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Forums - Movies & TV - So, Civil War is a beautiful mess (spoilers)

 

DakonBlackblade said:
Angelus said:

This is sadly true, and not for the reasons one would think. A well portrait Spiderman, which this is, SHOULD be a great asset to a Civil War movie, adding an element of lightheartedness and comedy in what is overall a very serious, and often dark storyline. Problem is, the whole movie here is pretty much lighthearted, and full of jokes, so it turns Spiderman into just another number to add to their hero clash. That said, it's still a fun geek moment to see him on screen with the other avengers, so I can't complain about his presence.

They do make imo some big mistakes in the way they represent his (hell, all the heroes) powers. You can't show the Winter Soldier as a credible foe to Captain America for an entire movie in the last go around, then in Civil War have Spiderman treat Bucky like a toy (stopping his super arm without any effort whatsoever), and then make Cap look like he can dispatch Spidey with no effort. And there's many examples of these kinds of issues throughout the movie. The airport fight, while fun to watch, is equally acting because they clearly put it together thinking more about how the moment to moment action would look, rather than making sure it's coherent with the characters the way they've established them. And this is symptomatic of pretty much the whole of their entire lives at this point. Make sure it looks good, make sure it's funny, and remind everyone that more is on the way soon.

Basically, I agree with your OP, though I don't judge it quite as harshly as you. I found it to be an entertaining movie, but also came away annoyed and wishing marvel would do things differently.

The movie has a much darker tone than any other Marvel movie, seriously where are all these jokes ppl talk about. Theres basicaly Spidy being Spidy, Ant-man being Ant-man and Falcon being Falcon,  the Volkswagen beetle scene and basicaly nothing else. Spidy was recruited because Stark needed someone he knew was powerfull enought to handle himself, would the movie work without him ? Ye sure it would. But why keep him out when they got the rights for the character back after all this time. Seing Cap almost killing Stark was so lighthearted, Rodey getting cripled was very light as well, or Wanda blowing 12 people to death due to lack of proper controll over her powers then blaming herself the entire movie while half the team and the ppl of the world all judged her also super light, and the lightest of all is having a villain who is grieving because his whole familly was murdered and so he spends quite a bit of time hearing a recorded voice message from his wife to him.

Non brainwashed version of Buky is way less powerfull than his brainwashed version, this is made very clear on the trilogy, in this movie is absurdly clear. When Zemo braiwashes Bucky he takes down everyone that tries getting in his way, when he is not brainwashed he pretty much looses every 1x1 he gets himself into.

Dude....everyone in the theatre was laughing like every 5 minutes. It was really annoying actually cus I often couldn't hear the next line of dialog. Don't tell me this wasn't a funny, lighthearted movie. Yes, there were moments of seriousness sprinkled in, but they're few and far between, and lost impact, because they try so hard to make you laugh the majority of the time, that any sense of trepidation goes out the window.

Wanda killed some people. You don't see it. Just an explosion on the side of a building. She gets over it after Hawkeye walks in and tells her to get off her ass (that's like literally almost all he said).

Rodey gets crippled.....because they just stare at him falling for 10 seconds.....and Tony forgets his suits can break the sound barrier (seriously did all his toys get worse after iron man 1?) Whatever it's cool, we're quickly told he's basically fine, and at the end we see Tony is gonna fix him up, which was predictable.

I'll give you the fight at the end, which was by far the best part of the movie. Sadly, the movie then closes with a wink to everyone hunting that Tony and Cap will be buddies again real soon, and they don't even have the guts to leave anyone in jail for a minute. So in conclusion, the movie is called Civil War.....and.....nobody dies, nobody ends the movie in captivity, nobodies life gets ruined, and everyone is likely to meet up for drinks soon to laugh about how silly this all was. Bygones and all.

 

It's a fun movie. It's also a terrible Civil War movie.

 

Edit: As for what you said about brainwashed Bucky being stronger, I don't know if that's supposed to be the case of not, but Black Panther basically schools him even without his suit, and everyone else he fights at that point wouldn't stand a chance against him brainwashed or not. Tony only had a glove, Black Widow isn't nearly strong enough to match him, and Cap isn't around until he catches the chopper. So I don't buy that brainwashing makes him stronger, more ruthless of course, but not stronger.



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Jpcc86 said:
If the editing and pacing in a movie as easy to follow as this one represented an issue to you I can only imagine BvS was utter torture.

BvS was a damn torture for me. They ruined some of my favorite characters and the plot was a trainwreck. I don't want to talk about it. Post-traumatic disorder.



d21lewis said:
bigtakilla said:

I personally thought The Dark Knight Rises was TERRIBLE! But that's just me.

It was. I could write an essay on how bad DKR was. 

Well obviously I'll always choose DR over DKR, but I didn't think it was HORRIBLE. Maybe just a more significant plot? Perhaps it was a nuclear weapon(instead of a simple bomb).

 

The only superhero movie that I could not even handle to watch was Fantastic Four. Even the action scenes were horrible 



 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

12/22/2016- Made a bet with Ganoncrotch that the first 6 months of 2017 will be worse than 2016. A poll will be made to determine the winner. Loser has to take a picture of them imitating their profile picture.

TDKR was the low point in an otherwise stellar trilogy. It wasn't terrible, but you could tell the Nolans wanted closure and it felt a bit rushed. Recall they didn't want to write a third movie after Ledger died.



The media are too much generous with Marvel movies, this movie is thé worst of thé 3 with BvS and X Men.

 

 

X M'en ( thanks to thé introduction and thé quick scènes )>  BvS ( thé best réalisation quality and thé most  ambitious, though bad cut ) > Civil War ( simple , no surprises, always the same thing, 0 depth )



Predictions for end of 2014 HW sales:

 PS4: 17m   XB1: 10m    WiiU: 10m   Vita: 10m

 

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DakonBlackblade said:

The story is solid, the pacing is awesome (seriously the plot moves along on every scene and there is action every 10 minutes, how can anyone dislike this pacing ?) and everything is tied together nicely. 9/10.

Also Zemos plan is pretty much perfect, specialy because its not realy a plan, he uncover stuff and act upon what he finds out and what is going on in the world, reacting and manipulating the events to make sure the Avengers will go at each others throat. He never had a masterplan to be the evil evil dude whod conquer the world, he is a special agent thats finding dirt on the Avengers and using it to stear up discord.

Lawlight said:
I have some questions, if anyone can help me understand it'll be appreciated:

- How did Zemo frame Winter Soldier?

- How did Cap know where WS was hiding?

- What was Zemo's plan?

- How strong is Cap in this movie? He's stronger than Iron Man and Spider-Man.

 

- He used some tech to mimic his appearence, they comment on this on the movie. He conviniently leaves it together with the real analyst body so that IM would pick on his trail.

- Sharon Carter told him, I mean thats super obvious. She goes "OK we have intel, most of it is noise, but this one piece here seens legit".

- To make the Avengers go at each other, other than that he adapts to what is happening and what he is finding out as he goes along and manipulate the outcomes, quite brilliantly. The only problem his plan realy have is that IM, Cap and bucky arrive at Syberia at the same time, he had no way of knowing that would play out exactly like that. But I don't think itdve mattered, hed shown the video to IM anyway, he was sure he was going to go there, and see what that'd do to him.

-Strong, he has been way stronger than his comic book counterpart from the begining,  his strength here is consistent with the universe. Spidy never had a chance tough, its a 15 years Spidy with no experience x a real veteran whos a master of pretty much every martial art, Spidy couldve out manouvered him and outsmarted him if he was more experience, but 1v1 Cap would always have the uperhand. And on a hand to hand fight Cap could take IM anyday.

Except for that one time in the Civil War comic where Iron Man told Cap that he's "recorded every punch you've ever thrown. I know what you're going to do before you do it." And proceeded to beat the holy fuck out of Captain America with his bare, armored hands.

It's the same thing Prometheus did to Batman (Batman said "Well. That was humbling.") so technically it's cheating but still....



Lawlight said:
spurgeonryan said:
What did you enjoy more? Cap or bat.

BvS. Both have much of the same problem but BvS, I felt, had better action and the action sequences were filmed better. I also enjoyed it more because it was "different" compared to CW which was more of the same. And time flew by for BvS compared to CW.

I think both had too many characters and some pointless scenes.

My wife asked me, when we left the theatre "Did you check the reviews prior to us seeing this movie?" and I said "yes, everyone loves it" because she felt it was even worse than I think it (she fell asleep so that says a lot).

What action scene in Batman v Superman came anywhere close to the Airport scene in Civil War?  I mean, I can only think of a few action scenes in that entire slog of a movie and most of them were pretty dumb.  The final fight scene with the trinity vs Doomsday had some cool images but was interspersed with stupid military stuff and stupid characters.  The early stuff was kind of cool with the memories of the Man of Steel fights.  The only fight or action scene I thought was well handled was Batman's siege on Martha Kent's captors.  That scene was visceral and powerful and effective.  

But even the best action scene in that film didn't come close to the fourth or fifth best action sequence in Civil War.  

1 - The Airport scene, Hero vs Hero
2 - The african Chase, pursuing the Winter Soldier
3 - The emotional final fight, 2 on 1
4 - The Brainwashed escape
5 - The opening siege on Crossbones

All of these scenes were better, had more emotion, and more thrills than the final fight or the batman siege on the captors.  Did I miss an entire movie's worth of action sequences?  because I was bored to tears throughout Batman  v Superman, especially after the superpowered ballet that was the climax to Man of Steel (which, all plot points aside, I actually quite liked).  



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PS4, PS3, PS2, PS1, WiiU, Wii, GCN, N64 SNES, XBO, 360

3DS, DS, GBA, Vita, PSP, Android

Okie_Loki said:
Runa216 said:

I wouldn't take Lawlight's opinion as gospel, he's been bashing the movie as trash for over a month now and..he apparently has only just seen it now?  We all know what the word for that is. 

Perhaps so, but this is no different than all of the people who bashed (and continue to bash) BvS before it even came out and afterwards. Plenty of people didn't see BvS and would go on the Internet and trash the entire plot, etc. 

At least it appears LL actually saw this movie. 

I was hesitant but cautiously optimistic about Batman v Superman before it came out.  The trailers looked bad, I hated that the huge act 3 twist was spoiled, and it felt like 90% of the plot was revealed in the trailers.  IT still sounded like it could have been good, with the lone thing I was excited for being Batman (Ben Affleck is an amazing actor and director now, better reco'nize!).  

Many of my fears about the film, pre-release, were alleviated by reminders of prior surprises in superhero movies. 

Lex Luthor's casting of Jesse Eisenberg sounded bad, but so did Heath Ledger as Joker, and look how that turned out.
People hated Batfleck, but from day one I was on board because of his recent works both in front of and behind the camera
Zack Snyder - for all his hatred - has produced some gems if he has the right writers.  Pretty bad Man of Steel, but great Watchmen. 
The Trailers giving everything away screamed desperation but I've been surprised by emotional depth in other effects heavy films

Before Batman v Superman's release, I was actually excited to see it.  IT wasn't until after I saw it in opening weekend that I realized how atrociously bad it was.  Just not a good film. 

On the flip side, leading into Civil War I was kind of hesitant.  It didn't seem like it was going to be that good and I didn't actually like the 'civil war' storyline in the comics, the advertising didn't scream 'must see', and after Batman v Superman's catastrophic blech response, I was really anxious.  Add to that the back-stage politics of getting Spider-Man in the movie, and I was worried about this being another example of too much world building without enough substance. 

I got the opposite.  It blew me away, people liked it, I loved it, people are ga-ga over Civil War.  IT was a better film.  I didn't decree it as such until I saw both but every metric points towards this being the case.  Pre-release hype and anti-hype be damned. 



My Console Library:

PS5, Switch, XSX

PS4, PS3, PS2, PS1, WiiU, Wii, GCN, N64 SNES, XBO, 360

3DS, DS, GBA, Vita, PSP, Android

Pacing was great with a gradual escalation between the two sides. Some of the best acting between myself and Evans in simple scenes like the olive branch



I am Iron Man

Angelus said:

 

This is sadly true, and not for the reasons one would think. A well portrait Spiderman, which this is, SHOULD be a great asset to a Civil War movie, adding an element of lightheartedness and comedy in what is overall a very serious, and often dark storyline. Problem is, the whole movie here is pretty much lighthearted, and full of jokes, so it turns Spiderman into just another number to add to their hero clash. That said, it's still a fun geek moment to see him on screen with the other avengers, so I can't complain about his presence.

They do make imo some big mistakes in the way they represent his (hell, all the heroes) powers. You can't show the Winter Soldier as a credible foe to Captain America for an entire movie in the last go around, then in Civil War have Spiderman treat Bucky like a toy (stopping his super arm without any effort whatsoever), and then make Cap look like he can dispatch Spidey with no effort. And there's many examples of these kinds of issues throughout the movie. The airport fight, while fun to watch, is equally frustrating because they clearly put it together thinking more about how the moment to moment action would look, rather than making sure it's coherent with the characters the way they've established them. And this is symptomatic of pretty much the whole of their entire movie universe at this point. Make sure it looks good, make sure it's funny, and remind everyone that more is on the way soon. Everything else is an afterthought.

Basically, I agree with your OP, though I don't judge it quite as harshly as you. I found it to be an entertaining movie, but also came away annoyed and wishing marvel would do things differently.

Pretty much this, I'd give the film 7/10 mainly for the entertainment factor but it has flaws laced with in it, my biggest gripe with the film was how insignificant both the villain and the whole storyline are at the end of it.