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Over the past few years, an incredible, disturbing general refrain has emerged from the cast and crew who have been working on a bunch of great new TV series, from Big Little Lies on Stranger things – “It really is a 6-hour movie”. (Please fill in a larger number to give records of programs that have eight or nine episodes per season instead of six.) The war between film and television feels especially foolish to fight when we degenerate into a pandemic that has so much of we kept. away from movie theaters, and essentially everything changes into television, whether it is meant to be or not.
Marvel’s latest show for Disney +, The falcon and the winter soldier, is no different, starring Anthony Mackie say that the program would be like a six- or eight-hour film last summer, and director Kari Skogland emphasized it again during an interview with / Film. Set aside any amount of eyes you may have when you see that comment again. Maybe a six-hour Falcon movie appeals to you. The profession would be more interesting if Disney + deals The falcon and the winter soldier like a movie, instead of … well, a weekly television show.
When Disney + opened its virtual doors in the fall of 2019, it teased where services like Netflix or Amazon Prime struggled when it came to new shows. Yes, Disney + had an exciting new show with The Mandalorian, but episodes were not released simultaneously, but are treated as HBO Game of Thrones or any of his many other frontier-pushing performances. At the end of the first season, it was clear that The Mandalorian has gained a huge advantage by being the rare streaming program released week after week, instead of being instantly binge. (I wrote these two episodes in the first season, and although I’m still not impressed with the story of Baby Yoda and friends, I admit that I’m very much in the minority about the idea that the show should be released at the same time.)
After the similar massive success of WandaVision, it’s easy to imagine that Marvel’s next TV venture is just as compelling, so weird, and capable of attracting interest week after week, even among those of us who are not incredibly comic book savvy. But halfway through the season (maybe Marvel has a second Falcon and the Winter Soldier season planned, but nothing has been confirmed), it appears Anthony Mackie was right. The falcon and the winter soldier do feels like a six-hour movie. And releasing its installments once a week is a terrible way to increase momentum.
WandaVision was dramatically more interesting in its first series of episodes, but the brain trust at Marvel made a wise decision to lean into the roots of the medium. Even lip service to the idea of how television use to look allowed WandaVision to feel especially appropriate to release weekly. If Wanda Maximoff were to find herself in the middle of sitcoms from different television eras, it would make more sense to give her and the audience a week in between to wonder what would happen next. Only on the premiere date did Disney + violate its own rule and the first two installments of WandaVision, so audiences can better understand how quickly things can change for the Scarlet Witch.
This technique would be extremely beneficial for The falcon and the winter soldier, as the first episode ends before Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes meet. To say the least, it’s risky to name a show after Captain America’s two former best friends, to advertise the show based on these two guys working together, and then … not to be in the first episode together to work. (The premiere episode also offers hardly any tips why Sam and Bucky will even work together.) This is not the first show to boast that it’s really like an extended movie; the problem is that most of the programs are released at the same time … like a movie. While Sam and Bucky try to take down the Flag Smashers and temporarily recruit the evil Baron Zemo for their cause, it becomes more challenging to be invested in a show that really feels like it’s meant to be watched at once. This is the inherent problem of advertising your program as an extensive movie: people can be best served by watching it that way.
And The falcon and the winter soldier is not the only Disney + original to struggle with the weekly release strategy. The streamer also has The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers, a revival of the 90s film series in TV form, with Emilio Estevez once again as Gordon Bombay, the formerly grumpy lawyer who has to teach kids hockey who now … a currently grumpy ice rink owner who has to hockey kids file. (Everything that is old is new again.) Game Changers is only two episodes in a ten-episode season, with some basic conceptual roles reversed. This time, it’s the Mighty Ducks themselves who are the bullying team in town, who accidentally inspires a single mom (Lauren Graham) to start her own ragtag team, simply to give a less aggressively prepared and scheduled version of the sport to to offer in a grip bag. of goofball children.
It’s essentially a 21st century version of The Mighty Ducks (which itself is a more cuddly version of The bad news carries). You know. A Movie. And just like Falcon and Winter Soldier, Game Changers is released once a week, a decision that only removes the momentum that the sports-oriented show may try to build. It’s not just that this show was inspired by a movie (which begs the question why it was not a movie either, or was released at least once). This is it Game Changers feels like Disney +’s reaction to another streaming service’s TV revival of a sports-oriented movie series. First on YouTube, and now on Netflix, Cobra Kai has the basic concept of The Karate Kid, turned it on its head (originally positioning the previously evil Johnny Lawrence as a new kind of hero, with Daniel LaRusso as the thorn in his side), and became pretty damn popular in the process.
Cobra Kai is not perfect, and sometimes avoids the real consequences of the violence that persists in the community of the show. (And like a number of 80s movies, it’s a program that furiously ignores the idea of parents in the community because their children rage in violent karate attacks.) Cobra Kai has the advantage of releasing its seasons simultaneously, and by creating enough cliffs on an episode-to-episode basis that encourages immediate viewers of subsequent episodes.
Game Changers is like Cobra Kai did so in his first season, and slowly follows the pattern of the underdog sports movie. In the second episode, the Do Not Disturb (Graham’s character begins) play their first game and play terribly. At the end of the delivery we still get hints that the troublesome Bombay will soften and coach again (because natural he will). And it’s easy to imagine that the Do Not Disturb at the end of the ten-episode season might still be able to win. But where shows like Cobra Kai allows you to treat the full journey of the underdog for a few hours Game Changers as a traditional TV show only serves to highlight its creative inefficiency. Watching a five-hour underdog sports movie is one thing; watching it in dribbs and drabs over the course of three months is not terribly exciting.
This plea is not meant to reflect Veruca Salt and to beg for anything now, not because. The issue is more fundamental than that: not all streaming programs are the same. While it’s funny to watch streamers like Netflix and Disney + talking about creating a new paradigm for the release of their shows – by which they meant recreating how broadcast networks have always released their shows – some of these programs do not release weekly. WandaVision Whatever his creative flaws were – a much bigger water cooler show exactly because it was not released simultaneously. But some shows need the binge-able strategy. The more creators are encouraged to treat their programs like feature films, the wiser it is to release them like movies.
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