Good, not Great

Rating: 7/10 (12 May 2016)

Reviews are in the eye of the beholder and are so subjective, they are only really useful if you share similar interests. So with that already said, I am an avid Comic book fan. For the most part, have enjoyed the MCU. Loved Avengers, Thor, Winter Soildier. I like what they are doing on TV. I lean towards the DC characters but that will no way influence this review. Civil War, the graphic novel series, was one of my favourite comic book arcs. An early worry of mine, was that by using that name, it was creating a rod for its own back. The issues in the comic book arc could not be an issue in the MCU. There are no real secret identities – the emotional themes and pertinent questions could not be asked. While that fear does manifest itself, its not really the problem I thought it would be. My main issue with Civil War is that it really doesn't make sense. The stakes never seem that high. Even the opening scene which kicks off the whole Accords doesn't really have the fallout to deserve such a reaction. The scene from the trailers, running through the Avengers collateral damage is even worse (New York – you know, when you repelled an Alien Invasion, Washington – when you stopped Hydra killing millions of innocent people). The only one that really makes sense is Sokovia, which makes it even more of a hypocrisy to put the person mainly responsible for that in charge of the UN controlled Avengers. Having said that, IM is one of the things that actually works. Perhaps too much. I came out thinking that he was actually the one that was right all along and it was Cap that was completely unreasonable. Cap's reasoning for not signing the Accords starts off weak, then just gets weaker. Its also a complete reverse of what has been happening in the MCU up to now. There are some real left-field choices in the film. The choosing of teams reminded me of a sports day. There is no real reason for IM to pick Spider-man and plunge a 14 year old boy into a fight against Super- powered adversaries. There's also no point for Spider-man to agree. Apart from launching his own movie of course. That whole recruitment section seemed forced and totally out of sync. Likewise Hawkeye and Ant-man. What's the motivation for these two? Why would Ant-man risk everything for Cap? It makes no sense. And what's happened since Age of Ultron that means Vision doesn't know what the mind stone is? Or how to use it. As I'm pretty sure he shot Ultron with it. There's so much more that doesn't make sense but that's not to say it's not a good movie. There are some outstanding action scenes and its well directed. Black Panther works and is a good introduction. It just doesn't feel like its own film, it feels like a filler film, an episode. It's no Winter Soldier, its more Age of Ultron. Enjoyable, but expected a whole lot more.