What If... CA:TFA Was Copied Poorly?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ม.ค. 2025
- What If episode 1 is bad and it's not even close to the worst in the show. Prepare for more.
If you liked this video I have a similar one about Eternals on my channel so go check that one out as well
Playlist: • What If... Marvel Made...
#whatif #mcu
Man, this show was such a fascinating idea on paper. Exploring different scenarios that diverge from OG canon to tell new compelling stories, the possibilities are endless. But the writers only seem interested in shitting out some of the most ridiculous fanfiction-level narratives I’ve ever seen.
Not to mention that the character designs and animation are so unpolished and janky. They were clearly going for an Arcane-esque aesthetic, but that show took *six years* to develop, whereas you could tell What If was rushed out like most Phase 4 products.
This show is actually a perfect observation case... We get to how bad a good story can get in the hands of shitty writers... We get to see the many ways the first avenger could have been screwed up and we get to admire the original even more in contrast...
@@johnnycrown5097 What if....marvel was poorly written trash
@@Janx14 what if marvel was poorly written fanfiction
Iron Man's Mach 45 armor from 2015 or whenever: Totally destructible
Howard Stark's 1940s old timey Iron Man anime mech suit: IT'S INDESTRUCTIBLE
[RE: Howard's armor.]
"They don't make 'em like THAT anymore."
--- James Leasor.
(Amongst INNUMERABLE others.)
Why the heck did they choose _this_ moment to be the one to alter the timeline? The entire reason they chose Steve for super soldier experiment was because he jumped on the dummy grenade to protect people when everyone else ran away, and passing the test...
But wanna know who else stepped forward at that part? _Peggy._ Steve got to the grenade first, but I distinctly remember them show Peggy's reaction at that part, and she _didn't_ run or duck away from it. They could have made THAT the moment when the timeline split, by having Peggy act first.
They make a whole point about the misogyny... But come on... If Steve was chosen because of his heart _despite_ his physical weaknesses (barely considered a man at all by their standards), I doubt Peggy being a woman would matter that much to them.
Because it was made by disney, and they love pushing misogyny to "prive them wrong" all part of the agenda
The superior what-if story. Ironman Armored Adventures: what if Howard stark was a good father to Tony.
any story that ends with tony stark being a good person is a peak story
@@NoBody-oe3bfthat explains why the MCU films have dropped in quality because it’s not Tony’s story anymore
@@axelnilsson5124nah they just killed off their comedic character and now fill every movie and show with one hoping atleast one of them gets the fans attention like tony did
Piper 5😢ppp0ppppp5pppp5ppp😢
great job brother, I used to think the Captain Carter episode isn't actually that bad... But here we are...
I also used to think it wasn't that bad. But man does every episode of this show suck
@@puggietaur including the ultron one?
@@JustSaph oh man you aren't ready for my video on that one 😏
@@puggietaur 💀💀💀
@@JustSaphbro that one is one of the worst if not the worst 💀 it was so bad it didn’t even survive a first viewing for me. It actually caused me to re-evaluate the entire series
at the end where red skull gets crushed by the lazily written tentacle monster, how did the monster effortlessly kill redskull since he is a super soldier? however, when peggy just decided to push it, the monster just decided to give up :/
that's a good point
"It *IS* indestructible, was."
Pal, everything is indestructible until it was destroyed.
no, indestructible means can't be destroyed not hasn't been destroyed
One thing (if I might):
"Indestructible" is similar to "impossible".
"NOTHING is "impossible", only MATHEMATICALLY IMPROBABLE."
--- Sir August De Wynter.
Back in 1943, it was "impossible" to split an ⚛️ atom, or to break the Sound Barrier 🚧.
And (as Mz. Mode would say) here we are.
@@puggietaur you missed my joke lol. I know what it means, I just make a joke based on his logic.
Producer: "OK! We're doing a What If... series. We can do anything! Limitless imagination! What's your first idea?"
Writer: "I've got it! What if Captain America was a girl, and she had to fight the real enemy, sexism, while being the biggest Mary Sue you've seen since Captain Marvel?"
Producer: "Go on..."
Writer: "The overarching plot is basically the same as the first Captain America film except worse, with a version of the Iron Man armor shoehorned in, just because. Also, tentacles. And you know how Cap was frozen for decades & thawed out in the present? Simple. Elegant. Well, we're not gonna do that. What we're gonna do makes no sense. Something something portals. Something something time travel. (Just ignore that this is the space stone & not the time stone.)"
Producer: "Genius!"
it was very creative, especially the part where they made characters far more sexist than they've been established to be
They could've put the Tesseract inside one of the cars inside a metal box - instead we got Zola holding a Hydra "endorsed" box that says " hey!!! Open me, I have something important inside "
23:58 It's also a reference to how Hitler was obsessed with the occult and had many teams of archaeologists searching for occult artifacts and other mythological items to give them an edge over the Allies.
You didn't mention that Peggy works for the British military so Flynn can't promote considering he works for the American military not to mention she shouldn't be talking to him like that based on their ranks...
Just as a heads up, the "Peggy is Stronger because her base was stronger" is explicitly not how the concept of 'peak human' works. Peggy's physiology would be changed to peak physicality for a human being. It sets everything to 100. Your 'base' does not matter because it just dials EVERYTHING up. This is why Steve's base didn't matter either for the serum. Physicality was basically irrelevant and Erskine knew it. The only time it matters is when someone is ABOVE peak human. This is only for things like mass. In the comics, for instance, there's a soldier 'Protocide' that's a prototype cap...and he is stronger than Cap but only a bit because he's physically taller than what would be 'peak' human (he's like 6'3") so he's a smidge bigger in frame. That's it though. It's slight.
Meanwhile, Peggy is a peak human woman. Peak male strength is far far more than peak female strength. Basic biology. Peggy should actually be considerably weaker than Steve (though she'd have other attributes that would be far better than him due to biological differences between men & women).
I mean that's a fair interpretation, it's just possible that the serum amplifies existing muscle and thus made Peggy with serum stronger than Steve with the Serum. If that's not how it should work that's a small issue compared to basically everything else in the episode 😆 but thanks for pointing that out
@@puggietaur Oh absolutely. It's definitely minor...and don't even get me started on the "improved" formula in FATWS where people look exactly the same. Such garbage.
Good breakdown on the vid. Gonna take time to watch all of your videos. :)
Oh, that's right! Erskine was looking for the best candidate in terms of personality, nothing else! Because it was the strength of Steve's character that mattered.
Maybe she'd have a peak womb and make semi-super babies or something
Damn, this channel needs more views. Really great analysis on the first episode, can't wait to watch the rest!
thanks so much!
Great vid my dude, 1 small thing tho, you could do with toning down the backing music just a little, it can get a little distracting at points
i've already started working on that, hopefully it's less distracting in the following videos
Its really weird and confusing what Marvel is doing with the multiverse. The Spider-Men are from their own universes/Earths that are not branches of the MCU timeline, but its all referred to as the “multiverse” as are dimensions and splinter timelines. The Watcher is suppose to look over the multiverse and I guess that encompasses alternate timelines of those universes?
I mean Tobey and Andrew technically could be from alternate timelines of the MCU where, for example, the tesseract never fell to earth and that led to a bunch of things being different. But yeah they don't really make it clear whether they want you to think certain universes are branches or not
@@puggietaur Yeah, but that would also mess with the previous continuity established by the comics and the films. All Marvel media is intended to be part of the multiverse with their own Earth designation (games, movies, shows, etc.) and characters in the comics have been aware of some of the film’s realities, including the MCU. I personally don’t like the idea of those universes branching from the MCU as that would just raise more questions than answers.
@@tiger_lord305 technically the MCU has never acknowledged that, it's the comics' fault for roping the MCU into something it's not a part of
The multiverse continues parallel universes that branched from one another (these are timelines) as well as entirely separate universes that differed from their original creation (so they didn't branch; they have always existed separately)
Theoretically, going to a different timeline should be a lot easier than going to an entirely separate universe. Think about a timeline universe branching off as a tree; that is its own multiverse system, but a stage 1 multiverse. Now another tree nearby is its own multiverse system, also of stage 1, but the collection of all such trees is a stage 2 multiverse.
And the collection of all such trees of different species (different IPs, such as DC, Marvel, star wars, etc), is a stage 3 multiverse. The entirety of all this collection is called the Omniverse
I did appreciate with this episode that Steve still got to be a hero and help even tho he isn't qualified
it's nice but i'm not sure why howard chose him
deserves more views, great job! greetings from germany :)
33:52 personally when it comes to why no one on earth wants to destroy the earth I’m more a fan of “it’s where I keep all my stuff.” From the tick but good use of the clip.
Excellent review! Concise, well-thought out, full of strong arguments, and swiftly edited. Can’t wait to see the rest. You’ve earned a subscriber
16:26 It is very much possible to achieve this, the issue isn't the fact she's pushing off the bike but another strength feat. If we say that the motorbike weighs as much to her as a normal bike would to us (which can be inferred by the scene where she just throws one with one hand). If this is true then the force she exerts would be more than enough to lift the motorbike up. people parkour with bikes all the time.
and for some reason this is annoying me a lot. but the only way your argument would apply is if both Peggie and the bike were in a vacuum.
fair enough
@@puggietaur by the way Great breakdown on Red Skull in the first avenger. I always enjoy someone breaking apart good or bad scenes to explain how they tick.
Yeah. If you could produce enough force, you could bunny hop a bike like that just like how you can bunny hop a BMX bike. But... That is a lot of force.
@ Obviously more than even the strongest human can make but lets be honest, a super soldier like Captain America or Carter could given what they are capable of outside of that.
If these problems were fixed, I would've liked it so much more. A "What if...?" doesn't mean you can just do anything... it still needs to follow its own internal logic. The primary difference should literally be "what if this premise was different? How would everything else follow?"
Instead, they go "We want things to end up this way; we shall construe a 'what if' to make that happen.
A very good breakdown and introspection of how they miss the concept of a what if and how they messed up characters.
Very well produced and edited great video series I’m gonna watch them all.
Remember when the MCU tried to establish a mythos of sorts before slowly butchering it with humor and nonsense? Ngl this was so painful I'm glad I never watched this filth 😭
17:12 That is far faster than Tiger I's could move, that is also more Tiger's than were ever confirmed to be deployed to the Western Front. And unless Hydra had them on base, they wouldn't have reached them in time. And if they were on base, why are they out in a field, and not IN the compound?
Power levels regarding the super soldier serum isn’t like dragon ball. Regardless that Peggy was at a higher base than Steve, the serum pushed the physical and mental aspects of the human body to their limit, and since biological men are stronger than woman Steve would still have strength.
we don't know exactly how it worked so i was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt
Also, when red skull picks up the Tesseract, it sends him to space. Meanwhile, Captain Carter just kind of picks it up and carries it outside of its container.
it affects red skull that way because it was recently being used. when not being used it's safe to pick up
Bro this is a good breakdown, keep it up
The reason Peggy is stronger and faster than Steve is because she is female. Everyone knows that women are generally stronger and faster than...
...wait!
Later, Steve not only 'pilots' the teseract suit, but pilots a fighter plane. But Steve, without the serum, is still unfit for duty.
binging my videos i see 😉
and when she said "if he failed, destroy the world" she meant thats what would happen if red skull failed to control it, not that this was his backup plan
38:25 You cannot convince me that the explosion is not stolen from Dragonball Z and overlaid on this scene
To be fair. They reference dancing another time in Captain America one. When Peggy walks in on Steve being kissed by that random receptionist, she says, "Looks like finding a partner wasn't that hard after all." You could read this as her saying a romantic partner if you're wrong, but she means steve finding a "dancing partner"
did she casually barehand the tesseract???
the tesseract seemingly is fine to hold as long as it wasn't recently used. tony picks it up for a second in endgame. right after being used it's hot tho
This shows how a good story could've been ruined if given to crappy writers... We're literally watching the first avenger if written by shitty writers...
What's the music that starts at 16:05?
halland dalarna, it's in smash but originally from one of the minecraft spinoffs
@puggietaur thank you!! I kept thinking it was a touhou track
and again she said "his name is steve rogers not the stomper" because she cares more about him than that machine and finds it insulting how they seem more keen on it than him
40:08 twin paradox just doesn’t exist anymore apparently. Bro spent time discussing why polorisation doesn’t fit in a scene but can’t wrap his head around time distortion
if by time distortion you mean the other side of the portal was a dimension with different rate of time flow that doesn't work and i've replied to other comments suggesting the same thing
I'm glad this came up on my feed first time I watched what if I thought I was amazing because I was coming off the infinity war high, tried to rewatch it in 2025 and couldn't even stomach the first episode, watching this is so much better. And a buff girl called "Peggy" with a little bf is one of the most unintentionally hilarious things Marvel has done
They already did back in 1991.
Go watch it and you'll see how terrible it is.
Spoiler Alert: Steve Rogers spends more time stealing cars then fighting anyone to the point that they had to use pictures of him getting beaten and strapped to a missile on the box art.
TFA wasn’t a copy of that movie considering the story takes place in present time and still deals with Red Skull
So around 40:31 you talked about how the tesseract transported her forward in time. From what i got it was more she was stuck there for 70 years. But thats giving benifit of doubt and maybe I'm just stupid /: but like maybe the place it transported her moves faster? Idk its so dumb overall
Good video tho!
she clearly didn't experience 70 years, she comes out without having aged, expecting steve to still be alive
and if time moved fast enough that a few minutes were 70 years there, her body would get super out of sync when partway through and she would die
not too sure about the bike part. like i get what you mean, but you don't need to touch the ground to spring the front of a bicycle, you just need to apply forward force and momentum at the right time, and even a human can generate enough force to raise the bike enough to come off the seat due to the angle.
that's fair i wasn't fully correct about that one, she does insanely high with some of the jumps though
16:20
So... Yes, you can bunny hop. Bunny hopping is a thing. You don't have to push off the ground to bunny hop. (Well, you're pushing against the ground through whatever you're on, board, bike, whatever, which is similar.) But no, you couldn't get that much air doing it with a bike like that. Though give the right guy a BMX bike and he can pop a hop maybe... 2 feet in the air?
TWO YEARS AGO? THE EIGHTH ONE ONLY JUST RELEASED
Well then.
i don't do this full time, and i made a lot of other videos in the meantime... so yeah my upload schedule is pretty terrible 😆
@@puggietaur That's alright, I'm sure I'll manage to watch them in about the same span of time.
16:05 "We see Peggy catch up to a motorcycle which is a lot faster than we ever saw Steve run". Aaaand with that i can tell you're just nitpicking because... yeah? we did? In CA:CW, the tunnel footchase scene. And he has flipped motorcycles in the movies too. There´s some valid criticism in this vid, but some other points are just fluff.
fair enough
I think the problem here is how it looks. In Civil War, Steve looks to be going all out, but Peggy looks likes she’s just out for a jog. Which is the real point here, Steve always looks to be working hard in these type scenes, but Peggy doesn’t seem to be trying that hard.
minor critique: the way peggy can jump the motorcycle like that is the same way an ollie works. it doesnt look like anythings pushing but the whole bike is at the start.
is it animated properly? probs not. but it *is* possible!
not a major point either way though.
Small nitpick of your critique: teleportation could include being teleported to the dimension in which the tentacle monster is, in which time may work differently.
if time works differently then how could the monster control its limbs through the portal? and similarly peggy would die if time was flowing differently for one part of her body compared to another (the time dilation would have to be very high to make a few minutes into 70 years)
@@puggietaur i would write a bunch of defences BUT that requires me writing a LOT more for the writer and
at this point that just makes it into fanfiction ngl
@@cassiop3iaa In other words, it would require what I like to call "entering headcanon land".
a car moving does not have more force than an explosion
16:08 is it? He, Bucky and T’Challa were able to outrun cars
39:45
Well technically 🤓 the other dimension she was in all that time could have a different flow of time so on earth 70 years pass and on giant squid planet it was 3 weeks. Its not the tesseract doing any timey wimey BS its the properties of the other dimension.
But thats me doing the writing for the writers and i had to assume all of that
plus when partway through the portal the two sides of her body would age at vastly different rates which would royally screw up her physiology
I agree with alot of your videos, honestly, but are you this meticulous on every movie though? Your fav movie for an example. I think your a little too technical in my opinion. But who am I.
i am, you'll see my criticize quite small things about homecoming in my 2 hour review of it. i have heard and even believed criticisms other than what i mention in it, but at this point have defenses for them that I believe to be fair. Also I consider favorite and best different things, my favorite movie just happens to be one I also consider technically very good
It can create portals to alternate Dimensions where time works differently so tell her she could have been there for 1 hour why almost 30 years had passed here
then when she was partway through part of her body would age a lot more than the rest of it and she would die
The Ø in Tønsberg is said with a «Uh» sound if you care
You know what else is massive... 4:30
the hydra agent was like a ninja, until he got shot and his heart rate low key tapered, causing his life to fade from him
Maybe for those parts of What If that's inconsistent with the main timeline we can excuse them as a different universe. Like how in The Flash, Barry went back in time to save his mother and things were already different before he bought the tomatoes, such as Batman being older and Eric Stoltz playing Marty McFly, maybe Marvel's timelines works a similar way with that fulcrum concept?
that's not how it works, watch endgame or loki. and the flash doesn't do its time travel or multiverse well either that movie's plot is awful 😆
@@puggietaur Loki has a variant who is an alligator whose Nexus event was "eating the neighbor's cat" and Sylvie is a woman despite being a variant of Loki. And another Loki variant who's black. And we've got No Way Home establishing the Raimiverse and Webbverse timelines being canon to the MCU multiverse like how the Burton Batman movies seemed to be canon to the Flashpoint timeline despite being a branched timeline of the DCEU with Michael Shannon's General Zod invading Earth. Yeah, pretty sure you can only use Flash's fulcrum logic to justify that. After all, Marvel and DC are rivals who always copy each other, why not give them the same rules? The multiversal time travel in my novels will follow a similar logic with someone going back in time into another timeline already finding things off about that universe without even going back to the future.
@@SeanWheeler100 The only explanation for Alligator Loki is that it's not a real Loki. The Sylvie thing is an issue and is stupid. Loki is the worst story I've ever seen so most of what it establishes is breaking its own rules, the only thing it does do properly is how branches are branches and not fulcrums like the flash movie. The Raimiverse and Webverse are possible if the timeline branch happened farther back in the past, like before the Tesseract ended up on earth or something. The MCU's rules came before The Flash came out, and it's definitely not the same idea. Any resemblances it might have to it are continuity issues. The Flash's multiversal travel is pretty nonsensical anyways I wouldn't use it to explain anything, it doesn't even explain itself
@@puggietaur Well, it is really screwing up the branches in Season 2. In scenes outside the TVA, there's a caption telling us the year and place and whether the scene takes place on the Sacred Timeline or a Branch Timeline, and the two instance of the Sacred Timeline, I really have to disagree and say they are branch timelines. Because the first instance, X-5 went back to his life as the movie star Brad Wolfe, but if the TVA Agents were variants, as in people from branched timelines, shouldn't there be another Brad Wolfe on the Sacred Timeline confronting his imposter? And the next instance of the Sacred Timeline was Ravonna dropping off the TVA guidebook to Victor Timely as a child, and then the trip to the Chicago World Fair was on a branched timeline with a variant Victor grown up and had the book that Ravonna gave him, even though as a variant, he should be a different person from the Sacred Timeline's Victor. If Ravonna went back on the Sacred Timeline, it should be a closed loop similar to the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season finale where the agents returned to their original timeline shortly before they left and became the people in the blue hazmat suits from the previous season finale. It shouldn't be that the time-travellers were on the sacred timeline until they do something that causes a paradox to branch the timeline. The time-travelling Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America and Ant-Man from Endgame were not in the background of the first Avengers film. Pretty sure Loki is making the Sacred Timeline and branches more confusing than ever. Especially with the Sacred Timeline now being a rope of many timelines on the Temporal Loom. Oh well, I'll just watch your Loki review now. After watching the Echo trailer.
@@SeanWheeler100 yeah Loki s2 is not making anything better. Brad being an undercover agent in the sacred timeline doesn't make any sense HOWEVER the rennslayer thing actually does, at least the aspect you're talking about. she drops off the book to him in the sacred timeline, but when she visits him in the future, it's a branch timeline. the problem is that the branch timeline is 30 years or something past when she dropped off the book, and branch timelines play out in real time, so she would have needed to wait 30 years for him to reach that point. they just forgot about that rule from season 1
Disney needs to take a class in modal logic so they understand how different "worlds" interact.
Also... LoL go ride a bike. That's called a "bunny hop."
That's the only time I'll defend this show.
PS Reversing the polarity is a Doctor Who Easter Egg.
I love these videos but I still love What if alot
I don't know if this is just me but I think I find Steve Rogers less interesting than literally every other version of captain America, tbh
How to tell me you’ve never picked up a comic without telling me
i've read quite a few actually, it's just that i care about actual quality writing rather than faithfulness to the crappy comics
@ not the reply on the 2 year old vid😭 reply to my other comment about the time distortion then
@@puggietaur so that’s a no then, you only reply to comments that bait a reply and not to legitimate criticism?
@@TheChiefEcon111Dafug? He has the right to reply to any comment he desires. Also, kinda funny that you're bitching because you have no counterarguments for your point.
@@TheChiefEcon111He literally said "yes", you dumbface, but he simply judged the show as......a show.
I know, I know, an incomprehensible concept to you.
why dont you have a bigger following it doesn't make sense
What is CA:TFA?
captain america: the first avenger
I kinda like the dancing shoes line tho
You are wrong they are different and those are different realities not timelines use the correct words🤬😡😤
they are realities/timelines/universes the words are used interchangeably
What is the difference between a timeline, reality, dimension and universe exactly?
@@VexdinLord so timeline/reality/universe are used interchangeably and are the same, but dimensions (occasionally erroneously called universes, specifically in doctor strange 1) have counterparts in every timeline. for example, each timeline has its own astral and mirror dimensions
@@puggietaur Then we add Realms into the mix and I don't understand what the hell if going on.
@@VexdinLord "realm" doesn't really matter as a word in the MCU. the 9 realms are just different planets, and the quantum realm is its own thing that quantumania messed up big time
Bro you’re ruining “what if” if it’s entertaining plot holes don’t matter cause in the multiverse, if everything is possible, all of this is possible. Comparing it to our version of reality is completely missing the point.
You’re an entertaining narrator though.
multiverse doesn't mean free of logic but alright. if it's only entertainment that matters, then i'll just say that all of the plot holes ruin my entertainment of it
What If is a series that hinges on the premise of one event from the main MCU timeline being altered, which causes a multitude of differences and changes to events. Essentially the butterfly effect. Each episode is built off a premise, in this case being, "What if Peggy stayed in the room instead of going behind the glass window". The premise is broken however when moments that shouldn't have been effected at all by that choice, like Hydra finding the Tesseract later or there not being an extra vial of serum happen. These aren't nitpicks, these are huge events that allow the plot to go off so much from the original story into what the episode shows, yet they have nothing to do with the central premise.
Steave Rahjerz
The voice acting was horrible in this show
Everything marvel makes is bad so this isn't even a what if.
false. unless you mean recently in which case mostly true
@@puggietaur No it's the truth, the mcu has always been trash.
@@Auron1Roxas2 tell me why the first avengers movie is bad 🧐