Its good but not great

Rating: 7/10 (13 May 2016)

This movie wanted to be something its not. It wanted to be a psychological movie, it wanted to explore some deep themes but it just sort of scratched the surface then half way through sort of says "well I'm bored of that let's go back to the original marvel family friendly formula". Psychological movies go over the head of kids and it was about the airport scene when it sort of realized this.
My biggest thought walking away from this movie was that marvel really dropped the ball with Pepper Potts.
You might ask why I refer to a character that is only a throw away mention in the movie. But it was starkly clear to me in this movie that marvel lacks strong female heroes. And Marvel had a female character they could have developed into a very strong female hero. Black Widow and Scarlet Witch have their good points but they are stuffed into support character roles. Pepper could have evolved into Rescue over the course of the now nearly 10 year run we have had with marvel and been tony's equal in a number of ways. Instead she became his mum. And then dropped out when the times got tough.
I think this movie could have taken a vastly different and better tone if Pepper had been part of this movie as Rescue, standing beside Tony and not letting his paranoia drive his motivations. And that is just such a let down to the movie. It really is just Tony Stark's paranoia on steroids driving this movie. I get he's supposed to be some what damaged by this point. However using this to drive what should have been a killer movie just seems ... lazy.
In saying that I did enjoy Civil War. It was reasonably paced. I like Black Panther. He was a great character and showed the most depth. Black Widow showed depth in being able to take both sides. However the other heroes were just sort of watered down to stereotypes in the end and became a bit one dimensional.
I felt this reminded me of Frozen ... it tried to please everyone and it tried to fit all the stereotypes into one movie and in doing so it missed the mark.
I give this movie a B-. A good effort but go away and polish it a bit more and you will get an A+.