 We're about to wrap up 2021. The holidays are over. Everybody got their gifts. And the MCU even got into the Christmas spirit with Hawkeye. Did all of the MCU TV shows come out this year on Disney Plus? Loki, WandaVision, Falcon and the Winter Soldier. What if and Hawkeye? That's a lot. That's a lot of content on top of Spider-Man and Eternals. Are we sick of it yet? Are we sick of all the superhero stuff? Or are the producers, writers, directors, and actors finding ways to keep it fresh still? A little unique at least. Let's talk about Hawkeye and find out. What do we have here are six episodes, following not just Jeremy Renner's Clint Barton aka Hawkeye, but Hailey Steinfeld's Kate Bishop. Hailey Steinfeld. You're too close to Steinfeld. Change your last name. It bothers me. I love the TV series. I love Steinfeld as an actress, so I guess it's okay. I guess it's something I have to get over. The show wrapped almost a week ago, so this is a really well-timed review. Most people have already seen it and moved on. Well, I haven't. I have other things in my life. I have other stuff on my plate, okay? I had to watch The Matrix and get mad about that. So let's talk about this now. Let's calm things down a little bit. Let's get back to basics. Now, I posed a question at the beginning of this review as the MCU runs stale or they out of ideas. Or are they still keeping things lively? Well, with Hawkeye, I'd say it's a resounding kind of. As Hawkeye progressed and got about to the fourth episode, I was really all in. I thought to myself and my son who watched, man, this is probably my favorite of the Marvel TV shows yet. And I've enjoyed them all except for What If. I couldn't even finish that. Well, it just wasn't my cup of tea, I guess. This really worked for me. I love the playfulness of it. I like that it's set around a holiday. There's a good amount of action. Some of it's great. Some of it not so much, but there's a variety and that's the spice of life for me so we can press forward. I understand it's a TV show too. Oftentimes, you don't get the budget. You do have a big blockbuster movie. So there's a little bit of settling. I also went into this under the impression it was going to be a pretty light affair and I'm very thankful I did. If you go into Hawkeye, assuming it's going to be a dark, gritty action film akin to Die Hard, you're going to be sorely disappointed. This is fluffy, it's light. You can watch this with the whole family and that's the that's the attention here. Now, the show is called Hawkeye but it arguably could have been called Bishop as she has more screen time even than Clint Barton does. That said, he's very much the spark that ignites this entire show. Remember the quick little portion of Endgame where he's Ronan? This alter ego who goes around kicking ass, killing people, has no qualms about it. He's back. He's the central character here. Or at least the ghost of Christmas past Ronan is back. I would imagine Ronan's a big deal in the comics. I'm sure I don't know but I'm gonna assume that's the case. Here we not only get more followed from Endgame but the destructive path that Ronan went on and what it did to the local communities, specifically the mafia. Kate Bishop gets her hands on the wardrobe, she dons it for a night out on the town, kicks a bunch of bad guy ass and the next thing you know she's got the target squarely pointed at her. Thankfully the villains aren't as good marksmen as she is. I do really enjoy what the MCU's been doing going back to the older properties, showing different vantage points from those events. It's a very easy quick way to get the people invested in a new character. Ah I recognize that. I know that. That's the scene from the first film, The Attack in New York. Kate was there as a young child. She sees Clint Barton kicking butt. He's a normal dude. He's got a bow and arrow. She can use a bow and arrow. It's the same reason all those big blockbuster disaster movies take place around central icons like the Statue of Liberty or the World Trade Center or you know just things that we can all instantly recognize and feel bad about when they get taken down because they're iconic. They're beacons of inspiration. I'm not gonna break this whole story down. You might not have even seen the show yet, so I want to keep things a surprise. I know it's been out for a week and that's like an eternity for a lot of people, but there are still some that just want to hear my thoughts without spoiling any of it. I will just say Hell's Kitchen's been getting some good representation lately, so kudos to that. Let's break down the individual pieces. As far as the cinematography goes, I think Falcon and the Winter Soldier definitely had more of the movie feel to it, more so than any of the other shows out so far. This does look nice though. There is some cheapness here and there. Some of the action scenes are definitely a little sketchy, especially a chase sequence in the second or third episode, a little rough. The final episode, we'll get to that later, I guess. As I was saying when this started, about halfway through the series, I was really liking it. I thought, man, this is maybe my favorite, but then the final episode or two kind of hurts. They go a little too silly with things. They do a lot of tropes that I just don't have any interest in anymore, like cars that go 60 miles an hour when they're only like five feet back and nobody hears the engine rev up or it coming. I hate that crap. How many movies and shows has there been where a person's yelling at someone in the middle of the street and then it's just like boom, dead? Nobody heard that bus coming from like half a mile away? No one warned them? It's just silly. Another thing that's hard to get past is the fact that Clint Barton, who's been an Avenger for decades now and is like a master of his craft, has a hard time taking on specific henchmen or henchwomen. It wasn't the biggest issue for me because it really felt like he pulled his punches in almost every single one of those situations. He's not going up against aliens or super soldiers. These are regular folks and he doesn't want to break their arms or just straight up kill them, unless he has to. Hailey Steinfeld and Jeremy Renner have a great chemistry though throughout this picture, really had that father-daughter dynamic I was hoping for. It was nice to see his whole family back. The humor was on point. There's a stage production of The Avengers or Captain America or something. It's so freaking funny that I can do this all day. Loved it. And if you watch through the end credits of the final episode, you get to see that entire performance play out. It's like seven minutes long. It's perfect. Like I said, the action's a little inconsistent visually and even from a choreography standpoint, there's times where I'm just looking at it like, how? How are they getting through this unscathed? But again, it's light. It's silly. It's kind of nonsensical. And normally silly and nonsensical doesn't work for me on its own. You have to have something to connect to. And like I said, these characters are very connectable. That's a phrase. I just made it one. They're connectable. This is only six episodes and there's a lot going on, arguably too much going on. There's just too many factions of people and they show up kind of at the end and don't get enough time to breathe or really to digest what's happening. So it just comes off disingenuous, almost like it's just tipping the hat to fans of different properties. Setting it around Christmas and having one of the major plots, Clint just being able to get home back to the ranch to see his little hawks. That was a great idea. I like that. Because then you have that element of time that makes things move faster. They got to hurry up and get things done. You have that built-in sympathy as a parent, hoping that Hawkeye can get back in time. You know he's going to, but still. The fact that there's some pressure on the character, it makes it more interesting. And again, because of the Christmas theme, we get some fun music. There's even a die-hard jam in there, that rap song. I don't know the name of, but it's a solid, it's a solid choice. All around my son and I had a great time watching this. Very excited for a hopeful season two. I think if the last couple episodes would have kept the momentum and had more of a square focus on one or two villains, we would have had something really special. As it stands, it's a, it's a nice watch. I recommend it. It's easy to get through. I liked the goofiness and the humor. I would say maybe ease off it a little bit, especially when you get closer to the final episodes of the season. That's usually when you try to go a little more serious. This one went the opposite and I think that killed that final episode for me and probably some other people as well. If you saw Hawkeye, let me know in the comments. You can even give me your standing as far as the TV shows go. I'd be interested to see how you rank them so far. Like the video if you had a good time, subscribe if you hadn't. There's tons of content here, a movie and TV show related stuff and hopefully I'll see you around. I know Christmas is wrapped up, but if you want to throw one final present under my tree, I'd really appreciate it. And you can do so by heading on over to Patreon.com slash Adam Does Movies or right here on YouTube via the join button. 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