and i've run out of gods to burn
So. Let's talk Captain America: Civil War. Which I saw last night with innie_darling and 
allofthefeelings.
The short, non-spoilery version is: I liked it a lot. It's no Captain America: Winter Soldier, but I don't think anything could be? And it does do one or two things better than that movie. I enjoyed it a million times more than Age of Ultron (though it suffers from one of the same issues I had with that movie, and if you know me, you probably know exactly what that is). But it really should have been called Avengers 2.5.
Also, FYI, there are two post-credits scenes. At least this time, almost no one in the theater left. I guess people can learn.
angelgazing asked me afterwards how much fic I was planning to write now, and my answer is, I don't know? I need to see it again without a lot of the OMG OMG OMG playing in my brain to figure that out.
Our audience was appropriately appreciative, I thought, cheering at various moments that required cheering. It's always nice to see a movie with an enthusiastic crowd, even though some of the dialogue got drowned out by cheers at certain points.
We also got the Rogue One trailer which looks fantastic on the big screen. GIVE IT TO ME.
Ahem.
Now onto the spoilers. This is mostly rambly bullet points because I did not get a lot of sleep last night (and what sleep I did get was full of awful anxiety dreams), so while it's mostly squeeful, there is also some complaining. *hands* Have you met me?
▪ ♥♥♥T'CHALLA♥♥♥
T'Challa is the best thing in this movie, and Chadwick Boseman is a goddamn DYNAMO of charisma. I just want to watch him smile and flirt and beat the crap out of Bucky forever. You know that post on tumblr where Bucky's in Home Depot and T'Challa comes flying out of nowhere to clothesline him, or Bucky's eating a doughnut and T'Challa drops down on him from the sky? T'Challa leaving a cabinet meeting to put the (consensual) beatdown on Bucky? YES PLEASE. I want that in my eyeballs all day every day.
▪ ♥♥♥BUCKY♥♥♥
Bucky was the next best thing about this movie. BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKY. I loved everything about him here - his buckpack of memories, his fear of being triggered again, everything in the chase scene but especially the bit with the motorcycle. The way he and Steve look at each other - the microexpressions! The history! The Rockaways shout-out! That bit in the elevator where they totally kissed offscreen!
I guess some people are angry that he chose to go back into cryostasis? But I feel like it leaves a lot of stuff open for the future, and also he's now in WAKANDA so he can be in the Black Panther movie, once the Wakandan scientists figure out how to remove the triggers from his brain (or Marvel gets the rights to mutants back and Professor X can do it).
Alas, metal arm! I knew it, T'Challa.
Now maybe he'll get one with the shield emblazoned on it, as is right and proper.
I also liked that Vasily Karpov was his handler! Comics shoutout!
▪ The Sam and Bucky show! Holy crap they were right - the Mackie/Stan chemistry absolutely does translate on screen and it's GLORIOUS. Put those two in a remake of It Happened One Night stat! (With special guest appearance by Chadwick Boseman as T'Challa, popping in for a brief bout of fisticuffs amid the screwball romance.)
▪ ♥♥♥STEVE♥♥♥
I like that Steve was opposed to the Accords out of principle rather than because of Bucky, and I think that's the one real character development we see for him in this movie (hence why I don't think it really played as a Cap movie): '40s Steve and just out of the ice Steve and post-Chitauri/pre-Insight Steve all would have happily signed the Accords and then done whatever the hell he wanted any way - this is Mr. Better to Ask Forgiveness Than Beg Permission, after all, and especially so for Bucky. BUT having dealt with a World Security Council who was willing to nuke NYC and then discovering that SHIELD, the US govt (up to the highest levels - Pierce was Secretary of Defense!) and various other world govts were riddled with HYDRA, I can totally see him saying NOPE. I don't think this was articulated as well as it could have been in the film, but I do think it informed his state of mind a lot.
▪ Re: The Sokovian Accords: I think in general superheroes having accountability/oversight is a great idea, and some sort of international board or panel, invested with government authority, would be a great way to do it. However, see above about recent reveals that HYDRA had infiltrated many governments and suddenly any trust I have in such a body plummets. *hands* Let's face it - this is not the real world, this is a superhero movie world, and the government will always be taken over by mad scientists, evil politicians, Skrulls, or power-mad robots. So you know. I don't think too hard about the real-world implications though I can see why they would turn people off.
▪ Also re: the Accords: How was this sprung on anyone at the last minute? I'm sorry but they got 117 UN members to all agree on something and this wasn't in the news or at least backchannels for weeks if not months? So I didn't believe that at all. I also thought having things go bad under them first time out was not the greatest storytelling choice, though I understand why this movie was structured that way, and let's be real, this movie is structured brilliantly.
▪ ♥♥♥PEGGY♥♥♥
RIP, Peggy. I'm sad you're gone but you had a long, amazing life. I was mostly sad for Steve tbh. I love that they gave Peggy and Sharon the "No, you move" speech (I didn't like that Sharon's story just stopped and we never saw her again after that super-awkward kiss).
Here's the speech from the comics:
Doesn't matter what the press says. Doesn't matter what the politicians or the mobs say. Doesn't matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right. This nation was founded on one principle above all else: the requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or the consequences. When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world - "No, you move."
allofthefeelings said she'd thought the final post-credits would be Sharon picking up the shield, and that would have been AMAZING and also given her a much better final moment.
▪ Natasha didn't have near enough to do, but I do love that she and Steve weren't actually fighting - that she was there for him at Peggy's funeral, that she tried to explain why she thought signing/compromising was a good idea (also Sharon mentioning that Peggy said compromise where you can) - to keep one hand on the wheel. But she also dropped out of the movie and I missed her at the end. (Did that weapons locker where Steve and Bucky arm up say "Romanoff" on it or was it just some Cyrillic script and I saw what I wanted to see?) I did kind of expect some payoff on "At least you could remember me?" and I thought maybe she'd have been one of the five other soldiers, but I guess not.
On the plus side, by a very slim margin, this movie actually passes the Bechdel test at the very beginning, when Natasha and Wanda were talking about spycraft, but that was like the very least they could do. I wanted more of them and some Natasha/Sharon interaction as well.
▪ Rhodey! Thank god he didn't die! I figured if he had, no killfile could have kept me from being spoiled, but still. I don't necessarily agree with his stance (though I am possibly also influenced by the fact that I know who Secretary Ross is, both in the comics and in the Hulk movies, and I did like that Natasha was like, "Do you think Bruce would even be on our side?" when Tony brought him up), but I believe that he believes it, and since we didn't have Pepper (more on that anon) or Bruce, I'm so glad we got to see original flavor BFF Tony & Rhodey at the end there.
▪ As soon as the big "1991" came up on screen, and we saw a car barrelling down a dark road and destroyed by the Winter Soldier, I was like "HOLY CRAP HE REALLY DID KILL THE STARKS." Was that supposed to be a surprise at the end when Tony found out? Because it wasn't to me. (As happy as I was to finally see Maria Stark, I have a hard time believing two such WASPy people produced Tony; Dominic Cooper is much more believable as Tony's progenitor.)
Why was Howard driving around with super serum stuff in the trunk of his car though? (I admit, at first I thought it was, uh, Steve's genetic material and they were going to make super soldier clones, and I was like, Howard would TOTALLY have that stashed somewhere, but no. I guess they were Bucky-samples?)
▪ I guess that's as good a lead in as any to discussion my main issue with this movie, which is probably as much (if not more!) a failing on my part as the movie's, but goddamn, my sympathy for Tony Stark wears out quick and I don't have much to begin with anymore. I loved where he ended up in IM3 and it's all been undone and I'm just tired of it. You're a grown-ass adult, Tony! Get yourself into therapy for your issues like the rest of us do!
I realize this movie could have been subtitled "Tony Stark's No Good Horrible Bad Week" as stressor after shock after stressor piled on, but I also feel like he causes 88% of his own problems. And he never took any responsibility for Ultron, which is what led to everything else!
I really missed Pepper here - much like in AoU, her moderating influence would have kept a lot of things from spiralling out of control (and them being on a break = me: lol wut) but her absence looms over everything. Tony wants to keep the world - and by the world he means Pepper, mostly - safe and he can't do it and everything he tries makes things worse. So that was an interesting way to do that, I thought.
Like, I absolutely agree that discovering that Captain America is knowingly protecting the guy who murdered your parents allows for some rage punching, but come on, man! Pull yourself together after the first couple of punches are exchanged? You know who goes on murderous rampages to avenge their dead parents? Villains! Villains do that! (I mean, I would love it if they'd let Tony finally fall over the line into being the supervillain he's always kind of wanted to be? But I know that'll never happen.)
At least he wasn't a fascist in this (very loose) adaptation?
I feel like this movie completely missed a chance to do more with that theme of avenging dead parents by not having any Tony-Wanda interaction at all. Like, I admit that I only saw Ultron once, but did he ever acknowledge any complicity in Wanda and Pietro's parents' death? Did he ever say, "I guess the kids had a point?" Because he sure looks like a hypocrite now if he didn't!
And speaking of hypocrisy - part of his push to sign the Accords was finding out about Alfre Woodard's son being killed as collateral damage in Sokovia, but then he goes off and brings a 15yo kid who's been a superhero for 6 months into a fight that could kill him? Really?
And as an aside, I'm to believe that TONY STARK didn't spend weeks decoding those dumped HYDRA files and found out that way who killed his parents? Really? That's almost as unbelievable as Tony Stark not being evil AI genre-savvy in AoU.
Otoh, I did love that T'Challa didn't let vengeance consume him. He discovered the real murderer and brought him back for justice (though I guess not really, since that has to be a cruel and unusual and highly illegal prison he's in). I don't know who Martin Freeman was actually playing - the name was not familiar to me from comics, and I was expecting him to be Henry Peter Gyrich, tbh - but I didn't like him.
▪ I am sad we didn't get to see the prison break at the end. Bring me ALL the Steve, Bucky & T'Challa plan a prison break while Tony runs interference with the govt fic.
▪ Spider-Man. He was okay? I didn't like the actor - his accent kept slipping and also he looks twelve. I'm sorry but if you aren't going to give me Miles or SpiderGwen or any kind of interesting twist on Peter, at least give me "adult and been superheroing for ten years" Peter. As it was, well, I enjoyed RDJ and Marisa Tomei being sparkly at each other, but I have no desire to see this kid's movie. I'm sad they wasted the second post-credits scene on him. I would have preferred seeing Thor and Bruce sipping on some mead in Asgard or something.
What I did like about him was how he has Tony as his Science Mentor but his rationale for being a superhero was right out of Cap's playbook - protect the little guy; if you have powers and you don't use them, you're part of the problem, etc. I also really loved "You got heart, kid. Where you from?" "Queens." "I'm from Brooklyn." WOO! QUEENS REPRESENT.
▪ "I could do this all day." Oh Steve. That is the core of his character and I like that they brought it back here. Also, his exasperation with Bucky during the fight with the German police! "Don't kill anyone. "I'm not gonna kill anyone." Bwah. That stairwell fight was pretty awesome - I think they maybe learned some things from Daredevil. (I feel like there was also a lot of stairwell imagery, especially with people looking between bars, but I'll need to see the movie a few more times to see if that's right or just me seeing things that aren't there.)
▪ The thing I said that I thought they did better than CATWS was this: the climactic fight was not a city-destroying CGI fest. It was three guys with a personal beef whaling on each other, and while I don't see how Steve can repeatedly hit the titanium-alloy IM helmet with his fleshy hand, they have so overpowered him in these movies - HE FIGHTS A HELICOPTER AND WINS LIKE ACHILLES FIGHTING THE RIVER [and this is absolutely Steve's Iliad here - he is quite a sulky baby for parts of this movie: Sing, Goddess, of the rage of Achilles, indeed, though at least Bucky didn't get killed again] - that I accepted it.
▪ I also liked that the villain wasn't some grand megalomaniac out to take over the world, he was just a guy who wanted revenge and was willing to go to extreme lengths to get it. I'm glad they didn't kill him off. I feel like Marvel doesn't have a lot of great villains, and Zemo is a pretty good one, so they shouldn't waste him the way Strucker was wasted in AoU.
Woo! So that was a lot and I'm not certain it made a lot of sense, but I enjoyed the movie a lot and I hope you did/do too.
Now I have to stuff more envelopes. Sigh. This is the mailing that never ends.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/839720.html.
people have commented there.
allofthefeelings.
The short, non-spoilery version is: I liked it a lot. It's no Captain America: Winter Soldier, but I don't think anything could be? And it does do one or two things better than that movie. I enjoyed it a million times more than Age of Ultron (though it suffers from one of the same issues I had with that movie, and if you know me, you probably know exactly what that is). But it really should have been called Avengers 2.5.
Also, FYI, there are two post-credits scenes. At least this time, almost no one in the theater left. I guess people can learn.
angelgazing asked me afterwards how much fic I was planning to write now, and my answer is, I don't know? I need to see it again without a lot of the OMG OMG OMG playing in my brain to figure that out.
Our audience was appropriately appreciative, I thought, cheering at various moments that required cheering. It's always nice to see a movie with an enthusiastic crowd, even though some of the dialogue got drowned out by cheers at certain points.
We also got the Rogue One trailer which looks fantastic on the big screen. GIVE IT TO ME.
Ahem.
Now onto the spoilers. This is mostly rambly bullet points because I did not get a lot of sleep last night (and what sleep I did get was full of awful anxiety dreams), so while it's mostly squeeful, there is also some complaining. *hands* Have you met me?
▪ ♥♥♥T'CHALLA♥♥♥
T'Challa is the best thing in this movie, and Chadwick Boseman is a goddamn DYNAMO of charisma. I just want to watch him smile and flirt and beat the crap out of Bucky forever. You know that post on tumblr where Bucky's in Home Depot and T'Challa comes flying out of nowhere to clothesline him, or Bucky's eating a doughnut and T'Challa drops down on him from the sky? T'Challa leaving a cabinet meeting to put the (consensual) beatdown on Bucky? YES PLEASE. I want that in my eyeballs all day every day.
▪ ♥♥♥BUCKY♥♥♥
Bucky was the next best thing about this movie. BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKY. I loved everything about him here - his buckpack of memories, his fear of being triggered again, everything in the chase scene but especially the bit with the motorcycle. The way he and Steve look at each other - the microexpressions! The history! The Rockaways shout-out! That bit in the elevator where they totally kissed offscreen!
I guess some people are angry that he chose to go back into cryostasis? But I feel like it leaves a lot of stuff open for the future, and also he's now in WAKANDA so he can be in the Black Panther movie, once the Wakandan scientists figure out how to remove the triggers from his brain (or Marvel gets the rights to mutants back and Professor X can do it).
Alas, metal arm! I knew it, T'Challa.
Now maybe he'll get one with the shield emblazoned on it, as is right and proper.
I also liked that Vasily Karpov was his handler! Comics shoutout!
▪ The Sam and Bucky show! Holy crap they were right - the Mackie/Stan chemistry absolutely does translate on screen and it's GLORIOUS. Put those two in a remake of It Happened One Night stat! (With special guest appearance by Chadwick Boseman as T'Challa, popping in for a brief bout of fisticuffs amid the screwball romance.)
▪ ♥♥♥STEVE♥♥♥
I like that Steve was opposed to the Accords out of principle rather than because of Bucky, and I think that's the one real character development we see for him in this movie (hence why I don't think it really played as a Cap movie): '40s Steve and just out of the ice Steve and post-Chitauri/pre-Insight Steve all would have happily signed the Accords and then done whatever the hell he wanted any way - this is Mr. Better to Ask Forgiveness Than Beg Permission, after all, and especially so for Bucky. BUT having dealt with a World Security Council who was willing to nuke NYC and then discovering that SHIELD, the US govt (up to the highest levels - Pierce was Secretary of Defense!) and various other world govts were riddled with HYDRA, I can totally see him saying NOPE. I don't think this was articulated as well as it could have been in the film, but I do think it informed his state of mind a lot.
▪ Re: The Sokovian Accords: I think in general superheroes having accountability/oversight is a great idea, and some sort of international board or panel, invested with government authority, would be a great way to do it. However, see above about recent reveals that HYDRA had infiltrated many governments and suddenly any trust I have in such a body plummets. *hands* Let's face it - this is not the real world, this is a superhero movie world, and the government will always be taken over by mad scientists, evil politicians, Skrulls, or power-mad robots. So you know. I don't think too hard about the real-world implications though I can see why they would turn people off.
▪ Also re: the Accords: How was this sprung on anyone at the last minute? I'm sorry but they got 117 UN members to all agree on something and this wasn't in the news or at least backchannels for weeks if not months? So I didn't believe that at all. I also thought having things go bad under them first time out was not the greatest storytelling choice, though I understand why this movie was structured that way, and let's be real, this movie is structured brilliantly.
▪ ♥♥♥PEGGY♥♥♥
RIP, Peggy. I'm sad you're gone but you had a long, amazing life. I was mostly sad for Steve tbh. I love that they gave Peggy and Sharon the "No, you move" speech (I didn't like that Sharon's story just stopped and we never saw her again after that super-awkward kiss).
Here's the speech from the comics:
Doesn't matter what the press says. Doesn't matter what the politicians or the mobs say. Doesn't matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right. This nation was founded on one principle above all else: the requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or the consequences. When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world - "No, you move."
allofthefeelings said she'd thought the final post-credits would be Sharon picking up the shield, and that would have been AMAZING and also given her a much better final moment.
▪ Natasha didn't have near enough to do, but I do love that she and Steve weren't actually fighting - that she was there for him at Peggy's funeral, that she tried to explain why she thought signing/compromising was a good idea (also Sharon mentioning that Peggy said compromise where you can) - to keep one hand on the wheel. But she also dropped out of the movie and I missed her at the end. (Did that weapons locker where Steve and Bucky arm up say "Romanoff" on it or was it just some Cyrillic script and I saw what I wanted to see?) I did kind of expect some payoff on "At least you could remember me?" and I thought maybe she'd have been one of the five other soldiers, but I guess not.
On the plus side, by a very slim margin, this movie actually passes the Bechdel test at the very beginning, when Natasha and Wanda were talking about spycraft, but that was like the very least they could do. I wanted more of them and some Natasha/Sharon interaction as well.
▪ Rhodey! Thank god he didn't die! I figured if he had, no killfile could have kept me from being spoiled, but still. I don't necessarily agree with his stance (though I am possibly also influenced by the fact that I know who Secretary Ross is, both in the comics and in the Hulk movies, and I did like that Natasha was like, "Do you think Bruce would even be on our side?" when Tony brought him up), but I believe that he believes it, and since we didn't have Pepper (more on that anon) or Bruce, I'm so glad we got to see original flavor BFF Tony & Rhodey at the end there.
▪ As soon as the big "1991" came up on screen, and we saw a car barrelling down a dark road and destroyed by the Winter Soldier, I was like "HOLY CRAP HE REALLY DID KILL THE STARKS." Was that supposed to be a surprise at the end when Tony found out? Because it wasn't to me. (As happy as I was to finally see Maria Stark, I have a hard time believing two such WASPy people produced Tony; Dominic Cooper is much more believable as Tony's progenitor.)
Why was Howard driving around with super serum stuff in the trunk of his car though? (I admit, at first I thought it was, uh, Steve's genetic material and they were going to make super soldier clones, and I was like, Howard would TOTALLY have that stashed somewhere, but no. I guess they were Bucky-samples?)
▪ I guess that's as good a lead in as any to discussion my main issue with this movie, which is probably as much (if not more!) a failing on my part as the movie's, but goddamn, my sympathy for Tony Stark wears out quick and I don't have much to begin with anymore. I loved where he ended up in IM3 and it's all been undone and I'm just tired of it. You're a grown-ass adult, Tony! Get yourself into therapy for your issues like the rest of us do!
I realize this movie could have been subtitled "Tony Stark's No Good Horrible Bad Week" as stressor after shock after stressor piled on, but I also feel like he causes 88% of his own problems. And he never took any responsibility for Ultron, which is what led to everything else!
I really missed Pepper here - much like in AoU, her moderating influence would have kept a lot of things from spiralling out of control (and them being on a break = me: lol wut) but her absence looms over everything. Tony wants to keep the world - and by the world he means Pepper, mostly - safe and he can't do it and everything he tries makes things worse. So that was an interesting way to do that, I thought.
Like, I absolutely agree that discovering that Captain America is knowingly protecting the guy who murdered your parents allows for some rage punching, but come on, man! Pull yourself together after the first couple of punches are exchanged? You know who goes on murderous rampages to avenge their dead parents? Villains! Villains do that! (I mean, I would love it if they'd let Tony finally fall over the line into being the supervillain he's always kind of wanted to be? But I know that'll never happen.)
At least he wasn't a fascist in this (very loose) adaptation?
I feel like this movie completely missed a chance to do more with that theme of avenging dead parents by not having any Tony-Wanda interaction at all. Like, I admit that I only saw Ultron once, but did he ever acknowledge any complicity in Wanda and Pietro's parents' death? Did he ever say, "I guess the kids had a point?" Because he sure looks like a hypocrite now if he didn't!
And speaking of hypocrisy - part of his push to sign the Accords was finding out about Alfre Woodard's son being killed as collateral damage in Sokovia, but then he goes off and brings a 15yo kid who's been a superhero for 6 months into a fight that could kill him? Really?
And as an aside, I'm to believe that TONY STARK didn't spend weeks decoding those dumped HYDRA files and found out that way who killed his parents? Really? That's almost as unbelievable as Tony Stark not being evil AI genre-savvy in AoU.
Otoh, I did love that T'Challa didn't let vengeance consume him. He discovered the real murderer and brought him back for justice (though I guess not really, since that has to be a cruel and unusual and highly illegal prison he's in). I don't know who Martin Freeman was actually playing - the name was not familiar to me from comics, and I was expecting him to be Henry Peter Gyrich, tbh - but I didn't like him.
▪ I am sad we didn't get to see the prison break at the end. Bring me ALL the Steve, Bucky & T'Challa plan a prison break while Tony runs interference with the govt fic.
▪ Spider-Man. He was okay? I didn't like the actor - his accent kept slipping and also he looks twelve. I'm sorry but if you aren't going to give me Miles or SpiderGwen or any kind of interesting twist on Peter, at least give me "adult and been superheroing for ten years" Peter. As it was, well, I enjoyed RDJ and Marisa Tomei being sparkly at each other, but I have no desire to see this kid's movie. I'm sad they wasted the second post-credits scene on him. I would have preferred seeing Thor and Bruce sipping on some mead in Asgard or something.
What I did like about him was how he has Tony as his Science Mentor but his rationale for being a superhero was right out of Cap's playbook - protect the little guy; if you have powers and you don't use them, you're part of the problem, etc. I also really loved "You got heart, kid. Where you from?" "Queens." "I'm from Brooklyn." WOO! QUEENS REPRESENT.
▪ "I could do this all day." Oh Steve. That is the core of his character and I like that they brought it back here. Also, his exasperation with Bucky during the fight with the German police! "Don't kill anyone. "I'm not gonna kill anyone." Bwah. That stairwell fight was pretty awesome - I think they maybe learned some things from Daredevil. (I feel like there was also a lot of stairwell imagery, especially with people looking between bars, but I'll need to see the movie a few more times to see if that's right or just me seeing things that aren't there.)
▪ The thing I said that I thought they did better than CATWS was this: the climactic fight was not a city-destroying CGI fest. It was three guys with a personal beef whaling on each other, and while I don't see how Steve can repeatedly hit the titanium-alloy IM helmet with his fleshy hand, they have so overpowered him in these movies - HE FIGHTS A HELICOPTER AND WINS LIKE ACHILLES FIGHTING THE RIVER [and this is absolutely Steve's Iliad here - he is quite a sulky baby for parts of this movie: Sing, Goddess, of the rage of Achilles, indeed, though at least Bucky didn't get killed again] - that I accepted it.
▪ I also liked that the villain wasn't some grand megalomaniac out to take over the world, he was just a guy who wanted revenge and was willing to go to extreme lengths to get it. I'm glad they didn't kill him off. I feel like Marvel doesn't have a lot of great villains, and Zemo is a pretty good one, so they shouldn't waste him the way Strucker was wasted in AoU.
Woo! So that was a lot and I'm not certain it made a lot of sense, but I enjoyed the movie a lot and I hope you did/do too.
Now I have to stuff more envelopes. Sigh. This is the mailing that never ends.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/839720.html.
people have commented there.