Captain America: Civil War - Seen it! [spoilers ahoy]

Cafe Society
1

Captain America 3: Civil War is officially released worldwide today, ahead of America (in your face, USA!) who get it next week, and I went to see it this morning.

As you’d expect from Marvel, it is really good. Directed by the same guys who did Winter Soldier (and the next Avengers movie), the Russo Brothers, it deals with the aftermath of the swathe of destruction the Avengers have left in their wake, and more importantly the differing points of view they have on their responsibilities. Should they be reined in or left untethered? Tony Stark says they should be kept in check, Steve Rogers says they should not.

It’s more of an Avengers 2.5, because it includes a long list of characters, many of whom have not been in a CA film before (Iron Man, War Machine, Hawkeye, Ant-Man, Vision, Scarlet Witch), and including a few new additions (Black Panther, Spider-Man). It gets a bit crowded, and it doesn’t help that the bad guy kind of looks like Bucky Barnes, which confused me for a while.

It’s a great film, it handles the same ground Batman v Superman does but properly and carefully, and true to the characters they’ve set up in the movies. You care about everyone, and best of all the fights all happen in bright daylight.

Though I enjoyed it and look forward to what’s coming next, I did realise there were no scenes that made me want to watch the movie a second time. So there wasn’t much truly distinctive about it, it mostly felt like more of the same but still great.

It did make me excited for both Black Panther’s and Spider-Man’s upcoming movies, though.

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Hoping to see it this weekend. Who dies is the big question?

3

That certainly is a big question.

Not telling.

4

Saw it at midnight here and thought they nailed it.

Won’t give too many actual spoilers despite of what the title implies.
But here’s a few things that I absolutely loved.

  • It’s NOT the comic book Civil War, not by a long shot. But like the books both sides have a good point which gets more blurred as the story advances.

  • As mentioned, there’s a lot of players but all of them have a reason for being there, some of them have character development too!

  • Spider-man is awesome and completely fits in. He is the way he should be, makes jokes to hide his nerves being there with these big guns but hold his ground in the actual fight because he’s Spider-man, damnit.

  • More of Winter Soldier background including one thing you can see coming from a mile away but still hurts when it actually plays out.

  • Black Panther’s introduction is well done. You see very little of Wakanda but it’s easy to read between the lines and realize BP and Wakanda are about to make an impact.

  • The end actually doesn’t follow the standard “let’s gear up for the huge battle scene” scenario for once.

If there’s one thing I can see people being disappointed in, it’s the villain.
But my response to that is that he’s more believable for not being the usual impossible-to-beat-until-the-end type of guy.
His motivations also make sense and it’s interesting to see how the Avengers (both sides) fail to understand what he’s after because they look at the big picture/ramifications only and not the personal ones.

5

Oh, here’s something. Like Ant-Man did with Michael Douglas, the achievement of a young Tony Stark is amazing! This level of CGI opens up incredible possibilities for the future.

6

Excellent use of two and a half hours.
Lots of characters, but as mentioned, it feels like they all have a reason to be there. Several get only a few lines, but they manage to convey the characters they’ve already established.
Yes, there is a mid-credit and an after credits scene. Yes, Stan Lee makes a cameo.

7

Saw it at a military base on Saturday. Eh. I mean there was a lot of great stuff in it but it seemed like it wanted to have it both ways - have “real moral issues” but not really, you know, talk about them in a truly adult way. (You’re talking about going under UN peacekeeping authority but nobody says “Rwanda”, for example, but you want to talk about why and why not…) Also a lot of it was people changing their minds and doing things just because the plot required it to get them somewhere else, plus there was a bit of Idiot Plot in there for a good long while.

Also that fight scene in the middle was stupid. I’m sorry, it was dumb. I got the feeling that some exec said “you know what people want to see? Superheroes fight! You know what they want to see more of? MORE SUPERHEROES FIGHTING!” It was so… look, with the way they fight in Marvel movies you can’t tell if they’re really trying to hurt each other or not, and that handicaps the hell out of that sort of thing. Spider-man is there for zero reason except to, I dunno, paint Tony Stark as even more of a reckless idiot than he generally is. (Let’s recap: he went and recruited an actual child to go to war against a WWII combat vet, an Afghanistan combat vet, a mind-controlled Soviet assassin, a… whatever Hawkeye is but he definitely kills the shit out of people, and an ex-con. Of that charming bunch of people only the ex-con is not a stone cold killer.) The whole thing felt like something a studio exec excitedly plotted out on a brunch table with salt shakers and napkins.

That being said, all the small emotional moments worked like gangbusters. Steve and Tony were pretty heartbreaking. I just think that the problems with it are problems that I see in most of the current crop of superhero movies and it’s making them less and less interesting, and harder and harder to steer well.

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OH, and one more villain who makes no impression or sense. (Seriously, sit down and think, for a bit, about exactly what that dude’s plan was. Yeah. Really think about it.) It turned into a weird McGuffin storyline by the end, which is not necessarily a bad thing but here it was. Ugh, I’m mad just thinking about the silliness of that plot.

Without real spoilers let me point out that he had no idea there was any more proof about 1991 than was already in the publicly available papers, albeit encrypted. Trust me, Reddit was on it. How long did it take for those Panama Papers to have long and full articles written about who was in them?

9

I saw it yesterday and really enjoyed it, the only downside for me was, sadly, Spiderman.

A few plot holes, but nothing I couldn’t cope with. Liked the Black Panther and seeing more of the Winter Soldier.

10

Saw it. Haven’t yet really decided how much I liked it but if nothing else it really drives home just how inept Batman v. Superman is.

The answer to that question is one of my issues with the movie. If handled differently I think it would have taken things to the next level of quality.

Interesting. I thought it looked like very obvious CGI. Very plastic looking.

One thing I really liked is that they had a movie with real tension and conflict without it requiring an existential threat to the country, planet, universe.

Didn’t like Ant-Man any more than I did in his own movie and despite the joke about Captain America’s shield not following any of the laws of physics the complete stupidity of the physics of Ant-Man continues to annoy me more than entertain.

Also didn’t like that the movie required villain omniscience. If one bullet had missed/hit a target. If one CIA agent hadn’t cheated a bit. If one of an infinite number of little things had gone differently the master plan was ruined.

Despite almost none of the Robert Downey Jr. sarcarstic patter I think this was the second best Iron Man movie.

11

I enjoyed the movie but this is certainly its greatest weakness. If near the start of the movie before things start to move you’d ask the villain “so, what’s your plan for all of this?” I don’t think there’s any sensible answer he could give that wouldn’t sound utterly ridiculous. The whole thing is running on pure narrativium.

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Just think, he could have saved himself a ton of time and energy and just put that shit on YouTube.

13

Saw it last night, and it really is more an Avengers movie than a CA movie. Heck, it had more heroes than either of the previous Avengers movies did. I easily liked it better than Ultron, and it had some great moments and some flaws, IMO.

What I liked:

  • I really liked Spider-man. The nervous kid, trying to impress and fit in with his heroes, and talking a lot to hide his awe/nervousness. He had some good lines but my favorite was “That shield is not obeying the laws of physics at all!” Corollary: I loved Aunt May, and not just because of my decades-long, heavy crush on Marisa Tomei.
  • Black Panther was handled well, with enough mystery around him that makes me look forward to his movie coming out eventually. I also liked the development of Winter Soldier.
  • I liked that there was a twist reveal at the end concerning the villain’s plot and motives, even if his actual plot and motives didn’t work as well in terms of actually making sense.
  • I like in all these movies, but especially this one with so many characters, how they manage to make each hero a distinct individual with their own personality and flaws. Loved how they used Ant-Man and the aforementioned Spider-man, especially.
  • Steve and Tony’s relationship throughout the movie was sad, and it worked. Tony’s position on the accords as a consequence of his guilt and regret was believable, and so was his rage at the end.
  • Liked the shout-out to Peggy Carter.

Things I didn’t like:

  • I get the emotional punch, but Tony is smart enough to understand that someone can’t be held responsible for crimes when they are literally being mind-controlled.
  • Some of those heroes could have totally killed others, and were clearly holding back (e.g., Vision). I guess that makes sense given the relationships but it also lessens the impact of the fight. Speaking of Vision, why does he dress like a middle-aged dad?
  • The villain’s plot was ultimately nonsensical and wildly over-complicated, although I did enjoy the misdirect.
  • As far as the question “Who died?” I was a bit disappointed in the answer. I think they missed an opportunity to do something greater.
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Nah. I’m guessing that, like most people, you think of plans as being linear. I’m in point A, I want to get to point B, therefore I’ll follow this path.

A good plan is one which will achieve its objectives through multiple contingencies+. We saw the one branching of the plan which actually developed, but there were other possibilities.

Also note that while it did not achieve a possible objective of “getting some Avengers to kill each other”, it did achieve, and achieved them pretty early:

  • pitching public opinion against the Avengers
  • getting governments with enough push to do it to decide the Avengers needed to be controlled
  • damaging the team as such a team (to the point of cleaving it).

The bad guy is imprisoned, but inasmuch as he achieved those objectives (and he did), he won.

  • My own plans have been known to include “since Joe Slowpoke will always take five more days than he is given, inform people that we need the stuff done one week earlier than when we actually do”. And then when Joe Slowpoke is late and other people are jumping up and down I just wait until Joe Slowpoke had been thoroughly reamed and the teleconference is finished, and I say “oh, it was accounted for”. The two extra days? In case something explodes wherever.
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In his current comic, that’s totally what he is.

16

I enjoyed it a lot but it felt like it was missing…something. I’m not sure what. It didn’t have the forward momentum that Winter Solider had. That aside though, it was nice to just spend more time with these characters again. I like them all.

Manipulation by the bad guy aside, I have to say had I have to choose I side I would be with Tony Stark. There needs to be laws and oversight. But I get why Cap would not warm to the idea after watching SHIELD rot away and morph into Hydra right before his eyes.

I think the only hero who didn’t show or get a mention was Nick Fury. This really was an all star game of a movie.

17

See, I’m totally on Cap’s side, but I absolutely understood where Tony was coming from. I really felt like he considered himself guilty and needed someone else to have oversight - that’s really understandable.

I’m just floored that they made a movie this coherent and good and balanced between the two sides (and didn’t actually pick a side to “win” at all) out of the giant flustercluck that was the comic Civil War “event.”

I do think the last battle was a bit contrived - I’m blaming it on Tony having a concussion to match that black eye and sore shoulder, and him not getting enough sleep over the past few days. I just think the Tony Stark from the movie-verse is better than that.

Poor Bucky.

18

I felt like Tony would be on the Freedom side by nature. They inserted that scene with Alfre Woodard to illustrate why he chose the side that he did, but his stance in this movie just didn’t quite ring true for me. I realize that they needed to get Cap and Stark on opposing sides, but I didn’t quite buy it.

Enjoyed the movie because of the universe they’ve built, but the plot exchanged logic for forced narration, so it wasn’t quite a home run. A solid double, though.

19

This.

Some further pieces that seemed a bit questionable (beyond the ones already mentioned):

  1. It seems a bit implausible that Stark would recruit Spidey that fast for that major of an undertaking.
  2. They needed a throwaway line to explain the extreme changes of Spidey’s eyes on his costume (“Tony asked for it to give the costume more character.” or something).
  3. Both Spider Man and Black Panther looked like CGI, computer game trailer characters.
  4. Podunk African nation has the most advanced military technology in the world and seems to be friendly with Dr. Strange’s mystical people? From what we saw at the start of the movie, Africa isn’t a different continent than the one we have in our planet, so whaaa? Overall, Black Panther needed a better intro. He failed to have any real character in the movie, and the constant upping of his tech and abilities make it seem like they’re just making up his character as they go along. It would have been better if he’d had a movie before this, to introduce the character on his own.
  5. Captain America missed a pretty obvious line when saying that he’d go all out to save a friend, that that includes Stark as well. When fighting, we also should have seen more of that sort of conviction, rather than a full-force beat down on Iron Man.
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FWIW Wakanda isn’t podunk. It is a wealthy, advanced nation.

I also thought it was a little weird Tony apparently sussed out who Spider-Man was in his spare time. Enjoyed the scene though.