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!
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!