Spoilers Captain America: Civil War - Grading & Discussion

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The third Avengers movie is finally here. The Captain goes up against Tony Stark and if that's not exciting enough, we'll be getting the introduction of another well known hero. As expected, the movie is doing very well with critics. Extremely well actually.

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Just came back from watching it. Once again extremely good MCU movie. Was really surprised how well they managed to give each of the large cast screentime. No one seemed to be there just as a background filler. And it was focused on Captain America, just like a Captain America movie should be.

 

I'm not as big on Marvel movies as most people but this one has me somewhat excited and curious. Excited because the subject matter looks interesting and it's got a pretty good mix of central and supporting MCU characters. And I'm curious because it's 98% fresh and the critics are suggesting that this one succeeded where BvS failed. Got the shirt and I'm all set.

 

Saw it earlier today. Very good. Lots of humour.

 

Holy shit that was a good movie. Juggles a huge cast almost effortlessly, everyone gets stuff to do without feeling shoehorned. Spidey was awesome, T'Challa was great, Lang was...hell, everyone was great. Just go see it.

 

One other thing that I love is that MCU is already becoming so big that not everyone in the movies know each other, even though we have all seen them in the movies. And then there are these little connections between characters that still surprise the viewer.

Like:

Spoiler: scenes in the movie

Sam Wilson remembering Scott Lang and picking him up. And rest of them not knowing who he is.

Then that little tidbit of Stark hearing his father tell about Steve Rogers all the time in his childhood and remembering that he hated hearing about him.

And Scott Lang in prison cell shouting something about Hank Pym telling him not to trust(?) a Stark.

And seeing this movie I have no worries about how they are going to handle possibly even bigger cast in the Infinity War.

 

Saw it at 9pm. Liked it. Now understand why all of tumblr wants to fuck Sebastian Stan.

Spoiler: Spoiler

Although part of me wishes the entire movie was just Falcoln, and Winter Soldier bickering as they drive around Germany.

 

New international posters.

 

Can you move your seat up?

 

No.

 

Saw it this afternoon. Awesome. Just awesome.


Also, Aunt May is a total milf

 

Aunt May having regenerative super powers confirmed.

 

Wouldn't that be ailf?

 

Here's to hoping WB finally gets it through their heads that it's better to hire people who understand the characters, embraces the characters, and doesn't make the entire story somber, dark, and depressing. Who'd have suspected that those three simple ingredients can lead to massive success financially, critically, and in the eyes of the general public. Go figure.

 

Civil War held up well for a second viewing today, fantastic movie and my third favorite behind IM1 and Avengers.

 

Aunt May has always been drawn as being pretty old and frail and it looks like they had to rationalize it after the fact by establishing that Peter's dad's brother (Uncle Ben) was much older. Now they're going the CW route but it makes sense for a teenage Peter to have an aunt who's 50, and 50 isn't what it used to be. I'd also add Aunt May from the recent Ultimate Spider-Man animated series to this trend. She was more youthful and vibrant and dated Phil Coulson.

The 1977 Spider-Man series had an Aunt May who was played by Jeff Donnell who was about 55, so she was the youngest until Tomei came along.

I wonder who they'll get to play Uncle Ben in Homecoming, assuming he's in it.

 

I doubt he would be, unless it was in flashbacks. It's pretty clear that they aren't going to rehash the origin yet again. (Maybe we'll get something like the way Leterrier's The Incredible Hulk efficiently recapped the origin in the main-title montage.)

 

I liked it, but it's not without its flaws.
Spoilers...

The good:
The fight scene at the airport was very good. One of the most entertaining superhero fight scenes I've seen. Love Ant-man and Spider-man in particular.
All the characters\acting were great. The humor was good and not excessive like it can sometimes become.
The didn't do a rest button at the end. The next movie might undo this, but I really like it that the movie didn't end with everyone being friends again (as much as they tried to put a more optimistic spin on the ending).
Spiderman was great.

The not so good:
The movie stopping for the spiderman recruitment scene. It interrupted the pace and it seems silly that Stark would fly half way across the world in mid crisis to maybe convince him to come (when they never met before).

The rational for the airport fight scene was forced. Captain America dismissing the option to talk to Stark about the threat was contrived. It should have been something like this:
IM: "I must bring you in!"
CA: "But we must stop this dude in Siberia from activating more winter solders!"
IM: "Can we do it in less then 36 hours?"
CA: "I don't see why not"
IM: "Let's roll"....

Also, the bad guy couldn't have known that only the relevant trio will show up at the base or that Bucky would be brought to Germany (why did they send German police if the bombing was in Austria? Did I miss something?).

Overall very enjoyable. B+

Some random thoughts:
Would the Sokovia accord apply to non-Avengers? If I'm a superhero on vacation abroad and stop a mugging, am I breaking the law?
The UN having control over the Avengers could be funny if Doctor Doom was part of the MCU....

 

I really enjoyed it, so much that I'm going to watch it again tomorrow (partially so I can see it in 2D instead of 3D, which I didn't want to see it in). It's a stronger Avengers film than Age of Ultron and handled the conflicted superheros idea far better than Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (everything Snyder did wrong, the Russo Brothers got right). Not only is it one of the better superhero films, it managed to maintain a strong Captain America storyline despite the heavy Avengers-tone. It also builds nicely on the Tony Stark saga.

The airport sequence is excellent with plenty of surprises. The inclusion of Black Panther felt very natural to the overall story and the comedy from Ant-Man and Spider-Man were great.

However, there were a few things that bothered me.

There's a jarring segue where Natasha gives her condolences to Steve after Peggy's funeral in London before heading to Vienna to sign the Sokovia Accords. The bombing happens, followed by a scene showing Steve escorting Sharon back to her hotel. They hear the news of the attack and then sudden both o them and Sam are at the sign of the attack as people are still reeling from the bombing. Seems like this is a result of a bad edit and it stood out badly to me.

While I liked the idea of Zemo manipulating the whole situation for his own vengeance (a recurrent theme of the film), I found it a bit hard to believe that (as he's portrayed in the film) an ordinary officer of the Sokovian army with no connections to Hydra (unless I missed something) managed to find out about the existence of the Winter Soldier program and was able to know how to follow the tracks to more information on it. Perhaps my second viewing will clarify this issue.

My other major issue with the film is this...

I found this even more jarring that the London/Vienna segue. Not only did it mess up the flow of the film and made little in-story sense, it felt very obvious moment of "Hey! We can use Spider-Man! This is where we'll squeeze him in." After all of the press talk about how Peter would be conflicted about what side he would be on and how that provide another layer to the themes of the film (which was lightly touched on with Natasha), all we got from his appearance was the classic wise cracks while web-slinging. Nothing inherently wrong with that, but it did feel a bit unnecessary and forced.