Captain America: Civil WTF???

Okay, so this Christmas I got a whole heap of dvd’s. I love movies. I especially love superhero movies – but they keep messing them up. They just can’t seem to make a decent follow-up to most of the superhero movies I loved.

Let’s talk about THE AVENGERS. That’s a great movie. I’m having a bad day or sick with a cold and I want to watch a movie – odds are I might pick up the Avengers and watch it. Again. But AVENGERS: THE AGE OF ULTRON left me wanting a couple of hours of my existence back.

Same thing with IRON MAN. The first flick was brilliant. The second and third flicks were about as entertaining as projectile vomit.

CAPTAIN AMERICA? Well, while I know a whole lot of folks have sung the praises of THE WINTER SOLDIER (Captain America 2) – it left me feeling like I had eaten an entire bucket of unsalted, unbuttered three day old popcorn.

Turns out that CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR is no exception to the rule.

I know.

I should have posted a spoiler alert. You can skip the rest of my movie review if you want to. Just by reading that sentence “Turns out that CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR is no exception to the rule.” you can already guess what I thought of the flick.

It sucked.

Except it didn’t – for just a tiny little while.

Let me tell it to you. Humor the old fart, would you?

Let’s start with the title, shall we?

First off, the Civil War (at least in America) took about four years to resolve itself. I mean, there was Fort Sumter and then throw in the Monitor and the Merrimac, Antieatam, the Emancipation Proclamation, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg – and a whole bunch of other battles I can’t remember – and we’re still arguing over the flag on the top of the Dukes of Hazzard’s Dodge Charger.

Wait.

You mean that the movie wasn’t about THAT Civil War?

Oh yeah.

I forgot.

Well, secondly, the actual Marvel Universe Civil War saga went on for about a couple of dozen graphic novels worth of material involving damn near every single superhero in the whole entire Marvel Universe.

I haven’t read any of it, you understand. When a storyline runs that long it tends to be garbled and DEFINITELY out of my wallet-range.

Yup, I’m a cheapskate. And I’m broke. That’s a bad combination, but there it is just the same.

So the filmmaker who decides to try and cram all of that into one single two and a half hour movie has REALLY got their work cut out for them.

Well, the folks who made this movie didn’t let that stop them. They crammed about two hours worth of hissy-fits, pointless dialogue, long meaningful glances and stunned looks into a long and pointless movie.

First off, they forgot the villain.

I mean, I read some of the earlier Captain America comic books and I remember Baron Zemo looking something like this.

If I recollect correctly, he was a Nazi mad genius who accidentally got his favorite red toque super-glued over his face in a kind of a sudden-death-reverse-wedgie maneuver. I figure he was the sad victim of a ruthless high school hazing incident.

Actually, he was the dude responsible for the death of Bucky Barnes, back when Bucky looked like this.

Well, probably because it’s become politically incorrect to use mad genius Nazi dudes in movies these days they decided to use some dude who looked like a high school nerd-gone-bad.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH MAD GENIUS NAZIS, ANYWAY???

So then we have the start up – about an hour of folks talking back and forth and a whole lot of intense arguing and then there’s General Thunderbolt Ross chewing up the scenery and wondering where in the heck the Hulk is and then all of a sudden Iron Man and Captain America throw a simultaneous hissy fit and send each other nasty tweets and blocking each other’s Facebook accounts.

Then there is about fifteen solid minutes of superhero entertainment when Captain America pulls together his version of the Avengers (Hawkeye, Sharon Carter, Falcon, the Ant Man and Scarlet Witch) and Iron Man pulls together HIS version (War Machine, Black Widow, Black Panther, Vision and Spider Man) into an absolutely kickass superhero versus superhero experience.

And I’m on the couch going “YEAH! DUDE! THIS IS WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT! SPIDERMAN! ANT MAN! GIANT MAN!”

And then there’s an hour long stretch of more boring back story and a blurry and poorly shot scrap and then Captain America and Iron Man kiss and make up.

That’s right. A two and one half hour episode of Big Brother – with about fifteen minutes of kickass WWF (back before the World Wildlife Federation sued the “F” out of the WWF) action.

I know.

If you do the math you’ll come up with one hour in the beginning, one fifteen minute kickass airport fight scene, and one more hour of muddied-up carnage.

The other fifteen minutes is the credits.

And yes, there is an Easter Egg credit surprise scene – two of them actually, that don’t give you much more than a hint that the next two Marvel movies are Black Panther and Spiderman.

(And who the hell thought that Marissa Tomei would make a good Aunt May? What, did she fall into a time vortex or something?)

That’s it.

That’s all that I’ve got for you.

Okay, so I will watch this movie again – but I’ll most likely skip to the scene list and just pull up the Airport fight scene and skip the other two hours and fifteen minutes.

Seriously.

I’m not kidding.

Sometime today I think I’ll watch Deadpool and see what all the excitement was about!

yours in storytelling,

Steve Vernon