Mediocre popcorn flick.

Rating: 7/10 (10 May 2016)

Captain America: Civil War was is a mediocre action flick which can not decide whether it should take a dark and gritty tone, or continue with the silly popcorn style. from the outset it starts to build up some seriousness with a death scene and asking questions about consequences about previous movies. but fails to build on this soon enough when the action starts. The destruction of previous movies are something which didn't go unnoticed and warranted the signing of the sokovia accords. This tries to establish the MCU as an universe where actions have consequences. at the same time no one seems to care that scarlet witch aided and abetted Ultron in the last film. Iron Man did not have to face any grave consequences from the government or the public for creating Ultron in the first place. These issues fly in the face of the realism that was tried to be created here.
things that were good:
Nicely choreographed action sequences and set pieces. good portrayal of new heroes such as spider-man and Black Panther.
things that were not so good:
Soundtracks were forgettable.
for a lot of cases, No reasons were offered to explain why the supporting heroes joined the teams they joined. Antman and Hawkeye randomly joins cap team while Spidy and Romanov randomly joins Iron Man. This felt like football team selection for the school yard.
The main fight scene between the superheroes felt unnecessary and forced. While they are fighting in the airport, which is very conveniently empty, the joking took away the seriousness. The hitting felt fake and inconsequential. It felt like a WWE wrestling match more than a life and death situation.
There are few inconsistencies in the plot as well:
Iron man is given a tough deadline to catch cap but he still has enough time to design a spider-man suit.
Main villain Zemo has enough resources to bomb UN but not enough resources to kill avengers while they are offgaurd? his plan depended completely on luck. What if cap failed to save Bucky?
What if the agent carter hadn't died at that exact moment and cap never met her niece?
What if she never helped cap to get his shield back? these things couldn't have been planned by zemo but cap getting his shield back and meeting him in that hydra site was critical to his plan. this is not explained properly
How did a single CCTV camera record Bucky killing the stark parents and cover so many angles in such details? enough details to see stark moms facial expressions? With a cctv camera in the 90s? why did hydra even have a camera at that exact spot? Bucky catching up the the Stark car could be 2 minutes before or 2 minutes after. in such case there would be no recordings.
What if Iron man team won the airfield match and arrested Cap and killed Bucky?
overall, It was good to watch for the fight scenes but lacked in immersive qualities.