I'm not going to say that this is not a Captain America movie. I'm not NOT going to say it's not, either. I'm just going to let the insinuation that I'm saying it's not sit over here and waggle its eyebrows suggestively.
Because holy cow, guys, there were a lot of other characters in this movie.
Also, I think we've officially hit the crossover point in the MCU with this movie. If you have not been watching the Marvel movies up to this point and you jump in here, you will be really confused by some pretty vital plot points. This is no longer the friendly version of the Marvel comics universe. You've got to be paying attention for the connections if you want to catch everything.
This is, of course, something I'm really quite good at. So I was okay with the movie. If you haven't watched The Winter Soldier, Age of Ultron, and Ant-man, you probably will just be confused. On the plus side there's plenty of explosions and jokes to be entertaining even if the characters and plot confuse you.
I've got to say though, that if we consider this an audition tape for the Russo's next installment in the Avengers, it's not terrible. It's a little heavy handed with the themes, and certainly not nearly as entertaining as most of the MCU films. There were also, just, all of the characters. They even took the time to introduce us to two completely new heroes, but they managed to juggle their personalities into the melting pot quite adeptly. I didn't feel like either of them got shafted as far as character development went, though it did also push the run-time of this movie about a half-hour longer than my bladder wanted it to be.
The existing heroes didn't feel like they got shafted, either. Hawkeye shows up like, right in the middle, but his actions still feel appropriately weighted. And we finally got some characterization for the Vision, who really didn't have much time for that in Age of Ultron. And as far as Ant-man, Black Widow, War Machine, and Falcon are concerned, they play right along the lines you would expect them to. They didn't have huge character arcs, any of them. Those arcs belong to Cap, Iron Man, and Bucky, which is generally what I was expecting, as well as nice little arcs for Spiderman and Black Panther, which I was unsure of going in. There was, however, one character I was a little disappointed in.
Wanda Maximoff, unofficially known as the Scarlet Witch (but nobody tell Fox that we're calling her that), is probably my favorite hero in the MCU. And Civil War starts off by throwing me a fantastic little nugget of her operating with the other Avengers. She's spying, she's fighting, she does some seriously cool crap, and then... nothing. She inexplicably disappears for several minutes. And I'm just sitting there like "sure, Widow can probably take those guys, but where is Wanda? Because she would already have them down."
And then she's back! At the last instant, saving Cap's life and a hundred people on the street... with dire consequences... and I'm happy again. There's this great moment of emotion in her reaction to what's just happened, and that winds into a conversation and a meeting that convinced me she would have an interesting character arc to build on what we got in Age of Ultron. I was excited.
And then, inexplicably, she was completely out of the movie for another half hour.
THEN she got thrown in again in one of the coolest displays of power we've seen from her yet, and then she heads off to a climactic fight scene, in which she does some awesome stuff, some funny stuff, and then right when things get serious and her amazing display of power from earlier in the film would have been quite useful, she... well, vanishes for several minutes AGAIN.
I guess what I'm saying is that while the Russo's did a decent job choreographing the fights in this movie (aside from all the shaky cam, seriously guys, are you JJ Abrams?), they clearly did not know what to do with Wanda. She's powerful, she's got intricate and highly emotional motivations and character traits, but all we get of either of those are just these hints. These tiny little nuggets in a few places in the movie.
So here's my stake in the ground: The movie was fine. The characters were, for the most part, handled well. But these guys had sure better figure out how to handle the star player of the Avengers before Infinity War hits. Because let's be honest, if there's any hero on that team that can go toe to toe with Thanos wielding the infinity gauntlet, it's Wanda Maximoff.
I mean, she demonstrated the ability to disable one infinity stone without breaking a sweat. You made promises with this movie, guys. Don't let me down.
Because holy cow, guys, there were a lot of other characters in this movie.
Also, I think we've officially hit the crossover point in the MCU with this movie. If you have not been watching the Marvel movies up to this point and you jump in here, you will be really confused by some pretty vital plot points. This is no longer the friendly version of the Marvel comics universe. You've got to be paying attention for the connections if you want to catch everything.
This is, of course, something I'm really quite good at. So I was okay with the movie. If you haven't watched The Winter Soldier, Age of Ultron, and Ant-man, you probably will just be confused. On the plus side there's plenty of explosions and jokes to be entertaining even if the characters and plot confuse you.
I've got to say though, that if we consider this an audition tape for the Russo's next installment in the Avengers, it's not terrible. It's a little heavy handed with the themes, and certainly not nearly as entertaining as most of the MCU films. There were also, just, all of the characters. They even took the time to introduce us to two completely new heroes, but they managed to juggle their personalities into the melting pot quite adeptly. I didn't feel like either of them got shafted as far as character development went, though it did also push the run-time of this movie about a half-hour longer than my bladder wanted it to be.
The existing heroes didn't feel like they got shafted, either. Hawkeye shows up like, right in the middle, but his actions still feel appropriately weighted. And we finally got some characterization for the Vision, who really didn't have much time for that in Age of Ultron. And as far as Ant-man, Black Widow, War Machine, and Falcon are concerned, they play right along the lines you would expect them to. They didn't have huge character arcs, any of them. Those arcs belong to Cap, Iron Man, and Bucky, which is generally what I was expecting, as well as nice little arcs for Spiderman and Black Panther, which I was unsure of going in. There was, however, one character I was a little disappointed in.
Wanda Maximoff, unofficially known as the Scarlet Witch (but nobody tell Fox that we're calling her that), is probably my favorite hero in the MCU. And Civil War starts off by throwing me a fantastic little nugget of her operating with the other Avengers. She's spying, she's fighting, she does some seriously cool crap, and then... nothing. She inexplicably disappears for several minutes. And I'm just sitting there like "sure, Widow can probably take those guys, but where is Wanda? Because she would already have them down."
And then she's back! At the last instant, saving Cap's life and a hundred people on the street... with dire consequences... and I'm happy again. There's this great moment of emotion in her reaction to what's just happened, and that winds into a conversation and a meeting that convinced me she would have an interesting character arc to build on what we got in Age of Ultron. I was excited.
And then, inexplicably, she was completely out of the movie for another half hour.
THEN she got thrown in again in one of the coolest displays of power we've seen from her yet, and then she heads off to a climactic fight scene, in which she does some awesome stuff, some funny stuff, and then right when things get serious and her amazing display of power from earlier in the film would have been quite useful, she... well, vanishes for several minutes AGAIN.
I guess what I'm saying is that while the Russo's did a decent job choreographing the fights in this movie (aside from all the shaky cam, seriously guys, are you JJ Abrams?), they clearly did not know what to do with Wanda. She's powerful, she's got intricate and highly emotional motivations and character traits, but all we get of either of those are just these hints. These tiny little nuggets in a few places in the movie.
So here's my stake in the ground: The movie was fine. The characters were, for the most part, handled well. But these guys had sure better figure out how to handle the star player of the Avengers before Infinity War hits. Because let's be honest, if there's any hero on that team that can go toe to toe with Thanos wielding the infinity gauntlet, it's Wanda Maximoff.
I mean, she demonstrated the ability to disable one infinity stone without breaking a sweat. You made promises with this movie, guys. Don't let me down.
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