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IMPress Polly
05-08-2016, 08:17 AM
*sighs* Well here we go again. Another month, another idiotic blockbuster film about the comic book-inspired adventures of costumed super-warriors...or, put more correctly, about the power fantasies of their predominantly male viewers. This seems to be what dominates the silver screen these days, as Marvel's latest entry appears set to become the top-grossing picture of the year to date, followed closely by Deadpool (another Marvel movie) and DC Films' rival Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, with each having sold tens of millions of tickets already. Under these conditions, I feel morally obliged to critique, so let's get on with it.

Captain America: Civil War is basically Marvel's version of the superhero picture you saw last month, Batman v. Superman. It can be justly said to be superior to that competition, but that doesn't take much. Here are some samples of the writing quality that Civil War was up against from Batman v. Superman:

"I don’t know if it's possible for you to love me and be you."

"In a democracy, good is a conversation, not a unilateral decision."

"The world only makes sense if you force it to."

"The United States does not assassinate."

And then there was this exchange that served as my personal favorite for eliciting an understandable cry of "What the fuck?!" from another member of the audience: SUPERMAN: "Superman was never real; just a dream of a farmer from Kansas." PERPETUAL DAMSEL IN DISTRESS LOIS LANE: "That farmer’s dream is all some people have."

When compared against such competition as that, it's easy for just about any rival to seem better. Civil War's lack of pretentiousness does indeed help it compare favorably to the recent competition. Deadpool and especially Batman v. Superman have annoyed yours truly more than most of these superhero films by pretending to be something more than they are.

Deadpool pretends to be a critique of the genre while dedicating 95% of its screen time to participating in the genre's standard tropes and cliches (revenge plot, check, damsel in distress scenario, check, etc.), proving once more, as with such recent hits as The Wolf of Wall Street and Jurassic World before it, that simply acknowledging problems isn't synonymous with critiquing them. It's as if the filmmakers expect me to buy that throwing in "edgier" content like more blood and gore, nudity, an increased frequency of swearing, etc., is a novelty and an end unto itself.

Batman v. Superman, meanwhile, pretends to be a dark and serious, deeply reflective film about God and purpose and the nature of morality and so forth when it's really just a collection of brutal-yet-mindless slug fests connected by an incoherent and heavily cliched storyline that's much more about franchise building than, you know, actually telling a story. At least Captain America: Civil War doesn't pretend to be something more than what it is. That much it deserves credit for, I suppose. However, that does not make it a relevant or worthwhile movie.

Captain America: Civil War is, as sold, a tale of intra-Avengers warfare set off by the government's demand that Captain America allow the arrest of his old friend Bucky Barnes, a.k.a. "the Winter Soldier" -- an assassin whose moral compass has been scrambled by brainwashing -- so that he can be punished for his presumed role in a terrorist attack. To make a unnecessarily long and dumb story short, the Captain (Marvel analogy to Superman here) refuses, billionaire playboy Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man (Marvel analogy to Batman here) supports the idea of the Avengers being regulated by the United States and the United Nations (given that the Avengers' actions, including early on in this film, have sometimes led to civilian deaths), a wide array of superheroes spanning the Marvel "universe" (as these companies arrogantly call their licensed properties) take sides, and the epic brawl everyone came to see is on. But of course it's all a misunderstanding brought on by the forces of evil conspiring to dissolve the Avengers rather than an actual philosophical fissure, so the two sides ultimately reconcile, go after the real villains, and save the day, the end. If most of that sounds familiar, it might be because this picture is basically Batman v. Superman without the false grit. That corporate formula is how all "who would win in a fight" type franchise-crossover comic books work, so the more they come to the big screen the more people are going to get exposed to this same contrived storyline over and over again.

Substantively, like all the other Marvel pictures helmed by Disney of late, this one is centrally about what the best imperial tactics for the nation are in the post-9/11 world, as to best secure the world from the forces of terrorism. It's based on Marvel's Civil War graphic novel series from 2006 and that the relevance of that historical context cannot be overstated in terms of how one can properly understand this film's "point". It's basically about whether private military contractors (which is basically what the Avengers are) should accept national and international regulation, to which Marvel's answer is no. With the kind of neo-conservative reasoning one might have instead logically expected from Iron Man, Captain America in this picture explains "We may not be perfect, but the safest hands are still our own" in a line that could just as easily have been used by villain Alexander Pierce of Hydra (an organization that's clearly supposed to represent "the terrorists" in these movies) and doesn't at all square with the type of Captain America we saw in Winter Soldier who decided he'd rather go against his own government than allow one of its highest ranking military officials to order extrajudicial assassinations. Between these two latest Captain America movies, the idea is conveyed that on the one hand the actual military needs regulation, but on the other the regulation of private armies is just downright unpatriotic for some metaphysical reason. Put another way, the Captain is a hypocrite who's fine with vigilantism as long as he's the vigilante: a self-serving logical and moral inconsistency the movie never bothers to question.

Since it all turns out to conveniently be a misunderstanding between the forces of conservatism represented by Captain America and his group on the one side and those of liberalism represented by Iron man and his bunch on the other, another key message we get here is that the truly biggest problem with the management of American imperialism is that of partisan polarization that's all just rooted in misunderstandings, to which end the solution is bi-partisan dialogue and unity. After more than seven years under a president who won his post by representing exactly that, we in reality find ourselves still struggling to control the Middle East (due to the savage opposition of the local populations to our noble ambitions of stopping international terrorism no doubt :rollseyes:) and our domestic political landscape more polarized today than at any time since the American Civil War. Thus, being as this message comes from a 2006 graphic novel series, one must ask the question of Marvel: "How's your solution working out so far?"

These messages feel as dated, naive, and doggedly committed to the doctrine of American exceptionalism as the graphic novel series from whence they came. But hey, it's commercially viable entertainment and that's what matters, right? I have to point this out because some have laughably attempted to connect the themes of this picture to modern times. Some have, for example, chosen to somehow see a lot of Donald Trump in this movie's pro-regulation version of Iron Man and, perhaps even more absurdly, the anti-regulation, aggressively pro-interventionist Captain America as a representation of Bernie Sanders. This is ridiculous and wishful thinking my progressive-minded friends! Neither Trump nor Sanders were nationally relevant politicians in 2006 when the graphic novel series that inspired this movie was written and one of them was even ideologically on the other side of the spectrum at the time.

Then there comes the most pitiful defense that the apologists for Civil War offer: "It's just a movie!" Yeah. And the Iraq conflict around which Civil War allegorically revolves was just a war, and one with direct ramifications for the present day, so why bother having a serious discussion about it when we can instead satiate our anger with spectacular and reassuring nationalist entertainment? Now that is Trump-like thinking!

Private Pickle
05-08-2016, 08:29 AM
I usually enjoy your posts...

PolWatch
05-08-2016, 08:35 AM
I haven't seen this movie....but I also haven't seen any of the other movies Polly mentions. Most recent movies seem to target 12 year old boys...imo.

Mark III
05-08-2016, 08:37 AM
Comic book blockbusters are a big part of what Hollywood produces. They believe this is what is necessary to get people away from their own big screen tv's and into movie theaters. "Comic book superhero" is a genre, like noir once was, or screwball comedy, or courtroom drama, western, sci-fi, etc. It is a genre and fad, in the sense that at some point it's popularity will be superceded by something else.

Stories about people have mainly been transferred to television. I watched the mini-series "Olive Kitteridge" (HBO) on DVD the other day. It was a remarkable story of psychologically and emotionally damaged people in a Maine town. An unforgettable movie, but not one that would make much money in a movie theater.

Standing Wolf
05-08-2016, 11:10 AM
Generally speaking, "critics" don't actually do what they do to either recommend films or warn people away from them. They write what they do simply to show off their vocabulary and to try to appear to be the hippest, most cynical and aesthetically demanding person in the room. They delight in ridiculing a line of dialog, a plot point, or an entire film genre and invite others to either agree or be considered ignorant, undemanding rubes. They tend to spend more time studying, giving thought to and memorizing the details of films in order to make fun of them than the people who like those movies do; in effect, they scorn (in the case of superhero films) the fanboys' seriousness - and then double down on the seriousness.

decedent
05-08-2016, 12:07 PM
Another month, another idiotic blockbuster film about the comic book-inspired adventures of costumed super-warriors...or, put more correctly, about the power fantasies of their predominantly male viewers.

It was the best circle jerk I ever had.


But I also enjoyed the Euripidean study in justice and betrayal through the narrative of ordinary people (entailing corny dialogue) in extraordinary situations, all with the backdrop of unsettling social disillusionment. It wasn't a simple good-versus-bad story, but a complex story about conflicting ideology -- much like the Xavier-versus-Magneto dispute.

iustitia
05-09-2016, 01:15 AM
Shit like this is why I have no reservations about calling feminism 'cancer'.

This was the greatest Marvel movie ever made, if not the best superhero movie ever made. And one of the best films I've seen period.

Maybe you think relying on posters here not being nerds or being too old to care to see it gives you a gullible crowd to peddle pseudo-intellectual social commentary about a film completely unrelated to your ideological cult. Or maybe your personal beliefs are so ingrained into your psyche that you cannot enjoy anything that doesn't conform to unrealistic expectations you have. I don't care if this is out of naivete or weird obsessive vanity. It doesn't matter, because you're wrong.

The fact that you're bringing up Donald Trump, the Iraq War, Bernie Sanders, imperialism, etc. is just proof that you can't appreciate movies for what they are but that you're such an ideologue that you literally invent parallels that are neither obvious nor subtle. To anyone that's taking the opening post at face value, please take it with a grain of salt. I just saw the movie and none of what she's bringing up is accurate. I will absolutely debate the shit out of Polly if requested because I'm so confident in my ability to do so.

If you have the time absolutely go see this film. It's an insane juggling act of actions, drama, comedy and the Russo Brothers absolutely nailed it. If you want an in-depth or spoiler-free review I'm more than willing to write one because this movie deserves an honest review absent of petty, venomous vanity. If you like Marvel, superhero, or just action movies I swear on a stack of Bibles that this is well worth the watch. It's not a story about politics; it's a story about trust, friendship, loss and redemption as well as a being the best final installment of a trilogy, as well as being superior to every prior Marvel film. The one thing I'll agree with Polly on is that Batman v Superman was a pile of shit compared to this masterpiece. There's one thing this film could be said to fall short on that I can concede if someone made that point but I personally disagree and think it's actually a positive.

Disagree with opening post, to call this film phenomenal wouldn't do it justice. I loved it. 5/5.

Cthulhu
05-09-2016, 07:33 AM
*sighs* Well here we go again. Another month, another idiotic blockbuster film about the comic book-inspired adventures of costumed super-warriors...or, put more correctly, about the power fantasies of their predominantly male viewers. This seems to be what dominates the silver screen these days, as Marvel's latest entry appears set to become the top-grossing picture of the year to date, followed closely by Deadpool (another Marvel movie) and DC Films' rival Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, with each having sold tens of millions of tickets already. Under these conditions, I feel morally obliged to critique, so let's get on with it.

Captain America: Civil War is basically Marvel's version of the superhero picture you saw last month, Batman v. Superman. It can be justly said to be superior to that competition, but that doesn't take much. Here are some samples of the writing quality that Civil War was up against from Batman v. Superman:

"I don’t know if it's possible for you to love me and be you."

"In a democracy, good is a conversation, not a unilateral decision."

"The world only makes sense if you force it to."

"The United States does not assassinate."

And then there was this exchange that served as my personal favorite for eliciting an understandable cry of "What the $#@!?!" from another member of the audience: SUPERMAN: "Superman was never real; just a dream of a farmer from Kansas." PERPETUAL DAMSEL IN DISTRESS LOIS LANE: "That farmer’s dream is all some people have."

When compared against such competition as that, it's easy for just about any rival to seem better. Civil War's lack of pretentiousness does indeed help it compare favorably to the recent competition. Deadpool and especially Batman v. Superman have annoyed yours truly more than most of these superhero films by pretending to be something more than they are.

Deadpool pretends to be a critique of the genre while dedicating 95% of its screen time to participating in the genre's standard tropes and cliches (revenge plot, check, damsel in distress scenario, check, etc.), proving once more, as with such recent hits as The Wolf of Wall Street and Jurassic World before it, that simply acknowledging problems isn't synonymous with critiquing them. It's as if the filmmakers expect me to buy that throwing in "edgier" content like more blood and gore, nudity, an increased frequency of swearing, etc., is a novelty and an end unto itself.

Batman v. Superman, meanwhile, pretends to be a dark and serious, deeply reflective film about God and purpose and the nature of morality and so forth when it's really just a collection of brutal-yet-mindless slug fests connected by an incoherent and heavily cliched storyline that's much more about franchise building than, you know, actually telling a story. At least Captain America: Civil War doesn't pretend to be something more than what it is. That much it deserves credit for, I suppose. However, that does not make it a relevant or worthwhile movie.

Captain America: Civil War is, as sold, a tale of intra-Avengers warfare set off by the government's demand that Captain America allow the arrest of his old friend Bucky Barnes, a.k.a. "the Winter Soldier" -- an assassin whose moral compass has been scrambled by brainwashing -- so that he can be punished for his presumed role in a terrorist attack. To make a unnecessarily long and dumb story short, the Captain (Marvel analogy to Superman here) refuses, billionaire playboy Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man (Marvel analogy to Batman here) supports the idea of the Avengers being regulated by the United States and the United Nations (given that the Avengers' actions, including early on in this film, have sometimes led to civilian deaths), a wide array of superheroes spanning the Marvel "universe" (as these companies arrogantly call their licensed properties) take sides, and the epic brawl everyone came to see is on. But of course it's all a misunderstanding brought on by the forces of evil conspiring to dissolve the Avengers rather than an actual philosophical fissure, so the two sides ultimately reconcile, go after the real villains, and save the day, the end. If most of that sounds familiar, it might be because this picture is basically Batman v. Superman without the false grit. That corporate formula is how all "who would win in a fight" type franchise-crossover comic books work, so the more they come to the big screen the more people are going to get exposed to this same contrived storyline over and over again.

Substantively, like all the other Marvel pictures helmed by Disney of late, this one is centrally about what the best imperial tactics for the nation are in the post-9/11 world, as to best secure the world from the forces of terrorism. It's based on Marvel's Civil War graphic novel series from 2006 and that the relevance of that historical context cannot be overstated in terms of how one can properly understand this film's "point". It's basically about whether private military contractors (which is basically what the Avengers are) should accept national and international regulation, to which Marvel's answer is no. With the kind of neo-conservative reasoning one might have instead logically expected from Iron Man, Captain America in this picture explains "We may not be perfect, but the safest hands are still our own" in a line that could just as easily have been used by villain Alexander Pierce of Hydra (an organization that's clearly supposed to represent "the terrorists" in these movies) and doesn't at all square with the type of Captain America we saw in Winter Soldier who decided he'd rather go against his own government than allow one of its highest ranking military officials to order extrajudicial assassinations. Between these two latest Captain America movies, the idea is conveyed that on the one hand the actual military needs regulation, but on the other the regulation of private armies is just downright unpatriotic for some metaphysical reason. Put another way, the Captain is a hypocrite who's fine with vigilantism as long as he's the vigilante: a self-serving logical and moral inconsistency the movie never bothers to question.

Since it all turns out to conveniently be a misunderstanding between the forces of conservatism represented by Captain America and his group on the one side and those of liberalism represented by Iron man and his bunch on the other, another key message we get here is that the truly biggest problem with the management of American imperialism is that of partisan polarization that's all just rooted in misunderstandings, to which end the solution is bi-partisan dialogue and unity. After more than seven years under a president who won his post by representing exactly that, we in reality find ourselves still struggling to control the Middle East (due to the savage opposition of the local populations to our noble ambitions of stopping international terrorism no doubt :rollseyes:) and our domestic political landscape more polarized today than at any time since the American Civil War. Thus, being as this message comes from a 2006 graphic novel series, one must ask the question of Marvel: "How's your solution working out so far?"

These messages feel as dated, naive, and doggedly committed to the doctrine of American exceptionalism as the graphic novel series from whence they came. But hey, it's commercially viable entertainment and that's what matters, right? I have to point this out because some have laughably attempted to connect the themes of this picture to modern times. Some have, for example, chosen to somehow see a lot of Donald Trump in this movie's pro-regulation version of Iron Man and, perhaps even more absurdly, the anti-regulation, aggressively pro-interventionist Captain America as a representation of Bernie Sanders. This is ridiculous and wishful thinking my progressive-minded friends! Neither Trump nor Sanders were nationally relevant politicians in 2006 when the graphic novel series that inspired this movie was written and one of them was even ideologically on the other side of the spectrum at the time.

Then there comes the most pitiful defense that the apologists for Civil War offer: "It's just a movie!" Yeah. And the Iraq conflict around which Civil War allegorically revolves was just a war, and one with direct ramifications for the present day, so why bother having a serious discussion about it when we can instead satiate our anger with spectacular and reassuring nationalist entertainment? Now that is Trump-like thinking!
Based on this, I'm totally going to see it and enjoy myself immensely. And tell all my friends about it too.

Thanks for the recommend.

Sent from my evil, baby seal-clubbing cellphone.

Standing Wolf
05-09-2016, 08:09 AM
This was the greatest Marvel movie ever made, if not the best superhero movie ever made. And one of the best films I've seen period.

I'm really looking forward to watching it. I may try to make it on a weekday morning this week, if I can finagle a day away from work, so I can see it in a less crowded theatre.

Of all the Marvel films to date, I thought the last Cap, the Winter Soldier film, was the absolute best - with the first Iron Man a close second and the first Avengers movie after that, with Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant Man rounding out my personal top five. I've been a Captain America fan since I was nine years old and read 'Avengers' #4, and overall I really can't complain about the way Marvel has treated Cap cinematically.

I'm not really as "down" on BvS as - it seems - pretty much the rest of the world; hey, I thought it was better than Man of Steel. The people in charge of the D.C. superhero movie franchise don't really seem to have much of a coherent vision of what they're trying to accomplish, in terms of attracting a loyal audience. I'm afraid they're probably going to screw up the Wonder Woman film, too, and I suspect the pro critics are already writing their 'Aquaman' jokes, although I'd be happy to have my fears on both be unfounded. They're obviously trying to lighten the mood of the franchise with Suicide Squad - which is a pretty weird sentence, now that I think about it.

http://www.morbidmonster.com/scart/images/b-100.gif

iustitia
05-09-2016, 12:24 PM
Avengers, Winter Soldier, Ant-Man, Iron Man and GOTG were certainly the apex of this universe, Winter Soldier and Ant-Man being my favorites.

Civil War is the Godfather of the MCU.

Crepitus
05-09-2016, 12:40 PM
I'm not a movie critic, if it has lotsa action and cool special effects I'm gonna watch it, and probably enjoy myself doing it.

If you want depth and consistency you need to be going to Sundance, not blockbuster.

Cthulhu
05-09-2016, 10:16 PM
Winter Soldier is my favorite thus far.

Sent from my evil, baby seal-clubbing cellphone.

Cthulhu
05-13-2016, 10:40 PM
And Batman vs Superman was for too.

Affleck delivered. Best Batman performance I've seen.

Sent from my evil, baby seal-clubbing cellphone.

Standing Wolf
05-22-2016, 11:06 PM
Saw CA:CW today and really thought they did a great job! One of my major complaints about big action films with a lot of CGI battle scenes is that it's sometimes hard to actually see and understand what is going on; there's a lot of frantic movement, explosions and bodies going everywhere, but it's difficult to impossible to figure out exactly who is doing what to whom and how. This movie did a fine job of making the fight scenes intelligible, if that's the right word. Not sure that I'd go so far as to displace one of my current top five Marvel films with this one, but...it's a solid number six or seven.

Cthulhu
05-23-2016, 10:01 PM
Saw civil war.

It's basically amazing.

Sent from my evil, baby seal-clubbing cellphone.

iustitia
05-23-2016, 10:29 PM
But... But... Muh feminist smears! Muh misandry! Down with the patriarchy!

Cthulhu
05-23-2016, 10:40 PM
But... But... Muh feminist smears! Muh misandry! Down with the patriarchy!
Shu'up faygit.

Captain 'Murica is the most goodest.

Sent from my evil, baby seal-clubbing cellphone.