i want yelena to date me, paralyze me, cover me in bear fur, and burn me alive as i stare at her in a humongous flower dress
Recently, I read this interview with Kevin Feige where he said that the Academy Awards have a bias against Marvel movies.
If you ever wonder why that is, look no further than the first 20 minutes of this episode.
You get this long 10 minute scene between Pugh and Steinfeld which hits a lot of important emotional beats for the plot, and the writing is actually not too bad.
Sure you have Pugh doing that awful Russian accent again, and Hailee Steinfeld’s making weird faces as if she’s Kate McKinnon in an SNL skit, but that’s besides the point.
Look specifically at how they shoot it.
Besides the bland looking apartment, you cannot shoot such an important and lengthy scene doing nothing besides shots and reverse shots and then expect to get an Oscar (or in this case Emmy) for it.
It is literally the laziest and most uninspired way to approach a scene like that.
So, what do they do to mask the poor filmmaking and weak story choices (because let’s face it, Marvel has once again put out something with a messy and unfocussed plot)?
Just take a quick look at some of the other comments, and you’ll get the idea.
It’s like they’re dangling a ball in front of a cat, and it’s kinda embarrassing to see how effective that is.
The way Natasha's characters is so present and important in Hawkeye just feels right considering her relationship with Clint and as a Nat stan I'm so happy with the respect she gets in this.
All the scenes with Yelena were really good, I love her and she doesn't feel shoehorned into this at all, she fits well into the series.
The fight between Maya and Clint was very solid.
Eleanor being the bad guy was painfully obvious but they didn't handle it too bad and I'm looking forward to Kate confronting her.
And yes Kingpin!!
Was this the first on-screen POV from someone who went through the blip?
I liked the episode, but the BS with accent gets me everytime. They trained world class spies and they did not remove their accents.
I like the way how the show is slowly exploring the side of Hawkeye, the movies failed to do. Loving it.
Florence Pugh lifting the show to a higher level. Loved it.
Cool visualization of The Blip (god, still not getting over that name :lol:) from the goner's perspective!
Yelena is simply brilliant and I need so much more of her in my life.
Florence Pugh is great of course and funny. The reveal in the end is awesome too. I guess next week is the end already. I could go for 12 episodes.
KINGPIN
KINGPIN
KINGPIN
KINGPIN
KINGPIN
KINGPIN
KINGPIN
KINGPIN
KINGPIN
KINGPIN
KINGPIN
KINGPIN
Far from home spoilers…
We just got given daredevil and king pin the same day. I am so happy. At least this time I wasn’t in the cinema so I could freely shout at the top of my lungs when I saw him.
There you have it, folks. “Big guy” revealed. The King is back and we are obviously because the man (and the actor who plays him) is a legend.
Amazing episode! Florence Pugh stole the show once again. Yelena‘s scene with Kate was just so well written and acted. Also very interesting that they are bringing in characters from the Netflix shows now.
After some of the big emotional beats that permeated all of last episode, Hawkeye decides to step back and focus on another character in particular this time around - specifically that of Yelena Belova, the standout from Black Widow this past summer and her experiences during and after The Blip. In fact, Natasha's ghost is felt throughout this entire episode, and while it's called "Ronin" it's clear that Jonathan Igla and his writing staff is more interested in how somebody like Barton became the Ronin rather then the persona itself. Grief has been a consistent theme throughout Phase 4 and here it's clear that grief, once again, is what propelled Clint to do what he did and continues to rule over his entire life. Both him and Maya are two sides of the same coin in that regard and their scene together (plus a great action beat) is an easy highlight here.
But yeah, this is Yelena's episode to lose, and her interactions with Kate are the easy standout here. Florence Pugh is great as per expected, and while this episode doesn't shine visually or even camerawork wise like some of the prior episodes it's got some strong writing. Really love Yelena's almost nonchalant attitude towards talking to somebody who was fighting her just a couple of hours prior, and her comedic timing is impeccable here. The reveal at the end is also a gamechanger, not just for the show itself with our new mastermind unveiled but also for the rest of the MCU as the possibilities of who can show up and when has officially changed - let me tell you, I nearly screamed. Top tier stuff once again from Marvel.
He's here. The Kingpin of Crime is back.
Avengers: What does it mean? - Has Yelena not bothered looking into New Yourk 2012. What Natasha has been doing uptil endgame. Not seen footage of Avengers fighting crime etc on youtube - She is a spy so gathering intel on Clint involves looking into Ab* Avengers & whatbNatasha did involved innShiels&* in Shield, on the run she met Nat after Civil War (publicised fih) . Never watched Daredevil so Kingpin is bad bug* guy but I k now nothing else or sense any 'danger' for anyone. Forces ppl to watch Daredevil for Kingpin background which is rude.
too much yelena in this episode....
It's truly remarkable. I can and I did skip 3 episodes and still wasn't surprised by any "twists".
But screw this - Pugh is here! Give her character a tv show or put her in movies already.
For the love of god do not touch Yelena's accent. Want to get rid of stereotypes? Start with the godawful "bros" and update Natasha's last name to grammatically correct one - Romanova or at least Romanoffa. WTF Marvel why would it ever be Romanoff?
On the less important news... did they actually brought back Kingpin?! Vincent's Kingpin?!
Does that mean that Jessica Jones exists in the MCU? Well... Shut up and take my money Disney!
p.s. going back to the opening scene with the blip. I have a question was it ever mentioned in MCU how many people died when they came back from the blip? It implies that all the people on the plains died; many died on trains due to appearing on the tracks; most people on ships are drowned unless they were by the shore; cars would probably give you 50/50 chance depending on the traffic? What about buildings that were demolished? Hell, what about buildings that were constructed on the place you disappeared?! How many people on the streets died thanks to unlucky passengers of the plains... And yet they wasted "what if" episode on zombies.
Kate Bishop: "He's an Avenger!"
Yelena Romanoff: "What does that word even mean?"
Kate and Yelena's encounter is the best scene in this episode. Not only does Yelena constantly attack Kate's biases, but she reveals deeper truths about Clint as well.
The Avengers memorial was neat—it made me pretty nostalgic—but it makes no sense after you finish the episode? Like, he goes up to the memorial and
"He asks for forgiveness for what he’s about to do which seems bad, but then he goes and seems like he’s going to murder… but then… doesn’t do murder." — Film Crit Hulk
When Clint tells Maya the truth about her father, it gets worse. Like, why didn't he tell her this earlier?
Finally, the text message reveal was pretty underwhelming. Not only did it leave my dad, mum and me completely silent, but it fails to communicate the threat of this character at all. Neither of us has seen Daredevil, so it feels like nothing.
To finish the review, I'll leave you this quote by Film Crit Hulk about the MCU and its storytelling fears.
"At first, the MCU joked about it (I’ll never forget the “now he’s my older brother! that’s weird!”) and we really felt the callousness of it. Then they’ve flirted with the personal costs, the political fallout, and the various theoretical issues it may have caused, but that’s the whole thing. They don’t REALLY want to get into it. They don’t want to ever bring it all too far down. Even if the material itself is BEGGING to do just that, especially if they want to be true to the interiority of these characters. But it’s the exact same reason they cut away from the moment Yelena would learn the news about her sister. Marvel is always so damn afraid to break your heart. To go to a REAL place of grief or sadness (so much that they made a show about avoiding it). And I think it’s the reason the whizzbang MCU circus glides ever on with ease, but I think it’s also silently taking the air out of how much we can really be invested at the same time. If they went there, no matter where “there” happened to be, I think the whole enterprise could have been even better (again, I hate to keep using Black Panther as the standard bearer, but it shows exactly how well all this can work if you work without fear and go for the jugular dramatically and thematically)." — Film Crit Hulk
7/10
"When I was a boy ..."
Reindeer meat is far from tough or chewy smh 0/10 worst episode yet
So this Episode opens with some bad basic math, starting in 2018 followed by 5 years later which would put us somewhere into 2023. Which in itself is bad enough, but why exactly didn't she come back with Tony's fingersnap but years later?
Next we have a a 10 minute scene of Kate talking to her mother which was amongst the most boring things I've ever watched.
This gets followed up by another scene (also around 10 minutes) between Kate and Natashas Sister in which we get to experience the classic "I've heard something so it must be true"(Some shows mix it up with "I've read something on the internet...") against "I've known him for a week so I have to have the right impression".
Not to mention how horrible the russian accent was, both of theses scenes shouldn't be longer than 2-3 minutes.
I have seen youtube videos below the 20k view mark better produced...
I always wondered how people disappeared and reappeared during the blip!
I didn't get a clear look of Kingpin. Is it Vincent D'onofrio?
Yeah, Yelena is really good and we have THE KING back, but holy shit it's so bad that both of them are forced in this show. Poor Jack, just to think he had a chance to be a smiling cartoon villain in all of this, I feel sorry for him now.
[7.6/10] This is a tough one to judge, because it has one ridiculously good scene, surrounded by a lot of material that is perfectly solid, but not nearly to that level.
So yeah, give me more of Yelena and Kate hanging out having fun but ominous conversations with one another. Florence Pugh is outstanding in the role. She is so matter of fact in her demeanor, so unguarded, despite being an ostensible spook, that it’s disarming and charming. The way she seems genuinely excited about being in New York and connecting with another human being on some level, while also doing some legitimate menacing and moral weighing with her erstwhile foe grounds the character despite the larger-than-life goings on of all of this.
More to the point, I love the debate between her and Kate over who Clint really is and what amount of mercy, trust, and understanding he really deserves. Kate is in the role of the fan, someone who doesn’t necessarily know Clint super well, but who sees what he stands for in the public eye, wants to sympathize with him despite his darkness, and believes that despite his lack of perfection, the things he’s accomplished warrant some leeway. It helps that, for Kate, Clint was an idol, one who parasocially filled the role of her father, which gives her extra reason to see things from his perspective.
But Yelena comes at this problem as someone who was not only disoriented and unmoored by being Blipped as the well-done cold open establishes, but who lost her sister, something she blames Clint for. She has motivated reasoning for hating him, for wanting him dead, for seeing the worst of him, but she’s also not off-base.
There’s been a fair amount of real world commentary in the film criticism world about whether Clint deserves redemption after what he did as Ronin, about whether that element of the character is problematic and deserving of criticism. Yelena delivers that criticism in convincing terms. She argues that whatever his personality, he should be judged by his actions, by the red in his ledger, one that she thinks includes her sister’s death. It’s a compelling back and forth with no easy answers, the kind of complexity we don’t always get in these types of stories.
And the rest of the episode is...perfectly good. Despite a bright spot in the last episode, the business between Kate and her mom still feel perfunctory. I can’t say I’m not anticipating the quasi-reintroduction of Kingpin into the MCU, but the headfake that Eleanor is in the shit rather than Jack doesn’t do much for me. What’s more, despite the opening private moment between the two, I’ve yet to really be invested in the relationship between Kate and Eleanor on a scene-to-scene basis. So while I can appreciate the shock of the reveal on an intellectual level, I’m not really moved by it. (Hell, I’m more moved by Yelena transmitting the information to Kate. More of their budding friendship, please!)
Similarly, there’s emotion when Clint goes to the commemorative plaque for the Avengers in the Battle of New York and talks to Natasha as though she’s there. The same goes for his conversation with his wife, Laura, about how big all of this crap is getting and where it might lead. Again, Renner’s doing damn good work here, which elevates some stock scenes. But his confrontation with Echo/Maya over his past lacks a certain oomph, both in terms of the fights, which fit into the standard MCU normie battles, and the human connection element, which likewise feels a little rote. There’s some juice to Clint telling Maya that her boss wanted her father dead, with hints that Kazi was Clint’s informant, but again, it works more on an intellectual level than one that earns an emotional reaction.
On the whole, this one is worth watching for the Yelena/Kate scene alone, one of the standout scenes of Marvel Studios’ foray into television so far, and one which would fit comfortably alongside any prestige drama. (I’m thinking The Americans, naturally.) But the rest of the episode is the sort of solid but generic material that made me come-see-come-saw about Hawkeye’s first two episodes.
Yelena is a nice addition to this show.
Kate surely doesn't like where this is heading.
i would die for florence pugh to be honest
Shout by DeletedBlockedParentSpoilers2021-12-15T09:35:45Z
The KING is back! Long live the KING.