An Uneven Avengers Escapade Masquerading as a Cap Film

Rating: 5/10 (6 May 2016)

I really bought into the hype surrounding this film and was hoping we'd all be in store for a masterpiece in the vein of 'The Winter Soldier'. What we get instead is a very convoluted, nonsensical, and unnecessary sequel with a bad guy (Zemo) who's about as scary as an elderly church-going granny. About the only enjoyable things about this film are watching Scarlet Witch in action and realizing that Tom Holland is the one Sipder-Man to rule them all. Holland seriously had some of the best dialogue and action scenes. Black Panther on the other hand gets blackballed in his introduction to the MCU. His place in the story basically just screams placeholder. In fact, Black Panther completely gets shafted in the closing credits...Spider-Man gets a thunderous crowd applause when the words "Spider- Man will Return" flash up on the screen. Black Panther gets no such closing credits. Another point of complaint would be just the pacing of the story and some of its elements. The action pieces of the film come in spurts, between long droning stretches of Cap and Iron Man waxing philosophical about who knows what. I actually found myself nodding off to sleep during these stretches of non action. Also a huge problem is the Winter Soldier's central placement in the film and his storyline. Marvel needs to make a firm decision about this character's direction in the MCU, because they throw out a lot of mixed signals to the viewer. At this point, the Winter Soldier is planned for many more films, but he's almost completely unlikable and pretty much somehow lost all his rad intimidation factor of when he was the heel of the last movie. If the audience is supposed to be full of sympathy for the Winter Soldier, Marvel is not stoking that fire in the right way at all. So in conclusion the main positive of this movie is Spider-Man. The negatives are many including character misuse and numerous story misfires. Stow your expectations away and just enjoy the very few simple pleasures this disappointing film delivers.