OT - CA Civil War

I realize this thread, arguably more so than the AoS threads I recently posted probably belong more on the MCU board for their topic, but it's not strictly that I want to discuss the movie per se with just anyone, but rather I want to discuss it the misfits on this board; since I'm familiar with their opinions on other topics and am curious what they might have thought of this movie.



I'm honestly not a Star Wars fan.  I've definitely seen all of the Lucas SW movies at least once; the original trilogy a few times, I haven't really kept track, but I could just never get into them.  The irony is, when I found out my brother had never seen any of the Star Wars movies or Indiana Jones movies, I made it a point to get him to watch all of them, if only by virtue of understand a world of pop culture references he otherwise never understood.  I wasn't surprised that he liked Indiana Jones; we're both history/mythology nerds and while IJ isn't exactly a documentary, it makes fun use of the material - at least the odd numbered ones do...
I was a little surprised he liked Star Wars, especially considering he opted for the linear viewing by starting with Episode 1, rather than starting at where the franchise began with; and then it just snow balled.  He's definitely gone to see all of the new movies in the theatre the first week, if not the first day they're released; whereas I've only seen Rogue One out of all of the new movies that Disney has made.  Interestingly enough, I rather enjoyed it; I thought it worked very well and I always like a good retroactive story that fits into established lore and even addresses an erstwhile plot hole.


Nah, I'm usually pretty good paying attention to what's going on, even when I'm on the computer doing something else; and if I do happen to miss something, that's where I'll grab the remote and skip back to catch it.  That's probably another reason I don't go to the theatre often, because even with my singular focus on the movie, I'll still miss something, especially if my mind wanders, but I can't exactly rewind it then.
It's also the reason I tend to have the closed captioning on, as there's usually a split second delay in what's been said and what's written on the screen; that if I'm not positive of a piece of dialog I can usually look and see what they said - although I often get a kick out of the fact that the closed caption can regularly be wrong; and I'll feel bad for the people who are more dependent on the closed captioning to be accurate. 
More often than not, I'd just be bored as hell just sitting watching a movie or show and doing nothing else.  It's usually good indication though of the quality of whatever I'm watching if I do find myself paying closer attention to the TV; because that means the writing and acting is such that it's drawn me in, but those shows are few and far between.
Agreed.  I recently rewatched the first Christopher Reeve Superman movie and I was kind of blown away by how good it still was.  I had sort of developed this idea in the back of my mind that it had become dated and less relevant; I think in part as push back to the days of discussing Smallville on the IMDB board and so many people insisting the show in some way or another needing to align with how things were in the fucking movies and it drove me absolutely nuts - especially when, for good God damn reason, they went and killed Jonathan off.  It just emboldened all of those people, saying, "See! See!  Jonathan died, just like in the movie.  We told you it was going to happen!"
I was rather disappointed though when I subsequently watched Superman 2... I could have sworn I always liked that one more than the first, but I just don't think it holds up nearly as well.  Looking up the behind the scenes drama, part of which I already knew; and the disparity between the Donner approach and the Lester approach is striking.  
Interestingly enough, I came to find 3 isn't as bad as I would assume it was.  It's bad, but it has its moments.  If you took out Richard Pryor and reworked to remove the shtick and put Brainiac back in like the original script called for, it might have been pretty good.  Hell, Pryor may not have been to bad with the right writing; and maybe instead of being the pawn of the Not-Lex character and instead was an unwitting pawn of Brainaic, it might have worked.
4's premise was weak, but a better writer might have been able to salvage it and make the main antagonist work.


To be fair, I wouldn't classify Youtube channels like CinemaSins as "critics" per se; it's more like a reaction video or a humorous way of recapping content.  His "sins" are meant to be taken with a grain of salt and generally aren't legitimate grievances of the story; though there times where he vents about genuine frustrations with certain elements.

I'll admit, some of thoughts on the movie may be colored by what I think the characters behaviors should be, based on a broad generalized concept of my impressions of who the comic book characters are.  I've read far more DC comics than I have Marvel.  I've read a few Hulk TPB and a lot of the Ultimate Spider-man comics, but what I know about the likes of Cap or Iron Man or even Thor probably stems more from the movies than anything else; though I don't necessarily take the movies as gospel or the final word on the characters and have invariably looked up how certain things played out in the comics.  So I admit I may be wrong who the characters are meant to be, at least from the source material, but I'd still argue that the way movies have set things up, the movie characters don't strictly align with the comics nearly as much as other here are saying.

I find myself on the fence as to Cap's character and motivation; because i do get what people are saying about him bucking convention and disobeying orders, but there's something dissonant about the idea of Captain fucking America saying, "No, we don't need to be sanctioned by any government authority; we can just be our own private army comprised of super-humans."  My impression of him has always been that of the quintessential, ideal soldier serving the principals of the US; dedicated, loyal - he wouldn't blindly follow orders if they ran afoul of the core principals he had sworn to serve, but it would be in defiance of the person who had betrayed those principals or abused their position; and he would still respect and value the institution and the need for a chain of command.  And maybe that's not what Captain America has ever been, but it just seems weird to me if it isn't.
Likewise, Tony Stark/Iron Man seems like the polar opposite to Cap; where he does start out as the lone wolf and self-made hero and creates a one-man private army unto himself.  Tony became Iron Man and gave himself the authority that power gave him; and he only begrudgingly shared that with the US military (at least in the movies).  Otherwise he answered to no one and largely went unchecked and had no problem with that. He then parlays that into taking a more active role with forming and managing the Avengers after SHIELD was diminished and relegated to ABC primetime.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm all about playing against type and playing with established conventions.  I don't think it's impossible to get these two characters to champion their respective positions in this conflict, I just don't think they did a very good of creating that motivation.


No, not strictly so.  Just because they said it in the one film, doesn't mean that's the invention of that type of character of phrase.  Don't even get me started on the fucking Nolan Batman film....
It was a dull movie.  And by that, I mean, it fucking sucked; along with the two follow-ups.

The shirt or the blonde?  Deb doesn't strike me as someone who'd share, but I've been wrong before...