Civil War and Batman vs Superman: please help me to get excited about these movies

Cafe Society
1

Don’t get me wrong, I love superhero movies as much as the next girl, and they have really turned around Captain America for me. I never liked Cap much before the movies, he always seemed to be a jingoistic anachronism. Instead, they made him into a gentleman, a warrior, a kind man, and a hero. I admit to being impressed (my only complaint: those were not hydras on the bad guys’ pins but octopi!) But I loved the Avengers I and II and I do like Batman even after what’s-his-face nearly ruined him with those terrible Dark Knight movies.

What I don’t get is why I should care, at all, about the internal squabbling of the team. From what I gather, the Civil War movie is about Bucky and Cap going up against Iron Man. And Batman vs Superman is about Superman going on a rampage.
Let’s see. Superman will get beat up a little by Batman, and most likely come to his senses, probably right in time to save a bunch of virgins, orphans, and nuns.
Bucky, Cap and Iron Man will probably come to some sort of agreement which will allow everyone to live.

I am really disappointed that I am not in the least excited about any of these movies, and I WANT to be. I am more looking forward to the X-Men movie than any of these. It doesn’t help that Ben Affleck is Batman, I don’t like Ben Affleck one bit.

So please! Help me! Tell me fun and interesting stuff! Convince me I will love these movies so I can be excited! And for once, I don’t mind spoilers, provided they are not too massive - like no telling me Bucky gets his head blown off or something. I like Bucky and he is honestly the only reason I keep watching the Captain America movies.

Well. That and Chris Evans’ abs.

2

Well, Wonder Woman will be in there somewhere. That’s kind of interesting.

3

The only help I can offer here is agreement. There is no reason to be excited about these movies.The signs and portents all indicate the coming of an age of suckitude in super hero movies.

4

Yes, I am looking forward to that, although it is kind of reduced by the presence of Spiderman in one of them (I forget which one).

I am so fecking tired of Spiderman and his stupid whiny emo issues. I hope all of his dumb little webbing snaps while he’s on top of the Empire State Building and he screams all the way down. :mad: And his girlfriend is seriously annoying too.

5

BvS will be BS. Totally skipping that one.

But CA:CW looks to be amazing. Several key people are likely to die, for a given definition of “key” and “die.” It will change the matrix of the MCU leading into Infinity Wars. It introduces Black Panther and Spiderman to the MCU.

But the key, to me, will be seeing how they deal with the end of the comic arc. Will they stay semi-true, or will they go off in another direction? And if they do stay true, then who?

Can’t wait for May!

6

It’s really more about a larger issue of the government wanting to track and monitor “supers” after all the collateral destruction from all the previous films.
It kind of doesn’t make sense in the Marvel Cinematic Universe the way it does in the comics, mainly because of the absence of mutants. In the comics, Avengers, X-Men and mutants are all in the same universe. There are thousands (millions?) of people with various super abilities. In the MCU, there are only a handful, and most of them are government employees anyway:
Thor is an alien from another planet
Hulk, Captain America, Winter Soldier, Scarlet Witch and Spider Man are all products of experiments / industrial accidents.
Iron Man, Falcon, Ant Man are just guys in high-tech suits that anyone can wear
Black Widow and Hawkeye are barely “super”
Batman vs Superman I think shares a similar theme of Batman wanting to hold Superman accountable for the destruction he brought to Metropolis.

7

Not quite. What they are wanting to do is require the approval of an international commission before the Avengers can intervene in any situation.

8

These movies have the potential to be interesting. They could be explorations of two different views on what a hero is. One view is that a hero is a representative of a society; the other view is that a hero stands outside society. Both are legitimate arguments so you could make a story out of the confrontation between two valid yet contradictory viewpoints. Considering how many stories boil down to good vs evil or right vs wrong, a story of right vs different right has more depth than the average action thriller.

9

That sounds at least as exciting a basis for a movie as planetary trade policy. :stuck_out_tongue:

10

Although Agents of SHIELD has established that a worldwide outbreak of Terrigen exposure has created an unknown number of superpowered individuals, who are then frequently kidnapped - either by the government or Hydra (and the ones in government hands suspiciously frequently later turn up in the hands of Hydra.)

11

Which, of course, doesn’t really work in the context of the MCU either, since they had an international commission which 1) Was willing to nuke New York rather than attempt to fight the Chitauri and 2) Turned out to be controlled by HYDRA anyway.

12

This definitely isn’t what the movie’s about.

This is what the movie is about. And early responses from advance screenings are generally positive.

13

If you don’t care for a certain movie or a certain character, it’s not possible to “convince” someone to like it through logical reasoning or arguments. But if we’re just sharing opinions…

Marvel consistently hits it out of the park. These movies are both critically and commercially successful. Even a weaker Marvel movie (such as Avengers 2) is still quote good and very entertaining. I can’t see why a studio that has seen consistent success would suddenly start churning out garbage. Cap in particular has the most personal story of all the Marvel characters, and there is widespread consensus that CA2 was one of, if not THE, best of the Marvel movies.

I have read several articles that claim the superhero genre is getting old or stale, but I don’t see it. To the contrary, Marvel seems perfectly willing to innovate. Jessica Jones was an astonishing success that was definitely NOT the cookie-cutter superhero story, and Doctor Strange looks like it will also break the mold.

My understanding is that the movie is about Cap being forced to choose between his obligation to the law and his friendship with Bucky. Most action movies never ask their characters to make meaningful moral choices. The moment that really sold me on Civil War is the scene where Cap insists Bucky is his friend and Tony says, “So was I.” The fact that this is focusing on moral conflicts and character-driven drama indicates that this movie is going to be much more than two hours of action figures punching each other.

I also appreciate the fact that there does not appear to be a “bad guy” in this movie. It is far more interesting to watch a fight between two well-established characters than a fight against some random monster-of-the-week. Having the characters disagree over a point in which they both have good arguments is also far more interesting than a story in which one side is clearly “right” and the other is obviously “wrong.”

This is something I don’t think the Civil War comic pulled off very well… Cap was making an argument for uncontrolled vigilantism while Tony came off like a jackbooted fascist. By shifting the argument away from a broad moral question about the legalities of super-heroing to focus on the specific relationship between Cap and Bucky, Marvel will have corrected one of the biggest flaws in the Civil War storyline.

FWIW, I haven’t seen any of this complexity in Batman/Superman. Maybe it’s in there, somewhere, but the trailers haven’t done a good job of communicating it. It looks to me like two heroes meet and fight, before teaming up to fight a bigger threat, which is the plot of every superhero team-up story ever written and a trope that has been dead since the 90’s. I hope that I’m wrong, because I want both of these movies to be good, but right now I have very little interest in Batman/Superman.

14

I admit, I never finished Jessica Jones. I may pick it up at sometime but there was way too much sex in it and I really got tired of it. I don’t like sex mucking up my movies too much.

I didn’t like CA2 that much. It was OK. I did like Avengers: Age of Ultron, though now that I think about it, we’ve only seen it once, so it didn’t have the draw the first one did.

I will try these movies, both of them. But I still see nothing to convince me to see them in the theatres and not watch them at home.

Thank you guys!

15

I can’t help you with Batman v. Superman, since all indications are that that one’s going to suck by the numbers, just like you describe. Civil War, though, is likely to have real ramifications, that aren’t going to just run into a magical reset button, and which likely will result in deaths and other irreversible changes. Which is especially important in that it doesn’t stand alone: There will be more Marvel movies, and if the past is any indication, most of them will be pretty good, and they will be set in a world that will be defined by Civil War.

16

I don’t have much interest in either. Zach Snider has not clue as to what Superman is all about, and the trailer shows that’s there will be plenty of <yawn> fight scenes.

I have complete apathy about the Marvel Universe, too.

So don’t get enthused about them. Just hope that a decent movie comes out this summer.

17

I agree that it sounds interesting to have characters who disagree, without one being the bad guy. But I don’t understand why they are physically fighting over it, other than because it looks cool and because nerds have arguments over what superhero can beat up what other superhero. I’m sure it will make more sense in context, and that I’ll go see it like I’ve seen all the other Marvel movies, and I’ll probably really like it or love it, but I’m not as excited about Civil War as other Marvel movies.

18

These all SEEM like words in English, but I can’t understand how they possibly fit together.

:smiley:

19

I’m kind of in agreement with the MCU. I’m totally bored by it. I skipped Avengers 2 as I really couldn’t be bothered. I did like Captain America: Winter Soldier (generally I find the CA movies the best in the MCU), but Thor is dull to me (didn’t watch the 2nd Thor movie) and Iron Man is also getting stale (the last IM movie was awful). So I don’t really have high hopes for Civil War. Maybe it’ll be good. I dunno… but I like Spidey, so maybe I’ll see it for that.

On the other hand, I’m really excited by Batman v. Superman. I think the questions of how do we react to a basically God-like entity is fascinating and Batman’s reaction (that this person is dangerous and we can’t really trust him) is an entirely reasonable reaction. I’m intrigued to see how they tackle it.

20

Particularly in the context of Jessica Jones! There’s, like, one, maybe two episodes with some sex in them. The rest is all Jones getting drunk and David Tennant being magnificently creepy.