‘Civil War’ Could Have Been The Best Marvel Movie. Instead It’s The Worst.

This post will have more spoilers than a Stephanie Brown cloning facility. You’ve been warned!

EDIT: It’s come to my attention that people are using this post as a club on people they disagree with. Don’t. Part of the reason fandom is toxic is we can’t stop taking dumps on each other’s doorsteps. This post is not and should not be considered an indictment of critics I disagree with the opinions of, and should not be used as such. It is just my personal perspective on a movie I wish I loved, but really didn’t. Treat it as such.

A brief note: I am fully aware that most people are just showing up for the action bits. The action bits are really cool, and if that’s all that matters to you, which is fair, ignore this post. If you’d like to know why a critically acclaimed blockbuster leaves a comic book nerd seething with non-continuity related rage, keep reading!

A Disclaimer: Before I kick this movie down a flight of stairs, I want to state that I don’t think the film’s creative personnel are at fault here. Everything I’m about to complain about has the feeling of creative people struggling with decisions made possibly years before they got there.

I want you to imagine something for a moment. A private American military contractor attempts to intervene, without informing the local authorities or even getting sanction for their actions from the US government, in a terrorist attack in a foreign country. Due to a miscalculation on the part of the force’s leader and a poorly trained member, an entire diplomatic corps from a foreign country is killed. The world is outraged, and the leader of this force gets up in front of a camera and says “Well, tough shit, we’re the good guys and that’s just the way it is.”

Outrageous, right? That’s the first act of Captain America: Civil War, and believe it or not, it gets worse from there.

The Whole Concept Is Busted

I was always iffy on Civil War as a movie, because reconciling superheroes with the real world tends to open up a lot of cans of worms. It doesn’t matter how well-meaning you were, if you fought some dude in the middle of New York, trashed millions of dollars of property, and accidentally killed a whole bunch of people, you would be in profoundly deep shit. We gloss over this because it’s a movie about a giant green dude and a Norse god facepunching dragons, but the more reality you inject into superhero movies, the more difficult it becomes to write a plot that make sense.

There’s another factor though, which is that the only check on superheroes is their own morality. If Captain America doesn’t want to be in jail, he’ll leave. I don’t agree with the whining over Batman having guns and blowing up mercs in Batman V. Superman, but I do get it. But at least that movie acknowledges Batman is a total dick and features a god-like being struggling with the fact that he’s basically deciding who lives and who dies. Here, nobody gives a shit. Cap says he’s struggling with guilt but you sure don’t see it in his actions, and Tony was apparently unmoved by all the destruction he caused until Alfre Woodard guilt-tripped him. Which leads to my next point.

Why Isn’t Tony In Jail?

Granted, Tony being a hypocrite is nothing new. But if the UN is going to demand anybody be fitted with a bureaucratic restraining bolt, it’s Tony Stark. Tony has, so far, unilaterally flown into another country and murdered a bunch of its citizens (Iron Man), destroyed a major section of the port of Miami (Iron Man 3), built a massive power source right in the middle of Manhattan which was immediately misused by aliens (Avengers), and most egregiously cracked open alien technology and rubbed his algorithms on it to see what would happen, creating Ultron (Avengers: Age Of Ultron).

Just for contrast here, Thor has had to actively prevent the trashing of London and a small town, Cap crashed a bunch of helicarriers into a river, and the Hulk only wrecked a university campus. By any yardstick, Tony Stark has caused more death and destruction than any supervillain in the MCU. The movie does acknowledge this, but it does so in a way that makes the bad guy more sympathetic than anybody else in the movie.

Cap Is An Outright Bully

The main disagreement in this movie is that Cap doesn’t want to be responsible to a committee of bureaucrats with agendas. Which is a sensible position, in most cases, but it’s not one to hold after you blew up the diplomatic corps of an African nation, right on the heels of an entire nation being dropped out of the sky, and it’s ESPECIALLY not one to hold after the entire goddamn United Nations votes in concert to say “Slow your damn roll.” A fellow soldier tells him to his face to stand down and Cap’s basically LOL NO.

Cap then proceeds to spend the entire movie proving the United Nations right. Instead of going to Tony, his friend and colleague, and saying “Hey, Bucky might be under HYDRA mind control, let’s send our mutual friend the superstrong robot who can phase through matter to catch him and then figure out what’s going on here”, he insists he’s the only one who can capture Bucky, who you might remember beat his ass like a pinata in the last Cap movie. That goes wrong, he gets arrested, and his friend Tony gets him off the hook. So Cap spits in his face by, instead of telling him his suspicions, unilaterally running after Bucky when he escapes. By the way, Black Widow, on Tony’s side, clearly realizes Bucky is under mind control and apparently says nothing to anybody, despite being the expert in weird-ass Russian mind games.

Once Cap realizes what’s going on, does he clue in Tony? Or go to a newspaper? Or send an email to the UN? No! He gathers a bunch of people, including dragging a coworker out of retirement, to go to Siberia. And then he gets them all arrested, while he and his unstable assassin buddy who may still be under mind control go off to find other unstable assassins!

And that’s not even the biggest dick move!

The Third Act Twist Makes No Sense

The main twist in this movie is that Howard Stark was assassinated by the Winter Soldier in 1991. Cap knew that it was an assassination, but not that Bucky was involved, which was apparently a closely guarded HYDRA secret.

Here’s the thing, though: Why, after Cap learned this, wouldn’t he sit down Tony, his friend, and tell him? Yes, it would be deeply painful, but Tony has every right to know this. Keeping it from him, even by mistake, is a douchey thing to do in the first place.

And why would Tony not already know this? If Zemo, some Eastern European special forces dude, can decrypt HYDRA files with ease, for Tony this should be a no-brainer. Wouldn’t Tony be decrypting files anyway, to track down dangerous tech and contain it?

Worse, the movie ends with a man who just learned his parents got murdered get beaten senseless and nearly killed by said parent-murderer and one of his closest friends. And it has the nerve to call back to the first movie, where Steve is getting bullied, as if Steve’s not the asshole here. Hey, Steve, once you crack Tony’s life-support device, you maybe want to give him a swirly while you’re at it?

Black Panther Is An Awesome Character Who Gets Shafted By Spider-Man

Spider-Man doesn’t belong in Civil War. He was shoved in with a hammer and a crowbar. And it was done at the expense of Black Panther.

Just like Batman V Superman was at its best when Wondy shows up, Panther brings this movie’s dramatic scenes to life. And clearly this was supposed to be his show, until Spidey crashed the party. It’s kind of painful how hard this movie flogs the new Spidey, although Tom Holland is a great Pete. He’s all over the airport fight, which is fun and all, but Panther has a great arc here the movie just doesn’t have room for. His people are being killed, his father dies in an attack, and he has to overcome his country’s isolationism as both defender and king to be a true hero. As it is, he has the best (and only good) non-action scene in the movie, and I hope Zemo turns up in Black Panther.

It’s All Pointless

After all that, what happens to Bucky, the close friend for whom Steve has sacrificed the freedom, careers, and happiness of himself and his friends to keep free? He volunteers to go back to jail, basically. Sure, Wakanda is a nice place and if they figure out how to cure him, they’ll pop him out of the freezer. But until then, off to jail!

This marks the biggest problem with this movie; the whole thing turns out to be a filler episode before we get to Infinity War. Lately all Marvel movies do is lay out the back story for another damn Marvel movie. Age of Ultron was just killing time until Thanos came along. Ant-Man had an entire section, the Falcon fight, that was basically a DVD ad. And now you have this movie that ultimately goes nowhere and does nothing. And it could have been so good, which is the worst thing of all.