Captain America fights Iron Man, and the MCU for once gets a painfully personal climax
Image: Screenshot: YouTube Film Features The Marvel Moment
Even the most devout Marvel loyalist can admit that the studio’s cinematic universe tends to have a problem when it comes to the big climactic set pieces that end their films. As with many of Hollywood’s CGI-heavy spectacles, there’s a tendency toward louder, flashier, and dumber—final fight sequences in which a hero or heroes go up against a large, anonymous, and insubstantial assemblage of meaningless goons, usually in service of preventing a giant glowing hole in the sky from opening or closing or exploding or whatever. For the MCU, this unfortunate trend began with Iron Man 2, whose finale found Tony Stark and Rhodey fighting empty suits—an all too fitting symbol for what was to come.
With the ending of Captain America: Civil War, Marvel blessedly broke from that tradition. It’s not the most instantly iconic scene in the movie—that honorific almost certainly belongs to the airport fight, the closest thing Marvel has ever come to bringing a big comics splash page to life. But one can see the beating heart of the company’s continued success in the final showdown between Tony (Robert Downey Jr.) and old war buddies Steve (Chris Evans) and Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), a.k.a. The Winter Soldier.
Beginning with a flashback reminder of the gruesome car-crash death of Tony’s parents when he was still in school, Civil War builds to a reveal engineered by the revenge-driven Zemo (Daniel Brühl): Stark watches security footage depicting the shocking truth that his parents were actually murdered by Bucky while the bionic soldier was brainwashed and under the command of Hydra. Immediately, everything else goes away—Tony just wants an eye for an eye. The climactic sequence finds him slugging it out with Steve and Bucky, the two of them trying to get him to realize it’s not Bucky’s fault. It’s angry and raw and painful.
The fight showcases the personal stakes that drive this franchise, and that hold the key to the success of the entire MCU. People love these films in spite of their overheated finales, not because of them (barring a few excellent exceptions, of course). The “character first” approach comes home to roost in Civil War, by taking two of the most beloved heroes and pitting them against one another in a fight that definitively left no room for half measures—either Captain America was going to stop Iron Man from killing The Winter Soldier or he wasn’t. Except maybe those code names shouldn’t be used here. These aren’t heroes trading quips, or even getting into a heated debate in the science lab aboard a Helicarrier, à la The Avengers. This isn’t Captain America versus Iron Man. It’s Steve versus Tony. It’s two characters in which audiences had become deeply invested, one refusing to let the other avenge his family. “He’s my friend, Tony,” Steve says, trying one last time to explain. Tony’s sense of betrayal is palpable: “So was I.”
These very intimate, very human stakes are what make the conclusion of Civil War meaningful in a way many other MCU final fights aren’t. The fundamental clash of ideas and personal values will always resonate far more than any over-the-top slugfest; it’s why the final conversation between Vision and the last avatar of Ultron in Age Of Ultron packs more punch than much of the city-destroying CGI robot battle that precedes it. And by staging an action sequence rooted firmly in an all-too-understandable falling out between its most iconic characters, directors Joe and Anthony Russo were able to give a visceral emotional impact to the excitement of a hero-on-hero struggle. Every brutal punch and injury lands not just physically but psychologically and symbolically. A friendship that had defined the Avenger films was being ripped apart. It stung.
Of course, Marvel couldn’t leave well enough alone, and the MCU couldn’t let such a downbeat state of affairs endure (at least, not until Infinity War, when the bummer was the whole point). Hence, Steve Rogers’ film-ending voice message to Tony, assuring the troubled billionaire that they’re still friends and that he’ll always be there for him. It drains the bitter struggle of some of its nasty acrimony—especially Tony’s demand that Steve give up his iconic shield, a move that seemed to sever more than just their friendship. But the weight of the fight that precedes it is still potent, and a demonstration of what keeps these films working. And hey, should we really expect anything less than for Captain America to be the bigger man, even when he’s just dropping into your DMs for a quick apology?
348 Comments
This is why Civil War worked so well and Batman V Superman fell so damn hard. Civil War made everything personal. The fights between Cap and Iron Man felt so real and destroying because they were friends, they had a personal edge to them. We cared about these characters and the bond they had built up over the preceding movies. To watch it all get torn down affected the viewer.Whereas BvS threw a Superman we hardly knew or in some cases even liked straight into a war with a Batman we didn’t know at all, for reasons that were just stupid and then have it all made better by two even more stupid words. Also why not throw in a third character in Wonder Woman with no explanation at all as well. Ultimately we just didn’t have enough of a connection to any of these characters to be fully invested in what happens to them. Something DC still seems to not understand.
Even the fight BvS is based on—The Dark Knight Returns—specifically builds off of the characters’ decades of shared history. They know each other: they call each other Clark and Bruce in their fight. They’ve fought side by side together, they were friends. But they both also knew this was a long time coming. BvS is basically WHO IS THIS ALIEN I MUST KILL HIM RRAGGHH. It’s a perfect encapsulation of how wrongheaded the DCU approach was from the beginning.
DC tried to grab the payout without the investment. They rushed things, they tried to fast forward to a shared universe film, and crammed this storyline in well before any of the storylines that would have given it meaning or weight had played out. It was the first movie with this iteration of Batman, and only the second with this iteration of Superman. Contrast that to 5 preceding movies with Ironman and 4 with Captain America, with both of them in two of those.
The thought experiment I like to play is — what if Marvel had tried to make a movie like Civil War after Iron Man 1&2 and The First Avenger, but *before* The Avengers? It wouldn’t make any sense. If we’ve never seen Cap and Iron Man fighting together on the same team more than once, how could the audience possibly be invested in the breakdown of their relationship? You’d just have two hours of strangers punching each other in the face.Then it would just be awkward when they shook hands and agreed to form the Avengers at the end of the movie.Of course, this is basically what DC tried to do. I’ll never understand why they didn’t try a World’s Finest movie leading up to Justice League.
So so true. Would have made more sense to just filmed Matt Reeves movie and man of steel 2 and maybe another few stories to build the required context. Missed opportunity
That’s a really good point, and it makes me think wonder if that fight from Dark Knight Returns provided any inspiration to the Russos for this one.
Both villain plans in BvS and Civil War rely on implausible turn of events that said villains would have no way of foreseeing.Difference is that Zemo’s motivations make sense. He’s a man torn by loss and consumed by Vengeance. Bruhl sells it (in an underrated performance imo). Whereas Lex’s motivation zig-zag from planetary security, childhood trauma, thesis’s about God, and allusions to Darkseid.
Oh my God, this. I can excuse a lot of the convenient coincidences in Civil War because the film has a strong, emotional center. Hell, Zemo’s ass-pull of a plan ultimately works because he’s a dark mirror to the Avengers. A big part of MCU is that the heroes are heroes because of their indominatable will – Dr. Strange’s climax reiterates that point fantastically.It’s why Infinity War is effective, because while it’s predictable that they’ll save the world (or at least avenge it) in the sequel, the film absolutely sells how the survivors have no idea if there’s anything to be done in the climax. Zemo is such a motivated villain that I can suspend my disbelief long enough to buy that he wrestled any and all circumstances to have his damn revenge, just like the heroes win because they absolutely refuse to give up.Ironically, BvS COULD have been salvaged if any of the fuckers in charge of this piece of shit realized that Batman, Superman and Luthor have a common thread – their respective Messiah complexes. Make the film about what it means to be a hero and how all three approaches are flawed. It would be a strong way to carry the conflict that could allow a better window into the characters and could mitigate the fact that it comes a lot earlier in to the DCEU than it should. But that would require someone to actually think about the source material.
I can also excuse a lot of the coincidences in Zemo’s plan because it feels like we’re just seeing the path things took, but he was a chessmaster who had contingencies within contingencies. I mean, to a degree, they showed that: he had presumed that Cap and Tony would team up in the first place and show up in Siberia together, and when they didn’t, he called room service so the psychiatrist’s body would be discovered, and that got Tony back on track.
‘Make the film about what it means to be a hero’ — As interesting as that would be, I’m not sure it’s the kind of story Snyder could really do well. What he’s shown in movies and interviews suggests a sort of skepticism that heroes even exist a lot of the time (part of me also dings Goyer here, though I’d argue the Nolan films actually did a better job with this question in turn by playing on the separation between Bruce Wayne the man and Batman the symbol).
When it comes to Civil War I assume you mean that Tony and Steve end up at the bunker together? If so, I didn’t find that entirely implausible. Zemo at least set up reasons for it. He fed Steve the info to lead him to believe he was going to wake the super soldiers at the bunker. He then waited until after there was already conflict between the heroes before allowing the doctor’s body to be found, proving Steve right, knowing that would send them after Steve. It’s contrived that only Tony goes, yes, but his plan would’ve worked even if all the Avengers went.The thing I like about Zemo’s plan is that it could’ve worked out in any number of ways even if things went differently. It was fluid enough that he could adjust on the fly. His ultimate goal was to get the tape and use it to further divide the Avengers. Yes, it’s pretty contrived that only the three Avengers with deep personal stakes come together at the right moment, but even if they hadn’t, he still could’ve used that tape in some other way to similar effect.
The reality is that the plan doesn’t even need Cap and Iron Man to come to blows. Zemo’s intention is for the Avengers to disband, and even if they hadn’t fought, Cap and IM were definitely going to divide hard over the revelation.An actual fight is just icing.
This was, to me at least, one of the greatest strengths of CW. Even though the film has its flaws, and doesn’t hold up entirely on rewatch (the airport scene was thrilling on first view; now it comes off as a contrivance). But I got the impression that a lot of people hated the fact that Zemo had only a goal, and the skill set to actualize that goal, but was actually winging it as far as his plans went, when I saw that as a narrative strength.Zemo wasn’t a chessmaster villain with some grand, intricate plan with 30,000 bullet points. He was just a deeply wounded special agent, with just enough knowledge and ability to be really dangerous despite coming out of nowhere, and having a “plan” that was essentially “push the heroes, watch what happens, then make the best follow-up move”. Which was actually the point of the film, because the entire subtext of the film is that these “heroes” have stopped thinking about the collateral damage that their actions create, and now only think about the high-level, grand dragons with 30,000 bullet-point plans. And even when they do think about it, they deal with it by simply off-loading responsibility onto someone else. Zemo wasn’t Xanatos, but much like the later (and better-realized) Killmonger, he succeeded in his goal of making the heroes recognize that they were wrong.Again, not a perfect film, and I think had the Russos recognized just how much Zemo was the protagonist (not the hero) of CW in the same way that Coogler recognized that Killmonger was the protagonist (not the hero) of Black Panther, it would have really sharpened and streamlined the plot. But the emotional core is strong enough that it shines through the extra detritus, and kind of shows how good emotional storytelling really still pays off commercially.
Hell, I’d say the plan was even simpler than that!“Get the video of the assassination. Release the video of the assassination.”Steve, Bucky and Tony being there when he got the vidc with no other Avengers present to restrain Tony, was just icing on the cake.
I pretty much agree with everything you said except Killmonger being a better realized character. I love Jordan in pretty much everything I’ve seen him in except BP. Whether it was directorial choices, or his own, his delivery is stilted and lacking the nuance he’s brought to other roles. I’m not a huge fan of BP in general as far as how it deals with it’s social and political themes. The most culturally advance society on the planet is a monarchy whose political system is based on ritual combat. It’s ridiculous, and the movie never engages with how awful that is or how disenfranchising that would be to the population. It’s especially egregious when Killmonger is rightfully driven by a long, long history of disenfranchisement. Yet, he beats up T’Challa and and a huge portion of the country says, “well, he won so let’s go kill everyone.” I digress. A lot of people complained that Zemo’s plan relied on bunch of coincidences or contrivances, but that assumes everything went exactly as he wanted and that everything went to plan to begin with. There’s one, very big, plot oversight and that’s that the Avenger’s, particularly Tony in this case, didn’t pour over every bit of Hydra intelligence that Natasha dumped on the net to realize, like Zemo did, that the date of Tony’s parents death coincided with an unknown mission. You’d think Tony, in the least, would notice that. It’s a date he’d know well. The rest though? Zemo already figured it out. He knew he just needed that one thing, the tape and Bucky, to turn all these “superheroes” into humans. Expose everyone’s lies and the rest just follows course.
Exactly. That’s the cool thing that a lot of people seem to overlook about Zemo’s plan. It basically boiled down to “have Stark see the footage,” because he knew that alone would be enough to drive a wedge into the Avengers that would lead to their downfall. In the beginning he says to the Hydra guy that he just wants info and if he doesn’t get it from him then he will have to do it the long way which will result in much more bloodshed.So if he had gotten the info right in the beginning then it would have been a lot more direct. But regardless, things just worked out even more perfectly than he could have hoped.
I’m really happy Bruhl’s Zemo survived. I have high hopes he returns in a future movie, either an Under Siege or Thunderbolts adaptation.
Whereas Lex’s motivation zig-zag from planetary security, childhood trauma, thesis’s about God, and allusions to Darkseid.
Because heaven forbid characters to be complex and be able to be motivated by more than one thing?Zemos motivations are singular and direct, there is no complexity or depth to them. Bruhl does an excellent job selling it. It is the actions where things fall apart, the entire movie and ability for him to be able to advance his agenda required the writers to make the “heros” the dumbest possible versions of themselves.
How much complexity do you need from someone who hates the Avengers after they caused the death of his entire family? Would giving him additional ‘depth’ by adding an in-built hatred of ‘powered’ individuals or a hatred of Americanism/Industrialism represented by Cap and Iron Man really have done anything to affect his goals or actions?No, that would have been completely unnecessary. His motivations being singular and direct actually allows him to succeed, he disbands the Avengers and it’s not until a truly universal threat emerges that Tony even considers reconciling with Steve. For all of the supposed depth and complexity (and I would argue haphazardly throwing various interpretations from the comics at a zany Eisenberg counts for neither) given to Luthor in BvS, he fails at his goals hilariously, especially when you take Supes resurrection in Justice League into account.
Honestly, Zemo’s plan was pretty straightforward – he wanted the mission report from the Stark assassination, after figuring out it was Bucky from the SHIELD files.When torturing the HYDRA guy didn’t work, he went straight for the source, framing Buck for the bombing to flush him out (and assuming Cap would take him alive).Then he got the info from Bucky, and headed to Siberia to find the report.The Sokovia Accords made his life easier, as did Bucky assuming he was after the super soldiers and following him, but neither was necessary to his plan’s success.
Since I don’t trust Snyder after Watchmen, that 3rd trailer was the definitive “No” from me because I had to decide if:
Doomsday would be given quality time to be explored as a character.
Or
Used as a strawman in an already badly paced film that continues to cram as much properties as possible with bad context for doing so.
I chose the second one, but I never watched the movie, so I have to rely on commentators to tell me if I’m wrong 🙂
I loved the fact that the end battle boiled down to a fallout between two friends.Also T’Challa got to bring down Zemo, without having to resort to a physical battle.
“The living aren’t done with you yet.” That final conversation between Zeno and T’Challa packs an emotional punch while still being quiet and understated. It’s great. I know a lot of people have gripes about CW, but it’s up there with Avengers and Winter Soldier for me.
I really like the version of T’Challa we got in CW.He lost some amount of the gravitas in his own movie and IW. This is my favorite appearance for him so far.
The final scene between T’Challa and Zeno is one of my favorite parts of the whole movie. That was when I realized that I really like T’Challa and couldn’t wait to see more of him.
He’s the Sansa Stark of the MCU. “I learn slowly, it is true, but I do learn.”
This is certainly not a bad thing to be.
Yeah, it’s great and gets T’Challa off on the right foot“Vengeance has consumed you. It is consuming them. I am done letting it consume me.”
T’Challa’s MCU introduction was pitch-perfect, solidified w/ his Zemo scene. While Tony & Steve are fighting over murderous revenge, T’Challa – a man who sought the same since Act 1, for the murder of a parent no less than Tony – understood it’s futility in the face of Justice. And in his growth T’Challa takes Bucky to his homeland, a white outsider offered Wakanda’s resources to heal.
But, but….Martha….(Seriously people were laughing so hard at that scene when I saw it in the theater.)
Wait, who?Also 1,2, 5!!
I torrented that shit, and I had people coming into my house off the street to laugh at it.
Apparently in the original draft of the script, they were both supposed to have the same mother. She supposedly gets shot in an alley, survives, and just fucks off the Kansas to start a new life instead of taking care of her son and managing the Wayne family estate. Incredibly, the “both our moms have the same name!?” thing was the result of paring back the stupid.
Bro, both their moms were named Martha. I’m sorry, but I just don’t know how it gets any more personal than that.Jokes aside, you’re comparing the wrong fights. The fight between Batman vs Superman had to be less personal, because the whole point was that they didn’t know each other. If you’re going to compare it to something, go with the fight in the woods in the first Avengers.As for how well the audience knew Bruce Wayne… come on? How many more origin stories does that character need?This is not a defense of that movie. BvS sucked.
Yes both their parents were called Martha, but the film does nothing to set this up as a reason to why it mattered in the first place. Are they really trying to say it took this to convince Batman that Superman had earthly connections to humans? Thats just poor writing. He surely knew of the connection between Superman and Lois Lane if he had figured out who Clark Kent was. Was this personal relationship between an alien and human not enough to sway him?And i’m not saying anything about the fights but that the reason why BvS failed was that we were much more invested in Civil War’s characters and storyline. BvS failed to give us anything that actually made us feel like the whole thing mattered.And no we knew nothing about this Batman, sure you can throw the whole “we know his origin story already” at us but this was a vastly different Batman from what we had just received via the Nolan-Verse. The whole branding of criminals and actively going out to kill Superman should have been enough to convince you of that.
The movie sucked.I’m glad we didn’t get yet another Batman origin story though. I know enough. Bruce Wayne isn’t that different from movie to movie. Brooding billionaire, can put on a plastic charm, tormented detective. I’ve more or less got it. I have a lot of other problems with the movie, but getting more Bruce Wayne setup isn’t one of them.
I guess he thought Lois was a beard. *shrug*
But if “the whole point” of your DKR semi-adaptation “was that they don’t know each other,” you’re displaying a truly horrifying misunderstanding of the source material.It’d be nearly as dumb as shooting Dan and Laurie’s alley fight in Watchmen as a “badass” superhero beatdown!
Nobody cares about the source material. The movie has to exist on it’s own merits. In this movie, they have decided that Superman and Batman do not know each other, which is fine. They aren’t handcuffed to the way the story played out in the comics. The problem is that the movie sucked and Snyder does horrible things with the characters.
It doesn’t suck because it diverges from the source material, as such – Civil War has almost nothing to do with Millar’s story.It sucks because Snyder doesn’t understand why people *like* the source material.He doesn’t understand why people like Superman. He doesn’t understand why people like Batman.Therefore, he doesn’t understand why people want to see them fight.Worlds’ Finest is an entirely original story that does a great job mining the Batman/Superman conflict, and even has them punch each other…and it succeeds because Timm and Dini understand the characters, understand each one’s appeal, and understand why they might get into a fight.
I’m in agreement with you. Though a general audience would need to know why we should want to see them fight. I don’t know that the bulk of their potential audience was really fired up to see them fight in the first place. DC diehards, sure, but it’s a little tougher to get crossover fans.
A general audience doesn’t know why we’d want to see Cap v. Tony, either!The Russos sold it by digging deep into what makes each one tick, and figuring out why it would happen. Same as the DCAU did with Bats and Clark.Snyder went in with the assumption that people wanted to see them fight because punching is cool.
I feel like we’re arguing the same point here.
Oh, 100% haha!
It’s also a fight in which The World’s Greatest Detective didn’t want to listen to a 30 second conversation w/ his supposed Enemy about Lex’s plans that would have nullified the entire need to fight.
It was a bad movie
At one point Civil War and BvS were going to come out on the same day. The fact that the first ever cinematic teamup of the two biggest superheroes got pushed out of its slot by a threequel about Captain America was the point where DC officially lost cinematically.Imagine if they had been released simultaneously given what we know about their relative quality now.
It sounds so obvious when you just say it, and it only took two paragraphs. How the hell did not one DC studio executive think of it? How many people got paid exorbitant amounts of money to look at Snyder’s vision, nod, and say, “Great idea, Zach! Just brilliant!”
I came away from BvS thinking these guys didn’t have to fight if the plot hadn’t forced them to against reason. If either of them had been truer to their characters (and I’m talking about the characters the film itself established, not their comics counterparts) and talked for half a minute, it wouldn’t have happened. The fight feels stupid and unnecessary as a result, and makes the characters seem lame and unsympathetic.In contrast, the fight in CW is a tragedy. Even when they tried to talk about it, they still came to blows. Tony’s unreasonableness felt earned. The inevitability gives it actual dramatic weight, and when it ends, the sense of loss is real.
Not defend BvS too much, but the Ultimate Edition version of the film at least makes it a bit more plausible for why Bats and Supes fight each other.Granted it’s stupid why they fight, but at least it’s a bit more understandable.
“It wasn’t him, Tony!”“I don’t care. He killed my mom.”Downey sells that line so damn well with his flat voice and dead eyes.
This was my take as well. First of all, if Batman was as intelligent as he is supposed to be, and as he (as contradictory as it may sound) wants to end violence, there would have to be a mega huge character-driven logic to drive him into being Superman’s adversary. A “Superman is a god-like alien who could destroy us” is not valid, it’s more of a kneejerk reaction. It’s plausible that Bruce would’ve initially thought this, but he would have then investigated Clark, looked at ALL of the evidence up to that point, and conclude that he was in fact a good guy.From the start of the movie, I was waiting to see how exactly Snyder was going to pull it off, and he failed. By the time they actually fought,the movie became just as pointless as the “Martha” resolve.When the theater lights turned on, I looked at my friend who was with me and just said, “Holy shit man, Zack Snyder should be fired”.
GrumpySatan on Reddit posted this as a comparison of how MCU would have looked if they had followed DCEU’s route to Justice League. It’s great way of summing up how rushed things were.If I would draw the comparison, I would portray it like this:
Captain America (2013)
Civil War (2016)
A Guardians of the Galaxy that really is more like Spider-man 3 with the Sinister Six. (2016)
Thor (2017)
The Avengers (2017)
Hulk (2018)
And the upcoming films:
Dr. Strange (2019)
Ant-man and the Wasp? (2020)
Thor 2 (2020)
Iron Man 1 (2021)
Guardians 2 / Sinister Six 2 (2021)
Spider-man 1 (2021)
I mean, just look at how far away Iron Man’s solo film is to Civil War when he would’ve been introduced. Five years before you get any meaningful time with someone that is supposed to be central to Civil War and the Avengers
Is WW the Thor, in this analogy? Because that shit was pretty explicitly The First Avenger, haha!
I think in terms of the two characters both being gods it fits.Though as you say, Wonder Woman did have a lot similar DNA to First Avenger.
Both movies end with an American Captain named Steve committing suicide-by-plane to save the continental US from a bomb, haha!
CW and BvS are essentially the same movie. Third party looking to manipulate two other parties into destroying each other.The problem with CW, and why it is by far the worst MCU movie, is that everything about it relies on each of the characters being the dumbest possible versions of themselves. We have seen these characters over countless movies and as written they have shown a degree of critical thinking and reason, which this movie throws right out the window.There is an endless stream of impossibilities to force the narrative along. Everything from Zemo crashing into someone’s car/property in the middle of the day and having no one in the neighbourhood or that is driving call the police. To magically transporting characters halfway around the world and into a country, unknown to anyone else, yet three characters with expertise cannot get out of.It is a comedy of errors when they were not looking to make a comedy.That is without getting into the big action movie whose big action set piece can be removed from the movie and nothing about it changes. Which is a huge problem.You are also making an argument against basic reality and engaging in a huge false equivalency. One it was two people who knew each other fighting (again being as dumb as possible in order for it to work) and the other was two people who did not know each other fighting. One as you pointed out was about the interpersonal conflict. The other never had this, because it was never going for this, its purpose was different. It was third-party observation and involvement that it was going for. We the audience knew, but the characters did not. What if we take two characters, that the audience knows and force them together, what would the conflict look like if they only just met.BvS has issues all on its own, basically everything in the back 1/3 of the movie, but at least the first 2/3 is executed and planned out, and forces the audience to keep up and engage with the material and put the pieces together, whereas CW just hands all the answers over.Both are kind of trash, but the edge (oh so very slight) goes to BvS simply for consistency in the first 2/3, instead of the inconsistent seismic graph type plotting of CW.
Yeah somehow i think you’ll see a lot of people saying your comment is wrong on so many levels. The only thing you got right was.“CW and BvS are essentially the same movie. Third party looking to manipulate two other parties into destroying each other.”Also saying its the worst MCU movie in a world with Iron Man 2, 3, Thor 2 and even the first Captain America isn’t doing you any favours. Yet every single one of those films is still infinitely better than BvS.
Oh, i am sure i will. Part of the problem with the MCU is that it has caused people to stop thinking and engaging with the material, everything plot-wise is simple and handed to the audience. There is no depth and ask for the audience to string the pieces together. Which leads into some very basic takes and adoration for things that should not be gifted it. This is why WS is the best MCU movie, because it requires audience engagement and participation and does not just hand everything over on a silver platter.Don’t get me wrong, those movies were bad as well. CW is the worst because it has to do away with everything we have come to know about the characters up to that point in order for the movie to work. As i said it requires all of them to be the dumbest possible versions of themselves in order to work.The whole movie relies on the idiot plothttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiot_plotThis is why BvS still has the advantage (slight) over CW.
And the DCEU has show us some people will defend anything without proper reason.
Trialism and political identity are the words you are looking for and everything is infected with it. It is why we have toxic fandoms, and as an extension, all fandoms being trash because they cannot remove themselves from the material.CW entire premise relies on the Idiot Plot, and that is why for as bad as those movies you listed were, with the exception of the First Captain America (things were still new enough that it had its own identity, as each of the original 4 did, with a unique style, and feel. It was not bogged down in the surface level writing, plotting and need to make them “funny” with one-liners dominating and plaguing the dialogue) it is still worse than those movies you listed.
I feel I’m going to regret asking, but in what way do you feel the characters in Civil War are acting as the worst, stupidest versions of themselves, exactly?
Tony – acts like a petulant child throughout the whole thing (except the realization of what is going on when at the Raft). Lets the info of one kid’s death get to him(way to care about anyone else). Attacks his friends for not giving up their rights because of the issues he caused through his stupid actions. Attacks his friend knowing full well that the one he is protecting was brainwashed and forced to do things he did not want to do. Attacks and gives up on his friend for siding with his oldest friend.Cap – Refuses to pick up the phone, talk to anyone, or record an account of what happened and send it to those in charge or those that have access to them such as 13, or send them to news outlets, or you know Twitter. Tries to handle things on his own instead of letting those in charge know where to find Zemo when he finds out where he is going.Ross.T- with no evidence outside of shitty video orders to kill someone. refuses help to bring in a suspect and instead ignores that fact that they perhaps the most highly trained killer ever and sends a local swat team in taking him out. Refuses help that could get him and everyone else answers by bringing in the subject alive.T’Chala – with no evidence outside of shitty video tries to kill someone. Redeems himself at the end of the movie.Falcon – never offers up an alternative way to go about things (see: issues with Cap)Ross.E – by extension who whole Accords infrastructure- Has an in house psychiatrist, on the payroll, with credentials and everyone forgets what he looks like? Everyone suspects the subject when things go tits up and were out of the subject’s control.13 – Knows some truth about the situation yet, conveniently forgets to look into the psychiatrist after the escape, like their hotel room. Or you know notify her bosses and look into the Psychiatrist when she was in the room when Cap figured out he was not the real guy and could have communicated that info to her bosses.Zemo – Crashes into a vehicle/property in the middle of the day and expects no one in the neighbourhood or driving by to call the police. Dunks individuals head into a sink but their mouth and nostrils are always going to be above the water line, leaving the person to survive and come after them/notify the people they work with. Every action he takes requires everyone to forget their jobs in order for it to work. His final plan rests on the assumption that Cap and Bucky will come after him, when they could have just called and told Ross (T) where he was foiling his plan. Nothing about his plan was smart, as it required luck and for everyone involved to do the dumbest things possible in order to get to his next phase.All the other Avengers that had no business being in the movie, not asking some very basic question and proceeding to form divisions and wanting to fight straight away.Everything about this movie hinged on people being their dumbest self, not willing to pick up a damn phone and call, and a hotel maid entering a room to clean it.Everything about the movie hinges on the Idiot Plot.
Guys, he’s using a named literary criticism we must listen to him!
Isn’t this how Stark usually acts? This isn’t him at his worst, this is him almost all the time.
Shooting first and asking questions never is totally consistent with Thaddeus Ross’s character. He hates that Bruce Banner has been kept from him, hates Tony Stark for humiliating him, tricking him, & tearing down his favorite bar, and hates the Avengers for making both of them out to be heroes. When Cap offers to bring Bucky in peacefully, he doesn’t care, because he cannot admit that Cap’s way is better than his way, not after Cap argued against him back when he presented them with the Accords. When given the evidence that Bucky is innocent, he doesn’t care, because he cannot admit that he’s wrong to these people he hates & wants to control. That is who Thunderbolt Ross is, a hateful, prideful, spiteful hypocrite, given too much authority & too little accountability ever since his military days.
Tony – Tony’s arrested development issues are not exactly a secret. One of his major character arcs is the growing up and maturing he does between Iron Man (and especially Iron Man 2) and Infinity War. He attacks his friends because he signed over his autonomy with the Accords and his new boss has ordered him to arrest them, plus, he really believes Bucky’s guilty and that Cap is letting sentiment cloud his judgment. He attacks Cap later because the fact that his parents didn’t die in an accident they were brutally murdered by the guy standing right over there, hits him completely cold and Cap is in the way. Note how many times he tries to immobilize cap when he could have shot a missile or something at him.Cap – A big part of Cap’s character arc in the MCU is his growing distrust for authority. Big reason he won’t sign the accords. But, leaving that aside, who is he supposed to try to call? He can’t even convince Tony to listen to him and he’s supposed to go to Ross? Or what, try to get on the President’s calendar or something? How long would that take? Remember, by the time he actually knows anything solid, he’s a wanted fugitive and the clock is ticking with Zemo having a big head start.Sec. Ross- You’re kind of missing the point with Sec. Ross. He doesn’t care about the bombing or how many died or any of that shit. He cares about getting the Avengers under control. His control. Cap, Falcon and Wanda didn’t sign. Wanda’s already under house arrest, so this Bucky thing gives Ross the perfect excuse to put the screws to Cap and Falcon. The idea being that they’ll either sign, go to jail, or be “killed while resisting”. Bucky’s guilt or innocence is a matter of supreme indifference to him.T’chala – His dad just died in his arms and yeah it’s a shitty video, but it’s a shitty video of one of the world’s most deadly assassins with a long track record of exactly these kind of interventions. The fact that it’s a shitty video matters to Cap, but not really to anyone else. When you’ve solved the mystery, you stop trying to solve it. If you see what I’m saying. T’chala already knows who set the bomb. He’s not interested in hearing any more evidence. He’s out for vengeance. Letting it consume him, as he put it later in the movie.Falcon – Again, what alternate way of doing things? If they’d taken the time to try to do things some other way, Bucky would probably have been killed by that SWAT team. And again, by the time they have anything solid to report, they’re wanted fugitives who Sec. Ross is determined to make an example of.Emmitt Ross – It didn’t seem to me like they had an “in-house psychiatrist”. More like an outside expert on-call. More on retainer than in-house. It’s a quibbly point I guess. But how many people actually see Zemo on the way in? Does Ross? We never see them in the same room together. Obviously he has to go through security and get his forged credentials checked, but saying Ross should recognize him when it’s extremely likely that Ross never sets eyes on Zemo at all is arguable at best. It’s almost like sneaking into high security areas with forged credentials is something highly trained black ops commandos are really good at.13 – Actually doesn’t know anything except that its weird that the psychiatrist disappears like that and that she trusts Cap. By the time she knows anything more, she’s already stolen their equipment back for them and is a fugitive herself. She certainly doesn’t have time to go checking into hotel rooms she has no way of even knowing about.Zemo – Who’s going to call the police in the kind of neighborhood that an ex-Soviet, ex-Hydra colonel chooses to hide out in? Especially for a fender bender? Another really quibbly point. I wouldn’t call the police if I saw somebody jump the curb and hit someone’s car, especially if I see them get out and walk up to the person’s door. Either they’re handling it themselves, or one of them will call the police, if necessary. It’s not my business. Uh, we see the colonel’s mouth and nostrils go below the water line, we see his body jerk around until he drowns.Zemo’s plan has nothing to do with Cap and Bucky coming after him. While Bucky’s brainwashed he orders him (presumably) to escape and get transportation and then who knows? He ends up trying to steal a helicopter. Did Zemo specifically say get a helicopter? We don’t know. But why would Zemo want Bucky to tell Cap where he, Zemo, was going? That’s just dumb. Obviously, the plan was for Bucky to go out in a blaze of glory. Crashing that helicopter into something solid and hopefully important and distracting. Or maybe suicide by cop. Captain America busts up the plan when he keeps Bucky from getting away in the helicopter and then slaps the Bucky back into him. Zemo has to amend his plan when he sees on the news before he gets on his plane to Moscow, that Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson and James Barnes are all missing.Originally there was no way anyone could know where he was going, who he was, anything; so he could just go to Siberia at his leisure, find whatever he’s looking for (could have been more than just the tape of Tony’s parents murder), and then leave with a treasure trove of Hydra info. With the right equipment, he could e-mail that video to Tony from anywhere on the planet. But once he sees that news report, he knows they’ll be after him. That’s why he calls room service when he gets to Russia, so they’ll discover the dead body and all the evidence that he was the one that bombed the UN meeting. Because who else are you going to send after them? Who’s even left? Who could even get there quickly enough to make a difference? It’s a little bit of a hail mary, hoping that Tony gets there before Steve and company can catch up with him. But it’s not sooooo outlandish, and it does work.You keep talking about the Idiot Plot. What is the basic information that is withheld from the characters? What is the simple conversation they could have that would solve everything without violence? They try to talk this out over and over. Tony brings those stupid pens to try to play on Caps emotions and patriotism. You keep saying the movie depends on everyone being the dumbest version of themselves, but I think most people see these characters that we’ve seen develop over 10+ movies now being true to that development. Tony is scared of what’s coming and doesn’t trust his own judgment anymore, and has pretty severe PTSD and unresolved issues regarding his parents death. Cap has developed the other way: he pretty much only trusts his own judgment now and he certainly doesn’t trust another big faceless world government body to do what’s right. They’re probably on a collision course even without Zemo doing anything from the moment these Accords are announced, but when you’re craving vengeance, you don’t want to see your enemies get struck by lighting or die in a ski accident. You want to be the one pull the trigger. Plus, he would have started working on this way before anyone knew about the Accords. Honestly, it seems to me that you just don’t like the movie, which is fine. You like what you like. But trying to dress it up like this is silly. Just say you don’t like it without all the pontificating, which frankly makes it seem like you didn’t watch the whole movie, or else missed the point of some pretty important scenes.
I disagree that this is an example of people acting like idiots, but rather of people acting emotively and under pressure, which is the premise of the film. Let’s look again:Tony – is clearly going through his issues with his dead parents. Miriam Sharpe gets to him at his most vulnerable, after he’s just literally relived his last moments with his parents on stage, and plays on his guilt and grief, which have been huge motivating factors throughout his whole MCU arc. All the deaths from the start of the film remind him of the deaths his stolen weapons caused in ‘Iron Man’, and the people killed by Ultron, and so on. As he’s always done, he tries to retake control and refuses to listen to anyone who might stop him. That’s not his stupidest self, it’s the self we’ve seen in five previous films. And his sense of grief and guilt builds up all the way until the end of the movie (probably mixed in with the PTSD we saw in IM3), until, confronted with the fact that Bucky killed his parents, he cracks. Any actions after that aren’t going to be rational.Steve – has no idea who he can trust. He’s already seen SHIELD taken over by Hydra in ‘Winter Soldier’. Now he and his friends are being targeted by these Accords and he feels under attack. He also thinks that Zemo is going to activate the other Winter Soldiers imminently; he doesn’t have time to communicate with a bunch of people he doesn’t trust and who don’t trust him to try and say, “Hey, I know I’ve been attacking everyone on your side, but maybe you could take my outlandish word on what’s happening and help a brother out?”Thunderbolt Ross – has been well established as trigger-happy and belligerent, and pretty much hating the Avengers. He’s going to do what he’s going to do even if (or possibly because) it steamrolls over the wishes of someone like Cap.T’Challa – has just lost his dad, after a bunch of his people were also killed. He’s dealing with grief. It makes him perfectly likely to go with the obvious explanation (supported by the intelligence community) that Bucky killed his dad and to go after him for closure.Falcon – trusts Steve and has reason to. He and Cap saved the world in ‘Winter Soldier’, he’ll back Cap’s play. That’s not stupid, just loyal.Everett Ross – I’ll admit, this is a legitimate complaint. You’d think they’d vet people better than that.13 – we don’t know how much freedom she has to investigate things during an emergency like this. It’s quite possible that unless your name is Ross you’re locked out of the investigation. There’s also not a lot of time to look into things; the major events of the film take place over like a day and a half.Zemo – the car crash doesn’t necessarily attract a lot of attention; there’s no alarm, and the neighbourhood looks kind of remote/sketchy, so I wouldn’t be surprised if no one around wants to get involved. I’m pretty sure the water-line thing was just a production error; it’s pretty well implied Zemo killed that dude. His plans may require people to act in certain ways, but at a point that just comes into the area of suspension of disbelief. Almost every film like this with a villain who has a master plan requires you to take on faith that people will act the way the villain needs them to.
Tony – Up to this point has never expressed anywhere near this amount of concern or interest in his parents, outside of IM2 and there was no “i am sad they are dead” i would go so far as to call it jovial remembrance. Any time they have been brought up there was not some massive breakdown but the response of a person who had come to terms with there loss 20 years prior. Miriam Sharp, you mean the lady that happened to be standing at just the right elevator at just the right time and there was never any reason for Tony to go there other then it needing to happen for the story. That whole scene it one of the greatest plot weakness in the whole movie. It plays and comes off like it was thrown in as an afterthought. All those deaths at the start of the film, the Avengers greatest hits where the only way, according to what you are getting at, for Tony to remember is for them to be put in a compilation video? Tony is his stupidest self, because contrary to what you have put forward we have not seen anywhere near these levels of responses from Tony before, in fact, we have seen an almost complete dismissal from emotion up to this point. To go along with his wildly over the top overreaction to everything. He has never expressed and grief or guilt in all the movies up to this point. None of his actions in the movie are rational from what we have been presented within previous movies with the character, outside of him figuring things out at The Raft. As for Tony snapping when he finds out about Buckey, and reverting to a 5-year-old with a temper tantrum is precisely being the dumbest version of the character possible. It takes everything we have seen the character grow and discuss and throw it all out the window, for cheap emotion outburst in order to force the story along.Steve – Clearly he could not trust 13 with looking into things and conveying messages and audio clips to, it is not like he trusted her throughout the entire movie, especially to get their kit back and not rat them out. He never felt attacked until the end. He was playing the middleman for 2/3 of the movie, it was only after the airport (that never needed to happen) that he became an outlaw. What do you mean he does not have time to communicate with other people? How long do you think it takes to get from America to central Europe without detection? He had days worth of time when all he needed was 10 min, to record an account from Buckey about what happened and send it to 13, Ross (T and E) and every news agency. He already knows about social media from WS. The best way to protect Buckey would be to put the message out there and to come in quietly. Instead of wasting days waiting for the America group, the Accords group could have sent a team earlier to where Zemo was going to and stop him. None of Steve’s actions had a “protect Buckey and expose the truth” after the escape. He had not been attacking anyone on “their side” until the airport. If he wanted to stop Zemo, hanging around in central Europe for a few days was not the way to go about doing it. Communicating it with the people he knows can handle the situation and further keep Buckey out of it protecting him would be the way to go.Ross (T) – You are right they have presented him as that before, expect at the start of the movie with the trail of the dead video. There is also the issue about his talk about committee action for missions, how things have changed. So unless everyone on the committee is an idiot that does not care about finding out what is going on and bringing them in and getting help to do so, and allows Ross to act unilaterally then yes you would be right, except that is not what is presented to us.T’Challa – Again with the “grief and lashing out” all these characters are mentally unstable and should be locked up, if you are giving these kinds of reasons for their actions. Supported by what intelligence community? Everything is based on one blurry video still, that is not evidence, not anywhere near enough for a kill order. Especially not for people who have had training and years of experience in process and leadership roles. T’Challa wanting to go after him to bring him in with Cap would mesh with his position. Not as Tony did reverting to a 5-year-old with an emotional outburst, the first time we see him. Here is BP, his father was killed and now wants to go murder people?Falcon – does trust Steve funny i thought you said Steve did not know who to trust earlier, yet seems to trust Falcon just fine. Have you ever heard of being loyal to a fault? If all Flacon does is agree and go along with Steve and not providing any other options, then he is a useless character with no mind of his own, which we know not to be the case from WS, yet they make him that for this movie. Falcon does trust Steve but that does not mean not presenting the best options for getting out of the situation rationally.Ross (E) – it is not just him vetting, but the whole organization. The headquarters are in a city and their go-to psychologist is not located in that city but has to commute in and stay at a hotel? This is not just someone the looked up, it is someone they have a retainer on or already works for them. Must have been a hell of a look alike and age range for him to get past everyone in a secure building.13 – How much freedom to investigate do you need as a member of the FBI/CIA to do a name and location search on a suspect? Oh an incident happened affecting someone i care about, i am going to do nothing to help them, just sit on my hands and not try and look into things? She worked for SHIELD and now the FBI/CIA and ignores her years of training and experience?Zemo – really? how many car crashes do not cause that much attention? It is in a residential area, if it was more rural the distance from the main road to the house would have been a greater distance and required him to actually drive up in order to hit the car/property. Lets for argument’s sake remove that then. Production error or not, it is what is presented to us in the movie. It is the info we have to go on. You cant dismiss it as a “production error” just for confirmation bias. Hard to kill someone just by tying them up, especially when they are also someone with years of training as well. All of his plans require people to act a certain way, ways that he cannot control or influence. The actions he takes are so broad so vague that there are countless paths of actions for the characters to take. Everything about Zemos plans hinges on the characters taking the one perfect path. If you are writing a competent well thought out movie then “suspension of disbelief” when it comes to character actions has to be at near 0 or it falls apart, as this movie does. There are a reason and logic to things and actions, even in the most sensational stories.This movie is a classic example of Idiot Plot, it requires so many hoops to jump through to make it work. There is no flow, without some outlandish sequence of events, that are not presented in a way to make them work internally.
Tony’s never shown guilt or grief? In the first movie, his whole arc starts when he feels guilt that Yinsen died getting him out of that cave. He mourns the guy and decides to do something worthy with his life in honour of that. Then later he sees his weapons being used in a terrorist attack in Gulmira, and in a moment of guilt, shoots the hell out of his lounge room. He feels guilt over Happy getting attacked in ‘Iron Man 3′ and, in a petty moment of childishness, challenges the Mandarin to blow the shit out of his house. I guess you could call that idiot plotting as well. Point is, we’ve established that Tony is a guy who acts recklessly in moments of crisis. Also, maybe the death of his parents hasn’t been brought up a lot, but it’s his parents. I think that we can accept that a person might still be sad about his parents having died in the middle of a rocky relationship with them even if he doesn’t mention it every day.When I said Cap didn’t know who to trust, I thought it was pretty clear I meant within the security council, which for all he knows is crawling with HYDRA agents. He obviously trusts Sam. As for putting a recording of Bucky on social media – I don’t know where he’s stop and film that, but okay – why would anyone believe the word of a guy who’s accused of blowing up the UN? Who would then decide they should do anything about it? It’s probably still down to Thunderbolt’s side, who Cap has been fighting. (He took down that German SWAT team that came after Bucky, who may not have been Ross’ men but were acting on his behalf.) Even if he tells them, it’s probably not going to be a quick conversation; they’ll want him to come in, surrender his weapons, explain everything he knows, and then confirm it because, once again, it’s on the word of the Winter Soldier, an assassin legendary for advancing HYDRA’s agenda. It’s much easier for Cap to take the Quinjet, which, being capable of space flight, can presumably get to Siberia pretty fast.And yes, I will forgive production errors. I’ve seen movies where it’s obvious a character is using a prop knife, because it wobbles around like rubber, but I still accept that, within the reality of the film, it’s a knife. The implication is definitely that Zemo killed that dude.
“I disagree that this is an example of people acting like idiots, but rather of people acting emotively and under pressure”I agree, although I would say that acting emotively and under pressure often makes people act like idiots. But that doesn’t matter in a narrative, as long as the characters’ actions and the motivations behind them are true to their established characters and the emotional reality of the situation.
Ah okay, so the characters being true to themselves (as presented to us over the course of a dozen films) as opposed to making the “correct” (from your external vantage point) decisions makes them the “dumbest version of themselves.”Gotcha.That being said, I appreciate that you did have examples to back up your assertions, and I can see why you feel the way you did based on how you evaluated the character’s actions. Thanks for the interesting discussion.
I’d argue everything about the movie hinges on the characters being driven or dictated by their emotions, as humans are wont to do. It’s easy to apply a logical, analytical eye far from the outside, but sadly only one of the characters in these films is an actual robot.
I thought I was the only one! Civil War was such a letdown; the movie as a whole felt completely contrived.
Iron Man 3 and The First Avenger are both loads better than Civil War.
This is a bad take.
Please elaborate on some of the stupidity of the characters in Civil War and moments where they display a lack of critical thinking and reasoning. Examples would help your point a lot.
“Martha…”
Jones?
DC’s biggest and best events have always been killing or maiming their main characters. Death of Superman, Knightfall, Killing Joke..they’re a weird bunch. Weirder still, that this sort of vibe somehow managed to live on in their films…(I’m assuming neither comic company has much to do with the movies, but maybe that’s not true?)
I mean, yeah, obviously one movie was based on a lot of other movies and the other movie wasn’t, which made one movie more effective than the other. This is the most banal possible observation to make about this movie; do we really need to bring up Batman v Superman again?The answer is “no”. It adds nothing to the conversation except a bunch of people patting themselves on the back.
It’s especially disjointed because Wonder Woman’s mother isn’t named Martha so you are left scratching your head, wondering what her stake is in all this.
Her college roommate, who she was very close to, was named Marta. It was near enough to get her invested.
You are spot on, but let’s remember that Marvel had had the opportunity of building these characters over a couple of movies before Civil War whereas DC pretty much rushed Snyder’s vision and tried to cram what should have been four or so movies into one smorgasbord of a movie.
It boils down to this; I never understood why Superman, Batman, and Lex Jr were doing what they were doing. In Civil War, I understood everyone’s motivations.
This. All the characters in CW were acting irrationally, but it was because they had pressure applied to deep-rooted emotional triggers—family. Tony can’t be rational about his mom being murdered… It’s his mom. T’Challa’s dad. Steve’s childhood friend and surrogate brother. Zemo’s family. I understand the bad decisions they make in light of the situation, because they’re acting like flawed, emotional human beings.Nobody in BvS is believable or relatable.
Revenge is a common theme in blockbuster movies and it’s rarely, if ever, effective outside the original Godfather. But the scene that made me realize this movie nailed it was Black Panther confronting Zemo. Guilt-ridden at having hunted the wrong man, T’Challa demands an explanation. Zemo basically tells him, “What’s it matter? Bucky’s not innocent”. Perfectly encapsulates the theme that revenge is a fix. Tony killing Bucky won’t save his mom. T’Challa killing Bucky won’t save his dad. The world reigning in the Avengers won’t bring back the lost. But if it feels good, isn’t it worth it? So dark, Zemo’s an underrated MCU villain with a really subtle performance. T’Challa choosing not just to spare Zemo, but to save him is the catharsis of the movie.
The setup was so perfect. I honestly thought the best part of the movie was going to be the airport. And it was great, giving me such a rush that stayed with me well after it ended. And then came the silo video scene, and this was my exact reaction as Tony went over to the monitor (just replace Tony for Tommy):
I can’t think of a time I pleaded with a fictional character out loud.
“So was I.” and “He killed my Mom.”
Two devastating lines in that final scene. Downey really brings it in the whole movie. I know there’s a bit of a continuity issue with IM3 and then into AoU and this, but you can still see that Tony’s just tired; he’s resigned to doing this but doesn’t want to. That look he shoots when Bucky tries to shoot him with a gun: “Now why did you have to do that?”I already talked about my daughter’s very traumatizing watch of Infinity War but she was pretty worked up here too in our runthrough. “No . . .you don’t have to . . . no, stop . . . “ In that final fight. It’s been quite cathartic watching these with her.
It’s hilarious to me how Civil War and BvS ultimately boil down to a mom figure. I’m amused especially by the fact that “he killed my mom” has VASTLY superior narm potential to “save Martha”, yet it’s played so honestly that it tells you everything about why Stark is fighting there.Man, fuck the DCEU.
Those two lines lend weight to those that say Tony has had the greatest growth the course of MCU.
Those lines meant something, at least to those of us who’d been with him from beginning.
At the same time, it really underscores why Tony might need the check of a whole oversight accord: he could at any moment kill based on a decades-old personal wound.
It’s his mom who died man. It’s a scene that shows us that besides the growth he has done, he is still human. That line basically says that while he knows it is a decade old grudge, the fact that it was his parents that were killed surpasses any reasoning, and he just wants to hurt (or even kill) the guy who did it, wether he was brainwashed or not.
Yeah. He’s not wrong in wanting one for himself, specifically! He’s been emotionally fried since the self-sacrifice play at the end of Avengers.
Everyone brings up “So was I”, but the better line for me is definitely “He killed me Mom.” RDJ infuses it with the right amount of anger, indignation, and sadness. He doesn’t care if Bucky wasn’t responsible. He still did it and he’s the only one who can be made to pay.
I think the sadness is the most prevalent part of that, too. We expect anger and indignation there, because for Tony to get angry/cocksure is something he’s done a few times. But that sadness–that under that big suit of armor is still a sad, scared kid who never got over just one death–is so visceral.
Agreed completely. In some ways, I think it might be the most human line in the entire MCU. When he says it, you feel it – and suddenly, Tony instantly goes from “probably the bad guy in this fight, definitely the aggressor” to “yeah, I’d probably feel that way too, buddy.”
“He killed my Mom” is preceded by “I don’t care” which gives it even more impact.
“He killed me Mom.”Arghh.
I like it even more in tandem with the raw anger of, “I don’t care.”
Was that the Scottish dub?
““He killed me Mom.””
I love a good typo, because this makes me want a redub of the scene where Tony throws on a dumb Cockney accent or similar. ‘E KILLED ME MUM, STEVE!”
I always thought it was so impactful because he didn’t say “he killed my mom and dad” or “he killed my parents”. He said “he killed my mom” and that was so huge
Aw, I just got a little emotional reading about your kid’s reaction there.
Oh god. I just realized that someday, when I watch these movies with my kids (they’re 13 months now, a little too young at the moment), they’re probably going to have a similar reaction. *preemptive tears*
The first one was a powerful, powerful line that set the tone for the Captain America/Iron Man relationship that retroactively helped understand the characters and set the personal stakes for the rest of the Infinity Saga in a groundbreaking fashion that should be studied by storytellers for decades to come. The second line was a reminder that Tony Stark’s mom had been mentioned a total of 4 times in any meaningful way in the MCU, 3 of which being in this movie, and zero times in the any movie that included the words “Iron” or “Man” in the title. “He killed my dad” would have raised the stakes and helped complete a lot of Tony’s arc, and some of his issues with Captain America who worked closely with his dad.
You have to establish hating a parent. You don’t really have to establish loving one. They work very hard to show that he and his dad never had a great relationship. Neglectful at best in the films, straight up abusive in the comics. The fact that he only brought up his mom says just as much about his complex feelings about his dad.
I’m not sure it makes it much better, but it felt like that was kinda the point. Tony had a lot of baggage with his father, which is why his mother’s death stuck with him more.
I don’t know. I think for the exact reason that his mom was mentioned so little previously that it works more powerfully here.All those mentions of his dad in prior films were based on their estrangement. I’m sure he’s as broken up about his dad’s death, but you could maybe sense that his mom was always his confidant whenever he butted heads with his dad. Having just watched the absolutely brutal way the Winter Soldier killed her probably put her more in his mind at that moment.
Difference being, Tony loved his mom unequivocally. His relationship with his dad was a little more complex. Hence the line.
There’s also the fact that his dad’s job was the reason Hydra wanted him gone, while his mom posed no threat to Hydra, or supposedly anyone else for that matter. There was no good reason for her to go too.
Yeah, I think that there’s an understanding on Tony’s part that his dad accepted this kind of risk by doing the work he did, so while it doesn’t necessarily lessen his emotional response he is still able to rationalize it. His mom was a civilian, though. To paraphrase The Godfather, Howard’s death was business. Maria’s was personal.
Exactly this. Tony knew that his dad’s work would have put him in the line of fire. If Bucky had just killed him then he’d still be angry (and likely still gone for Bucky) but it was a risk Howard knew he was taking. But his mum who was innocent of the whole deal and yet still got assassinated? That’s unforgivable.I know people have mentioned RDJ’s line readings but the look he gives Steve after watching the video is amazing, He just looks defeated, sick, confused and angry in one perfect mixture of facial expression and body language. It’s been mentioned elsewhere – either on these posts or in the Age of Heroes threads – but RDJ’s performance in this film is incredible and the peak of his MCU work.
…he had a terrible relationship with his dad, though. Based on several films, too.The scene with him and his mom at the beginning of the film makes that line far more impactful than anything about Howard would have been.
I think ‘anger about seeing your mom murdered’ is the kind of thing that needs no build-up. It’s his mom, dude.
Except little boys love their moms. Tony shows his relationship with his mom was not strained the way it was with his dad. She was just perfect. And then Steve’s friend killed her. Do people not have emotions that aren’t tied into plot devices in the real world?
To each their own, but I have to admit that I don’t think “Tony Stark loved his mom and is pissed off that some brain-warped assassin brutally murdered her” is really the kind of thing that needs a whole bunch of intricate foreshadowing to feel believable.
You’re right that it doesn’t, but storytelling-wise, we mostly got him and his father, and their issues. We got a great buildup to this moment, then a line out of another movie. Had there been zero family issues until this moment, I would have 100% agreed with you. But it would be like if in Star Wars we got the buildup to Darth Vader confronting his son, Luke Skywalker, and all of sudden his love for Leia was what made him turn on the Emperor.
If you are talking about the scene in the embassy where Tony blocks the gun Bucky is shooting with a gloved hand, i felt that was more Tony recognizing the danger he was in and how shit just got almost real for a moment.
My father made that shield! That gets me every time. All the dad issues Tony had in one sentence.Someone still has to explain to me why Howard was carrying Super Soldier stuff next to his golf bag, though
Did you see the trunk space that car had? My grandfather was a golfer and a lover of the Mercury Grand Marquis, his clubs never left the trunk. Howard’s golf bag was there because the trunk was the most convenient place to store them.
OK, but why isn’t the stuff that makes more Captain Americas traveling with about 40 armed guards?
See my comment above, it was just Cap’s blood. They were trying to reverse-engineer the serum, something that has yet to be done successfully.
Because guards draw attention.
I’m going with “Stark” as the answer to this one. I don’t think the men of this family have ever thought it was a better idea to let someone else take care of something.
It wasn’t Super Soldier serum; it was Captain America’s blood.
He was going to the Pentagon.
Yeah, my daughter is my Marvel movie buddy, and we were both pretty upset when it came down to Tony and Steve pummeling each other in the finale.
Tony really went through the wringer in this movie, and Downey does the work to make you feel for him. Even as a Cap stan, in a Cap movie, I was kinda rooting for Iron Man at the end.
I’d still quibble with the idea that there’s a continuity error – he explicitly states that he created Ultron “to end the fight, so that we can go home,” then CW is entirely driven by his guilt at having done so.
Iron Man: [restraining Bucky, whispering in his ear] Do you even remember them?Winter Soldier: I remember all of them.This is another one that hits the mark.
Agreed that the film had bit too upbeat of an ending. Rhodey being seriously injured, or even dead, may have made a more powerful final act and ending.
Part of me wonders if Marvel could have made Civil War be two ninety-minute films?Sure it would have smacked of Harry Potter-esq over milking the cow, but spreading the story out longer could have led to more meaningful ending.At the very least they could have fleshed out the stuff with Rhodey.
I always thought it could easily have justified being two films. there’s just too damn much happening with a) tying up Winter Soldier’s loose end with Rumlow, b) introducing Black Panther and the idea of Wakanda, c) introducing Peter Parker, Aunt May and Spider-Man, d) all the personal stuff Steve and Tony have to go through, and e) giving time to literally all the other Avengers. not even the dream team of Markus/McFeely/the Russo Brothers can cram all that into one movie without dropping some balls
One of the best decisions that the movie made was having the one person who was critically injured in that melee be harmed by their own side.
It also serves as the culmination of everybody (including the movies) being kind of a dick to Rhodey.
It’s very subtle, but I like that this movie and IW seem to establish a bit of an affectionate rivalry between Rhodey and Sam. I get the sense that because they were both servicemen that Rhodey likes to pull rank and boss Sam around.
Idk if I’d call it a rivalry, but yes, I liked that IW seemed to expand on what CW hints at. I don’t think there’s anything that says Rhodey liked to pull rank,. though. He calls him ‘Sammie’ in IW. They seem to like each other.
More serious than being a paraplegic?
It would be serious if it stuck. The movie essentially makes it non-serious by just giving him an exoskeleton that makes him no different than before (thus far, anyway. I’d love to see it have real consequences for Rhodey. He’s terribly underused.)
I feel like an exoskeleton isn’t the same as not being a paraplegic and I don’t know how you can even think that.
To be fair – was he still a part of the Air Force? Because bionic legs or no there goes the career he was a part of for a significant portion of his life. That and depending on how he was paralyzed the walking’s nice, but he’s still might not be able to pee, poop, make love, and other lower-body activities normally again.
It’s also a nice nod to bionic-Rhodey from the comics!
He’s probably also in pain a lot of the time.
That feels a little like telling an amputee that because they have a prosthetic leg they’re no different than they were before. Granted Rhodey has the benefit of magic StarkTech, but it feels more real and lasting than say Felicity on Arrow because it is an exosuit and not a magic chip that makes Rhodey’s spine work again.
Black Panther introduces some hella advanced medical technology. Then GotG also introduced the cosmic stuff which in the comics proved to be able to fix a disabled guy’s spine.To me it was smarter to keep the conflict itself more “light hearted” without serious consequences. It made Infinity War more inpactful.
And not only that, the next time we see him, he *immediately* gives the people who (from his POV) caused that fight a big smile and cheerily accepts a “court martial” to violate the accords he spent CACW protecting to help them and, specifically, Vision who accidentally shot him.
I’m willing to buy that he’d make those choices. After all, space aliens just showed up in New York and Europe, and Vision didn’t mean to hurt him. Maybe two years working under the new rules have flipped his stance. But he does it without a moment’s pause or even a single line to convey conflicted feelings, and that really undermines Civil War’s impact.
Personally I’m glad they avoided the “Black guy dies first.” Trope. Allowing Rhodes to live allowed for further character development between him and Stark.
And then they leaned right into it in Infinity War
I think Loki was technically the first death of that movie.
Did they really need to do the “someone tries to kill TWS because he killed their parent(s) while brainwashed” thing AGAIN?
Well, they also did the “I’m mad at the guys who let my family die even though they saved thousands of other people” thing again, too.
Well, yeah…but it’s repeatedly from incidents they caused. Like…saving thousands from Ultron in Sokovia is all well and good except Tony Stark BUILT ULTRON.
I’m sure its obvious and I’m just missing it, but what movie is that plot point repeating?
I don’t know how obvious it is. This is TWS’s second appearance. That wasn’t a plot point in CA:TWS, his first. I have no idea what film he could be talking about. Perhaps it’s a comic story, but that’s not relevant.
I think he’s talking about T’Challa and perhaps forgetting that it’s in this very movie too. In fact, it serves an important purpose to note that T’Challa, after considering additional information, made the choice to forego vengeance in contrast to Tony’s immediate reaction.
No idea…only thing I could think of is OP is referring to Black Panther thinking TWS killed his dad earlier in CW.
That…uh…that didn’t happen in any other movie?
what are you talking about?
Called it!But, seriously, I doubt I’m the only one It HAD to be this scene. Yes, the airport brawl is great fun (although the whole “empty airport setting” does give it a bit of a staged-fight feel if you look at it too closely) but this whole scene (or series of scenes) just has “it”.
Ad while the action is great and surprisingly grounded (that “double-page spread” shot of Steve and Bucky just dismantling Tony while swapping the shield back and forth is gold) it’s definitely the dialogue and the interplay between Evans and Downey Jr which gives the whole thing its pathos.(The Black Panther scene outside is a nice bit of quiet contrast too).
“Yes, the airport brawl is great fun (although the whole “empty airport setting” does give it a bit of a staged-fight feel if you look at it too closely)“You’re not wrong, but I grant them a considerable pass on that because A) the scene is amazing, B) they explicitly mention that the airport has been purposefully evacuated in advance of the confrontation, which would be an easy cop-out if not for C) the whole plot of the movie being based around the repercussions of civilian casualties and property damage done by Avengers fighting. Very few plot conveniences fit so nicely into what a movie is otherwise doing.Compare that to the final fight of BvS (which had similar themes about collateral damage), set in the downtown core of a city, which we’re simply told is empty because working hours are over…okay.
It’s fascinating how DC just didn’t learn their lesson after Man of Steel.I mean, Pacific Rim, a dumb movie about giant robots fighting giant monsters (and a movie that I absolutely adore) takes time to show people evacuating.And DC just tries to accomplish this with a throwaway line of dialogue.
As much as I hated BvS overall, the scene at the beginning where Bruce is trying to help people amidst the destruction Superman and Zod are creating is great IMO.
I was most struck at how the people at Wayne Enterprises were afraid to leave until they were told to by the boss. Bruce must be really demanding on his workers.
“Oh, you got up from your desk because Starro the Conqueror’s starfish minions were marauding outside and the Joker had flooded the vents with purple poison gas? Fired.”
While I’m not a fan of BvS by any measure, it’s fairly accurate to state that people are prone to freeze, rather than panic, in emergency situations. This is why emergency training relies on having experienced/prepared individuals who will start giving instructions to evacuate/etc in emergencies (Flight Attendants do this in airplanes, for instance), because otherwise too many people would just freeze up and sit there as the building/plane/etc burned until it was too late to get out in time.
Quite aside from your tacit assumption Wayne Enterprises never did fire safety for employees (to be fair, this is plausible,) freezing in place is a form of panic. The thing is, not everyone would panic in the same way. Indeed, not everyone would panic at all. How unfortunate no off-duty fireman was in the hall, spurred to take action. Obviously the scene was supposed to show Bruce being heroic, saving helpless employees as only he could. I can only tell you what my first thought was, as I sat in the theater watching it. Obviously there’s something wrong with the way I watch comic book movies, so leave it at that.
“Sir, we need to evacuate the building!”“That’s funny, I don’t remember signing off on the HR/70-I8 Officewide Evacuation form. Oh, that’s right, no one submitted one.”“Well, Mr Wayne, uh, we thought maybe in this instance -”“Procedures are there for a reason, Henderson.”
I forgot that part haha
That’s a fantastic scene showing what it’s like to be on the ground during one of these cataclysmic battles.
Honestly the only interesting scene in the whole damn movie.
When I finally watched BvS last year and it started with that scene I thought “This movie can’t secretly be great can it?”
And while it is decidedly not great, and steadily rolls down hill from that opening – that opening is phenomenal. You buy into the idea that Batman / Bruce could hate Clark immediately.
It’s by far the best scene in the movie, and we can only dream of a universe where the remainder was as good.
Zak Snyder’s whole agenda as a filmmaker is “the little people don’t matter, only the clashes of the Important People”. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
Marvel has been really good about this in general. In both the Avengers and AoU the main chunk of the action in the final fight is dedicated to evacuating civilians/containing the threat.
I think it’s also missing the point when people complain there’s no real life or death stakes in the fight. Of course not: they’re heroes and allies who are trying to simply incapacitate to bring them in or escape unharmed, and not deciding to kill each other because Mark Zuckerberg sent them an ominous paper clipping in the mail.
Thank you! That’s always been my reaction to people bringing this up. Of COURSE they’re not trying to kill each other; they’re all heroes even if they happen to be on different sides of a situation they can’t figure out how to resolve peacefully. And just because the fight isn’t a lethal one doesn’t mean that there are no stakes. Everyone involved has some personal stake, whether it’s trying to survive (Bucky), avenge (Panther), save a friend (Cap), impress a mentor/hero (Spidey, Ant Man), uphold the law (Rhodey), etc, etc.
Exactly! When did we fall into this mindset that death was the only stakes that mattered?
Maybe it took place in Charlotte NC in the 90’s.
I found it quite funny that while the Avengers were arguing and then fighting each other over what was in effect an administrative matter in a dispute they themselves did a lot to escalate among themselves, at the same time, on the Agents of SHIELD, said agents were trying to save the world from a very real external existential threat.(Yes, yes I know the TV shows are take it or leave it.)
its a great fight sequence but yeah, the setting is so generic and bland. I genuinely didn’t realise they were in berlin until Homecoming when its rehashed.
This is right up there with Dark Knight as one of my favorite comic book movies, and this final battle is one of the big reasons. I particularly like the reversal that sets it up – you think they’re going into a big battle against a bunch of other Winter Soldiers, but then the movie pulls the rug out from under you and makes it about the Steve vs. Tony conflict that’s permeated not just this movie, but both prior Avengers movies.And while I don’t totally agree that their truce at the end undoes this (and I think Infinity War bears out that they’re not exactly on good terms), I do kind of wonder if it wouldn’t have been better to have Tony kill Bucky. It would’ve given the movie one truly un-doable consequence, and Bucky hasn’t really served much purpose since then anyway.
Totally correct about the end battle pulling the rug out. I had no idea Bucky was the one who killed Tonys parents. When Zemo showed the footage I actually let out a shocked “oh no” in the theater. That entire last 15 minutes or so is incredibly powerful.
For me, the thing was I was unsure for most of the movie whether the audience was supposed to know it was Bucky. In Winter Soldier during the Hydra reveal there’s a quick shot of a newspaper clip heavily implying Bucky was involved, and remembering that I just kept thinking “WE already know it’s Bucky… right?”
I knew immediately in Civil War, from the very first clip of that car crash, who it was, and I think it must have been because I subconsciously remembered this tiny bit from TWS.
I realized it at the very start when they first showed a snippet of the footage that we ultimately saw, but it was no less affecting when Zemo produced the receipts right in front of Tony and all hell broke loose. The unfolding of this movie was goddamned perfect.
Civil War has not one but two of the best fight scenes in the MCU, and making the end battle a personal conflict instead of a giant melee was a great move. The emotion and desperation in this fight is great acting (and a nice contrast from the quippy, “we’re trying to stop each other but not kill each other” airport battle). Rewatching the fight just now also maybe worked out my one big problem with the scene: there’s no way Cap and Bucky should be able to beat a full strength Iron Man toe to toe. But maybe the emotions are actually the explanation. Bucky is fighting for his life and Steve is fighting for Bucky’s life, so they’re obviously giving it their all. Tony, on the other hand, is lashing out as a wounded kid who just had to relive his parents’ deaths, something that the movie establishes early on still affects him. Tony is not a murderer, and there were a couple of times when he could have ended Bucky if he wanted to. Tony is clearly pulling his punches to hurt but not kill Steve, but he may be doing that for Bucky too, consciously or just because it’s no in him to kill someone in cold blood. I’d like to think that if Tony had won, he would have taken Bucky in alive (very hurt, no doubt, but alive), but Steve and Bucky of course couldn’t take that chance.
The one you described is certainly top 3 or 4, but I’m still of the party that thinks the T’Challa/Zemo final conversation and suicide prevention is one of the most absolutely magical scenes the MCU has managed to produce. Brühl managed to inject more pathos over the span of about 2 minutes of screen time than any other Marvel villain (other than Loki, ofc, but pretty much everything’s built in for him to begin with). CW is still my absolute #1 in the MCU for SO many reasons, and I don’t see that changing any time soon.
It’s hokey as hell, but I love T’challas final line to Zemo:“Vengeance has consumed you. It has consumed them. I will not let it consume me.”
As long as it’s done right, pulpy silver-age influence in serious scenes is my narrative CRACK. Boseman sells the absolute hell out of every second of it, too, to say the least.
“The living are not done with you yet” may be the best line of the movie
I can’t remember when I realized that Zemo was listening to a recording, not a message (oops, that means I have to rewatch, oh darn) but that was a nice touch. MCU often gives us villains who have actual lives, or did have lives before they became villains.
This. So subtly placed, yet so crazy powerful when the reveal hits you.
The T’Challa/Zemo scene is terrific, but the fight is the definitive moment of the film. It’s a concentration of the Civil War of the rest of the film, and it’s a moment years and movies in the making. It’s definitive for the film, the characters, and the themes the movie itself is exploring. T’Challa’s conversation up top is brilliant in part because it is directly about the ideas at the core of the movie (as indeed the best scenes in any movie are) – but the confrontation itself is the movie’s absolute centre. What a freaking fantastic movie.
A fine movie and no mistake. I wonder if the effects of the accord were explored enough in the MCU afterwards though. A bit of tension between the pair of them in Infinity War doesn’t seem like a substantial payoff to a film that felt like a relationship gamechanger.
A bit of tension? Steve, Natasha and Sam go completely AWOL and are wanted criminals. Tony and Steve haven’t talked to each other since the events of CW and they still don’t talk during IW.
Yeag, but the whole team seems to be doing pretty OK on the run. None of the accords stuff come into play.
The movie basically tells us the Avengers split is a major factor in why Thanos wins.
What “whole team” are you talking about? You have seen the movie, right? There is no “whole team.” How does the Accord stuff not come into play? Steve, Natasha and Sam have been on the run constantly since CW and aren’t Avengers anymore. The actual members of the Avengers amount to Tony, Rhodey, Wanda and Vision and Wanda and Vision are about to ditch out too. Bart is retired and Scott is under house arrest. All of this is because of the Accords. Everyone being so divided is a rather major plot point and a large reason why they were all fighting on separate fronts rather than coming together.
Just a small correction, Wanda is part of Cap’s team and on the run with them. She and Vision have been meeting up secretly with the implicit permission of their respective team leaders, but yes, they were both about to ditch.
Hell, Tony didn’t even call during a damn ALIEN INVASION.
And Spider-Man wasn’t being hunted down in Homecoming either.
Spidey was on Tony’s side…
And the Accords left him alone without trying to micromanage him at all.EDIT: Oh you meant Tony didn’t call Steve. I thought you meant Tony didn’t call Ross. Sorry.
Ah, no worries.
And the Russos have explicitly said they lost in Infinity War because of the events of Civil War.
It’s funny, in the comics Annihilation was happening in space while Civil War was occurring on Earth. Nova’s calls for help were ignored because of this, but luckily he and his space allies were able to pull off a victory anyway. IW shows the sort of thing that may have happened if the threat had reached earth when the heroes were divided.
They didn’t share any scenes in IW, so I’m expecting that their rapprochement will be a major element of Endgame.On the other hand, I do agree that the Accords stuff was given very short thrift with the Rhodey scene in IW.
“On the other hand, I do agree that the Accords stuff was given very short thrift with the Rhodey scene in IW.”
I mean, maybe, but I don’t blame the film for that since there was a LOT to get done. I do think it’s enough acknowledgement that Rhodey was immediately ordered to arrest the fugitives, refused to, and acknowledged that he was going to be court-martialed for it. We also sometimes gloss over that the entirety of Infinity War took place over something like one day, so normal human/government reaction times simply wouldn’t have allowed for fully-measured responses regardless of whether the writers had wanted more.
The thing is, at least as presented in Civil War, the Sokovia Accords seem to mostly affect being an Avenger or some other formally sanctioned hero that could be deployed internationally. I think it gets glossed over a lot how the inciting incident isn’t so much “Wanda did a thing that cost lives” as it is “Wanda did a thing that cost lives in Nigeria in a clandestine operation run by a privately funded paramilitary organization with no knowledge or approval from the Nigerian government.”Like, the Sokovia Accords don’t apply to Spider-man, really, because he’s a kid in Queens doing things in Queens. (Though maybe Far From Home will explicitly address these matters.)
The wizards operate in secret, T’Challa was exempted from the Accords, and GotG 2 & Ragnarok both happen in space. Other than Homecoming, the next movie that even could reasonably address it is Infinity War. We get more in Ant-Man & the Wasp, too.That said, we do see aftereffects in Agents of SHIELD and in Jessica Jones.
Even the most devout AV Club loyalist can admit that the website’s Marvel Moments tend to have a problem when it comes to bitching about the fight scenes in a space that’s ostensibly about a celebration of the MCU.We get it. Every entry.
How dare these not be uncritical puff pieces!
For how much I disliked the First Avenger (I have my reasons) TWS and CW are probably my two favorite MCU movies overall. And cap has easily become my favorite character of the bunch as well.
I know I should have seen it coming a mile away, but I was absolutely FLOORED by the Ant-man/Giant-man reveal at the airport. It might have been the first time I yelled “HOLY SHIT” in a crowded theater.
Nice of you to join us, Mr Holland.
Even the normally reserved UK cinema I saw Civil War had a crazy reaction to the Giant Man scene – it was clear how many weren’t expecting it and how well the surprise actually played.
I loved that scene, but unfortunately it was spoiled for me when I saw (in a physical store) a LEGO Civil War playset about the airport battle 3 weeks before the movie came out, and it had Gi-Ant Man on the front.
Biggest reaction I’ve heard in a UK cinema, by the by, was for The Raid.Firstly, The Mad Dog/Jaka fight. At the conclusion – complete silence. I think everyone had forgotten to breathe for about 15 seconds. You could hear a pin drop.Secondly, the complete opposite reaction for the Mad Dog Vs The Brothers Rama. People were whooping and hollering at the end like they’d just seen Big Daddy beat Giant Haystacks.I saw the film a second time (both these showings were before it’s general release, incidentally) and the reactions were exactly the same as they had been the first time.
Not even in Die Hard?
I’m pretty sure the whole theatre lost it when I saw it.
“Anybody on our side hiding any shocking or fantastic abilities they’d like to disclose?” is my favorite line from the movie.
I walked out of that theater HOARSE.
I saw the Lego set for the airport fight from this movie at a Target, and there was a goddamn Giant Man Lego figure. THANKS FOR THE SPOILER, LEGO.
Wait, there’s an Ant-Man and a Spider-man?
Everyone’s got a gimmick now.
“Tiny man is big now. Tiny man is big now!”
Not really sure where else to post this, but PSA: the spoiler trolls are starting to rev up for Endgame, so you might want to start your media blackout now if you don’t want to accidentally read anything! I already did this morning 🙁
That’s very annoying. I’m gonna limit the websites I visit the next couple of weeks. Thanks for the heads up.
you are a good man
the spoiler trolls are starting to rev up for Endgame I appreciate the warning. Apparently there’s leaked footage – which is easy to not see, but comments about the leaked footage will be harder to avoid. There’s no way in the world I’m missing Endgame – I would see it even if I knew every twist about the story, every quip or even every line. But to have such things told to me by amateurs? Yuck.
It seriously makes me hate the current Internet based culture we live in. For all the trailers and tv spots and people still couldn’t wait another week to effectively spoil their own experience of the movie.
Oh, it’s not just that leaked footage, it was a very major spoiler. At least, I assume it wasn’t in the leaked footage!
Civil War is still my favorite Marvel movie, because the ultimate stakes are personal, not world ending. I think it’s RDJ’s best performance as Tony Stark.
Hey… some “people” LIKE the big spectacles. Imma bout over critics who can’t pay attention saying that things are hard to follow. So this is one Marvel devotee who ain’t admitting any of yo shit
Even the most devout Marvel loyalist can admit that the studio’s cinematic universe tends to have a problem when it comes to the big climactic set pieces that end their films.Honestly, my biggest (and only) problem with this is people on the Internet continually bringing it up because they don’t have anything more original to say. The critique is incredibly overstated.
Yeah, there are issues with the Iron Man and Iron Man 2 setpieces…but the main problem is that DC decided to imitate the IM1 final scene (giant explodey beam of light) in literally every one of their movies.Marvel got away from that shit pretty quickly, all told.
I just want to say that, as much as I liked this movie, they should’ve at least had Zemo wearing a lavender ski mask when he’s in the snow as a nod to the comics. Just for a couple of shots, fer cryin’ out loud.
Hell. The crown too.
That’s what I’m saying!!!
A great Marvel Moment. One that I am hoping gets resolved in Endgame with what would be the definitive Marvel Moment for not just that film, but for the entire MCU. I am of course referring to this pivotal moment in Cap and Iron Man’s relationship.
LOL. What in the fuck?
It used to be slang for “straight talk”
Really? I heard it was slang for ‘Photoshop’.
http://www.dorkly.com/post/58891/3-viral-geek-rumors-that-were-total-bullshit
Well, shit. My google fu was not strong enough.
I literally just Googled ‘solid dick slang’. lolI’m very lucky Google knew what I was talking about.
I’m at work, so I googled some other terms that didn’t include “dick” in it. Took me to a site that hadn’t figured it out yet.
I believe that image is photoshopped. It used to say “Solid Advice from Iron Man.”
Yeah, noted in the other comments. Thanks!
Sadly, that was debunked as photoshopped.
I know it’s a fake, but one can still hope.
At least we still have the Joker’s boners.
:: chortles ::
You ALL still have Joker’s boners!
RDJ deserved an Oscar nom for this movie. Those last few scenes are raw as hell, and along with his delivery of ‘Cut the shit, Rogers! Did you know?’, they’re as good if not better than anything he’s ever done. One thing I love about his performances in these movies – he never, ever says to himself ‘It’s just a comic book movie’ and phones it in. Ever.And PERSONALLY, because no one asked, MY choice for the Marvel Moment of this film is when Nat, Sharon Carter, and Bucky are all scrapping it out. Think about it – that’s a Black Widow versus a Carter versus a Winter Soldier. Then T’Challa jumps in! That’s fucking RAD.Remember when Civil War and BvS were at one point slated for release on the same day? Man, I wish that had actually come to pass. There would’ve been fighting in the streets.
One of the MCU’s greatest strengths is its casting. None of the actors phone it in. Hell, I’m still floored by the amount of work Cooper puts into Rocket Raccoon.
Very true, and Rocket is one of my favorite characters. Even in the first Iron Man movie, RDJ was bringing his A-game. He’s never slacked off in this role ever. I’m not the biggest fan of the dumb DJ scenes in IM2, but he was even still going for it then.
One of the MCU’s greatest strengths is its casting And when they get it wrong (as I contend they did with Edward Norton, and with Terence Howard) they course-correct in exactly the right direction without missing a beat.
I actually thought Howard was pretty good, but I certainly have no complaints about Cheadle, either.
I actually thought Howard was pretty good, but I certainly have no complaints about Cheadle, either. As soon as I typed his name I should have realized that I don’t feel he was miscast. I thought Norton was wrong for sure, and am glad he didn’t make it into any subsequent MCU movies…. But yeah, Terence Howard was fine. They didn’t give him much to do, but if they’d kept him on, they would have, and he’d have made a good War Machine/Iron Patriot. I like Cheadle better as an actor maybe, but that’s probably because I’ve seen him in more movies.
I always though Howard seemed more like the kind of guy who’d be Tony’s pal than Don Cheadle. Howard has that kind of bro-ish energy that suits the role. I like Cheadle in the MCU, but it feels like a very different Rhodey.
I fucking love the videos of him in the voice booth.
And then Brie Larson came…
I would love to know if the airport fight was influenced at all by a similar airport fight in 1986’s Squadron Supreme #12. It was the climax of a Marvel series that also featured two factions within a hero team fighting against each other because of deep philosophical differences.It was remarkable for being probably the first Marvel book that realistically showed the consequences of superhero combat, which was pretty brutal and had multiple character deaths. CW steered clear of that level of realism, but lots of the emotional beats of heroes fighting former friends, as well as Rhodey’s fate (if it had been taken to its extreme) were pretty evocative for me.
I would love to know if the airport fight was influenced at all by a similar airport fight in 1986’s Squadron Supreme #12.I’m not familiar with that issue, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Everyone from Feige on down has or strives to have encyclopedic knowledge of Marvel history. Seems like it would be a dream job to be a researcher for the MCU… I know it wouldn’t really be just reading comics all day, you would probably have to produce some kind of work product, but still.
Wow, I’d forgotten about that limited series, but there are a lot of similarities between the way the Squadron Supreme conflict plays out—hero team splitting over politics/values, recruiting additional people (including some villains) to each side, and fighting it out—and the comic version of Civil War, as well as DC’s Kingdom Come. I need to re-read that.
I adore Squadron Supreme. Its existence is remarkable to me, given its themes and plotting and when it came out.
I thought the JMS reboot series (early-mid 2000s, I think? Can’t quite remember but it sounds right) was also really good. If you haven’t read it, take a look sometime.
I really liked his reboot, especially as I anticipated it being a pretty self contained series with an endpoint. I lost interest rapidly once it started crossing over with the Ultimate universe and losing JMS.But that first year of stories was great.
Now I have to go dig up the trades, which I know I have in a box in the crawlspace somewhere. Dammit.
Ummm, you’re welcome?
Interesting phrase on the cover of that issue:
Forgot about that. Cool!
It really is absolute carnage. Someone blows up trying to absorb another character’s powers, someone’s spine is broken, there are multiple deaths, a pregnant woman is almost psychically crushed, I think someone finishes up in a coma and not likely to live. It’s one of the biggest downers I’ve ever read in a comic book.
Maybe I’m alone in feeling this way, but I couldn’t help but feel that Tony’s side of the argument held no water whatsoever. Tony is the only person in the room who had a hand in creating Ultron, yet he tries to pass blame for the Sokovia disaster to the entire team. He also shows footage of New York being wrecked while ignoring / not mentioning the nuke that the government-appointed World Security Council sent to blow up Midtown once they lost confidence in the Avengers.The comic book event starts because a bunch of inexperienced, young superheroes try creating a reality TV show about their takedown of a supervillain group, which includes a guy whose powers allow him to explode, in a very public area near school children and the exploding powered supervillain explodes causing hundreds of innocent deaths, including aforementioned school children. The carelessness by the “heroes” is much more egregious and civilian causalities are much more avoidable than in Civil War’s opening act.The movie wants it both ways. They want a movie where you feel conflicted about who to root for but they don’t want their heroes to actually have much red in their ledger.
Yeah this is where people are saying that the movies should have tried to include Agents of Shield more. Around that time Shield started adding Inhumans to the MCU. So theoretically there are a bunch of people popping up worldwide with super powers that they can’t really control. It would have made the Sokovia Accords make more sense if it was a much larger issue than just the Avengers being the problem.
The reality is that if superheroes actually existed in the real world, I believe most people would be screaming for some kind of oversight.Even with the instigating crisis in the film being less egregious than the comic, it’s still the latest in a continuing trend of disasters related to extra-legal superhuman activity. It’s understandable that a summit would be called to try and put a handle on this stuff before it got worse. The comic handicapped Tony’s quite reasonable position by saddling him with clone Thors and Negative Zone gulags. I was very happy that his argument in the film was pretty solid, because it wasn’t about Ultron; it was about this group of characters setting themselves above the law. While it was temporarily working out because these characters were inherently good, the disasters were still piling up and letting them continue to operate independently only set up a precedent for a potentially horrible mistake when the team wasn’t so good or qualified (as the Ultron incident demonstrated.)
See, I would say only two disasters are truly related to extra legal superhero activity. The attack on New York isn’t, Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. specifically recruit the Avengers and ask / manipulate them into helping protect the city. And the Hydra uprising isn’t either, Cap and Black Widow are shown actively working for S.H.I.E.L.D. up until it gets taken over by a terrorist organization and then reconvening and working with Fury and Maria to try to stop the threat. Black Widow then answers to what happens in front of a Senate committee (Cap is in the hospital at this point).In both cases, oversight was there and the Avengers largely operated on behalf of S.H.I.E.L.D. In both cases, the Avengers prevented a threat that had nothing to do with their existence and stopped governmental agencies from making the situation much worse. Yet Ross trots out footage of NYC and DC as if the Avengers carelessly let innocent people die.Side note, is the MCU S.H.I.E.L.D. not controlled by the UN like in the comics? Rhodes emphasizes that this is the UN and not S.H.I.E.L.D. or the World Security Council, as if those two groups weren’t UN controlled as well. It’s a bit confusing.Anyways, my point is while the Avengers, and particularly Tony, do have culpability in what has happened, pointing to events where the Avengers were spurned by a government agency to help doesn’t make sense to the overall point that’s being made. It makes it sound and feel disingenuous, as does Tony showing the rest of the Avengers a picture of a kid whose death is on his hands way more than the rest of the group. And the larger point that could have been made is allowing government officials, who can be corrupted or wrong just as easily as superheroes, to have full oversight could set the precedent for a horrible mistake just as much and the government agencies which have been in the MCU have been very fallible.
I agree with you that the Battles of NY and Triskellion were when the Avengers were under SHIELD oversite, but they still represented the type of mayhem that these superheroes were capable of. After the fall of SHIELD in TWS, the events of AoU and the opening of CW kinda demonstrated the what the Avengers were capable left to their own devices, for good and bad.
And your last point is basically Cap’s argument, which is valid. Afterall, if Zemo had been trying to activate super soldiers, the sanctioned Avengers weren’t doing anything about it because Ross wasn’t letting them; it proved Cap’s point. Because in reality, Cap ultimately wasn’t blinded by his personal bias towards Bucky- he was actually trying to go somewhere he was needed that the government was telling him he wasn’t allowed.But that’s the crux of the dilemma here: both Tony and Steve are making good points here. The true answer to this situation shouldn’t have been either/or. Unfortunately, the Zemo crisis and Peggy’s death had the bad timing of preventing them from really hashing it out. You could see they were getting close in Geneva until Cap found out about Wanda. With a little more time (and without the Winter Soldier situation), they could’ve blown off some steam and come back to the table, even with Cap’s disapproval of that development.
Very much this. Getting oversight & accountability isn’t such a bad thing; however, waiting for a committee to approve missions is completely impractical considering the kinds of threats the Avengers fight. The movie actually begins to address this when Tony assures Steve that they’ll amend the details to be more pragmatic once the PR disaster dies down, & Steve accepts that & prepares to sign the Accords.
There’s a great “What If?” comic (by Bendis, actually), that basically solves Civil War by Tony putting Cap in charge of, essentially, superhero development for the whole country’s meta population.
I mean, your last point is precisely Cap’s argument, based on his experiences in Winter Soldier.
You know, I was also thinking there are many more incidents than just 2 that are extralegal.We keep referring to the Ultron incident (by which I’m sure we are thinking of Sokovia), but there was also the Johannesburg Hulk rampage earlier in that film, and the battle in Seoul between Ultron and Cap’s terrific trio.Iron Man had multiple battles over the course of his 3 solo movies that were totally on his own. His very first one involved invading another country, and was freaking Rhodey and the rest of the military out!Hulk vs Abomination had a tremendous battle in the middle of Harlem.Thor’s battle with the Destroyer practically leveled a small town, and then he had a pretty big battle in London that an episode of Agents of SHIELD detailed the clean up for.Not to mention the Cap-Bucky-Panther chase in CW.All this stuff is piling up. If I were living in this universe, I would be concerned about where the next giant super battle would occur. Which is not to say that all these battles weren’t legitimate- they were all basically about evil superhuman threats that needed to be answered. But I don’t think just trusting a group of unsanctioned people who answer to no one to take care of it is the solution.Because it’s not just about Tony spreading the blame out for Ultron to the rest of the team. Rhodey and Vision both also came up with their own separate sincere arguments for supporting the Accords (Natasha’s reasons were more pragmatic in origin) that kind of fall in line with what I’ve been talking about here,
I agree with your general points but my larger one was just that the argument made by the pro-Accords side fell flat for me because of how some events were referenced and how events transpired in previous movies. There could have been a more compelling pro-Accords case and I think some counter points by the other side were left out too. I wish they spent a bit more time arguing it honestly, they barely begin before Cap leaves to attend Peggy’s funeral and after that sides have been drawn.
Well, Ross was obviously incredibly biased in the way he referenced those past events. I think what was most relevant about his footage is the unbelievable destruction the team is capable of, even when facing legitimate and unavoidable threats. I do think Rhodey and Vision covered some of the other points, for whatever its worth. It wasn’t just Tony’s self recriminations about Ultron. I also think it might’ve been nice to see them kick it around a little more, but the abbreviated conversation because of Peggy’s funeral and the Zemo crisis is integral to them not being able to resolve it before it was too late. I don’t think Cap presented the most thought out counter point, either. Like, yeah he’s right about possible corruption of the people giving orders, but that doesn’t negate that the Avengers themselves answer to no one, which is the larger point of the pro-Accords side. Anyway, I guess watching these heroes talk about this stuff anymore than they did was not in Marvel’s interest. Let’s just get them punching each other already!
Right. For me, it wasn’t just the accident in Nigeria, it was the fact that they basically ignored Nigeria’s sovereignty to run a clandestine operation with their private paramilitary organization.
Exactly.
“If we can’t limitations, we’re no better than the bad guys.”
He also shows footage of Johannesburg – the main thing behind the Accords is not just the disasters, it’s that they’re disasters on foreign soil by an American-backed team. That’s why the Accords are presented by the UN
The most important Marvel moment in the movie I think is when Everett Ross laughs at the very idea of giving a lawyer to Barnes. Of course arresting Wanda without charges or shoot to kill orders told you everything you really needed to know about Stark’s side, but the joyous contempt is just so special. Given that Ross is the token of white admiration in Black Panther, this actually says a lot about that movie too.
Wanda has a lot of nerve actually. She was a known member of a terrorist organization (HYDRA) before joining Ultron and unleashing the Hulk on a major population center, blows up a bunch of Wakandans and abandons reasonable house arrest to go chase a red herring with a wanted fugitive.
The fact that the Russos didn’t let Wanda be more of her AoU self here is super annoying. She’s also a Sokovian reacting out of anger from her parents’ death! She has the backstory that’s a perfect foil for Zemo, T’Challa and Tony.
Wanda is not Palestinian. There was no “reasonable” house arrest without charges. BS.HYDRA was a part of SHIELD, which means Natasha and Clint are also members of a known terrorist organization too, but they aren’t condemned. The double standard is more BS.The notion that Wanda should have let the street people in the market get blown up rather than risk the lives of the wealthy people suite people is BS of a peculiarly despicable sort. It is highly doubtful that Wanda directed Hulk to go to Johannesburg. She did draw the Hulk out. But then, why else was Bruce Banner there, except to be drawn out? At least this point is a turd labeled a Clark bar, but not enough. Chasing after Barnes was falling for the red herring, but it was Stark and his stooges who did that. Your real objection is I think that state violence is good, while resistance to state violence is unforgivably evil and deserves the most ruthless and violent repression, regardless of law, justice, common sense and common decency. Not a good look as far as I’m concerned.
1) Every SHIELD agent wasn’t a member of HYDRA and you damn well know it.
2) You agree Wanda was trying to use the Hulk to hurt people. Got it.
3) Zemo was the one who played Cap’s people like a fiddle.
4) Tony had basically got Wanda off thanks to the Accords but Cap had to drag her off on his damn fool crusade.
1) Not every SHIELD member needed to be a witting HYDRA officer, because they all served HYDRA’s long-term purposes. 2) You agree Hulk was in Africa to hurt people. Got it.3) Zemo played Stark (and Black Panther, too.) Zemo wanted them killing each other. Stark would have if he could have and he had no intention of ever giving up on killing Barnes. That’s why he couldn’t even call Captain American when Thanos was attacking. Having right wing politics doesn’t give you the right to falsify the plot.4) Stark gave her nothing. If she can be locked up then without any charges, she always can be. And, ff Natasha can be admired for her career of assassination Wanda can. As near as I can tell, Age of Ultron is really good for smoking out the wingnuts who think a US general (the William Hurt Ross?) and a US spy (the Martin Freeman Ross) and a US billionaire are international oversight, so it’s okay to shoot people on sight.
My gut says that MCU finale-fights are batting 500. This narrative that they have a problem … is it true? Here’s the ones that stick the landing:Iron ManCaptain America: First AvengerAvengersWinter SoldierGuardians of the GalaxyDoctor StrangeCivil WarInfinity WarSpiderman HomecomingThor: RagnarokI’m on the fence with Captain Marvel.I count nine that miss the mark. GotG is close. You have to buy into the dance-off. Iron Man 1 was a tad tepid, (I said Tad! Don’t kill me.) but it’s hard to punish them when they were first out of the gate. I guess if you’re grading strictly, rating the endings as either great or fail, then the grade is maybe D+ … 68% or so. That doesn’t seem like a fair way to judge though…
No you were right, IM 1 was lame. But the entire finale stretch in GOTG 2 from just before when Fleetwood Mac starts playing until Yondu’s death is flawless.
I’ll rewatch. I remember nothing topping Yondu’s Stand & “Come a Little Bit Closer.”
The ending of GOTG2 is WAY better than the first.
GOTG2, Ant-Man and IM3 all blow IM1’s “explodey beam of light” ending (which became DC’s SOP) out of the water.It’s only really Incredible Hulk, IM2 the first two Thors, AoU, AMaTW and Black Panther that don’t stick the ending superhero fight…and even BP has a pretty great side-battle going on besides the T’Challa/Erik duel.
Downey and Evans totally sell this fight. It feels very real and personal and without them I don’t think it works.I do like that end though with the cell phone being sent to Stark. I kinda wanted there to be a moment in infinity war where it was the Guardians and Thor landing at Avengers HQ and Stark making the call and just saying “We need you”. I think him personally not making that call in Infinity war was a let down and hopefully they have that first reunion of Cap and Stark being very emotionally satisfying.
I do like that end though with the cell phone being sent to Stark I like that it’s an ancient phone – probably the most modern one Steve Rogers is comfortable with. I also like that it echoes the clunkyness-but-usefulness of the pager Carol Danvers leaves for Fury.
Stan Lee as FedEx guy: I have a package for a Mr. Stank? Is there a Tony Stank here? Priceless. (paraphrasing of course)
I’m just imagining the poor sales assistant who had to help Old Man Rogers pick out a phone.“Well, this one’s pretty basic.”“Where are the buttons?”“Oh, it uses a touch screen.”
“Touch screen? What am I, an astronaut? I’m going to say this one more time, son, I’m looking for a phone. Not some Martian supercomputer.”
I always just thought it was a burner phone. The cheapest kind of thing that would be untraceable.
I like that the apology is also a terrible PA non-apology. ‘I know that you believed you were right! Also you got the Avengers (all two of them!)‘.I mean, Passive Aggressive Captain America is my fave type of Cap but man, that letter.
Eh, Cap is nothing if not self-righteous (in the best possible way!) “I won’t let the fact that you were wrong about this stop me from saving your ass in the future.”
Like I said, I love PA Steve Rogers. Makes me understand why Tony didn’t call back.
“I think him personally not making that call in Infinity war was a let down and hopefully they have that first reunion of Cap and Stark being very emotionally satisfying.”
I think that having the reunion/reconciliation take place in Endgame after an unimaginable tragedy is going to make it way more potent than it would have been if they’d done it right away in IW.
Did you realise that Stark pulled the phone out in Infinity War even though he has no specific reason to have it with him, meaning he keeps it on his person at all times? Love that
Even the most devout Marvel loyalist can admit that the studio’s cinematic universe tends to have a problem when it comes to the big climactic set pieces that end their films. As with many of Hollywood’s CGI-heavy spectacles, there’s a tendency toward louder, flashier, and dumber—final fight sequences in which a hero or heroes go up against a large, anonymous, and insubstantial assemblage of meaningless goons, usually in service of preventing a giant glowing hole in the sky from opening or closing or exploding or whatever. Statistically, 9 out of the 21 MCU films so far have had a final sequence featuring an army of goons (plus a final boss), and exactly two out of 21 have had a giant, glowing hole in the sky. Just putting the “problem” into perspective; it’s a lot less common than articles like this claim.
The argument annoys me, as well, probably because I’m such a comic book fan, and big final fights are such a trope that I’m used to them. I figure it’s like Westerns for movie critics: they can either bitch about the gunfights in general, or they can tell me why a particular gunfight fails. For me the “giant glowing hole in the sky” worked in Avengers, and was complete nonsense in Suicide Squad.
#notallbigglowingholesinthesky(had to be done)
This criticism gets leveled at Marvel a lot and it’s not completely unfair, but I think the biggest reason it gets a pass from fans is something Marvel absolutely nails: the characters.Yes, maybe we’ve seen near-apocalyptic boss battles in almost every movie, but audiences are so invested in these characters that it’s an easy thing to overlook. Whereas in something like Suicide Squad it a glaring flaw because the characters we’re supposed to be invested in are barely there.
Thank you. These people love to overexaggerate everything.
This needs more stars and at the top of the comments for sure.
This is a great MCU film, probably 3rd or 4th overall for me. I love how they bring back Spider Man and really embrace the fact he’s a teen. “Hey remember that really old movie, Empire Strikes Back?”
I love how they bring back Aunt May, and Tony calls her “Aunt Hottie”.
Also a fun reunion between old costars
I think she was in Chaplin as well.
It’s weird, I’ve seen this movie at least three times now, including an MCU binge before Infinity War and one this month for Endgame. This is the first time I realized that there’s the line where Tony asks Steve “You knew?”, which is crucial to their animosity, but they never mention how Steve knows. I had to google it, and it turns out it’s part of Dr. Zola’s disembodied UNIX head exposition dump in the SHIELD bunker at Steve’s old boot camp. It’s odd that there isn’t anything to catch everyone up to speed on such an important detail.
It’s one of those repeat viewing things, but yeah, Zola even shows the exact same footage, if I recall.
It’s left very vague. Zola mentions “history was changed” over a shot of young Howard Stark’s photo being redacted and then a seperate grainy photo of Bucky with a sniper rifle is shown.Its a lot to pin on Cap knowing everything from that.
Even during the film, before Civil War was released, I thought it was pretty obvious in showing that Bucky as the WS had at least killed Howard Stark; but I also can see how it was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment for a viewer.
But I think if they were any more explicit it would likely take away from the scene, as the plot wasn’t really concerning Tony (at the time).
Excellent piece, partly because it’s the first Cap movie piece in your series that doesn’t try to whine about ‘jingoism.’ Someone’s learnt something.
I agree the personal part of this story was great but I found this movie boring. Iron man is a tool for signing the agreement and making Spider-man his sidekick annoyed the shit out of me. Peter is a complex character in his own right and didn’t need to be 3rd fiddle to fucking Iron Man.With that said, as people have said in the responses, the personal fight it why this worked and Batman vs. Superman didn’t. You need to build the friendship 1st to have the sense of betrayal that leads to two friends wanting to kill each other. Batman vs. Superman had none of that.This had some of that but again I wasn’t as in love with this as other’s was. It’s outside of my top 10 Marvel movies. Maybe #10 at best.
Loved CW, though for my money, and I’ve always wished Tony had said “So was my dad” to Cap saying that Bucky was his friend
Damn. Never thought of that. Would have been gut-wrenching, but also a bit too “logical” for Tony in that moment
true. Caps friendship with Tony was always a bit strained. But his friendship with Howard was real and Tony had told him before that Howard worshiped Cap after he was gone.
“Even the most devout Marvel loyalist can admit that the studio’s cinematic universe tends to have a problem when it comes to the big climactic set pieces that end their films.”
Hi. I don’t know if I’m the most devout Marvel loyalist, but I might be up there. And I’m not sure we can really take this statement as fait accompli, despite how often we see the sentiment in these essays.
The does a great job of being not just a great Captain America movie but also (imo at least) the best Iron man Film of the series all while introducing an A-list player in Black Panther and giving him a compelling arc as well. Having rewatched it recently it has really aged well and cemented for me that the Russos are masters when it comes to handling multiple character arcs in film.
Straight from the comics:And also revisited in Cap vs Hydra Cap:
The final climax is really what elevated Civil War. How tempting it must’ve been to have had Iron Man & Cap team up against the suddenly active super soldiers, then have the rest of the Avengers jump in at the last minute to save the day. That easily would’ve been a Phase 1 or 2 ending, but Phase 3 has shown Marvel willing to be bolder with their storytelling and subject matter. This scene alone is definitely one of the most impactful ones of the MCU of sure.As if we didn’t need reminding enough, this climax was also a valueable lesson to the doomed BVS. A lesson in how write a credible story for two heroes to go against each other, and also how to write a suitable conclusion to that conflict.Notice how the conflict only really becomes personal at the end, after numerous scenes where the heroes have tried to talk things through. How Captain America doesn’t need anything to make him stop the fight. It gave the climax so much weight and Henry Jackman’s score is also a highlight.Opposed to BVS where the conflict could’ve easily been resolved if Superman was more pro-active and Batman wasn’t so paranoid and deluded. The concept was stupid to begin with, demeaning both characters and the ridiculous ‘Martha’moment was a massive insult to fans and audiences alike.So in short Civil War was the right way to do things and BVS was so the wrong way.
If only Tony and Steve realised they both have best friends named James
For all of those comparing Civil War to Batman v Superman: I also hereby submit to you all that having Batman fight Superman is actually the least interesting interaction those two characters can have.
Maybe it’s just me, but I have a hard time buying Captain America as a credible threat to Iron Man (or, for that matter, The Winter Soldier in CA:TWS). Yeah, you’re super strong. So’s Tony’s suit AND HE’S COVERED IN METAL. We know Steve’s not bulletproof; that should mean he’s also not getting-clobbered-in-the-face-with-a-metal-fist-proof. Plus Tony’s got repulsor beams, whatever that thing in his chest does, the 100+ other weapons hidden in there somewhere, oh and a FUCKING TANK MISSILE. Cap should be a broken, bleeding mess, and Winter Soldier a smear on the floor.Yes, I know there were extenuating factors – Iron Man’s suit had sustained damage et al; I just think if you’re going to show someone getting the equivalent of a sledgehammer to the face you should sustain more damage than a small cut.
Painfully Personal Climax- name of your sex tape. Zing!
I wonder what social anthropologists are going to say about this in coming decades. A superhero franchise in the first quarter of the 20th century where the heroes turned on each other.
‘Business as usual’, surely. Heroes punching each other is established comics tradition.
The ending also allowed T’Challa to prevent the man who killed his father from killing himself, after spending the film ostensibly searching for him to kill him. Demonstrating his compassion and ability to set aside the personal vengeance that had driven the others to breaking points.
Yeah, the deliberate contrast with Tony is powerful and moving.
Maybe my favorite MCU film, I can’t get enough of the Russos. They just get it like nobody else.And they put such nice little touches in the films, like whenever a scene opens centered around Zemo, it always begins with a shot of his foot. Why? I don’t know, but I like it.
Those scenes were guest directed by Quentin Tarantino.
After 21 films I consider Zemo to have been Marvel’s best villain, because he’s human, he did kind-of succeed and in a really painfully personal way, and he did so without any embarrassingly overwrought moments (which all these films, Marvel and DC alike, are prone to occasionally). Bruhl plays him very smartly, very effectively.
Bullshit! No one was named “Martha”.
A lot of people in these comments sections will come out with their list of best to worst MCU films, and I’ve never had that clear an ability to rank them; I like so much about most of them in different ways. But if you put a gun to my head and said, “Best MCU entry, now”, I’d say “Civil War”. So much of this movie is exactly what I always wanted to see in a superhero movie.And this battle between Tony and Steve is so perfect because it’s a battle between the kind of heroes they’ve been throughout the series. For Tony, it’s always been personal. Iron Man is his way of atoning for all the mistakes he’s made, for feeling like he didn’t live up to what his dad wanted him to be. Of course the thing that would cause him to turn against his friend would be a personal wrong. Whereas Steve is motivated by duty and a sense of justice. He came to the base because he thought there was a greater threat to the world, but he fights Tony because he knows, no matter how much his friend is hurting, it’s not right that Bucky, who was abused and brainwashed, should be punished for Hydra’s sins. It’s tragic for us to watch, but we know that these reasons make sense for these characters.
These aren’t heroes trading quips, or even getting into a heated debate in the science lab aboard a Helicarrier, à la The Avengers. This isn’t Captain America versus Iron Man. It’s Steve versus Tony.I disagree with the slight in this first sentence. They’ve never treated each other as anything other than their personal identities, rather than their superhero ones. See, that’s the thing about the MCU. The quips, jabs, and debates have always been between the people behind the masks, even in that first assembly scene on the Helicarrier where they’re all getting together for the first time. Hell, Steve tells Tony to put on his suit for a fight, because in that moment he wasn’t talking with Iron Man, he was talking with Tony.This article series has stated on numerous occasions that the reason these movies have been successful is because of the focus on the people, on the dialogue and character development, and not taking a surface-level approach to the masks. The MCU is as successful as it is because the superheroes they’ve built this up around are people first, and they depict them as such.
The fact of the matter is that the MCU’s Civil War made a whole lot more sense than the comic story it took it’s name from. There’s no reason for Tony and Steve to be on the sides they come down on in the comic if you really look at the characters and their histories. The addition of Bucky and making Tony responsible for Ultron totally changes that and gives them context for their decisions. Though it sports the Captain America title, this is really an Avengers movie. One much better than Age of Ultron.
Rewatched this the other night. Still gives me chills