I was pleasantly surprised by this movie and actually thinking about skipping it until right before the next one, but a friend asked me to see it with her, so of course I did. The character insight here is great. The introduction of the new heroes was well, well done. I know there are some hints that at least one of them wasn’t needed and oddly placed, but I disagree. I think this movie is often about questionable decisions by the one that brings them in anyway.
Never been much of a Captain fan myself, in movies or comics, but this elevated him a bit for me.
You guys had me scared about Spiderman. He’s never been my favorite to start with, and hearing it was some 14-year old (or whatever) kid with an obnoxious voice didn’t bode well. Turns out he is hilarious, not annoying (except as much as he’s supposed to be as a character), and is where the movie finally started picking up.
I felt the beginning of the movie up to that point, while not ‘boring’, was a bit of a slog. The rest of the movie made it well worth it, of course.
Well, wound up deciding not to do 3D or IMAX, but then the regular showings close to when I arrived at the theater were all sold out (call me dumb, but I ain’t paying Fandango $2 so they can give me a virtual ticket. Fuckin Ticketmaster-esque shit, y’all), so I just sucked it up and bought the next available showing, which was 3D AND IMAX.
No idea if either particularly improved things (I actually found the IMAX speakers to be uncomfortably loud), but this movie was so good I didn’t mind having to blow like $14 on the ticket. And I earned enough Regal Cinemas Scrip to get a free soda to complement my smuggled candy bars.
Holy fuck, this movie was so cool. Might actually be my favorite Marvel movie yet, but not 100% sure yet. Every single character was absolutely spot-on, and the humor was fabulous. I think I prefer the Russo’s dialogue to Wheddonspeak, at the least.
I enjoyed so much of the movie. The build-up in the beginning took me to a different spot than I had created in my head from the trailers, so was pleasantly surprised. As others have stated, the action sequences are impeccable. Even in pitched battles where a lot is going on, it was very fluid and I felt a huge amount of continuity.
Clocking in at 2 1/2 hours, I never once looked at my watch. It didn’t feel too long. Rather, the pacing was wonderful and engaging.
I do have two nitpicks and since I have zero information from the comics, not sure if they’re being true to the source material, or it was fabricated, so I’ll ask here.
Sokovia Accords - this really felt manufactured and I was like “WTF are you talking about? Sure there was some collateral damage, but the consequence is the EARTH WOULD BE DESTROYED”. It’s hard for me to manufacture or accept any kind of guilt trip on the events leading up what divides them. This just felt too much like a script and to be honest, it bugged me during, after and even now 2 days later. Doing some light reading on the Original comic page, it’s hard to tell if the superhero registration act (from the comics) was brought about due the same circumstances as the Sokovia accords. It feels like the original comic was more about events like at the beginning of the movies - accidental but lethal consequences, but when the secretary comes & gives his talk, I was like “why on earth are you bringing up these HUGE things as examples?”.
The whole spidey thing. So with a 36 hour countdown timer, he decides to fly to New York & back to try to convince this kid to help out? This was another WTF moment. How much time did that waste? He was more confident in getting Spidey to accept his offer than of his own ego that his current team could take care of it? To Spidey’s credit, I didn’t mind him in the movie and he plays it like an exuberant teenage kid, but the whole enlistment thing really bugged me.
But these are really two nitpicks and the movie flows so well, I can’t recommend this one enough but I’m not going to even try ranking it with the other movies. I’ve always had a hard time doing that, so not going to do it here.
The whole spidey thing. So with a 36 hour countdown timer, he decides to fly to New York & back to try to convince this kid to help out? This was another WTF moment. How much time did that waste? He was more confident in getting Spidey to accept his offer than of his own ego that his current team could take care of it? To Spidey’s credit, I didn’t mind him in the movie and he plays it like an exuberant teenage kid, but the whole enlistment thing really bugged me.
But these are really two nitpicks and the movie flows so well, I can’t recommend this one enough but I’m not going to even try ranking it with the other movies. I’ve always had a hard time doing that, so not going to do it here.
I don’t think it takes Tony very long to travel the world actually. it’s not like he’s going through the TSA. I also kind of took this as the other team knows all our cards, so I need a wild card to through them off. Spiderman’s introduction might have been a little forced, but I think it mostly worked.
My only nitpick is that Zemo’s plot depended on so many variables that he almost became SAW-like in his predictive skills. Thank goodness everyone reacted the way they did!
I definitely agree that the criticism of Sokovia felt unfair. It was probably intended to feel that way. On the other hand, Tony Stark created Ultron, so Tony Stark almost destroyed the world. I think I’d probably be feeling a tad guilty at that point. So maybe the framing that the Avengers don’t care about collateral damage is unfair, but the idea that just because you have a huge amount of power doesn’t mean you get to use it when you feel like it sounds alright. Maybe a “We had to stop Ultron!” defense followed with a “and who created Ultron?” rejoinder would make it all more explicit, but I think it still works as it is.
And, tbf, it kinda fits in with the generalized Action Movie viewpoint of large bureaucracies being meddling, ineffectual twits headed by interfering, small-minded powermongers. The movie doesn’t do very much to make the Secretary a terribly sympathetic character, tbh (Tony et. all probably do a better job of selling his viewpoints), and even King T’Chaka comes across as a little overly domineering. “We’ve never really engaged with world affairs, but now that a handful of our citizens died in the process of some global superheroes saving hundreds or even thousands of more people, we’d like to lead the UN charge on shackling said superheroes!”
So of course the Sokovia Accords feel a little “unfair!” It’s a bunch of blowhard bureaucrats interfering in stuff they’ve got no business in!
(Also, you know, in the end, it is a CapAm movie, so that his particular viewpoint winds up being most sympathetic probably isn’t an accident. Well, re: the Accords, at least. He was sort of a gigantic idiot re: Bucky basically the entire time)
I thought this was by far the best Avengers movie yet; the movie did an excellent job of keeping each of the many, many characters true to themselves amidst the clamor of giant action setpieces.
But while the fact it’s the best Avengers movie yet gives me hope for Infinity War, the title says it’s supposedly a Captain America movie … and as a Captain America movie, it wasn’t quite as good as Winter Soldier. As a big fan of Cap in general and Winter Soldier in particular (my favorite Marvel movie by a fair margin), this made me a little wistful about the Cap movie that Might Have Been had his 3rd movie not been hijacked into a giant superhero team-up.
Part of that is Cap’s own storyline getting overshadowed.
Things like …
Peggy’s death and Steve’s relationship with Sharon, while well handled, got downplayed in the clutter, no Nick Fury, no consideration of what the new SHIELD-less world looks like, no look at what progress if any Steve is making adjusting to the modern world, etc. Also, Crossbones got shortchanged with the Boba Fett treatment: carefully built up in one movie, then quickly dispatched in the first act of the next movie because priorities changed.
The time spent on things like Spidey and Ant-man was a hoot, but it did mean the movie had less time for Cap’s cast.
A bigger issue is that Winter Soldier resonated more because it dealt with core dramatic issues that would work outside a superhero movie - security vs. safety, what to do when your conscience says you can’t keep doing what you’ve been doing, etc. Winter Soldier dealt with what to do when your childhood friend has been programmed to be a super-assassin - a perfectly good premise for a comic-book movie, but a very comic-booky one. I can’t help but feel that Civil War would have cut closer to the bone had the writers and directors had more time to refine Bucky’s storyline than trying to shoehorn in half a dozen extra characters.
But again - best Avengers movie ever! And Chris Evans says he’s up for more Cap, so here’s hoping someday we’ll see a proper Winter Soldier followup.
Yeah, I think they movie could have used a little more “we need to rein in the Avengers because…” walk-through. They used New York and Sokovia as examples, and my first thought was “but they saved the world, both times! Without them, humans on Earth would either be enslaved or extinct”. Then I thought about it and realized that The Avengers themselves were the cause of the issues that Earth had to be saved from. Tony and Banner created Ultron, which lead to Sokovia. New York was caused because of those pesky humans trying to harness the power of one of the Infinity gems. But, the reason they were doing so (according to Nick Fury in The Avengers) was because they had to find a way to arm themselves against people like Thor and Loki.
The Secretary of State, in Civil War, explains it in high level terms by saying something like “You being here is what causes these things to happen”. That could have used a few minutes of additional dialog to better spell out what he meant. Everyone in the room seems to embrace the “it’s all our fault” explanation without questioning it, which seemed a little too hand-wavy. Very minor nit that in no way reduces how much I enjoyed the movie.
For all the promotional material playing up the giant superhero beat-down, I was surprised how much of the movie specifically focused on Cap and Bucky and Falcon, and the whole conflict around that. By the time it rolled around to the big fight, I think the movie had earned some much-needed lightness, if only to set the stage for the overly grim ending. I don’t think the ending would have worked nearly as well if that mood had persisted throughout.
Seriously though I think your response is “normal” because of the way the argument was presented, it makes no sense at all. Saving the world vs a few buildings falling, stopping a biological weapon from getting into the hands of a maniac vs damage and deaths on the street. Captain came from a period of time when winning meant losing no matter what, people were going to die even in victory; it was just a matter of how many.
Tony didn’t take well to loss when they were losing and certainly can’t seem to accept that winning can also have loss. That and his position is exactly what the government positions generally are… everyone wants to catch the bad guys but they still respect borders. The groups that don’t are generally convert and here are the Avengers on nightly TV with their very public identities.
I understand the position of those who lost their loved ones; it’s always one too many when it’s someone you know.
I think the parallels to modern war are perfect. What Nesrie said is right, Cap came from a time when war meant people died, but you fought for a greater good. The consequences of not fighting were far worse than the cost of the fight. Nowadays, the public doesn’t have any appetite for war. IRL, we fight our battles with drones, and we lose our collective shit every time a handful of people die. Tony comes from that world. Both worldviews have merit, and they’re both right, which is what makes this such a great movie.
As for the Sokovia accords, don’t forget that the Avengers made Ultron. Yes what they did was necessary, but it never would have happened if they hadn’t existed. The Battle New York never would have happened if Thor hadn’t fallen to Earth, if Cap hadn’t crashed the Tessaract into the ocean, and if SHIELD hadn’t used it to make weapons. Vision was correct, their very existence invites conflict.
Wife and I just caught this, and without going into many details we both loved it. This was a far better movie than Avengers 2 (not that there’s really a need to compare it). I’m really curious to where things go from here. I know Evans is out, right? I thought Downey was out after this film too, but I saw someone post upthread that he’s possibly coming back now?
My one disappointment, while I loved the fight scenes, I was baffled at the use of shaky-cam especially at the lead in. I don’t have a great memory for this stuff, but I don’t remember them using that style of action shots in past MCU movies, and I feel like it even wasn’t as prevalent in the latter fight scenes of this movie.
And I want to give a big thank you to whoever posted in the Qt3 forums a while back about not watching trailers any more. When I read that, I started skipping online trailers and even closed my eyes during previews in theaters. I eventually started bringing earbuds in and listening to other stuff while the previews were playing to block out the dialog too. It’s made such a difference in the movies I watch, particularly in these big blockbusters where stuff is everywhere trying to spoil bits and pieces of the films. Coming into this I had read briefly in my head that Spiderman, Black Panther, and Ant-Man were all in it, but it was far enough back in my subconscious that I was genuinely surprised when they came on screen. Not to mention the movie becomes much more unpredictable (beyond the standard film tropes). Can’t recommend this enough.
This may not be a popular opinion, but I think I am getting Tony Stark burnout from these films. He gets way too much screen time and the character never grows imho in all of them, be it Thor, Capt. A , Avengers, etc… I think he really invaded this film. There are some other interesting characters and I would prefer Stark take a holiday.
