Movie review: Captain America: Civil War

[annathepiper]

Divided We Fall

Dara, Paul, and I went and saw Captain America: Civil War last night, and I can say without reservation: gracious, that was satisfying.

Now, Cap’s name is in the title of this thing (and Dara opined that its title should have been Captain America: Why Don’t Any of You Fuckers Listen to Steve?, or perhaps Captain America: He’s Not Perfect, Except For His Abs). But really, this is way more of an Avengers movie. Though granted, it also has a huge focus on Cap. I mention this though because if you go in expecting this to have the same focus on Cap that the previous movies did, you might be a bit disappointed. But if you think of this more as an Avengers movie with a focus on Cap, it works way better. Particularly given how so much of this movie’s plot draws from the events in Age of Ultron.

But of course, it’s also drawing on events in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. This is not a good movie to come in cold to the MCU, is what I’m sayin’ here. If you haven’t seen either of those movies yet, this one will make way less sense.

I’ve seen a lot of enthusing about the new kid playing Spidey. Of whom I mostly have this to say: I’m having a hard time mustering much giveadamn for yet another iteration of Spidey, particularly when pulling him into the MCU delayed Captain Marvel. Marf. Though, even given my crankiness about that, I’ll cheerfully grant this kid was charming and fun. Yesterday I put up a post on Here Be Magic about why I love Supergirl, and one of the things I call out there is how DC’s doing such a lovely job bringing a tone of brightness and optimism to that show. This iteration of Spidey is helping do that for the MCU, I feel, and I can’t help but appreciate that.

Still, though, I think I would have been way more on board with another Spidey if this one had been Miles Morales instead of Peter Parker. Which is why, when it comes to the new faces introduced in this movie, I was way more excited by Black Panther. His character was amazing, and I am 100% ON BOARD with his forthcoming movie.

Before I get into spoiler discussion, here are some other reviews from sites I regularly follow, which I just doublechecked now that I’ve seen the movie myself. I’m pretty much ON BOARD with everything these links have to say, too. Particularly the parts about the biceps. 😀

Captain America: Civil War is the Emotional Pinnacle of Superhero Movies on Tor.com

Review: Captain America: Civil War Is Good (but Too Stuffed to be Great) on The Mary Sue

Movie Review: Captain America: Civil War on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

And now, for spoilers! ALL THE SPOILERS behind the fold!

Read the rest of this entry »

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

Comments

[tiggymalvern.livejournal.com]

My main issue with Civil War was that there was really too much plot to be contained in one film, and that was always going to be an issue with trying to cover so much ground. I didn't mind the number of characters - for the most part they were well used, though Ant Man felt more shoe-horned in than Spidey - but the plot's complexities unfortunately don't remotely hold water.

The whole film is set up with the big red herring that the schemer behind it all is bent on world domination or some such, that he's probably yet another Hydra hangover. And the audience runs with that. And then it turns out he's a nobody - he's some civilian from a failing state who lost his family. At which point, the whole convoluted edifice collapses.

This is not a man who would have the resources to do what what he did. Maybe he could hack the Hydra files Widow released in Winter Soldier, but that wouldn't mean he could predict where Bucky would be captured, or where the authorities would hold him, or who they would ask to interrogate Bucky so he could snatch him and replace him - to do all that, he'd need high level access to EU/UN security procedures as well as the Hydra stuff. It's far too much precision planning for one guy, with far too many places where one single change to one link would wreck the whole plan.

I enjoyed the characters and the character arcs, and I agree with much of what you said about them, but in trying to make the villain's story personal too, the writers blew their own film out of the water. I still liked it, because I've spent a lifetime dodging plotholes, but this was definitely a 4/5 for me, unlike Winter Soldier which I loved pretty much unreservedly.

[annathepiper]

I cannot quibble with this! And yeah, Winter Soldier was pretty much flawless.

Though I didn't think this Zemo guy was entirely a nobody. He was a colonel, and I'm pretty sure I heard it mentioned in passing that he was Sokovian Intelligence...?

*goes to doublecheck*

The Wikipedia page on Zemo (he was a supervillain in the comics) says, quote, "This version of the character is a colonel from an elite squad in Sokovia..." Link here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron_Zemo#Film

So he wasn't exactly a random citizen. Presumably he had some access to whatever military tech and data that Sokovia had.

And I'm willing to handwave that, at least a bit--in a world that contains the Avengers AND S.H.I.E.L.D., particularly the latter which is on record now as being willing to cross national borders when it thinks it needs to, I'm willing to buy agents of even small countries upping their intel game. For the sake of their own defense and self-interest, if nothing else!

Though yeah, what he pulled off in this movie was still a bit of a stretch for one dude without backup to pull off.

[tiggymalvern.livejournal.com]

Yeah, when he said his name, I went 'Huh? This is Zemo?' I'm not sure why they used the name when they weren't going to remotely use the character; that was just puzzling to people who know the comics.

[annathepiper]

Ah okay! I haven't followed Cap's title so this was my first intro to the character.