This movie's entire marketing campaign is exactly the same as WWE's Survivor Series, asking the viewers if they're #TeamCap or #TeamIronMan. How about #TeamNeither? Well the movie doesn't disappoint if you were expecting WWE with superheroes. This movie was a massive insult to my intelligence. It was one big contradiction after another that I was enraged by the end.
You remember how HYDRA infiltrated SHIELD and the government in the last Captain America movie? Seems like it would've been an easy setup for Civil War amongst the heroes right? Well the writers don't remember this because absolutely zero of HYDRA infiltrating things was mentioned in this movie. Instead the film wants us to think the Avengers are now reckless heroes who killed mass amounts of casualties in their battles in the previous films despite there being no prior hints this was the case. If you can believe this massive contradction that was never addressed before, this is what motivates the United Nation to force superheroes to register as government employees. Two things here: 1) Aren't the Avengers already government employees? They work for SHIELD which is the government. And have a military headquarters which also comes off as government. 2) The United Nations were the same people who fired a nuke at NYC during the alien invasion in Avengers 1! That was somehow better than what the Avengers did? There's some more idiocy in this one scene, but I won't get too detailed into it because the movie forgets about this plot point by next scene. I kid you not. As you probably seen in the commercials, the Avengers are back to destroying things like airports by the halfway mark.
The rest of the movie consist of chasing Winter Soldier which is the prime motivator to get the characters to go all WWE on each other. Anyone remember Electro from Amazing Spiderman 2? Remember how his character went from a Spiderman fan to his enemy without any real reason? Well I hope you enjoyed Electro's character development (or lack of) because pretty much everyone in this movie is going to do the same thing. Hawkeye last we saw him just wanted to retire with his family. Well here he's betraying his former friends and risk losing his family to help a wanted assassin because screw reasons. This is made worse how the film even brings up the people he's fightng are his best friends. Ant Man is now mysteriously best friends with Falcon and Falcon even has him on speed dial despite they're only meeting was their fight when Paul Rudd was trying to break into Avengers HQ and Falcon was trying to arrest him. Did Ant Man became good friends with all the henchmen he beat up in his solo film too? Rudd was trying to show his family he's a changed man and reconnect with his daughter. So what does he think is a good way to show that? Betray the government fight the Avengers, help a wanted assassin and risk being thrown in jail which *spoilers* he does get thrown in jail. Why did he do all of that? Your guess is as good as mine. Scarlet Witch is established to have Vision taking care of her in this movie, and flips sides shortly after. Wdoes she all of a sudden attack her caretaker to help Steve's cause? She's an idiot I guess. Yes these are the "reasons" the film gives us for this "civil war".
Believe it or not, this film actually has a "villain" that most people including myself forgot even existed until others brought him up. Yes he's that insignificant to the film outside being the one initiating all the problems with Winter Soldier. He's typical forgettable villain trying to kill the heroes, except here he wants the heroes to fight each other instead. You want to know what his plan is?
- Get resources to build up army then find new super soldier serum formula to power up army.
- Find codes to Winter Soldier so he's effectively part of your team.
- Kill the dad of a non Avenger and frame it on Winter Soldier so non Avenger can kill Winter Soldier.
- Seize every opportunity to have the heroes try and kill Winter Soldier if non Avengers fails.
- Kill new super soldier army while they're frozen.
- Initiate fight between Captain America and Iron Man by revealing Winter Soldier killed Tony's mom. This step not only requires for only these three to be in a room together, but for his previous steps to have failed.
- Kill himself.
- ???
- Profits
Yes people this is what actually happened in the movie. Everything I said is meant to be taken seriously and not a farce or parody. This movie really has a thing for taking anything resembling continuity and logical sense, bringing into the back and shooting it. Other memorable parts of this idiot train is the "villain" great plan to initiate another Winter Soldier fight while he's in captivity in the good guy's HQ, Iron Man refusing the follow Winter Soldier's lead to capture the "villain" which is what caused the whole airport fight to now deciding to follow Bucky's lead BY THE NEXT SCENE! Apparently his change of heart was caused by Tony being mortified that when heroes get arrested, they go to jail. As well as Black Panther going Electro after spending the movie refusing to believe that Bucky didn't kill his father, and the most laughable of them all, the film actually tries to make you believe the heroes fractured because of the "villain's" moronic plan. No they fractured because the heroes in this franchise can't stop beating each other up, and this time a number of them thought it was a great idea to help a wanted assassin along the way for no reason. And that could've easily been prevented if the other heroes just followed Bucky's lead at first instead of deciding to follow his lead the next scene later after they already destroyed an airport.
This film emphasizes what's wrong with the Marvel Cinematic Universe films. These films main priorities evidently is to have as much shameless fight scenes as possible and to bait for upcoming characters whose payoffs are just going to be more WWE fight scenes. And the filmmakers will do anything to achieve these fight scenes regardless how much it butchers story development, character development, continuity and anything resembling logical sense. It's harder to name a MCU movie with more than one hero where the heroes are actually getting along from beginning to end rather than a MCU movie with more than one hero where they can't stop wanting to beat each other up because that's all the MCU seems to care about.
Anyone who tells you this movie is "emotionally deep", "thought provoking", "morally complex" and anything that tries to make this movie sound beyond a WWE match is lying to you. Any message this film could've had will get trampled all over it and thrown it into a wood chipper sooner or later as the film progresses. This is possibly the worst movie I've seen in 2016 and possibly the worst MCU movie so far, though I'm sure Marvel Studios will make me eat my words later on.
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