'Captain America: Civil War' - Movie Review

The plot points in the first hour of this movie are delivered like plodding hammer blows.

  • Bucky is the Winter Soldier.
  • Under mind control he has done many evil things.
  • Some evil guy called Zemo wants to control him.
  • Steve Rogers/Captain America is still determined to free/save Bucky.
  • Tony Stark feels guilty about the things he didn't say to his parents before they abruptly died.
  • The Avengers have induced a lot of collateral damage in saving the world.
  • Tony Stark is made to feel guilty.
  • The Black Panther is mad because his Dad the King was killed.
  • the U.N. thinks the Avengers are dangerous and should have an oversight committee.

The delivery of this information is incredibly work-man-like, with about as much poetry and appeal as the process of bulldozing a lot before raising a house.

I was pretty offended by the "you killed lots of people in Segovia" thing: in "The Avengers: Age of Ultron," we saw the Avengers saving every single person. They made a big deal of it, and we were never shown anyone dying (except one of the heroes). So to say they killed lots of people is essentially saying "we lied about what happened in the last movie."

The Avengers and associated heroes split into two camps: those who think they should be controlled by the U.N., and those who think they should continue to remain at large and control their own destiny. There's wrangling, there are fights, alliances are tested and occasionally changed. There are more fights. And it's not drama anymore, it's just ... soap opera. Just as the comics they're based on are perpetual soap opera, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has inevitably devolved to that same state: "we don't want to kill off our main players, we'll have them injured, we'll have different teams fight each other. And next week we'll have half of them swap sides and do it again." Has some very funny dialogue, but that's not a saving grace. The failures of logic surrounding Zemo's actions are massive.

I'm running against the critics on this one (they loved it), but I think this is a major stumble for the MCU and the beginning of the end. Undoubtedly I'll see many of the MCU movies that will follow, and I'm sure a few of them will be good, but I think it's mostly downhill from here.