Come anticipate CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR with me

I think I missed this?

IIRC, it was something like "We have a king and a Black Panther. I am both."

So super savvy Avengers were gathered en masse in Africa to ... capture Crossbones? Who they thought was there to ... rob a bank? They should introduce a super villain called Red Flag, whose power is to confuse people that his presence isn't at all conspicuous.

(Obv. Nigeria stuff didn't matter, just MacGuffin widgets in motion. More mysterious is how grouchy grudge-holder bad guy snuck into the same hit security room with public enemy number one to do his stuff without even the benefit of a disguise - don't they check IDs? - but whatevs.)

high security, not hit

They were there to capture Crossbones because they'd been tracking him for some time and the setting was incidental to the capture?

"We have a king and a Black Panther. I am both." - this is just distinguishing one title from another? Obv. the king would have passed on the mantle (which seemed to be just very high tech supersuit) some years ago.

I don't know if it's going to be a thing in the MCU but, in the comics, Black Panther gets his power from a panther god. I assume this is what's being referred to.

They may just go the 'very high tech supersuit' route.

Well yeah that's what I'm saying, they seemed to (if you knew what you're listening for) audibly pass up the opportunity to do anything of that sort.

OTOH, Thor is an actual god.

There's only one God, and he doesn't dress like that

http://i0.wp.com/www.towleroad.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/tom-hiddleston-high-rise-stills-08-435x580.jpg

TBF, they've pretty firmly steered the MCU perspective towards viewing Asgardians as an alien species.

what's the diff, really

I can sort of see why people thought this was uneven but I really respect the pacing and how they rationed the breadcrumbs so that while we were heading to Siberia I still hadn't figured out how they were going to set up the climactic fistfight from the trailers. I think if I had seen this on the small screen I would have done the plot math before the first act was over, but there was too much to look at. Sound design was terrific too. A lot of movies like this will give you subwoofer fatigue but I didn't get that. Noticed the sound design much more than the score (a little disappointing there because I thought the score in Winter Soldier was one of the highlights).

I loved the escape chase sequence where Bucky, T'Challa and Cap are all running at pace or faster than the moving traffic in the tunnel. That was really nicely done, I thought.

Tony's motivation was clearly all about his ego - when Black Widow pins him down for this he has no response, he just goes to the island prison to get more gratification because hey guys I figured it out how can I help? Then he makes the choice to completely fall for Zemo's plan and ends up having his ass handed to him. Well deserved.

I thought they did a decent job of making Cap's decision seem difficult even though the people encouraging him to sign - Ross and Stark - are both oblivious, facial-hair-grooming pricks who are completely full of themselves. Black Widow and War Machine are accustomed to working inside a sanctioned hierarchy, so that makes sense for them, but the Vision I couldn't figure out. I guess since he hasn't quite determined what the Mind Stone is capable of he has a lot of sympathy for the idea that there must be checks on power.

At the end of the movie Tony still hasn't figured out jack shit about where all his problems really come from, has he?

BTW, as far as I could tell, they needed to go to Siberia to complete Zemo's convoluted plan because he didn't have the tape. He started out working from rumors, then verbal corroboration from the subject, then the location of the evidence itself. I would be happy to see more Zemo scheming in a future one of these, no idea which of the forthcoming movies that might fit in, though.

Ant-Man and Spider-Man were so much fun in the battle royale. You can say they felt shoehorned in but I think it was critical to drop them in for that fight to make sure the whole thing wasn't all 140 minutes of dour, emo clanging and angry-looking eye slits

"Hi, I know you too, you're great."
"I thought that was a water truck."
"You guys know that really old movie, Empire Strikes Back?"

Post-credits scene was worth it too.

xxposts agree w/ most all of that. I still have issue with Captain America's side though because the noise was being made by foreign countries, who via government and civilian mouthpieces, were all loudly complaining about the interference by the Avengers on their soil. Whereas the Avengers/Winter Soldier conflicts took place on their own soil. In those aforementioned flicks, the fight was taken directly to them to where they had no choice but to interfere (lest millions get killed or enslaved in a matter of minutes.

Their foreign forays weren't so rosy. Yeah, they kind of did have an obligation to fix the fuckup Stark made that basically felled Segovia, but it was Stark's hubris that caused the threat to begin with. And they were in Africa on their own, unannounced, and iced a bunch of people in a building.

foreign countries all screaming "STOP HELPING!", Captain America's position = "naw bro, we'll still show up in your country when we deem necessary", then helps destroy an entire airport parking garage (and many aircraft) in Leipzig as well as putting civilian motorists in danger. Not saying he didn't wind up being *right* in the end, but foreign countries/civilians (who are not themselves guilty of genocide or oppressing their own peoples) do kinda have a right to say "hey uhh how about you not come over here until we say it's ok".

but that does kinda fly in the face of superheroes and how they do their own thing so fuck it, I'ma go watch Gunga Din

the thing I liked most about the battle royale was the different levels of seriousness going on all at the same time - black panther is dead-set on killing bucky, hawkeye and black widow are looking at it as one step up from a sparring match, iron man and cap are fighting for their principles, ant-man and spidey are just glad to be along for the ride... makes it so much more entertaining and layered than grimdark punchpunchpunch

the empire strikes back gag did feel a little bit too much like disney metacongratulating itself about owning so many huge pop-culture properties

Ant-Man's "whoa-ho-ho" when he becomes massive is still a fav moment. I mean he's a badass but even Stark asks him "who are you", he earns his stripes by kicking ass without being seen and finally gets to be a very visible, menacing badass. cool moment.

The maguffin was as stupid as maguffins always are but this was good

Like tbh this bucky craic is fuck off obv death penalty and it should never have had one movie based on it let alone a second.

Ant-Man going giant was the best thing they held back from in the previews

foreign countries all screaming "STOP HELPING!", Captain America's position = "naw bro, we'll still show up in your country when we deem necessary"

Dammit Cap, stop being so AMERICA all the time

Ant Man going giant made me sad that I'm not versed in the comics cos they all sensed what was coming and started murmuring seconds before, excited with child-like energy.

how I long for those .0003 seconds of joy

So I'm confused about something. The Zemo in this is just ... some guy? Because how in the world did he learn about the Winter Soldier, let alone the entire program, let alone the importance of that day, let alone how to build a giant electro-pulse bomb, let alone infiltrate, etc. He was this super-master criminal evil villain, yet they make him just an aggrieved guy.

Zemo was a colonel from an elite death gang in Sokovia in the movie, not just a regular civilian. they briefly mention it after they find out he framed Bucky by using facial prosthesis. it was one of those moments where if you went to take a leak, you'd miss.

Yeah imma just say that's shit weak stuff, again not that plot matters

Oh, a colonel? In a death squad? Ah grand so that's it all explained.

Why do they bother its a distraction when they try to justify this stuff. COMIC BOOK MOVIE FFS get the colours fight and make the zings snappy

Ah now, we don't call them colours any more.

One thing I had a huge problem with was Stank recruiting an untrained 15-year-old kid, based on some Youtube videos, to participate in a very serious fight where he knows one player intends to play cat's cradle with another guy's guts. But then I realized that that's exactly the sort of thing Tony "Ultron? What Could Go Wrong?" Stark would do.

Yeah, what if Spider-man turned out to be an incompetent jerk?

Tony Stark wouldn't have done that for just any kid - he had to check that Peter was completely starstruck by him first.

Xxxpost they literally devoted less time to explaining it than you've spent batching about it.

*bitching

At deems

There was a one-off "well, all the shield/hydra files were leaked to the world by you people and I decoded the right encrypted ones to fuck with you" statement

One assumes that since Stark had devoted the time and resources to sussing out Spider-Man's identity, he'd also spent some time secretly assessing his fitness for a mission of this sort. While still, yes, being Stark and throwing an untrained kid into a totally dangerous situation.

Meh to that. I'm a lot cheaper per minute and the point of message boards is bitch. Three hundred million worth of screen time was spent on plot points that made no sense that nobody cared about. It's OK it was a good brawler regardless.

I thought about that, like is anyone gonna call out Stark for bringing a stretch pants kid to an armor engagement with Spetsnaz and SOF guys (and the fucking Mind Stone) but, yeah, Cap brought a twenty something who has PTSD. Same same on that front.

This movie's main character arc is RDJ playing a guy who is tragically incapable of working on his narcissistic issues. Cap's little epilogue missive (on paper! What old man still writes paper ass letters) and dropping the shield- is all about trying to be the example, to a person he values a great deal, but won't ever listen.

happy that Steve gets the high ground, his friend back, and the girl at the end and Stark gets called Stank and has to live with being a jerk

Spiderling

So my prediction is that Zemo comes back for the Ant Man sequel. I can't figure another number in the queue that provides a likely venue for terrestrial / mortal / non-cosmic conspiracy business.

I look at almost all these stories (in fact, I look at almost all stories) through the lens of individuals versus the institutions they serve. In my civil servant dreams, I envy Cap's latitude in being able to choose to operate as a truly stateless badass. I have no idea how he pays for his lodging, meals and incidentals, but clearly he has Bourne Identity cash and various passports somewhere, perhaps socked away inside his incognito ballcap. Anyway.

Stark IS the institution he works for - all the infrastructure of the Avengers post-S.H.I.E.L.D. is because of his billionaire largesse - so he's giving up nothing by signing the accords, in fact, he's probably saving money by doing so. God he's such a douche in this movie. RDJ does an excellent job selling it.

there's a 25 minute short film waiting to be made where Cap "loses" his ballcap and Michael Pena's character "finds" it, and realizes there's all these velcro pockets full of fake IDs and international currency, and then there's some kind of hilarious chase where Cap just has a hell of a time catching up to Pena, who then realizes who is after him and why, and then they reconcile and decide "this never happened, we were never here" just as some disaster is happening and they team up to save hundreds of civilians from being drowned in the Canarsie tunnel.

"You're no chicken. Where you from?"
"The Bronx!"
"Brooklyn."
IT WRITES ITSELF

oh and how did I forget this - best line of the film by far, but it comes in the middle of so much other awesome stuff -

"that thing doesn't obey any of the laws of physics at all!"

I may be paraphrasing

vibranium is pretty amazing stuff

Paper Ass Letter pretty underrated Beatle tune

I loved the escape chase sequence where Bucky, T'Challa and Cap are all running at pace or faster than the moving traffic in the tunnel. That was really nicely done, I thought.
>
I thought that was one point where the CGI was noticeable. Looked a bit clumsy to me. Will probably stand out even more in years to come.

I haven't seen anybody mention the Easter Eggs in the film. The mid crediuts scene with Cappy and the Black panther and the post credits thing which is probably a toy tie in and defintely more of a Spidey trailer.
But then maybe everybody already knows taht marvel films tend to have those extra bits, I was the only person in my cinema to hang around for the Spidey one though.

I did wonder who wound up having to pay for the airport nad the tunnel in Czech republic ( think that's where it was but couldn't see why Buckky then wound up in Berlin. Is that more of a UN base or something?).
THought it interesting that both this and superman v batman had a theme of collateral damage. Then both went on to create a lot more. Though I guess there is lasting personal collateral damage in that scene.

Was this an almost direct retelling of teh Civil War story from, is that, 10 years ago. Though recast as less racist or speciesist since not about mutants. Or has there been a print revisiting of that idea that this is based on?
I do see above taht this is different to what the original storyline for the Captain America film that became this was going to be.
Did enjoy the spectacle though.

Also has ant-man/giantman not got more direct control over his size. I was a little surprised that he didn't manipulate the change more as a combat technique. Might have got him out of some of the later stuff. But there you go, I guess he hasn't used the large size overmuch so might not be thinking about things in the heat of battle.

I'd say the studio paid for the airport runway etc