I didn't dislike the last Avengers film. Was it as good as Ant-Man or Guardians of the Galaxy? Hell no. Not even close. It was still pretty good though, and it outshone the other superhero movies that came out in 2015. (Despite that not being hard to do)
I'll be blunt, I thought the chance of this movie being good was pretty damn low. My expectations basically started out at the same place as my expectations for Batman v Superman, but after seeing that film I became optimistic for this one. At first, I thought my fears unfounded, as the film began with a quality akin to that of BvS, but around halfway through the film things began to fall apart.
This seems to be the year of superhero conflicts. Batman fighting Superman. Supergirl fighting Martian Manhunter. The constant levels of interhero conflict going on in Arrow. I think The Flash fought himself a few times in the most recent season of his show. Hell, there's another Civil War event going on in Marvel Comics. One that's actually stupider than the original if you can believe it. The Minority Report was a damn good film, we don't need to see a superhero version of it. Hell, the division of the two sides is even more retarded than it was originally. For some reason, Spider-Man and She-Hulk are on the pro-precrime side despite the two of them being historically tight with law-enforcement. One of Peter Parker's most important role-models was George freaking Stacy for crying out loud, and She-Hulk is a defense attorney!
I think the only superhero franchises not partaking in some kind of versus crossover event this year are Power Rangers, Kamen Rider, and Super Sentai, but the year's not quite over yet, any of those series could have some kind of versus crossover.
As much as the comics have beaten hero versus hero conflicts into the ground, this is the first time the mainstream audiences will be getting a taste of the kinda stuff we've been having to put up with for so long. Some may know that Civil War was one of the comics that made me stop reading Marvel Comics, partially because it was a direct lead-in to the worst story Marvel has ever published, One More Day/Brand New Day, wherein they split up the long-married fan-favorite couple of Peter Parker and Mary-Jane Watson, and one of my favorite pairings in comics. To say I thought Civil War was bad would be an understatement, Civil War was the event series that ruined the Marvel universe. Yes, there was an interesting dynamic of all the good heroes being outlaws and the government-sanctioned ones being villains, but what was gained was nothing compared to what was lost.
Since this film isn't a direct adaptation, it overcomes a lot of the major issues inherent to the comic. It's got a lot of the same beats to it, but they actually make it matter. The Civil War comic started out with a bunch of Z-list reality-show heroes nobody remembers or cares about blowing themselves and a bunch of people from here to kingdom come, and despite them being a bunch of idiots nobody expected to do anything right, and despite there being issues larger than this they could probably be dealing with (Planet Hulk anyone?) the government decides to take this opportunity to enact a superhuman resgistration act to try and curtail untrained heroes getting themselves killed. There are a few fairly major issues with this idea. First one being the fact that the Mutant Registration Act was shot down with a Death Star decades ago, and second being that I thought there were already laws in place that prevented people from going out and enacting vigilante justice? Bruce Wayne made this point in BvS, and Frank Miller made it in The Dark Knight Returns, the direct quote would be "We were always criminals." The question was always whether or not it was wrong, not whether or not it was legal. I thought that The Avengers was supposed to be the way they got around the legal aspect of superheroing. Batman gets support from the GCPD because they don't want to to take him in. Spider-Man, Daredevil, Luke Cage, etc, they get support from the NYPD for the same reason. Superman is beloved by all, it would be political suicide to try and take The Man of Steel in. Spider-Man is New York's very own hero, having put his life on the line for the city numerous times, no matter how much Jolly Jonah Jameson tries to paint him as a menace, everybody knows he's their friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. He helps people out, he saves children from burning buildings, he puts his life on the line for ordinary people on a daily basis, he's the guy everyone knows, he's the guy you can count on to help you when you're in a jam, he's Spider-Man for crying out loud and everyone knows that! He's sacrificed so much to help out as many people as he can, and he deserves to have a little something good in his life, and that's part of why I hate Civil War as a comic, because it took away two of the things that anchored him, his wife and his aunt.
My point is that the repercussions didn't make much sense. Again, who would turn on Captain America? He's literally the original All-American Hero, he's America's greatest war-hero, a living legend! How do you manage to turn the public against these guys? Captain America's team in the Civil War comic consisted of the street-level heroes and others who have a lot of public support. Tony Stark is just some rich dude with a suit of armor, and his team mostly consisted of people who the public has little reason to care about or like. Reed Richards might be one of the most important figures in the Marvel universe, and he might have saved the planet a few times, but he's generally considered to be a bit of a jerk.
Thankfully, since Marvel doesn't have the rights to all of their characters, the roster is significantly reduced, so the film is a lot more coherent than the comic was. The is in direct contrast to the actual scale of the conflict, or more to the point the scale of the regulation and what kicks it off. Rather than being cause by a bunch of nobody idiot heroes, the incident that brings things to a head is caused by The Avengers themselves while they're hunting down a group of former HYDRA agents turned mercenaries led by a guy called Crossbones, who reveals himself to be one of the guys Steve beat up and left for dead in The Winter Soldier. He detonates a suicide-vest in an attempt to kill Steve, but Wanda, The Scarlet Witch tries to redirect the explosion and winds up destroying the Nigerian Center for Infectious Diseases instead of containing the blast.
Meanwhile, Tony is trying to atone for his guilt over the Ultron incident by funding a bunch of projects for kids in college. For some reason his girlfriend and woman who basically keeps his life together is nowhere to be found. (Probably because she's too smart to put up with how bad the plot gets towards the end) On his way out of the school, he's ambushed by a woman who blames him for the death of her son despite her acknowledging that it's irrational. Keep this in mind, this is important.
Back at the new Avengers HQ, "Thunderbolt" Ross makes his first appearance in the MCU since The Incredible Hulk. He tells them that The United Nations are trying to pass an international law to allow them to control The Avengers.
Here's the problem with this scene. First off, they show a lot of footage from incidents completely unrelated to The Avengers. The Helicarrier crashing in The Winter Soldier, which was HYDRA's fault. The alien-invasion from The Avengers, which was Loki's doing. Things from Thor, things that there was no possible way to control or prevent. Yes, they showed Hulk hopping between buildings and busting things up, but if the damage he did was minimal compared to the damage he prevented. Yes, they show Ultron destroying Sokovia, and while Stark created him, I don't think anyone could have predicted the AI going rogue and becoming an omnicidal maniac. At least not without someone who can predict the future, or possibly a pre-crime machine.
Second, for some reason they reference The Avengers being a private organization, despite them being a sub-division of freaking SHIELD, a government agency that traces its roots back to World War II. Yes, SHIELD has a load of bad publicity after the HYDRA infiltration, but they basically had that sorted out after the second season of Agents of SHIELD. They're trying to push government oversight of The Avengers despite them being a government-sanctioned team. Yeah, I get that they're also trying to keep what seems to be basically an American organization from interfering in international affairs, but I thought SHIELD was supposed to basically be an international organization anyways? Hell, it's not like they've ever been able to stop America from basically doing what we want at any point in the last, what? Forty years? Not that there's been much official objection, or at least any that means anything. My point is that while they make a good point, it doesn't really match up to reality or established series lore, part of which is chocked up to the fact that the Russo brothers didn't bother watching Agents of SHIELD. Not that I can really blame them, the show is kinda boring at times, but they're supposed to be maintaining continuity between franchise installments.
Naturally, Steve objects to this, citing all the times when the government has either had an agenda or was corrupt. Considering SHIELD was basically saturated by HYDRA operatives, I can't see anyone supporting government control of superhero teams except for an overly controlling government. I could see them trying this kind of tactic if they rushed it through and pretended it was something cool and necessary, but with as public as the signing of the accords are I wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of politicians lose their jobs on the next election cycle, being replaced by more pro-vigilante, pro-superhero representatives.
Third point to make; Ross asks them if they know where Thor or Bruce Banner are, saying that if they misplaced two nuclear warlords there would be consequences. The problem with this logic is that Thor is a god, and he basically does what he wants, and Banner was only restrained by SHIELD for as long as he wanted to be. They're people with motivations of their own, you can't always control them. Orders only go so far when a Norse God is involved! Do you expect to keep tabs on your ace pilots or snipers or whatever at all times when they're not on active duty? Because that's basically what The Avengers are.
In Vienna, when they're signing the accords (They just skip all the campaigning for and against the accords) and the place gets bombed, killing King T'Chaka of Wakanda in front of his son, T'Challa.
Security footage places Bucky Barnes at the scene of the crime, and since he was last seen working for Hydra, they figure he's behind it, and decide to hunt him down. Steve tries to intervene, but him, Bucky, and Sam Wilson get captured by German commandos backed up by T'Challa and War Machine. Apparently The United Nations signed off on Germany airdropping a black-ops team into Bucharest.
I would like to raise the following issues with this. First off, why do they think they can capture The Winter Soldier? He gives Captain America a run for his money, and both of them made a career out of taking down entire enclaves of entrenched Nazi's on their home turf with enhanced weaponry and armor, and that was before the Winter Soldier transformation! After that, he basically became a combination of Solid Snake and The Terminator, who thinks that anyone but at least four Avengers could take this guy down easily? The only reason they even surrender is because Steve doesn't want to fight with Rhodey. The only reason they get into that situation is because T'Challa (Who supported The Sokovia Accords despite going off the reservation in this scene) stuck his nose into the situation and mucked things up.
This brings me to my second point, Martin Freeman's character, Everett K. Ross (Not sure if he's related to Thunderbolt or not) says that they could have brought in Bucky if not for Steve and Sam's intervention, to which I refer you to my above statements about the kind of work Bucky did during and before his stint as The Winter Soldier. If you think that anything other than a team of superheroes could take down The Winter Soldier, you're either fooling yourself, stupid, poorly written, or purposefully trying to let him get away.
Tony pulls a few strings to get T'Challa, Steve, and Sam out of custody, but a guy infiltrates the compound disguised as the psychologist who's supposed to psychoanalyze Bucky and his team sets off an EMP that kills the power to the base. The guy sets about activating Bucky's Winter Soldier programming and makes him tell him a few things about his missions as The Winter Soldier and the location of his old base before sending him on a rampage through the base before he makes his escape while Steve, Tony, T'Challa, Natasha and Sam are occupied with handling Bucky's rampage. Rather unfortunately, the government has confiscated Steve, Sam and T'Challa's equipment, so they're not working at full efficiency.
Steve and Sam manage to subdue Bucky, and Sharon Carter, the niece of Peggy Carter, give them their gear back. This was when I noticed that they weren't trying to fix what Joss Whedon broke in Age of Ultron and put Natasha and Steve together and decided to make Sharon and Steve a thing despite them not having had a whole lot of screentime together in the previous movies she's they've been in together. Although I'm glad they took this long to put them together, in the Albert Pyun film they were together before the end of the movie.
Steve and Sam restrain Bucky while Winter Soldier mode wears off. Bucky tells them the Helmut Zemo, the guy disguised as the doctor, wanted to know about a specific mission in the nineties as well as the location of the old Winter Soldier base. Bucky tells them about the mission and the purpose of it, which was to steal some stuff to make more Winter Soldiers. And they did. Except that they were already crazy good and the serum made them even better and even worse. Bucky was barely able to contain one of them on his own, much less with the help of the other soldiers in the base. Steve figures they need to intercept Zemo before he can unleash that group on the world, and that the bombing from earlier that was pinned on Bucky was caused by Zemo, but he figures Tony has lost all trust and faith in him (Rightly so as well, but this would still be a good time to at least try and extend an olive-branch) and that they need to handle this themselves since everyone else is convinced that Bucky is still The Winter Soldier and that Steve is delusional. Steve figures they need a good burglar to get into the base, and Sam recommends Scott Lang, the second Ant-Man.
Clint rescues Wanda from Vision and picks up Scott on his way to rendezvous with Steve.
Meanwhile, Tony has been given a day and a half to bring in Bucky, and (for some reason) despite having War Machine, Black Widow, Vision, and Black Panther on his side, he drops into Queens to recruit some kid with spider-powers instead of calling on, say, Skye from Agents of SHIELD, his ultra-powerful girlfriend, or possibly freaking Daredevil? Punisher? Someone who could legally sign on to be a part of The Avengers without needing permission from a parent or guardian?
This brings me to the place where the movie begins to fall apart. Tom Holland is a terrible Spider-Man. He's a 5'6", uber skinny waif of a boy, and his voice is really high in this film. All of that together gives the impression that he's supposed to be like thirteen years old. Spider-Man wasn't even that young back in Ultimate Spider-Man, and that was the "young and hip" Spider-Man! Tom Holland might be a few months older than I am, but he sure doesn't look it!
The dialogue in this scene is pretty good, in fact I'd actually call it great if it was being delivered by somebody more suited to the role. Aside from a handful of lines where they try and lampshade a few of the more jarring elements of the reboot, but we'll get to that.
In addition to recasting Peter Parker, they also recast Aunt May. Gone is the somewhat elderly version of the character we saw in literally every other iteration, because Marisa Tomei looks like she could be Tom Holland's older sister. Yes, I know that she's fifty-something, but she looks like she's in her late twenties at most. In fact, she looks like they took someone in their late twenties and made them look even younger in this movie! They should be trying to draw attention away from this fact, not lampshading it!
Peter in this movie apparently has some kind of problem with sensory overload (Funny, considering he didn't go through anything like that in the comics, so they must be taking this from the Raimi movies) so he uses goggles to help him focus.
I'm familiar with practically every iteration of Spider-Man there is, I have never once seen him to need a pair of goggles to focus his Spider-vision. In fact, his glasses actually made his vision worse in other iterations. The web-shooters are back, and they make as little sense as they did in the original comics. Fortunately they don't have the X-Men around with mutant powers to muck things up as much, but they do have the Inhumans around, which basically serve the same purpose. He should have spinnerets on his wrists, and have the web-shooters as a backup to that. That was the one complaint I had about The Amazing Spider-Man.
Tom Holland's voice is second only to Tom Holland's acting in terms of what makes him unfit to be Spider-Man. At least in the scenes he has in the apartment in Queens, he sounds like he's starting to get really irritated at the directors for making him re-take his characters angry rant ten times. I'll be blunt, he sounds like a bad child-actor at his worst, and while his native accent doesn't bleed through more than like once, he doesn't have any of the New York tinge to his voice that Andrew Garfield had, or any of the genuine emotion that Andrew Garfield or Toby Maguire had. Whenever he's called on to sound angry, or strained, or tired or anything beyond simple stuff he sounds like he's putting waaaay more effort into hiding his English accent than he is into actually putting forth the intended emotion. This is basically what I was afraid was going to happen in The Amazing Spider-Man. I guess I was about four years too early with that feeling.
Anyways, Stark basically cons Peter into joining The Avengers to take down Steve and Bucky, because Peter Parker is a poor kid and working for a multi-multi-billionaire with a guilt and savior complex is probably a good way to get paid good money, not that we see much in the way of Peter being poor besides him scavenging electronics from the garbage and having kind of a small room, neither of which are clear indications on their own.
If they'd stuck with Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker all Stark would have had to say to get Peter on-board is "I know a guy who can bring your girlfriend back to life," which would have been clear motivation on Peter's behalf, it would have been something that would pretty much push aside his reasoning and morals, giving him proper motivation to do what Stark says rather than just risking his life for him basically because he asked him to.
Stark tracks Steve and his team to the airport they're hiding-out at and they begin the conflict. This is when Peter shows up in his new Spider-Man suit, and might I say, for a costume that goes out of its way to try and be comic-accurate, this is the least comic-accurate suit in the history of Spider-Man suits. The eyes change sizes like they did in the comics, but that was an art thing, it wasn't meant to actually be something the eyes did, which is why nobody ever cared when the eyes didn't change sizes in any of the other five movies. Then there's the web-design, which looks like it's printed onto the suit instead of textured on like it's been in previous films. Then there's the spider. Good lord the spider. The spider on his chest is a black oval with thick stick legs. Anyone who's ever picked up a Spider-Man comic would know that the spider on his chest has never once looked like this, not even back in the original comics. It was two circles with thin lines coming off of it originally, the spider on his back was the oval with the short thick lines. Also, the spider on his back hasn't looked like that in thirty plus years, so I don't know why they decided to go with that. The Spider-Suit honestly looks like a cheap Halloween costume, especially when compared to the suits from previous movies Spider-Man has been in, or even the original comics. It looks like it's just spandex, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense when you're going up against people like Captain America, The Winter Soldier, Hawkeye and Scarlet Witch. In fact, it almost seems like he should have given him some kind of Iron-Spider suit.
Eventually Team Cap decides that they need to just try and get to their plane and leave. Ant-Man pulls a Giant-Man and distracts Team Iron Man while the rest of Steve's team tries to get away, but ultimately only Bucky and Steve get to the plane.
This brings us to one of the absolute worst jokes in the entire movie, and that's saying a lot in a movie where Spider-Man makes a bad joke every time he's on-screen. Well, not exactly bad jokes, more like Tom Holland botches the delivery on every line that would be otherwise funny coming from Andrew Garfield or Toby Maguire, Neil Patrick Harris, or literally any of the other actors who have played Peter Parker. Aside from Drake Bell I mean (But even he's better than Tom Holland) Not only did Tom Holland manage to totally botch the delivery, the joke is also something that Spider-Man would never say the way it's written. To quote it exactly: "Hey guys, you remember in that really old movie, The Empire Strikes Back?"
Excuse me, no. Just no. Spider-Man would never say it like that. He'd say something like "Hey, you remember how they took down the Walkers in Empire Strikes Back?" By the time I was thirteen I'd already seen The Empire Strikes Back three times. It's literally one of the most famous movies in cinematic history, it's one of the most influential films ever made, and it's part of one of the biggest, most important franchises in the history of the planet, its age has nothing to do with it. The way this line goes down is entirely to set up a line about how young Tom Holland looks. Yet again, something you shouldn't be trying to draw attention to. Sometimes lampshading something stupid or something that doesn't make sense is a bad idea.
Anyways, Peter almost gets killed taking down Scott, and Tony tells him to stay down rather than getting up and fighting, and Peter winds up following his advice.
Spider-Man is suppose to have more endurance than that. What happened to him in this film? Captain America dropped a small bridge on him, Falcon ran his drone into him and Ant-Man landed on him, that's nothing compared to the level of abuse he's supposed to be able to take. In Spider-Man 3 he was beaten up and strangled by Venom and got his entire body pounded by Sandman and still managed to keep fighting long enough to kill Venom! In The Amazing Spider-Man The Lizard beat him up so badly one of his ribs was sticking out of his chest (It wasn't broken, it just looked like his skin was torn off) and he was back to fighting fit in a couple of days! In the comics, Peter has repeatedly lifted gigantic tons of rubble off of himself from a prone position and managed to keep going. Spider-Man is supposed to be tougher than this!
Not only that, when Tony tells him to stay down, he does try to get up and fight, but he stays down after one little token attempt to get up. Like I said before, we know how tough Spider-Man is, so we know that he could basically walk what little injuries he had off in a few minutes, especially with adrenaline pumping at full-tilt. Spider-Man doesn't just sit down and let other people fight his battles for him, even when he's injured. Especially not someone could be killed, injured, or crippled due to his inaction. This brings me to an issue from earlier in the movie, where Peter gives his justification for not using his powers for selfish reasons, because he's trying to maintain his secret identity.
Excuse me? Did either of the writers on this movie ever read a Spider-Man comic? Peter doesn't use his powers for selfish reason because he learned the hard way what happens when you don't use them to help people. His motto is "With great power comes great responsibility" and if he hadn't been out-of-commission for the last half of the film Rhodey wouldn't have been freaking paralyzed! Peter could have webbed up Falcon on takeoff so he wouldn't have been able to go after Warmachine and Vision wouldn't have tried to shoot him down and missed! There are three people on Tony's team that could have taken down Captain America and The Winter Soldier, Black Panther, Vision, and Spider-Man. Vision was taking care of Wanda, and T'Challa and Natasha were squaring off as Steve and Bucky took off, leaving Spider-Man as the only one who could have taken both of them on and won, and he's just sitting on his ass off to the side while his team-mates keep fighting. Peter Parker made a name for himself as Spider-Man by taking a stand and fighting even when it's not his fight. If he thinks he can help, or if anything needs doing, Spider-Man does it.
The only conclusion I can come to is that they didn't want Spider-Man around for the whole fight because they wanted it to go a way other than the logical conclusion of Spider-Man beating up Steve and Bucky and leaving the Zemo plot out to dry. We can see that Peter is strong enough to take Bucky on and not take many hits, which is something Tony and Steve both struggled to do, so I don't even need to things from the comics and previous movies into account, he's established as this powerful in the movie! Hell, Tony has footage of Peter stopping a speeding car from hitting a bus with his hands, so we know Peter is supposed to be as powerful as he is in the comics and the previous movies, so I can only assume this was a writers cop-out.
While Bucky and Steve are flying off and Sam is trying to keep Rhodey off their tail, Vision tries to shoot down Sam and winds up shooting down Rhodey instead. This is entirely Vision's fault as well, and he never apologizes or owns up to that fact. Or offers to fix Rhodey's broken spine and lacerated spinal-cord and countless other injuries with his rather insane level of power. If Vision had aimed his shot better, or flown to try and catch Rhodey (Which Sam did, by the way) or told Wanda to catch him with her powers or literally anything that could have saved Rhodey from the fall!
After Steve's remaining team gets captured, Tony finds out that Bucky wasn't the one who blew up the conference in Vienna, since law-enforcement in Germany found the body of the doctor and stuff that Zemo would need to make himself look like Bucky, so Tony decides to go off and help Bucky and Steve take down Zemo, but T'Challa follows him.
Now, here's how I thought the movie was going to go from here. Tony teams up with Steve and Bucky to take out Zemo and the other Winter Soldiers, but T'Challa attacks all three of them before they're ambushed by the Soviet team, and forced to team up together to fight them, T'Challa finds out that Zemo killed his father, and they all wind up teaming up and deciding to work towards clearing Bucky's name and repealing the Sokovia Accords. That doesn't happen.
Instead, it's revealed that the guy Bucky stole the Supersoldier serum from to make the other Winter Soldiers was Tony's father, and for some reason HYDRA had footage of Bucky killing Tony's parents back in 1991, in the middle of nowhere, where nobody would have put a security camera even now. If they'd shown body-cam footage, that would have made some kind of sense, but why would a covert criminal organization want to have evidence of their criminal activities lying around in case they get caught?
This causes Tony to start fighting with Bucky and Steve, despite knowing Bucky wasn't in control! Despite the fact that he should know that Zemo is showing him this to make him fight with Bucky and Steve! He asks Steve if he knew this, and at first he gives the logical answer (no) but eventually he says he did and he kept it from Tony because it would upset him!
I'm sorry, Steve Rogers is supposed to have enhanced brain-power and intelligence, he should know that's a stupid decision! Unfortunately, that's not even the worst of it! Bucky barely remembers most of his actions as The Winter Soldier even immediately after he's dropped out of Winter Soldier mode, so why does he remember such specific details such as the fact that he killed Howard and Maria Stark? Why would he even be told who he was supposed to kill? Hell, he probably met Howard a few times back in the forties, but it had been like fifty years between then and the time he killed him, so it's not like he would recognize him! Yeah, Howard Stark was probably one of the few people in the world who could recreate Dr. Erskine's formula, so it's a logical leap to make, but come on! It could have just as easily been Richard and Mary Parker, who also would have died around the same point in time (And they were also killed by Hydra) or any of the other really smart people who have died in Marvel history.
Zemo killed the other Winter Soldiers and left Bucky and Steve to fight Tony, while T'Challa prevents Zemo from killing himself as his motives are revealed. Zemo's family was killed in Age of Ultron and he decided to begin a chain of events that would lead The Avengers to conflict and possibly killing each other. Not like anyone's died really. Rhodey and Scott came close, but there's nobody actually dead at the end. The guy who was supposed to kill Captain America died in the first ten minutes of the film.
Get this too, rather than going back inside the base and telling the three stooges that Zemo kicked all of this off to make you guys kill each other, T'Challa just stays where he is and does nothing. Tony rips off Bucky's arm, and Steve disables Tony's suit. At the end Tony chides Steve for carrying the shield that Howard Stark made as he and Bucky are leaving, and like a complete moron, Steve drops his shield right there. Never mind that it'll be impossible to find a shield that good anywhere else. Never mind that Steve has had that shield with him for most of his life. Never mind that it was a gift from Howard Stark, who was one of Steve's friends. Never freaking mind that the love of Steve's life, Peggy Carter has just died.
Afterwards, Tony lets Steve get away with rescuing the rest of The Avengers from prison, T'Challa's people set about repairing Bucky's damaged arm and Peter (Who I'm becoming more and more convinced must be some kind of degenerated clone of the real thing, take your pick whether that's Toby or Andrew's Spider-Man) gets the Spider-Beacon from his webshooters for some reason.
All in all, this movie sucks. It's a shame too, because it's such a good movie aside from a few major points that break the whole thing down!
God only knows why this movie is getting better scores than Batman v. Superman, it's edited almost exactly the same way. I mean seriously, if not for the fact that they came out months apart, I'd almost say that Marvel was trying to rip it off. They introduce a pair of new superheroes without movies of their own (at least with the current actors) who get involved with the final battle and wind up being fairly important. Except that it doesn't have as good of a resolution as BvS, or as good of a climax, or as good of an ending. It just seems like they kinda stopped in the middle of the storyline they were going for and then forgot how to write the characters.
And now, a list of things missing from Captain America: Civil War.
#1: The Iron-Spider
#2: Spider-Man joining Captain America's side
#3: A decent ending
#4: Common sense
#5: A decent sense of character continuity with previous Captain America or Avengers movies.
#6: Spider-Man. Because I refuse to accept this watered-down shadow of my favorite superhero as the MCU version of Spider-Man
I'll say this, at least most of the characters are still mostly in-character throughout the film, but not Spider-Man. This is the most disrespectful adaptation of one of my favorite superheroes since the Supergirl series premiered last year. I actually liked X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but I'll acknowledge how little respect the producers had for Deadpool. That's what kind of Spider-Man we got. The only thing that would make it worse would be if he wasn't even dressed in a costume that even remotely resembles any suit he's worn in the past. In fact, if his mouth was sewn shut it would be even less disrespectful to the character than the bad delivery. Spider-Man never botches a joke, even with a bad writer! They might not make you laugh all-out, but you'll at least get a decent snort out of it. A small chuckle.
Come Spider-Man: Homecoming I expect Tom Holland to be gone. I want him out of the MCU. You can replace him with Andrew Garfield, or Toby Maguire, or Thomas Brody Sangster if you want, any of the three would be good. I don't care. Just make Tom Holland go away. I'd say he should be the George Lazenby of Spider-Men, but say what you will, George Lazenby wasn't insufferable.
Towards the end of the fight when Tony is telling Peter to stay down is the point in time when you realize what's going on, that's when the suit looks its cheapest, when Holland looks his youngest. Tom Holland is a kid dressed up as Spider-Man who just so happens to have gotten a gig with Marvel. His suit looks like a Halloween costume, except it looks worse than the costume I dressed up in when Spider-Man 2 was new!
Honestly though, cutting out Tom Holland as Spider-Man wouldn't have saved the ending, since the ending basically makes the whole, otherwise great movie into an idiot-plot.
Tony starts a fight with Steve and Bucky because he's an idiot. Steve didn't tell Tony that Bucky killed his parents because he's an idiot. T'Challa doesn't tell them why Zemo kicked all this off, because he's an idiot. Natasha doesn't leave with Steve and Bucky at the end of the fight because she's an idiot. Tony doesn't ask T'Challa to fix Rhodey's spine because he's an idiot. Peter doesn't step in to take down Steve and Bucky when they're trying to escape because he's an idiot. Steve leaves his shield behind with Tony because he's an idiot.
At one point in the prison that they stuck Steve's team in Tony looks around and sees Jessica Jones just sitting in a cell. Way to reference the actually good parts of the MCU there, Marvel.
I can try and give this movie some credit for what makes it good, but honestly the ending and the Spider-Man scenes are basically enough to ruin the film from a critical perspective. Coming off Batman v. Superman I was optimistic for Civil War, but after all the good stuff it just crumbled at the end. I'm still holding out hope for Doctor Strange, Luke Cage, The Punisher and Jessica Jones later this year, but so far Marvel has lost a lot of credibility in my eyes after this film. I am not looking forward to Spider-Man: Homecoming next year as long as Tom Holland is still playing Spider-Man, and I am hesitant to see if Marvel can salvage the mess this film has caused.
In the end, I give Captain America: Civil War a 4.1* rating. I'll see you guys next week, I'll either be reviewing Ant-Man or Majora's Mask 3D. I'm off to re-watch the good movies with Spider-Man in them. I might even re-watch The Amazing Spider-Man 2 just to see if I can find it in my heart to hate it more than I do Civil War. It might have devolved into an idiot-plot too, but it at least understood and respected the characters.
Image from Impawards.com
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