Here's Why You Don't Like the Replacement Avengers

I have heard your reasoning and my opinion of Clint and Kate has been elevated somewhat. My yearly L's video has the correction: https://youtu.be/K1qe0_IWSoE

Sam was a pararescueman. The guy jumped out of airplanes to give medical treatment to injured people in dangerous places. There's an entire world of opportunity in that skillset when combined with the mantle of Captain America. You could have an entire super hero danger + medical thing. You could do a whole (timely) struggle with the dichotomy between being a total butt kicker and a total life saver at the same time. But nah...we get preachy punchy.

That moment in Avengers 2 when Clint says, "Okay, look. The city is flying, we’re fighting an army of robots and I have a bow and arrow. None of this makes sense. But I'm going back out there because it's my job. Okay?" kind of shot him up near the top of my list of favorite Avengers characters. Also, I love archery. But that didn't contribute anything. Honest.

I liked the Clint / Kate storyline. She looked up to him and respected him. We don’t see that often in these stories lately. They actually made a decent team up. The way they made her a student of the character was great.

What sucks is that Falcon was a great character on his own in the MCU. Sam Wilson had an interesting background that could have been explored (how did he get selected to to use the wings and what were his modern war experiences like? Did he have a prior love or a close friend he lost? Etc.

It's the part where they call fans racist/sexist if they don't accept a mantle transfer - because Disney can't accept blame for their own failures - that is most damaging. And I don't like what they did in the Black Widow movie, where they made 'Black Widow' a job title instead of a name.

"Simply adding Hulk powers to a character that is the anthropomorphic equivalent to the colour beige doesn't suddenly make them interesting." God, I love this line.

10:51 Clint is MVP. When the avengers have him on their team, they win. When they don't have Clint, they lose

10:40 I’ll have to straight disagree: Clint’s “ordinary-ness” is his superpower: how he has to overcome his guilt from being manipulated by Loki, how he showed the Avengers the importance of (in his case, a literal) family, how he encouraged Wanda to still fight even if the odds are bad, because it is their job. That’s the superpower. ♥️ Everything else, I agree with.

Imagine if Thanos got defeated by ants and a big dumb head in his second appearance. Not very threatening now

I agree with most of the points you make in your content. But i disagree with you on th topic of Clint Barton not being interesting. Without delving into the tragedy of his character from the comics, the movies make him interesting by making him a regular at first glance. Its easy to dismiss him as a cheesy Olympic level archer with some gadget arrows. Howeverr, i think him being a highly trained hybrid of James Bond and Robinhood who was probably the biggest baddest rockstar hero before people started showing up with superpowers IS the interesting angle. And the fact that he's aware of how ridiculously outclassed he is by the other Avengers but still tries to pitch in and make a difference is what makes him a true hero. Just ask Stan Lee.

Honestly... Kate's arc about wanting to be Hawkeye is pretty relatable because at one point we've all wanted to be our fav superhero. Just in this instance Kate had a personal connection with Hawkeye (seeing him fight during the battle of N.Y. and then picking up archery because of that)

Kate and Clint have an interesting equilibrium because they are so different as a character. He is blue collar and rural. Just doing a job to provide for his family while trying to make good in the world. As I said in another thread, he is Danny Glover's character in Lethal Weapon. I assumed I would hear Clint say "I'm too old for this sh*t" in his own show. Kate is white collar and urban. She is a trust fund baby from Manhattan. She learned her craft by having parents pay for expensive lessons and boarding schools. The fact that she sees Clint as a mentor is a big character arc for both. And why it works.

Alanzo's mantle theory: "Anyone can be Ironman". I suppose anyone can superficially assume that title, but Tony Stark is Ironman and no one else is Tony Stark.

We are living in an age that values superficial stuff over real content, not because of stupidity, but due to complete ignorance. We're seeing everywhere people cutting a slice of bread , slamming on some cheese and tomato , putting it into the microwave for some time, then "Here's your pizza!", and when you complain about that not being pizza, they go screaming "You racist/sexist/homophobe/whatever! What's wrong about my pizza? Pizza is bread , tomato and cheese! SO if you don't like it you're at fault!". They're CLUELESS. I cannot really think that, the level of insanity is caused by real and only malice, it goes too deep. It's the corporate approach to product gone extreme. They dress whatever they see in a costume that they think an audience might like and throw it on the market, it fails and what do they do? change the costume and throw it again on the market. It's clearly the wrong people calling the shots, we have marketing managers in the same room as videogame designer deciding what a game should look like. It's like having a baker in an engineering room deciding how to build a rocket. But they fail to see it,they think that creativity is just something everyone has, more or less, and the real knowledge of the craft is secondary. As long as this mentality reigns, we will keep getting cheap copies of what really could have been. Just my 2 cents.

Hawkeye knew that he was just a guy with a bow hanging out with other guys who were massively powerful, but he made himself useful, not indispensable, but useful. As far as I'm concerned he should be respected. There is so much they could have done with him, but like everything else in Phase 4, they squandered that potential.

Talking about how Captain America was a PR stunt reminded me of the first film where Captain America was a LITERAL PR STUNT. He was mainly used as morale until Steve stepped up as a soldier. With Sam Wilson being a PR stunt, Captain America has gone full circle with an adjacent in US Agent.

Agree to disagree, Clint was the most relatable Avenger and my favorite. He was a military guy who was so good with a bow, given the proper upgrade he could use it like a sniper rifle. That's not "just a bow", but compared to the rest he's the closest to the average joe/jane. Others powers are certainly more desirable, I'll agree with that.

I don't think it will change because while Victoria is gone, the philosophy still lingers. There is a classic webcomic where a girl is writing something down and talks about the protagonist of her new story and proceeds to rattle off a list of traits (like gay, "of color", disabled, etc). Her roommate then asks, "but what about their character?" To which the author replies, "their what?" Look I was there, it's a common factor for new writers to list down "traits" of their characters. I remember doing it. The key is that you're supposed to grow out of it. Too many storytellers of the current pop culture landscape seem stuck in the above mode and never able to think of a character beyond their traits. I know I've run across people in the past who didn't understand how a character is not their traits which is why I recommend Mr. Plinkett's "character test" from the review of Episode 1. Strip away the traits, dig deep, get to the core of the character. If you have nothing once the traits are stripped away, then you have a prop - not a character. P.S. Clint became beloved when it was revealed he was a devoted family man. There are a LOT of fans of his out there - many dreaming of being Mrs. Hawkeye.

It's ironic that you showed a clip of Kate during the description of the issue of character versus mantle when out of all of the new heroes, she's the only one that they even bother trying to characterize. I'd even say they succeeded. Hawkeye had a lot of issues, but the way they handled Kate Bishop was one of the show's high points.