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Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Review: Captain America Civil War

This is not a "full review", which involves me watching a film 5-12 times, but more of a 'pocket review' [meaning I watched it once].

SPOILER HEAVY!!

The Nuts and Bolts
Direction: The Russo Brothers. Did well with Winter Soldier, although I am amazed their careers survived You, Me & Dupree.
Writing: Markus and McFeely. Pretty much have only written for the Narnia series and the MCU as a team.
Production: A large team, but I am focusing on Bell and Woebocken. Bell is a line producer for the MCU and Woebocken is a pro for years.
Music: Henry Kacjman, whoi mainly does superhero and action films.
Cinematography: Trent Opaloch who did Chappie and District 9.
Editing: Ford and Schmidt. Ford has more experience (his One Hour Photo work was great) and Schmidt is pretty much an MCU guy.

The Good
Acting: Chris Evans had to carry the acting on this one and he did a yeoman's job of providing the emotional content without being melodramatic. Downey did a solid job portraying Stark as wracked by emotions to the point of being untrustworthy in an understated manner. Olsen and Bettany had a little side movie going on that was done well, if point on. Everyone playing an avenger showed up and read with conviction.
Paul Rudd and Tom Holland were a ton of fun. They knew why they were there, they knew what was expected, and they delivered.
Chadwick Boseman was better than I had expected and did a great job of portraying a man with dual missions.
Action: The fights were fun. The use of powers was fun. Car chases, aerial chases, fistfights, etc. - a nice amount of well-delivered action.
Camera work: Opaloch was especially good with the crowd scenes and was very good with cameras for dynamic work.
Production: Sets, locations, props, costumes, etc. were all great.

The Bad
Editing: The Matrix showed an entire generation of film editors a very important lesson - when you shoot melee like the 1980's you get confusing jumbles but when you shoot melee like classic Shaw Brothers wuxia movies you get compelling action sequences that can carry great emotional weight.
The people involved in editing this film never learned that lesson.
Great fight set pieces were cut so rapidly and jarringly the viewer had to fill in and figure out what was happening. As a result the fights had less emotional impact.
Camera Work: Dialog was bog-standard two camera work akin to a 1980's sitcom far too often. During fights individuals were so tightly framed it was hard to tell what they were doing, let alone who they were fighting.
Directing: I was taught that underacting/wooden acting is the fault of the actor while over acting is the fault of the director.
I found some faults with the directors.
The directors had a weird combination of taking 'show, don't tell' too far (how many times did we flash back to the exact same thing in 1991?) for motivating events and then doing info dumps in a tell not show way for plot critical information. It is like they were in reverse film land, or something.
Writing/Plot: First, they take one of the most iconic of Marvel's villains, Baron Zemo, and turn him into a weaker version of the rather forgettable villain from The Peacemaker. His motivation is obscure until the very end and then? It is ridiculous. We have no idea how this obscure third-world soldier somehow broke codes that the CIA, NSA, and SHIELD couldn't, nor how he tracked down super-deep HYDRA agents, nor how he was able to place a massive bomb well within the security perimeter of the UN while also placing an EMP device at just the right spot at just the right time and also assassinate and replace a well-known man and then slip into a secure facility  WITHOUT a disguise and use his real name on security footage with no one noticing while alone with one of the most wanted men on the planet to manipulate some of the smartest men in the world to hate each other (despite saving each other's live multiple times) to have them travel to an obscure place in the middle of nowhere after he needlessly kills supersoldiers to stage a fight for...
I can't even write about how effing ludicrous the backstory of Helmut Zemo is, anymore. But it boils down to this,
"Obscure nobody from nowhere with no powers, no support, no agency, and no money can predict exactly how a bunch of people he has never met will react to information they might never encounter so well that he can manipulate the entire planet into doing his bidding and no one notices."
  It is the sort of plot a 12 year old dreams up for his first attempt at fan fiction, then discards when he is 12 as 'childish'.
 So the plot was horrible. Actively, objectively terrible.
 And elements of the film were as bad or worse.
  The United States Secretary of State shows the avengers some video to show them how bad they have screwed up. What does he who them?
1) The Hulk jumping around fighting an invading alien armada intent on conquering the entire planet.
Who is expected to feel bad?
  The avengers, who literally saved the entire world during that encounter.
2) The helicarrier fight from when clandestine terrorist organization  Hydra came within minutes of taking over the entire world using technology given to them by governments that were compromised by Hydra and that almost prevented the Avengers from saving the world by manipulating an oversight group to stop the avengers!
Who is expected to feel bad?
The avengers, who defied the corrupt oversight group, revealed the compromised government actors, and saved the world from slavery to Hydra.
3) Footage of Ultron preparing to cause an extinction-level Tunguska event that would destroy all life on earth using alien  technology from the invaders in clip 1 and technology from the international terrorist group in clip 2. The event was disrupted by the avengers saving all life on earth.
Who is supposed to feel bad?
The avengers, who ignored the calls of various pressure groups and governments that tried to stop them so they could (again) save the world.
4) Footage from the beginning of the movie. A team of terrorists led by a high-ranking member of that same terrorist group from #2, attempts to steal what appears to be a bioweapon of incredible lethality and rather than be taken prisoner detonate a suicide vest to kills scores-to-hundreds of innocent civilians and potentially release the plague. Scarlet Witch is able to channel the blast away from the crowd bit it still kills many innocent people.
Who is supposed to feel bad?
The avengers (especially Wanda) who demonstrable prevented terrorists from gaining a potent bioweapons and saved scores of innocents from a suicide vest.
I am going on a bit, but the point here is that we are expected to believe that the ENTIRE WORLD is so enraged by collateral damage that the overwhelming majority of people want to strictly control the handful of people that saved the entire world three times in 6 years and are SO UPSET that one of them did not completely stop a suicide bomber to the point that any one of them that does NOT submit to government oversight (which has already been PROVEN to have been compromised in the past!) will go to prison?!
...
...
...
As my oldest son pointed out during the movie,
"Anyone who ever took a course on morals, ethics, theology, or philosophy would have ended the movie in 1 minute."
Or, as son #3 opined,
"If I show footage of a gendarme kicking down a door at the bataclan theater I can blame the police for the Paris attacks?".
The stupidity was bad in many other places, too.
A) Based upon a blurry photo a terrorist attack is blamed upon the Winter Soldier and a 'shoot to kill' order is issued immediately even though the investigation cannot have properly begun yet and with the governments of the world being aware that the Winter Soldier was a brainwashed Hydra asset.
B) The Head of State of a UN Member nation chases down and fights with a known assassin who is wanted for multiple crimes, is the focus of an international manhunt, and when the assassin is apprehended the police also arrest the head of state?!
C) Wanda Maximoff, a foreign national, is held in the avenger's compound against her will on orders of a private citizen (Stark) for fear of 'bad press'? That is at best false arrest and at worst kidnapping and threats with a weapon (Vision is a machine) which could put Stark in prison for life.
D) A group of people, one of whom was never an avenger (Ant Man) are involved in a brawl. He (who was never incited to sign the accords!) is placed into a secret prison along with the 'bad' avengers without any form of trial and they are put there not by the UN, not by Interpol, not even by the Department of Justice, but by the US Secretary of State(!) personally(!!) and then interrogated by a civilian (!!!) Stark. I don't think Sokovia would be too pleased with Wanda being treated thusly by the US, do you?
The sad thing is, I only watched this movie and I could go on that much longer about the idiot plot, the plot holes, and the shabby, third-rate writing.


The Fun
Marisa Tomei: Back in the '90's RObert Downey was in a RomCom called Only You with Marisa Tomei - the two of them flirting on a couch was a nice shout-out to that.
Alfre Woodard: Downey also made a movie in the '90;s with Alfre where she played, essentially, his conscience. She sorta' does that in this film, too.
Comics: Too many, from the spidey signal to the birth of Giant Man!

Bottom Line
A deeply flawed movie that is still fun to watch.

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