Captain America: Civil War: Just Let Everyone Fight It Out
For those of you who are unaware (though if you’re reading this, you probably already know), a good friend challenged me to watch through the Marvel Cinematic Universe before then seeing Avengers: Infinity War in the theaters. Looking at showtimes for my area, I can see out til Tuesday which means I have a bit more time than I thought I did and I can collapse now. Well, for a few minutes anyway.
I’m still getting superhero fatigue and I’m now wondering if there’s a superhero anywhere who doesn’t land on one knee after a jump (thanks Deadpool)? I’m definitely involved enough by now that I have to see the rest of the movies — and then the ones that follow afterwards (which I’m kinda guessing may have been an alterior motive).
So, just saying… SPOILER ALERT!
Dear V,
See the caption under the photo above? I mean, who really didn’t see this one coming from the very beginning of the first Avengers movie when we saw Cap and Tony jab and pick and nip at each other like two dogs circling for a fight? (Note: I have never seen a dog fight so I’m just guessing here.)
And I’m just wondering how much bank Scarlett Johansson has made on these movies because I swear she’s in all of them.
So, at the beginning of this, our bad guy, Zemo, finds the book that has the instructions on how to control Bucky. We already know how it’s used because of Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
Then we come to the event that sets the tone of the entire movie. In order to save Cap, Wanda (Scarlet Witch) deflects an attack that ends up hitting the corner of a nearby office building causing deaths and more wounded. Interesteingly enough, 11 Wakandans were killed in the accident — this isn’t the first time we’ve heard about Wakanda, but it’s the first movie where Wakanda plays a larger role. I don’t blame Wanda for what happened because, sometimes, shit happens. Accidents happen, whether we want them to or not.
The world governments don’t see it that way. In the past 8 years, there has been an upturn of conflict that is being explained with causality — strength invites conflict.
The Wakandan King thinks the Avengers need an oversight committee belonging to the United Nations aand where that oversight committee thinks they are needed, that’s where they will do. And the rest of the world, it seems, has signed on. This agreement is called the Sokovia Accords, after the city that Ultron destroyed in the last Avengers movie.
There are two sides (or more) to every agreement or disagreement. In this case, Tony is still rather freaked out by what happened in Avengers: Age of Ultron, that he created Ultron and almost destroyed the world, and he’s afraid the powers of the Avengers are too much for them to handle by themselves. In a way, he’s reversing his opinion from the Age of Ultron movie — in it, he wanted there to be a world protection net to let the Avengers know where they were needed. Because Ultron failed, Tony seems to have vowed to never let mistakes like that happen again.
Tony lets his emotions overpower him and make the decision for him. He agrees with the Accords.
Captain America, whom I am so a fangirl of, does not agree. Cap thinks that men are men and can be swayed by money, power, politics and reason. This committee that Tony so believe in will never be truly objective about what the Avengers should do because opinions change, politics changes, and people change. He wants to be able to be available to anybody whenever and wherever he’s needed.
Cap realizes that, if they sign the Accords in the first place, they lose the right to choose their battles.
For me, choice is huge. I would rather have someone choose to be around me than be forced or guilted into it. But I’m still guilty of wanting to be around people so much that I have guilted them into it. Not meaning to hurt them or to be a burden, but because I was so focused on what I wanted, rather than what I wanted to stand for. :(
Anyway, moving on…
King T’chaka of Wakanda tells Cap and Tony that victory at the expense of the innocent is no victory at all. The thing is: the Avengers already know and understand this. It’s not like they’re going out and killing random people in their wake. Accidents do happen — no one is perfect. Except for Chris Evans who plays Captain America, that is… (grin/wink)
There’s an explosion at the UN building (where all the leaders of the world had congregated, go figure) and the King is killed. And there are signs and security cams that say it’s Bucky who planted the explosives. So Cap and his team go to work to try and find him.
One thing I really love about Cap is that, if he’s at work, he’s in uniform. If he’s not, he’s not working. It’s been that way all the way through. I think that’s Cap’s soldier mentality because it’s still in there. He may be a leader, but he’s still Captain America and he treats his team with the respect a captain should and vice versa.
So we have a nice fight and chase scene where Captain American becomes a fugitive from justice. I have written down ‘Cap’s a criminal’ but I can’t say that. Throughout this movie, I’m on Cap’s side. While yes, it says Captain America: Civil War, Tony plays just as much of a part in this as Cap does and when considering the two positions, I’m on Cap’s side, not only for the Accords but for him to find Bucky first as well.
And Black Panther makes his first appearance.
I’d like to note that Black Panther isn’t the world’s first black superhero (that was Falcon, who was African-American in the comics also), but he is the first African superhero. He’s definitely got a nice suit though and I love his retractable claws, but I wonder how much of his power is channeled to him through the suit. And we learn that he is King T’chaka’s son out for vengeance.
And, just like that, Cap’s a fugitve.
So Tony is essentially selling out to the U.N. because he’s doing what he thinks has to be done to keep things from getting worse.
Cap is standing for his beliefs and principles for the exact same reason — he’s doing what he thinks has to be done to keep things from getting worse. I love to see Cap standing up for his beliefs and principles. It’s an extremely sexy thing to do: to stand up to those who oppose you.
We also find out that Tony hated Cap from the very beginning — Howard Stark (Tony’s dad) had talked about him a lot, so we learn there were already problems between these two men before they met. Cap remembers Stark as a friend who helped him become the super soldier he is; Tony remembers a father that wouldn’t shut up about this other kid. Maybe some jealousy in there? Definitely.
So Bucky and Cap and his friends (Hawkeye, Falcon, and Wanda) are captured and Zemo, impersonating a psychiatrist, is sent to interview Bucky. And turns him back into the Winter Soldier.
From Bucky, we learn that there are more Winter Soliders (which kinda felt like Marvel saying, ‘If one winter soldier is dangerous, let’s include a few more.’) who are actually stronger than Bucky. They’re part of an elite Russian covert mission team.
And we have a new fight — Falcon brings in Ant-Man (they met in the previous movie, Ant-Man) and Tony brings in a teenage Spider-man who is actually rather good as Spider-man rather than the previous one played by Tobey MacGuire in the Sam Raimi films. I like his youth and enthusiasm and energy and excitement — I remember those days when I felt similarly and I think he did a great job of getting those emotions across.
So I’m told that Tony starts to be sort of a father-figure to Peter Parker and I looked for that. I don’t know if I saw it in this movie — I don’t think I did — but there was some great interplay between Peter and Tony similar to the interplay between Tony and the kid in Iron Man 3. I kinda wondered if that might have been where the writers and director got the idea from.
Peter’s view on the world, though, in contrast to Tony’s, is that bad things happen if he doesn’t do what he can do to make the world a better place.
Vision and Wanda are at Avenger headquarters and she realizes that he’s been stationed there to make sure she didn’t go anywhere. Tony’s afraid that she wouldn’t be able to maintain control over her powers and something bad would happen. Hawkeye breaks her out and, after a bit of a scolding like he gave her in Age of Ultron — fight or don’t fight — with the help of her powers, she gets by Vision and out of headquarters with him.
And it’s about time someone kisses Chris Evans! Damn! :)
So the line-up is:
Tony, Black Panther, Natasha Romanoff, Spider-man, War Machine (chuckle), and Vision
vs
Cap, Falcon, Wanda, Ant-Man, and Hawkeye
And this is yet another awesome fight. In it, we can see how powerful Wanda’s powers actually are. Ant-Man decides to go King-Kong-like instead of tiny. We see Tony’s love for him best friend: “Give me back my Rhodey.”
And I feel old for a few minutes.
To defeat Ant-Man, Spider-man wraps his webbing around Ant-Man’s feet, causing him to fall. His reference was to The Empire Strikes Back and the battle on Hoth with the Imperial Walkers. My thought: Gulliver’s Travels. That’s how the Lilliputians took down Gulliver, wasn’t it? Well, either that or they tied him up in his sleep.
Zemo wants to see an empire fall and Bucky is his tool. I thought that the empire he was talking about was a nation, but the more I think about it, the more I think that empire was the Avengers themselves.
As Cap and Bucky finds the chair Hydra sat him in to erase his memory and give him orders, they also find Zemo who has killed the 5 other Winter Soldiers(?).
We cut to what happened to Falcon, Hawkeye and Wanda — they’re relegated to a prison in the middle of the sea, each with their own room.
At some point, Tony realizes that it wasn’t Bucky who placed the explosive that killed the world leaders and asks Natasha where they went. She tells him cautiously, wanting him to go as friends, and Black Panther follows him when he leaves, still wanting vengeance.
I loved Tony’s comment about the Manchurian Candidate. If you’ve never seen it, it’s a movie (I even think they remade it… er, twice?) about a man who has been brainwashed to kill the President, Senator, something, but who doesn’t know it.
So the next truly big thing plotwise is that Tony sees a video, a video that we’re given a glimpse of at the beginning of the movie. It’s a video of Bucky, as the Winter Solider, killing Tony’s parents — and that drives Tony over the edge. I would have said there would be absolutely no stopping him. Tony has absolutely every right to be pissed at Bucky, even if he was under mind control, and pissed at Cap because he had guessed but didn’t know if it was Bucky or not.
This is another truly great action scene. At the end, Cap is sitting on top of a broken Iron Man, face shield off, and brings the side of his shield down. Tony flinches and thinks he’s going to die, but Cap brings his shield squarely down on his chest, affecting the suit’s power core. And it’s over.
At the end of the movie, the Avengers have factioned off into those who believe in the Accords and those who… well, believe in Captain America. You know which side I’m on. Rhodey has to learn to walk again and I’m sure with the Stark tech he had on his legs, he’ll be able to do it.
Cap leaves a cell phone and a note on Tony’s desk, telling him that he didn’t believe the Accords were right, even after all of this, and if he or his team was needed, he needs only to call.
In the last scene, we see Bucky being put back into cold storage willingly until they can figure out how to unbrainwash him. And they’re in Wakanda. So I’m taking a wild guess here, but I’m thinking that Bucky being in cold storage is going to be a big part of the Black Panther movie.
Ultimately, though, Zemo gets what he wanted — the end of the Avengers.
One thing I would like cleared up is who the woman on the phone was. Zemo said his wife, his father and his daughter were killed. If he wasn’t hallucinating the woman’s voice, and I’m not sure about that one way or the other, who was it? The credits said ‘Voice of Zemo’s wife’ so I definitely feel like I may have missed something there.
I absolutely loved this movie from beginning to end and will definitely have to watch it again. I think I caught a lot, but I’m definitely sure there was some I did not.
