Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		5.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 6, 2024

Disney / Buena Vista split its recent quartet of Disney+ SteelBook releases "down the middle" so to speak, with Obi-Wan Kenobi: The Complete Series and Andor: The Complete First Season coming from the Star Wars side of the streaming service, and with Moon Knight: The Complete First Season and the series currently under review representing the Marvel side of things. In one interesting way, however, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is at least something of an outlier in that the other three series and/or miniseries and/or limited series all started streaming in 2022, while this effort goes back a year to 2021, which may lead some fans of the show to ask its home theater media releasing studio, "Hey, what took so long?" There may be an even more salient question some may want to think about when watching this series, as is alluded to in a rather thoughtful making of supplement included on this two disc set, namely, what does it mean to be an American, especially an American? That may seem like an easy question to answer on its face, but as Anthony Mackie in particular gets into in the supplement, for Black men in particular it can be a tricky, indeed almost a trick, question, and that's just one of the interesting subtexts informing this series.

In Avengers: Endgame when Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) told Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) that Captain America's shield which Rogers had gifted to Wilson felt like it "belonged to someone else", there may not have been an overt "racial" component to the interchange, but Wilson's unease at accepting the "mantle" of Captain America is tied at least a bit more obviously to the trials and tribulations of what being a Black American man can mean, and in fact both the series and the making of supplement overtly address the issue of a Black Captain America (and/or Falcon) trying to "represent" a country that may not represent him.

If that's one character with some built in "issues", the veritable flip side is Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), another tether to Steve Rogers who, as he discusses in some kind of funny - sad interchanges with his therapist (Amy Aquino), has been "fighting for 90 years" and just wants a little "peace", to which the therapist instantly responds, "Bullshit". Further comedy is mined from Bucky's attempts post "mind control" to "make amends", which kind of hilariously basically includes giving people their comeuppance relatively nonviolently while espousing some new version of a 12 step program.

Though the analogies might be questioned, the making of supplement includes a "spectrum" of "unlikely partner" films as paradigms for the series, with an outright statement that the creative staff was aiming for a Lethal Weapon ambience, and there is a kind of fun, bantering interplay between Bucky and Sam, though in this case it might be argued that both characters are emotionally unbalanced for various reasons. For either better or worse, depending on individual viewer's sensibilities, the emphasis on race, which ultimately also includes an "alternate" Captain America in the form of Caucasian John Walker (Wyatt Russell), is not the only "political" angle to the story, and in fact references to a "better" state of things during the so-called Blip may recall some current day movements harkening back to a perceived previous "golden age". While that may be seen my some as an allusion of sorts, kind of interestingly a supposedly quasi-terrorist group called the Flag Smashers which plays into this "bygone halcyon age" actually espouses beliefs that sound more like what are often called "globalists", eschewing national identities and allegiances.

If the Flag Smashers in aggregate might be seen as a central villainous group, there are at least a couple of other characters whose moral shades of gray are played at least intermittently for laughs. Helmut Zemo (Daniel Brühl) and Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) each have contributions to aspects of the story, and their motivations are sometimes left rather ambivalent, though the series does try to provide more context and backstory for Zemo in particular. I frankly found Louis-Dreyfus to be a little underwhelming in her characterization, playing the scheming contessa as a somewhat more patrician Selina Meyer, but Brühl is frequently hilarious and nefarious in about equal measure, and it doesn't hurt that he is either intentionally or unintentionally made up to look a bit like an actual "comical supervillain".

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is (are?) presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Disney / Buena Vista and Marvel Studios with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. The IMDb lists the Blackmagic camera capturing at source resolutions of 6K, with a 4K DI, resulting in an often beautifully well detailed transfer, though as I've advised in many of the other simultaneously released efforts from Disney / Buena Vista in either 1080 or 2160, there's little doubt that there are even greater levels of fine detail in this 4K version when stacked up against this completely excellent 1080 release of the series, so those with 4K home theater setups should probably think about opting for that version. That said, those without 4K systems are still going to get a fantastically well detailed and beautifully saturated presentation that offers some generally superb fine detail levels, especially on practical items like sets and costumes. This series may have just a tad less CGI wonderment than some of the other day and date Disney+ SteelBook releases I've reviewed recently, but some of the FX work, while perhaps a bit more fleeting, both literally and figuratively as in Falcon's flying antics, still tend to look nicely sharp and at least reasonably well detailed. This has some of the same very minor flirtations with banding that I noted in our Moon Knight: The Complete First Season Blu-ray review, but nothing that I'd say amounts to much more than a very momentary distraction.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As with the video side of things, I'd advise fans to think about the 4K UHD release of this series, since it, like all the other recent Disney+ properties, offers Dolby Atmos audio while the 1080 releases offer "only" DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 tracks. The surround activity throughout the six episodes of this series is often extremely immersive, starting with an absolutely fantastic sequence early in the first episode featuring Falcon marauding through various mountains and valleys in a scene that frankly would have been perfectly at home with X wing fighters in Star Wars. While, yes, the Atmos track on the 4K UHD discs offers noticeable verticality and more enveloping surround characteristics as both Falcon and various combatants go whizzing to and fro through the air, the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 version offers a nicely layered and really enjoyable designed vignette that fills the side and rear channels with considerable effects activity as well. Both flying scenes and some of the other action set pieces understandably provide some of the most noticeable surround activity, but even less "showy" moments, like a pseudo-"announcement" of the "new Captain America" in a stadium offer great background spill. Scoring also regularly populates the surround channels. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English, French and Spanish subtitles are available.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Disc One

• Assembled: The Making of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (HD; 59:30) is a well done overview of the series, including some good interviews with the principal cast and crew. It might be a bit of subliminal branding that this bears the same Assembled title as the making of supplement on Moon Knight, the other Marvel release of the recent quartet of Disney+ offerings, did.

Disc Two

• Cap's Shield (HD; 5:04) focuses on the iconography of the shield and what "bestowing" it on a Black man might mean.


• Gag Reel (HD; 2:40)


• Deleted Scenes (HD; 2:26)

Of the four Disney+ SteelBooks released on April 30, this one may be the least spectacularly designed, though it's still handsome. Somewhat generic images of the titular pair grace the front panel, with a more action oriented set of poses dominating the back panel. Both of the exterior panels feature somewhat tapmed down reds, along with subtle blues that are almost grays, and hints of white. A photo of both focal characters is on the inside panels. The SteelBook also encloses art cards.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

We're several years on now from when this series originally streamed, and so a "second season" seems unlikely at this point, though evidently there are plans for the story to continue in a feature film. Kind of remarkably given how provocative some of the material in this series may be for some, it frankly did not strike me as overly screed like in any significant way. Technical merits are solid, and the supplements are enjoyable. The SteelBook packaging is handsome, though perhaps a bit on the generic looking side. If you have 4K equipment, I'd personally opt for that version, but otherwise this 1080 release comes Recommended.