So the critics like it, they really really like it.
Poor old Batman v Superman (RT Score 28%) is sitting in the corner sucking his thumb as Captain America does his victory jig and Iron Man shakes his buttocks in delight.
But at least BvS didn’t put me to sleep which is more than I can say for Captain America: Civil War. I spent the first hour of the movie fighting back the urge to take a nap and I almost never fall asleep while watching movies at the theater. Yet how are we to fathom this when the Grand Lodge has determined the vast superiority of Civil War (RT Score 94%)?
I think it’s fair to say that the only thing worse than a comics critic is a movie critic, at least as far as standards are concerned. At The New Republic, Will Leitch swoons over Joss Whedon and Jon Favreau as if they are demi-gods of celluloid, proclaiming them “terrific four-quadrant filmmakers.” In the very same breath, he suggests that Civil War can’t stand up to the two previous Avengers movies but is awesome nonetheless.
I’m sometimes seen as a harsh critic but saying that a movie is worse than Avengers: Age of Ultron is nothing short of farting pointblank into someone’s face. I cringe in horror whenever I think of Whedon’s farm house scene from Ultron especially when I remember how Whedon supposedly fought tooth and nail for its inclusion and considers it the epitome of his superhero aesthetic—in other words shallow, fannish, unnecessary, and dumb.
At the New Statesman, Ryan Gilbey gushes uncontrollably and announces that, “Civil War is the “antidote to Batman v Superman’s poison for comics fans.” Speaking as a comic fan, I think Marvel-Disney has done an exquisite job of poisoning comics and pissing on its grave but let’s not quibble over the finer points. Here’s the best part of Gilbey’s review:
“The plot is so satisfyingly worked out, and the foundations for the hostilities in the second half of the film so carefully prepared, that you want to take aside the makers of Batman v Superman (who thought it was motivation enough just to have one superhero mistakenly believe that the other was running amok) and say to them: See? This is how it’s done. It’s not so hard, is it?”
It helps also that there is nuance and colour here. The characters are multi-layered, crammed full of old allegiances and grudges and irritations. They have personalities. Remember those?”
I don’t know Mr. Gilbey, I agree that Batman v Superman isn’t made of the brainiest stuff (maybe it needs to be retained a year or two) but having two opposing superhero groups decide to wreak havoc across continents because Steve Rogers doesn’t want to sign a UN contract and just wants to protect his mass murdering pal (Bucky) does seem like rather poor motivation compared to seeing all your friends and colleagues killed by two superpowered Kryptonians.
And, no Mr. Gilbey, despite being the characters with the most lines in the movie, Captain America and Iron Man do not actually have “mutli-layered” personalities. They both speak in clichés, are one note cardboard caricatures, and barely have time to articulate a single serious idea; largely because they spend 50% of the movie beating people up, and a solid 25% of their waking hours cracking jokes while destroying public property.
But Gilbey is as nothing compared to the Uber Marvel fanboy, Justin Chang, writing in Variety:
“The shaming of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice will continue apace — or better still, be forgotten entirely — in the wake of Captain America: Civil War, a decisively superior hero-vs.-hero extravaganza that also ranks as the most mature and substantive picture to have yet emerged from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.”
Now I’m happy for Batman v Superman to be buried and forgotten as long as its tentacles reach out from the deepest nether regions and pulls every single Marvel movie down with it as well. What a wonderful world that would be. No more Superhero Movies as the Scarlet Witch once said. Chang continues:
“And the sides-taking showdown between Team Captain America and Team Iron Man, far from numbing the viewer with still more callous acts of destruction, is likely to leave you admiring its creativity.”
So let me see, would this lack of numbing callous destruction also include the part where the Avengers destroy parts of Lagos, a Berlin airport, and some unimportant city where the Winter Soldier is camping out? I guess it’s all less “numbing” because only Marvel superheroes ravage foreign lands with a smile. Chang is so clearly invested in these idiotic characters that it’s pure comedy to see him turn the joyless lives of Tony Stark and Steve Rogers into Ingmar Bergman Spandex hour. But he continues:
“In assembling this Marvel male weepie, scribes Markus and McFeely show a rare talent for spinning cliches into artful motifs: The pain of deep, irrecoverable loss recurs throughout the narrative, and for both Iron Man and Captain America, the bonds of friendship are shown to run deeper than any commitment to the greater good.”
In other words, Civil War is 3-Kleenex movie: one for when you feel the bile emerging from your stomach, the second for when you spit on the ground in disgust and have to clean up after yourself, and the third for when you finally fall unconscious and someone needs to wipe the dribble from mouth. But let’s talk about that “deep, irrecoverable loss” shall we?
The most affectionate moment between Tony Stark and his parents (the great motivator of the movie’s final fist fight) occurs near the start of the movie where the audience is abused with some godawful CGI which turns Robert Downey into some pasty refugee from Robert Zemeckis’ Beowulf. Seeing this in IMAX 3D did not help one bit. Tony then emotes to a lecture hall full of MIT students about his exquisite feelings of loss before handing out grant freebies to them all. Voila! Instant emotion and reason for knocking the crap out of Captain America. I guess when you’re shot up with the Marvel Super Critic serum, you don’t really need to see and hear the loss to feel the loss. You can just get it by telepathy, presumably from the rotting corpse of Walt Disney.
These are frightening people, folks. They want to convince us that the doggie doo in the apple pie is good for you. But there’s still some butter in the crust. I think it’s possible to see Civil War as a kind of Dr. Strangelove style satire without the bite; all hidden in plain sight with the umbral subtlety of a Dick Cheney.
The fact is, the protagonist of the show (Captain America for those not paying attention) encapsulates the true American Spirit of derring-do and humanitarian intervention. Chris Evans is dressed in primary colors unlike our bespectacled madman, Peter Sellers, but he’s a true psychopath of near Tom Cruise-ian Mission Impossible levels.
When someone tells Cap not to break things, he lets them know that he has to because it’s his Responsibility to Protect; he has to burn the village to save it. He has no interest in the judicial system since it’s run by military madmen just like himself. Like a true villain, his loyalty to Bucky overrides all moral and ethical responsibilities. Logic isn’t his strong suit, he just needs his freedom because his Democracy of One is indubitably best suited to the practice of ecstatic violence. The true heart of the movie is that Captain America wants to save a world that doesn’t need to be saved; a world that was never in any danger in the first place. The real hero of Civil War is Baron Zemo who has engineered a preposterous scheme to get Cap and Iron Man to fight each other and disassemble the Avengers (if they don’t kill each other first) so that the world will be saved from Marvel movies. He’s the Ozymandias of Civil War and, of course, he fails; doomed to watch reruns of Bambi in his jail cell for the rest of his days.
Even the Captain America of the comics turned himself in after a while and got himself killed, but this isn’t an option for the Steve Rogers of the movies since he’s probably all ready to do battle in Marvel’s upcoming Infinity War. Hopefully they’ll just kill him off when the Marvel movie universe starts tanking (just like the superhero pamphlets) some years down the road. Nothing lasts forever…I hope.
This is more or less what it looked like from the trailers. The idea that any movie starring Chris Evans could deserve the accolades this film has been getting…I’m skeptical.
The trailer is actually a pretty accurate reflection of the movie. It basically marks off almost every major scene in the film. And since so many people loved the trailer, I think lots of people will also enjoy the movie. I think it’s actually possible that the script for the movie is even worse than the Civil War comic (main series) which is really saying something. The action scenes help a bit but Marvel seems to have hired the same (cookie cutter) action choreographer for all their products. So even the main selling point (for me) is getting stale.
I didn’t understand the enthusiasm for Winter Soldier either…shrug.
Is Whiter Soldier the one that’s supposed to be flush with Snowden-esque significance? Yeah, meh. I can only suspect critics get so tired of having to defend negative reviews of movies hugely popular with the Reddit set that Stockholm syndrome sets in.
I finally got around to watching Age of Ultron this weekend. I was actually a bit shocked at how boring it was, and how marginalized any Whedon goodness (if there is Whedon goodness) was. All action, no motivation, no reason to care. I didn’t quite reach the point of actively cheering for the “heroes” to die, mainly because the cast is so charming, but I was close.
Nah, I think the critics giving high marks really believe what they write though that wouldn’t exclude Stockholm Syndrome. I think perhaps there’s a bit of selection bias; the Star Wars generation has become film critics and they like their entertainment to be meaningful in some vague fluffy way. Which explains the acclaim for Winter Soldier which I think had a drone metaphor (not Snowden?) and ended with lots of explosions. The meaning doesn’t actually have to make sense.
From what I recall in Winter Soldier the bad guys were data mining everybody and were going to use that data mining to kill all the super-powered people with long range weapons. Dr. Strange is mentioned. So it’s both Snowden (learning about Dr. Strange through data mining) and some sort of drone metaphor (bombing his home to take him out).
You’re not alone:
http://www.rowthree.com/2016/05/05/civil-war-what-is-it-good-for-absolutely-nothing/
Thanks for the link. I think it’s mostly the small blogs like this one and yours, and 3-4 bigger papers and sites. And I agree with your review that Civil War represents risk-free film making. The Marvel movie brand has a huge following – it’s an eerie mirror image of the comics world. Truly the McDonald’s of movies.
Damn, I actually really liked the movie, but won’t argue you make some valid points even if I overall disagree.
David, you seemed to like most of the fighting bits. I think I would have managed to ignore the plot more if I liked the fighting bits. But if you take away the main reason for watching the movie…
I ain’t gonna lie, I did love those fighting bits.
I haven’t seen the movie nor do I care too much about it, but I’ve got call “click bait” on this piece. It seems like a rant collection from fan sites. Comparing it to BVS? Check. Refering to RT score? Check. Critics who like it are idiots? Check. being derisive without grounding the film on what makes it so bad? Check. Lots of ideology passed as a film criticism? Check. Dedicating way too much text to something so shitty seems kind of banal or click bait. This same author usually writes about more interesting things, so I mind to comment.
Well, thank you for saying that I write about more interesting things…usually. But if you would only watch the movie, maybe you would understand. Maybe next week will be matter.
Comic book films don’t really interest me anymore (I don’t think I’ve seen one in the cinema since Dredd), and I suspect that if I saw this film I would have much the same response outlined here, but I’m not really comfortable with the elitist “other critics aren’t as good as me” angle you’ve gone for here.
Not sure why criticizing films is okay, but criticizing other critics isn’t…
Suat: “I think it’s fair to say that the only thing worse than a comics critic is a movie critic”
How true!
Saw this last night (I enjoyed the last Captain America, and at least I laughed in this one to see another Russo-related cameo from Community), and it is striking how little effort they made to make Captain America’s position even remotely justifiable. OF course the Avengers shouldn’t be accountable to international law because mumble mumble mumble.
I liked the Spider-Man bits okay; they’ve made him an appealing ensemble member at least.
What about the Ant Man bits? The product placement spots in the last Transformers made me laugh more (inside) than Civil War (esp. the Chinese milk one). Civil War isn’t particularly good but I’m sure it will be better than the latest X-Men (just based on the trailer).
Disappointing. Like everyone else ever, I like Paul Rudd. But I thought he was upstaged by the lines and overall personality they gave to Spider-Man. (I haven’t seen the Ant Man movie, or most of the other Marvel movies, for that matter, so maybe I would have appreciated Rudd more if I had)
I don’t like Paul Rudd.
“Not sure why criticizing films is okay, but criticizing other critics isn’t…”
There’s nothing wrong with criticising critics, but I expect the same amount of nuance and intellectual rigour that I would look for in any other critique. “Other critics suck because they don’t have the same opinions as me” is just not good enough.
That’s not what he says though. He talks about why Civil War is bad (weak thematically, indifferent performances, etc.) and then points out that other critics’ assessment is wrong and foolish.
I mean…he’s got significantly more detail than you have right? You’re paraphrase of his position is accompanied by no evidence; it’s just your feeling, basically.
This particular article is more of a “these critics suck because they think Civil War is a logical and artful film with considerable gravitas” thing. Just read the Justin Chang excerpt – he admits that the protagonists are sociopaths but feels we should commiserate with them. But as Noah likes to write, you don’t actually have to watch a movie or read an article to form an opinion. It makes the internet a more interesting place.
So, comments that are just insults will be removed, folks. Just so you know.
“But as Noah likes to write, you don’t actually have to watch a movie or read an article to form an opinion. It makes the internet a more interesting place.”
I’m not sure if that was aimed at me or Mr. Chang? Either way, I was just giving my impression of the review; sorry if it came across as an insult.
No, it was in reference to a drive by comment which has since been deleted by Noah.
Ah, fair enough.
On a complete side-note, I’m impressed to see you guys are willing to continue a discussion weeks after a review has been posted. Makes a nice change from the fire-and-forget approach to criticism I see elsewhere.
Right; sorry Saturn; I was just warning the guy who left the other comment not to try again; you’re comments weren’t insulting at all.