I wasn’t really considering the flag smashers, honestly, they didn’t leave much of an impact. I was thinking more about Sam & Bucky’s separate personal struggles - Sam with becoming a black Captain America, and Bucky with making amends. To me the real interesting conflict was not the one with the flag smashers - that just forms a standard comic-book backdrop to the more interesting look at America itself.
Problem is, in the end they made it so the solution was punches, by making the so-far-nuanced flag smashers suddenly evil
I wasn’t really considering the flag smashers, honestly, they didn’t leave much of an impact. I was thinking more about Sam & Bucky’s separate personal struggles - Sam with becoming a black Captain America, and Bucky with making amends. To me the real interesting conflict was not the one with the flag smashers - that just forms a standard comic-book backdrop to the more interesting look at America itself.