A fictional fantasy easy to swallow

Rating: 7/10 (8 January 2017)

I always check a page of previous comments, mainly to verify I'm on the right webpage but also to verify I watched the same movie and possibly to purr at shared opinions. This time I was very surprised at the vehemence of the angry dislike and scorn of most commenters to the latest Marvel offering, because as a non-purist it was basically what I expected: fantastic in the expected sense, not great as expected but I quite enjoyed it, as I'd hoped.
There's a rift in the lute betwixt Iron Man and Captain America and a spat develops when the Avengers are told by a mere 117 governments they must be officially registered to be allowed to continue saving the Earth. Iron Man and his motley crew side with the UN, the latter with his team side with Good. For a commercial work of fantasy it works. If all the Avengers had appeared in a scene singing and dancing in top hats and suspenders I would have accepted it in the same way we have to accept scenes like Bucky stopping and mounting a motorbike going by at speed one-handed and riding it away, or America mega-leaping from a building to the edge of another and continue running with no damage. Thumping whilst flying is routine and as for stopping a helicopter in mid-flight with your bare hands, well that kind of thing happens every day! I do have a minor problem with the chances of a traffic camera being nicely on hand in 1991 to record Stark's parents' brutal murders, the videotape surviving, and being suddenly available to the understandably outraged Tony 25 years later - in front of the murderer. But not much. You can appreciate that an appearance by Hulk would've made for a rather one-sided battle, but I admit I'm puzzled why Thor was excluded. The plot and acting is suitably unbelievable, the many action scenes are so superbly cartoon as to make Jason Bourne look a doddering old fool. My only worry is that it can't be long before the MCU, like the books, disappears up its own fiendishly incoherent plot vortex. Expect no ending, for there no ending in this world.
This franchise is financed by hard headed business people expecting only a profit but made by creative people who appreciate what they're doing as well. And in the main it'll be watched by people already looking forward to the next satisfactory Marvel time-filler probably including the real D. Trump too I expect.