Hawkeye 1x03
Jan. 5th, 2022 10:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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tori_reviewsHawkeye 1x03
This episode was short and mildly pointless. Half of it was an action scene that went on too long, and while there were a few good character beats later on, they could have added five more minutes of character development and still been on the short side.
The chase scene was kind of fun, with laying out the trick arrows we rarely get to see Hawkeye use and the kind of thing they can do. But the beats were fairly repetitive especially since they kept taking out the same truck so many times. The chase was also a bit uncanny valley, or just not put together that well if I can spot that the stunts seemed very staged and compositing out the windows was distracting. It didn’t feel real for most of it, which is kind of a problem when it’s such a big part of the episode.
I’m having some contradictory feeling on this whole Hawkeye going deaf thing. I know it’s a thing in the comics, I know there were people who said they should always have had deaf Hawkeye in the MCU, but…look, I have complicated feelings on doing things for representation that I’m not going to go into right now, but I’m generally against it. I can’t tell if that’s what this is, but it doesn’t fully work in the story so far. If it’s done to give him something in common with the villain, their experiences are so different that I don’t see this being effective at that. And moreover, this story can’t decide who its main character is, and to do parallels between hero and villain you need to know who each is.
I also have sort of two different trains of thought on the Ronin flashback we see here. On the one side, this universe is still doing very little to flesh out the Blip years or the post-Blip effects, and it bothers me. It bothers me with Kate too really; age-wise, she must not have been Blipped, so could they maybe through her tell us how non-Avengers experienced that world? But at the moment my problem had to do with the fact that they could really do something with the criminal underworld being messed up during the Blip and then again after the Un-Blip; people jockeying for power in a vacuum and then changed structures when people come back. Unfortunately, I don’t really see any of that in evidence in the flashback, and thinking that it should have been in the flashback makes me aware that it *really* should have been what sparked off problems in the present.
My other train of thought once again renders Kate a flawed piece of this story. Because if the story was really about Hawkeye and dealing with what he did as Ronin, there would be potential in questioning who the hero and villain are in the story. Because the flashback is a reminder that Clint was not a hero as Ronin, he killed indiscriminately, and without care for justice or proportionality. There would also be something about the cycle of violence to bring into play, because Clint’s killing streak made others become criminals and killers; and he hasn’t actually faced justice for what he did either. We sympathize with Clint because he was broken during the Blip, but he wasn’t the only person who’s had everything he cared about taken from him.
(I definitely have some questions for how Laura feels about this. We know she knows, at least enough that they talk about it, but I’m not sure she should be okay with it. On the other hand, she could see it as in character for him, she married him as an agent/soldier who already killed people, so maybe she rationalizes Ronin as just a bit more extreme version of that. But I want to know these things.)
I think those elements are there on purpose, at least partially, but it’s not in focus very often. And because the Ronin fallout story is such a natural one to explore, it makes the series jack-knife any time it goes back to Kate and the murder investigation. There would have been something to be said for having these characters on parallel but unconnected arcs, especially since it would have also fed into the legacy of Hawkeye/Ronin element going on with the mob arc. And again, I think some of that is in the mix of this story, but the elements are mixed up badly.
Also, Kate has now missed her appointment to talk to the cops about the fire at her place, I’m kind of more anxious about that than I am the actual cliffhanger.
I kind of want to talk about Kate’s whole bit about Clint needing a costume, but I find her annoying in a meta sense. In character it’s not that bad; I’m on Clint’s side, but it’s not unreasonable for her asking him to consider the branding of his public persona. But in a meta sense I don’t like it, because the scene itself feels like it’s only there for the meta commentary rather than the character commentary. Because Clint’s training and backstory is as a SHIELD agent, he is ultimately a spy, an infiltrator, and most definitely someone who doesn’t want to attract attention. And that’s why the MCU made the choice early on to go with purple tinted battle clothes instead of his comics costume. They dressed him as was appropriate to the character, and I don’t want to see that traded in for forcing on comics references.
Yes, I did manage to find a way to have SHIELD thoughts in this episode too. I really want Coulson (even if it’s Coulsoid) to just show up out of the blue and be someone Clint can talk to about everything going on. Coulson would think Clint should adapt Kate, and if Clint won’t Coulson would add her to the family I’m sure.
This episode was short and mildly pointless. Half of it was an action scene that went on too long, and while there were a few good character beats later on, they could have added five more minutes of character development and still been on the short side.
The chase scene was kind of fun, with laying out the trick arrows we rarely get to see Hawkeye use and the kind of thing they can do. But the beats were fairly repetitive especially since they kept taking out the same truck so many times. The chase was also a bit uncanny valley, or just not put together that well if I can spot that the stunts seemed very staged and compositing out the windows was distracting. It didn’t feel real for most of it, which is kind of a problem when it’s such a big part of the episode.
I’m having some contradictory feeling on this whole Hawkeye going deaf thing. I know it’s a thing in the comics, I know there were people who said they should always have had deaf Hawkeye in the MCU, but…look, I have complicated feelings on doing things for representation that I’m not going to go into right now, but I’m generally against it. I can’t tell if that’s what this is, but it doesn’t fully work in the story so far. If it’s done to give him something in common with the villain, their experiences are so different that I don’t see this being effective at that. And moreover, this story can’t decide who its main character is, and to do parallels between hero and villain you need to know who each is.
I also have sort of two different trains of thought on the Ronin flashback we see here. On the one side, this universe is still doing very little to flesh out the Blip years or the post-Blip effects, and it bothers me. It bothers me with Kate too really; age-wise, she must not have been Blipped, so could they maybe through her tell us how non-Avengers experienced that world? But at the moment my problem had to do with the fact that they could really do something with the criminal underworld being messed up during the Blip and then again after the Un-Blip; people jockeying for power in a vacuum and then changed structures when people come back. Unfortunately, I don’t really see any of that in evidence in the flashback, and thinking that it should have been in the flashback makes me aware that it *really* should have been what sparked off problems in the present.
My other train of thought once again renders Kate a flawed piece of this story. Because if the story was really about Hawkeye and dealing with what he did as Ronin, there would be potential in questioning who the hero and villain are in the story. Because the flashback is a reminder that Clint was not a hero as Ronin, he killed indiscriminately, and without care for justice or proportionality. There would also be something about the cycle of violence to bring into play, because Clint’s killing streak made others become criminals and killers; and he hasn’t actually faced justice for what he did either. We sympathize with Clint because he was broken during the Blip, but he wasn’t the only person who’s had everything he cared about taken from him.
(I definitely have some questions for how Laura feels about this. We know she knows, at least enough that they talk about it, but I’m not sure she should be okay with it. On the other hand, she could see it as in character for him, she married him as an agent/soldier who already killed people, so maybe she rationalizes Ronin as just a bit more extreme version of that. But I want to know these things.)
I think those elements are there on purpose, at least partially, but it’s not in focus very often. And because the Ronin fallout story is such a natural one to explore, it makes the series jack-knife any time it goes back to Kate and the murder investigation. There would have been something to be said for having these characters on parallel but unconnected arcs, especially since it would have also fed into the legacy of Hawkeye/Ronin element going on with the mob arc. And again, I think some of that is in the mix of this story, but the elements are mixed up badly.
Also, Kate has now missed her appointment to talk to the cops about the fire at her place, I’m kind of more anxious about that than I am the actual cliffhanger.
I kind of want to talk about Kate’s whole bit about Clint needing a costume, but I find her annoying in a meta sense. In character it’s not that bad; I’m on Clint’s side, but it’s not unreasonable for her asking him to consider the branding of his public persona. But in a meta sense I don’t like it, because the scene itself feels like it’s only there for the meta commentary rather than the character commentary. Because Clint’s training and backstory is as a SHIELD agent, he is ultimately a spy, an infiltrator, and most definitely someone who doesn’t want to attract attention. And that’s why the MCU made the choice early on to go with purple tinted battle clothes instead of his comics costume. They dressed him as was appropriate to the character, and I don’t want to see that traded in for forcing on comics references.
Yes, I did manage to find a way to have SHIELD thoughts in this episode too. I really want Coulson (even if it’s Coulsoid) to just show up out of the blue and be someone Clint can talk to about everything going on. Coulson would think Clint should adapt Kate, and if Clint won’t Coulson would add her to the family I’m sure.
