We kick off this summer movie season by reviewing Captain America: Civil War! As with all Spoilercasts, we start by discussing the movie without giving anything away, and then dive deep into what we thought about specific scenes and characters. Adam also talks about some recent show finales he’s enjoyed, and why he loves dramatic comedies.
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Time for a model kit build! This steampunk-inspired mechanic…
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Adam reveals his surprise Christmas present for his wife--a …
I just wanted someone to tell Tony that it wasn’t actually Bucky doing it, Bucky was used just like Tony’s suits in Iron Man 2, he was a vessel. You don’t hate the gun that shot your parents you hate the guy holding it.
Wasn’t his response “I don’t care. He killed my mother”?
He did say that, I can’t remember what Cap said to him before that though. I remember coming out thinking nobody said it, so if Cap told him that, it must not have registered.
Can’t remember either, but it was some variation on the “he was zombie-bucky” theme 🙂
I felt like the whole reason Tony signed up with the accord is to alleviate some of his personal guilt.
I totally disagree that the stakes were lower than in the Winter Soldier on this movie. The stakes were the relationship between Cap and Iron Man and therefore a world without the Avengers. Everything else in the movie was emblematic of working through grief, loss and how destructive it is to resort to vengeance to do that.
Adam – Another quite good show/miniseries you may be interested in: The Night Manager on AMC. Hugh Laurie and Tom Hiddleston are amazing together. I’ve been reading the book along with the series.
Where can you stream Girls? I’ve never seen it but am intrigued now.
I’m really surprised to hear that you guys were so definitively on Cap’s side. I have a really hard time seeing it from his point of view and felt like Tony Stark was in the right the whole time and couldn’t understand why Captain America was making the decisions that he was (for the most part). Granted, I’m very much a rule follower and to me it goes back to the same crux that existed in the X-Men movies. Do we really want beings more powerful than us to have the right to do whatever they want whenever they want with no oversight?
15 minutes in and I was like . . . .
I’m with you. All over my Facebook feed, friends who saw the movie would post afterward, “Team Cap!” Then I saw Civil War on Sunday and thought, man, Captain America was being really reckless. While Stark did have some guilt which likely had a part to do with him signing the accords, I agree with him that continuing without oversight is unsustainable and makes them look even more like vigilantes in the eyes of those who don’t trust them.
At what point do people go from seeing the Avengers as people who are trying to keep Earth safe to seeing them as vigilantes with an unknown agenda? People will go from being thankful to being fearful.
I can imagine being just a regular guy living in that universe. “Dammit, that’s my bike they just destroyed! Are they going to pay for it? Insurance isn’t going to cover this. … They’re leaving? They need to pay for my bike!”
I’m sure I would have loved the fight scenes much more if not for the shakey cam. I don’t normally have much of an issue with motion sickness, and I had to look away a couple of times to clear my head.
Girls is actually renewed for a 6th season. My wife loves this show, but I find it difficult to watch because every single character is so self-centered
I felt that the last scenes were a real let down. The whole plot appeared to be all about hunting down these additional super-soldiers and the characters were all making big decisions with serious consequences to do that in the best way they could. Then we get an “oh well, they’re all dead… lets have another fight.”.
Cap would never have been able to nearly pick up Thor’s hammer with Stark’s parents on his conscience.
Go Team Ironman: You just can’t go around the world, out of control, with deaths and billions of dollars of damage and not expect a little oversight.
After a bit of reflection, I enjoyed this more than Winter Solider. Yes, its a bit more scattered with so many more characters, but the movie was funnier, the action was more prolific, and was eminently more satisfying as a comic book fan (I deeply enjoyed the multiple nods to the Civil War book as well).
Zemo and T’challa’s scene was my personal favorite. Note perfect on BP and elevated Zemo as the best villain in the MCU to date. Hope we seem him return in some way.
And it’s worth noting that Iron Man instigated the final fight not because of Bucky, but because Cap lied to him about it. That betrayal is what really fractures the Avengers.
Author of John Adams (basis for HBO series) is David McCullough
IRONICALLY per wikipedia “McCullough has also narrated numerous documentaries, such as The Civil War by Ken Burns”
Ohh that would have been an awesome segue…
I’m Team Cap, but getting to that point was a much more conflicted process than I feel it was for a lot of others. Indeed, right up until the ‘Raft’ prison reveal I was on the fence.
Tony and his followers do have a point about the Avenger’s accountability for the collateral damage they cause. I think this turns around Cap’s point about agendas; how can the public trust that the Avengers have their interests at heart when they don’t seem to take much responsibility for their actions?
I think this idea of trust and vested interests is the most topical thing about this film, and I think it handles it almost as well as Winter Soldier handled the issues of surveillance and pre-emptive justice. The question of what should be done when civilians no longer trusts the interests and agendas of those who are meant to represent them. And I think that in the film – at least initially – it isn’t made as clear which side is which.
Sure, as viewers, we know by the prison scene (and if you’ve watched The Incredible Hulk) that Ross has a personal agenda against superheroes, and that he is willing to use brutal, inhumane methods to enforce that view. We also know that the UN, while they mean well, are not prepared for the kind of dangers that the Avengers can handle uninhibited. But for a guy on the street in the MCU? How can he tell? All he sees is the collateral damage, and the UN proposing to not get rid of the Avengers but to keep them in check.
But, the point that ultimately swayed me was when someone reminded me after the film of what Cap said about the kinds of missions they’d be sent on if run by the UN: the Avengers were founded to help people a) when no one else could (i.e. super villains) and, perhaps more importantly, b) when no one will. Again, the UN may mean well, but as a representation of many different interests it will be risk averse and bureaucratic. And lets face it, the public at large is not always the most sympathetic to the plight of those who fall through the cracks. This, I think, is what would be most limited by oversight of the Avengers; their ability to stand up for those who have no one else.
It also poses an interesting question about oversight in real-life, which I think is waaay out of the remit of the Tested comment section about Civil War, but is something for one to mull on.
struggled to hear Adam, could hear Will from the other end of the house
Yeah totally agree! To even compare the two movies I think is a bit silly, because they inherently set out to be such different films. One is a Bourne style Spy thriller, and the other is a large ensemble superhero opera — if you like one more than the other then that’s your choice of style.
This movie did what it was trying to do to almost a perfect level, juggling an insane amount of characters and treating every single one of them like they were the most important thing in the movie, while building (and moving forward) the personalities that have been on screen for tons of movies before it.
Action and choreography were top notch. Funny as hell, and lean expositional dialogue. The movie deserves nothing less than a standing ovation for doing so much of what it did so right, despite the minor logic and story errors.
(i really liked it! seeing again Imax saturday!)
Maybe hiding the truth from Tony would’ve affected his worthiness (even though he did it to protect Tony just as much as Bucky), but did Cap even know about Bucky’s role in the Starks’ death at the start of Ultron?
I assumed he only learned that the Winter Soldier was responsible from Bucky after he and Falcon got a hold of him.
Totally agree. By the end of the movie even Cap is proven wrong. He thought all along he was trying to stop the release those psychopaths and he was wrong, but all he ended up doing was proving that one, he shouldnt have kept that a secret and two, that with greater intelligence he could have stopped that bad guy and if he decides to go out on his own hes turning his back on society.
I have never stopped watching the west wing! when I get to the end it’s straight back to the start. it’s fantastic. though Mrs naughtyhorse thinks there is something wrong with me… but i just tell her not to talk to me while CJ is doing the Jackal.
-)
Rated S for Spoilers
I can understand part of what Cap wanted, but insisting on absolutely free control to do what you please? That doesn’t really fit with a soldier’s training, does it… As stated previously, in the film his worries were two fold; the first was not being allowed to do missions they wanted and the other was being forced to do other missions that they did not want to. This is where he lost me for I see it as mostly avoidable.
The first part is a non-issue in my mind, if the Avengers were truly needed then they would be called upon much as it was described in the first film. As it was, the unique powers of the Avengers weren’t required in Lagos as Rumlow and company were normal humans. Yes, they did a better job than the guards and the local authorities/military who were clueless and did not show, but a special ops team could have handled the situation. In catastrophic events where their abilities were required then I am confident they would be called to fight, such as another alien invasion, enhanced humans causing havoc, etc. While this doesn’t exclude other missions, they aren’t given carte blanche either and would have to request to be able to do specific missions such as tracking down former Hydra agents like Rumlow.
As for the second part, the Avengers were allowed to retire if they did not wish comply with the requirements of the Accords. I strongly believe they could have easily argued and won the right that their participation in any mission would be on a completely volunteer basis. Essentially the Accords would state they are only granted authority to operate at the choosing of the UN and/or the respective country they wish to operate in. If they felt that a particular mission was not for them then they could sit it out.
This is why I side more with Iron Man than Cap in this movie, in regard to the politics. What he did at the end, well that is a different story. Cap even knew they’ve messed up on occasion, why can’t he abide by at least some oversight? I suppose his distrust of organizations is strong after what happened to SHIELD, but he had to know that something was going to happen eventually.
I hear people praising Winter Soldier so much and I have to disagree a little. It was a great movie, I really liked it, but in my opinion it had a huge flaw that I just can’t get around. And that is that the story isn’t a Captain America story, it’s a Shield story. It’s about the fall of Shield, Cap being in it was mostly superfluous. They could have had Black Widow do the recognizing Bucky bit after going though the Cap museum and it would have worked just as well since she has history with him as the Winter Soldier.
In fact I would go so far as to say it would have made a far better movie if it had been an Avengers B Team movie with Hawkeye swapped in for Cap. It could have been a Hawkeye redemption story about him earning back his Shield team mates trust (cause ya know he did spend the first 2/3rds of Avengers 1 as a mind slave to Loki) instead of a Cap re-affirming his old timey values in this modern world story. Plus it could have given the more overlooked non-super members of the team their own spotlight, and would then have left them with the much better opportunity to do a more personal story for the Cap movie as he goes after Bucky when he is later informed that Bucky is still alive.
Re: visiting shops – check out some makerspaces/hackerspaces as well! I know you’ve visited some in NYC and the like, but those of us who don’t get to travel as much would love a tour as well!
For the record: Iron Man is not cooler than Captain America because Steve Rogers is the best hero ever. Why? Because he’d be a hero even if he wasn’t super – he’s literally the only one of the whole lot who’s like that. All the rest are like “oh, I have superpowers, guess I can help people now”; spiderboy even says it in this movie.
Anyway, the stakes really are high, much higher than Winter Soldier – but it’s somehow mundane or incidental; the main villain (who is awesome, by the way, Daniel Brühl’s Zemo is the worst thing that’s happened to the Avengers since Loki, and he’s even more bone-chilling because, unlike Loki, he doesn’t give a s**t) is on a vengeance mission (which succeeds because, and I may have mentioned this, he’s awesome), but the way he goes about it can bring about something even worse than HYDRA.
This is exemplified in Tony – think about it: HYDRA spent, like 70 years and hundreds of people infiltrating SHIELD, but Zemo, by himself, took about a week and a cunning understanding of human weaknesses, specifically Tony’s, to turn gorram Iron Man into a fascist dictator!
What I mean is, the kind of conflict that defines Civil War is a greater threat to the world than an invading force because the mechanisms Zemo brings to bear against the supers – excuse me, “enhanced” – work just as well on everyone else. It’s basically Mao’s cultural revolution tactic of turning everyone on each other, on a global scale, and starting with the very heroes who were supposed to shield (heh) us against such things. An external aggressor you can band together and fight, but… well, that’s exactly what Zemo said at the arctic facility right before… OK, spoilers.
Also, I just remembered that Brühl is Marie’s brother in the Bourne trilogy (it’s a trilogy; “Legacy” is a train wreck with the wrong title card) and now I want to see the movie where her death is Zemo’s start of darkness.
I was never a huge fan of the civil war story arc in the comics, but I respected what it was trying to do: bring to light both the liberties gained and squandered by allowing super beings to police freely. And in the end, it came down to bad decisions made by a hungover, beleaguered Tony Stark. And the assassination of Captain America (but not really).
In a way, this movie maintained that spirit, where alcoholism is replaced with grief, and cap’s assassinations is replaced with colonel Rhodes’ paralysis. Me? I’m just excited for Infinity War, my second favorite comic event after World War Hulk. 😀
And by the way, should I bother entering the Star Trek contest if I’m not in California? (My wife and I are huge Star Trek fans, and West Wing fans subsequently).
I totally agree, especially disappointing because the scenes are well choreographed and fun. During the first fight scene I felt like I was watching a 3D showing without the glasses.
The action choreography and filming of it definitely got worse between Winter Soldier and this one. Especially for the first half of the film.