. In the one episode in which he appears on Disney+, there is no way to feel the intensity and danger that Kingpin represents. Point of note though: the way in which Vincent D'Onofrio just threw Hailee Steinfeld around looked awesome and properly Kingpin.

I suppose the final thing that I want to say about Hawkeye is that it is nice that Marvel didn't sweep the whole thing of Clint's stint as Ronin under the rug. There were consequences for what he did, and he essentially made Maya what she was in a revenge-seeking pseudo villain. And speaking of Maya, it was wonderful to see someone with disabilities portrayed as very functional and in no need of coddling whatsoever. That was awesome.

Was the show perfect? No...if anything it ran a bit short. However, it is easily a stronger entry in the MCU than WandaVision was. Have any of you who are reading this seen it yet? If so, what did you think?

Disney Studios does a great job in rotating major characters out of their Marvel properties. Black Widow is the latest example of this.

A bunch of people around the world watched Black Widow this past weekend. I was one of them. By the time it was over, I had thought yet again on why Marvel (when run by Disney) seems to keep hitting things out of the park. Every film has a freshness to it that you don't get with new Batman and Superman movies where they have recast the old character with whatever the new hotness is in Hollywood. It occurred to me that one of the things that Disney really has going for it is its willingness to just let things go and move on.

For example, Captain America, Iron Man, and Black Widow had run their course. So they let those characters go. There may be new ones that pop up in the future. Anthony Mackey is going to be a "Captain America." But he will never be "The Captain America," and I'm not bothered by that at all. That old "cap" is done as far as I'm concerned (and I really do love me some Chris Evans). The reel's been run out on that particular iteration of the character and what they wanted to do with their life. I gotta say though, that I'm a little in awe of Disney's bold moves to just toss aside old characters that have made them a ton of money. Lesser studios might have tried to woo the actor back with a salary increase or some other such nonsense, but not Disney.

Black Widow (of course) is the latest of the bunch that gets their swan song in a motion picture. When the character was first introduced, female members of "The Avengers" and female superheroes in general were kind of rare. However, we can't say that anymore (and it's only been ten or so years--that isn't that long, folks!). And as much as Natasha spent posing and doing the things that she does really well for the entirety of her run in the MCU, the film was also a highlight of Natasha's greatest hits, showing us one more time just why she was an Avenger in the first place (even though she had no actual super powers). The film also was an excellent springboard to introduce us to someone who is going to be "a Black Widow," even if she isn't the Black Widow. And that's actually exciting, because I love this new character (her name is Yelena Belova and is the younger sister of Natasha but not by blood). Progression and change is so much better than just rebooting characters and asking everyone to pretend that they don't know the origin story one more time.

In watching all of these comic book movies and television adaptations, I feel like studios (and Hollywood) too often keep reaching for the same bag of tricks to try and capture lightning in a bottle. The characters of Superman, the Batman, Spiderman, and the Joker have been done to death. As much as I love Tom Holland in the role of Spiderman, it's going to be fun to see what Disney does with the character next as Holland's contract is up. I read online that Holland is hoping that they will renew his contract, but I actually hope they don't. With the MCU providing a guiding hand to the property of Spiderman, I would assume that we are going to see an expansion of the character into the many alternate realms and earths, giving us all kinds of "Spider people." This hasn't ever been done before in live-action, and it's going to inject some badly needed freshness into a very stale franchise.

Change is a good thing. Capitalism doesn't agree with this statement of course. With regard to entertainment, what capitalism tends to do is to seize upon a successful thing...and then clone it with something that is only marginally different. The up and coming Windows 11 operating system reminds me of this, because Gizmodo's screen shots show that its interface will be almost identical to Mac OS. So, they are copying Apple to try and catch lightning in a bottle. Only Apple already caught the lightning in a bottle, so I don't think it will end up being any more successful than Windows 10 was (I'm actually a fan of Windows 10). And that's why what Disney does by tossing out these old characters in favor of trying out new ones is remarkable by any capitalist measuring stick.

Anyway, Black Widow was a great film that didn't feel stale, and it opened the doors to many other fun opportunities to explore within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Anyone else see it this weekend? I'll look for your responses in the comments.