The rest of this rambling post is gonna be making notes for myself if no one else. So, if you haven't seen CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR yet, turn back now, for here there be *SPOILERS*!
THE GOOD/GREAT…
The wild kingdom of superheroes!
SPIDER-MAN! This incarnation is very much in line w/Bendis's Ultimate, which is really the logical play given the existing MCU. Superheroes are new, so Spider-Man should be, too. And he's still in high school, which will give us THAT whole scene to enjoy again. I enjoy high school/teeny drama if decently executed, or flipped, and I think I can trust the MCU to not waste our time. I had a smile on my face for most of the movie, but maybe slightly smilier when Tony meets Peter and when Spider-Man meets everyone. They're writing him really great, immediately likeable and thoughtful and pure of heart, y'know? I hope his solo stories get to be as powerful as ones in the first two Sam Raimi films. He's probably my ideal fave Marvel character.
BLACK PANTHER! Boseman sells the martial abilities, the nobility, and the wisdom. Granted, I'm coming at this with that already attributed to the character, but he is just so ready to wear all that, and well. Powerful, commanding, thoughtful (if still vengeful), and damn relentless. He wasn't quite set up as a match vs. Captain America—maybe more of Bucky's opponent?—but I think he is, in skills, power, and nobility.
FALCON! Love the intro of Redwing. And have to give him a lot of credit for playing Vizh against War Machine the way he did.
ANT-MAN! Loved seeing the application of Wacko (i.e. West Coast Avengers) Hank Pym's literal bag of tricks in this movie. Only wish that they'd used it more than once! And Giant-man! SO well realized on the big screen! I would've liked some sidebar exposition about his mass and strength and durability at that scale (will the "science" ever be consistent? =), cuz he took and dealt some serious punishment that he wouldn't have been able to stand at human scale.
Spidey has a nice choice remark on Cap's shield not obeying the laws of physics. I'll just take that as being applied to everything.
VISION! Learns that he can be distracted! By a telekinetic redhead. =)
What are Vizh's origins again? All JARVIS? Any Ultron? Any human engrams involved?
THE DRAMA!
When Cap and Bucky arrive at the Siberian Winter Soldier outpost and are then joined by Iron Man, I got confused. This looked like the setting that we see in the trailers where Cap and Bucky take on Tony, but here they are, truced up and ready to take on the five Soviet Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Any one of them could take down a country and disappear. Heh, that line landed with a bit of a thud for me. But dammit if this movie didn't do a damn good job of keeping me happy and in the moment like 90 percent of the time. I didn't put together the clues until right when Tony says, "I know this road…" And then it all clicked. So weird how the drama of it vibes for me with classic comic book lore, as if it's a comic booky thing, and not just a dramatic, narrative turn. I guess it's just where I come from, all of the comics reading and plotting I've absorbed over the years.
It does remind me of SOMEthing, tho… A little bit of Batman/Bruce Wayne, but something else. Something Greek? Maybe structurally Oedipal? Shakespearean? Dammit, I can't put my finger on it…
Still, a great turn and even if I do/did feel the writing is unfair to Tony Stark, it is consistently so. That piece of info, that secret revealed, is just the thing to get us from point A—Cap and Bucky and Tony ready to save the world—to point B—Tony needing to avenge his parents and Cap needing to defend his best friend.
THE CONFLICTED/CONFLICTING…
Turning Baron Zemo into this Zemo. I like this character's origin/back story, but it seems almost a waste/mismatch to make him a Zemo. I guess there's kind of a correlation with the Zemo of THUNDERBOLTS, who at least for a time seems driven by righteous or right-seeking motives. I'm afraid I didn't follow that plot thread consistently or to an end. Yeah, I think I might've been happier if this had been a completely new name, unconnected to familiar Marvel Comics baddies. A Zemo with no history vs. Cap, no ties to Hydra or Nazi Germany, just doesn't seem like a Zemo. I mean, he should be engaged in some kind of bet w/Zola, trying to one-up each other in ruining Cap's life.
He does finish strong, tho. Taunting the UN joint task force head, John Watson, with the notion that his machinations did NOT fail. He broke the Avengers. Now, we've got Tony's legit, daylight (still UN-sanctioned?) Avengers team, and Cap's shadow, off the radar, independent, secret Avengers team, that has a friend in Wakanda. It's interesting that cinematic CIVIL WAR ends with the adjusted status quo that the comic book CIVIL WAR series maintained for most of its year-long run.
Crossbones. Although he went out with meta-purpose, it seems a shame to cut down such a capable Hydra field leader already. In the comics, he's a thorn in Cap's side for a good long time, brutal and smart and a lieutenant of the Red Skull.
Scarlet Witch's powers. She describes her abilities as "moving things with her mind," so, telekinetic. But what does she do to Vision? It seems to me that she manipulates his own density-control abilities against his will. Does she have Phoenix-level control over matter? Does she "see" more than just matter? Is she manipulating the flow of electrons in Vision to manipulate his systems? Or is she manipulating probability? Hrm… Is it similar to the comic book Scarlet Witch's powers in that it's been described as one thing for a long time, but is then revealed to be something completely different? In the comics, it was described as chaos-magic, but Strange at some point says, nope, and with other concludes that it is reality warping, and not magic. Perhaps it's magic and she's instinctively limited it to telekinesis and every once in a while reaches in a different way and accomplishes not-quite-telekinetic feats. I always liked the idea of probability-altering, shifting the odds so that something very unlikely actually happens.
AM I MISREMEMBERING…?
Wasn't Cap outfitted w/some kind of energy tether that connects one (both) of his gauntlets to his shield (and back)? I forget if it was WINTER SOLIDER or AGE OF ULTRON, but when activated, it behaved like magnetic attraction. But y'know, that wouldn't be all that accurate or smart. Is vibranium magnetic? Maybe there's some iron/steel in the alloy of Cap's shield (is that what it is—an alloy?), but even so, you'd get that powerful an electromagnet attracting silverware through the walls, right? I think it's gotta be something different. Would be a neat trick if it affected ANY vibranium.
Wait, so…
Cap left his shield with Iron Man. Did we see where it ends up? Somewhere at the Avengers compound? Can the Black Panther hook him up w/a new one? Perhaps Coulson will reach out somehow and offer him a version of Fitz's shield? Altho that doesn't help in the distance weapon department.
That's all I've got just now. Gonna see it again, so probably more gushing soon-ish. =)
Keep on keepin' on~
No comments:
Post a Comment