A REVIEW OF CAPTAIN AMERICA VS IRON MAN
It goes without saying that this is better than BvS, but then again that was a really low bar. Civil War is like a whole delicious cake, engineered and tested over and over again to perfection, so that every bite you take, is just really really tasty af. In comparison, BvS is like Zach Snyder took the first draft of his 10-year old self's fanfiction of a Batman-Superman story, and just ran with it. But I'm not here to make a comparison between a piece of turd and a nicely made cake.
If I had to compare it against something, I'd compare it to the single slice of cake that was Capt America - Winter Soldier. That was like a lean, tight piece of cake, that made you go "wow that's really good, can't wait for the next slice." Winter Soldier is still the best shit from the MCU hands down. Anyway, after Winter Soldier and the dismal Avengers 2, Marvel got really excited to try and please us again that they gave us the whole cake this time round - a whole cake filled with sugary goodness like the annoyingly perfect, and perfectly annoying Spidey, a really badass Black Panther, more Vision, more Ant-Man (literally), Capt's biceps in that helicopter scene, and just the right amount of feels in that last fight scene.
I feel like Civil War could've benefited from being made into a season of a TV show, that would've just slowed the fuck down, so we could digest each piece of the cake before stuffing our face with the next bit (I'm rly going for the cake metaphor here). What I did like though was that in this cake, Tony Stark just got really dark af. His eyes are so dead, I don't know if that's deliberate but he just can't keep his shit together so that when he snaps, it makes a whole lot of sense. There was some great character moments too - some laughing bits, like Vision trying to make some kind of Russian food, because robots trying to be chefs is always funny af. Martin Freeman with an American accent.
The fights are fun to watch, because THE FIGHT SCENES ARE PUZZLES - where superheroes use the right abilities to fight against other superheroes. Lots of hand to hand shit on display here again, as is wont of a Russo Bros superhero movie I guess.
The villain was decent, he seemed like a smart guy, if a bit bland in the face. Then again the other Marvel villains were low bars - incl. Ultron and Loki who just wanted to take over the world and shit. So a dude who actually tried some sneaky shit to get the superheroes to fight, and we see his work, is better than Lex Luthor who just said "I made all this happen, BELIEVE!"
Some weird crap I didn't like includes the hipster text design for the location title cards. It was really weird - if you haven't seen the movie yet, when you watch, you'll see what I mean. Some weird plot conveniences, like shit getting figured out way too quick, so that they can quickly get to the next act and major fight between superheroes. And also some heavy-handed writing like both Tony and Steve getting their "inspirations" and ideas that propel them forward in the story from other people they go and listen to. Or why Tony suddenly goes ape-shit at the end and starts fighting Capt. It's a weird gripe, but you know, as a writer, sometimes it really breaks it for me when I can see that shit from a mile away.
Really though, it's fine in the grand scheme of things, this is like a top 3? Winter Soldier is really the pinnacle, and then the first Iron Man. So this would be third, definitely.
I liked the movie, but I had this thought in the back of my mind the whole time "This was a great cake, but how do you top this cake? Do I even want any more cake after this cake? What's the point of eating this much cake? What do I get out of it?"
Captain America - Civil War is really the most comic book of the superhero movies - the melodrama of comic books, the random piecemeal reasons for superheros to get into fisticuffs - it's all on display here. I really enjoyed going on this ride, shit was cool looking, and I was happy to lean into it. But then just like comic books, after awhile, you ask what's the point of it all? Why am I reading about the fifty billionth time that Earth gets invaded? Why do superheroes always turn sides after awhile, or die, and then come back to life? Why is there never peace? When does it ever end? And then the superhero bubble bursts, and we go back to watching other movies and reading non-superhero shit.