Captain America: Civil War

[owlectomy]

Matt Bird from Cockeyed Caravan says that a good two-hour movie has an hour of plot in it. The other hour, you get to use on character, on setting up the emotional arcs.

CA: CW has three main storylines:

* Tony Stark and Steve Rogers are at odds ideologically because the UN wants to regulate the Avengers.

* Steve wants to rescue Bucky from the government and also be his friend again.

* T'Challa wants to get revenge for his father's death (of which Bucky is falsely accused) and Tony learns the truth about his parents' death (for which Bucky is actually responsible, though not morally culpable).

And two characters who have emotional arcs:

* Tony feels guilt about Sokovia.

* Steve wants to rescue Bucky from the government and also be his friend again.

I think the movie really has time for no more than two of these storylines. Can we appreciate just how convoluted the Villain Whose Name I Forget's plan has to be in order to make all these part of the same story? And - while I understand that it's a long-running series of comic-book related movies so nobody can ever resolve their personal baggage - the arc of Tony's feelings of guilt just gets dropped.

This is a movie with too much plot in it.

I'm wondering how it would have worked if you just took the civil war out of Civil War. The conflict doesn't illuminate anything interesting about the conflict between civil liberties and public safety, and making it a big-ensemble movie just results in having a lot of characters in the fight whose motivations are thin and unclear. You could skip the whole Sokovia Accords question and still construct a movie where Bucky is being accused of T'Chaka's death and pursued by law enforcement; move the reveal about Tony's parents to the middle of the movie, and that's enough motivation for Tony to be at odds with Steve; pare down the cast. (I enjoyed both Spider-Man and Ant-Man, but they had absolutely no reason to be in this movie.)

Tony gets an emotional arc focused on dealing with what he finds out about his parents' deaths. Steve's emotional arc is, uh, pretty much unchanged (though maybe they'd have time to do a romance arc that's not just "well, we flirted for five minutes so I guess this is the part where we kiss"!)

I have not read the Civil War-related comics on the advice of people smarter than me. But the thing is, I think Marvel's movies have been successful in large part by realizing that comics and movies work differently and you can't port a comics storyline over to a movie without being willing to completely break it apart and put it together again.

I realize that I'm advocating here for Winter Soldier 2: More Steve and Sam And Bucky. But CA: CW tries to be Civil War and Winter Soldier 2 at the same time, and I don't think it makes it work.

Comments

[firecat]

It would have been better if they hadn't relied on "Tony makes an ego-driven lousy decision" as the plot generator AGAIN.