Canon-Strike VI: Marvel Cinematic Universe

[CMcK]

Movie 12 - Ant Man


Does Ant-Man play a larger role in the MCU?

I will let you know in a couple of weeks.

[QualityChimp]

Does Ant-Man play a larger role in the MCU?

I like the idea that the suggestion of Ant-Man winning Endgame by violating Thanos got so much traction that the Russo Brothers had to address it...

[prinnysquad]

Pocket comments until this kid gives me more time to post:

Iron Man - a great film. Still a good watch. I always take disproportionate satisfaction in the scene where he lands in the town and enacts vengeance on the warlord and his thugs. Downey is perfect in the role. He nails the tone throughout.

Hulk - Norton is really good in the role, and it’s a bit of a shame that he bailed. It’s better the more you watch it, probably because it feels like the part of a bigger universe. I like the way it goes straight into the story, cutting out origin bumph. It’s pretty low down my list, though.

Iron Man 2 - I still don’t know how much I like it. There’s some really good stuff in this, but there’s something off about it too. Some of the bits come across like Robocop. I’ll watch it if it’s on but I rarely find myself reaching for the dvd.

Thor - surprisingly great. I watched it early on and was surprised by how much I liked it. Asgard is a beautiful creation, but Hemsworth is a revelation in the role. He gets the fish out of water comedy bang on, but also convinces as a powerful deity who needs to learn humility.

Captain America - I liked it when I first saw it. The tech to handle the transition of Rogers is brilliant, and as a character he’s totally believable. Like many, I sneered at this jingoistic nonsense. The name, however, is irrelevant. He could be Captain Anywhere. He’s a moral and righteous person who ‘doesn’t like bullies’ and I think most people can empathise with that. The setting is exquisitely done, and the action sequences very satisfying. Amazingly, this gets better on repeat viewings.

The Avengers - the film that made me sit up and take notice. So much is top rank. The comedy works. The way the characters interact is amusing, yet warming. The action is pretty astonishing. The battle of NY is still a high point of the series. Almost perfect.

[Cassius_Smoke]

I like the antman films, but I never really got the concept. It looks a bit silly when he's tiny and punching people with seamingly the same force as captain America. I don't understand.

[prinnysquad]

That was explained in the first one, but I can’t remember how. Something about retaining the same force despite the reduction in size, because the Pym Particles should shift his matter into a different dimension while retaining the same density.

Comic book twaddle, basically.

[Neon Ignition]

Movie 13 - Captain America: Civil War
And now we enter the third and currently closing phase of the MCU. The third Captain America put aside any notions of being a typically Cap focused adventure and instead had the character be the vehicle by which the viewer followed character developments for the Winter Soldier and Iron Man. Mixing in a lot of the Avengers characters the film was a showcase for how large the casting had become and how the characters could cross pollinate each others entries.



As the march to setting up Infinity War began, what did Civil War bring to the canon?

[Dogg Thang]

I know it's a popular one but, for me, Civil War doesn't deliver. It doesn't deliver as a Captain America sequel and it doesn't deliver as an Avengers sequel either, leaving it in a weird limbo. My first issue with the movie is that I don't buy the setup at all. It doesn't work for me. Stark is all over the place and his motivations don't ring true following Ultron in which he pretty much starts at the same point as a character and yet keeps on making the same mistakes. So what isn't recognised is that, out of all of them, it's Stark who needs to be reigned in... but he has shown a complete inability to let this happen in every other movie so his turnaround here feels out of character and just plain convenient. While also being utterly inconsistent because he later breaks all the rules he will fight his own friends to subscribe to. It makes no sense. The words don't make sense and the actions don't match the words. And it's the same for Black Widow and many others. Captain America is one of the only characters of the bunch whose actions make some sense.

So I don't buy the setup and that's pretty critical.

To make matters worse, I don't feel the Russos bought the setup either. The result of that is that they try to pile reasons upon reasons for them to fight (accords, Winter Soldier, parents) and then can't justify the characters committing to them because they don't believe the reasons themselves. The characters ALL hold back during the big fight because they really shouldn't be fighting. The one injury in the whole thing is presented as a total accident in a fight where they destroy an airport. Nobody in the scripting or directing truly bought into the concept, in my humble opinion.

And each rounding up their own little army for this fight that nobody buys into? That's a real stretch.

The one reason of all that Iron Man would fight Cap is held back all the way to the end, which is a really strange choice given how much weight it could have had. At that point in the movie, it is very, very clear to us and Stark and everyone else that, with regards to everything else that happened up to that point in the movie, Cap was right and Stark was wrong which again muddies the motivations and makes the fights up to there even more pointless. The movie just doesn't make a huge amount of sense.

There are some great sequences but even those don't always fully hold up. Take the airport fight for example. On your next rewatch ask yourself this: where is Vision? He's there. He's there the whole time but vanishes for most of the fight because he is the one powerful enough to end it quickly. And so the Russos just sort of ignore him for most of that fight.

Civil War feels like a wasted opportunity. Even more so in conjunction with Ultron because both movies share some of the same beats, doubling over on each other but neither really using the other well. There could have been a real build up to this one but it feels like the result just didn't make it. It's Avengers: Little Playground Skirmish rather than Civil War.

And on rewatch, the thing that I think I miss most is that the Avengers stuff distracts from giving us a good closing movie to two great Captain America movies.

[QualityChimp]

Good words, DT.

It's a film full of spectacle and drama, but it's undermined by the weak catalyst for the events.

At the start, Scarlet Witch accidentally kills some Wakandan humanitarian workers when she uses telekinesis to throw a bomb in the air and it damages a building.
She throws the thing in the air to stop it exploding in a busy marketplace full of people.
I've just seen Ultron, which featured Hulk and Hulkbuster Iron Man demolishing buildings with their fight, so how is that any better?

In the comics, (I know I'm repeating myself) a team of z-list heroes want to make a name for themselves by filming them fighting some supervillians hiding out in a town suburb. One of the villains is more powerful than they thought and sets off an explosion, decimating the town and killing more than 600 people, including children.

That's a much more convincing argument for starting the Superhero Registration Act, but that's because there are so many of them in the comics. It doesn't work in the films.

Like I said earlier on, I'm a bit tired of them fighting each other all the time.
It's like there are no supervillains to fight, so they just squabble.

[Dogg Thang]

At the start, Scarlet Witch accidentally kills some Wakandan humanitarian workers when she uses telekinesis to throw a bomb in the air and it damages a building.
She throws the thing in the air to stop it exploding in a busy marketplace full of people.
I've just seen Ultron, which featured Hulk and Hulkbuster Iron Man demolishing buildings with their fight, so how is that any better?.

Yep, this is exactly it. We've seen them take care every step of the way... at least when they are fighting an enemy. What wasn't even brought up once in Civil War is that the enemy in Ultron was created by Stark. That in itself was a far, far greater reason for people (Stark) to be reigned in rather than what actually happened in Civil War.

[QualityChimp]

In Ultron, he even has a speech to Banner about he can't be arsed telling the others why he's going to build Ultron without asking anyone else:
"We don't have time for a city hall debate. I don't want to hear the "man was not meant to meddle" medley."

Then in Civil War, he's well up for reporting to Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross.
(I'd love to see him as Red Hulk!)

I really like the Comics Iron Man, he seems much less of a douche.
I really enjoyed the run of comics with him in, including The Mighty Avengers, Secret War, Dark Avengers, World War Hulk and the Invincible Iron Man series.

I can understand his actions in Ultron (fear of alien invasion) and Civil War (his unchecked actions in Ultron lead to Sokovia's destruction), but by Spider-Man Homecoming, he was just a monumental douche.

I do like this Endgame meme though...

->Open Spoiler<-

[Dogg Thang]

Then in Civil War, he's well up for reporting to Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross.

Up to the point where he goes rogue anyway and cuts off communications and just does same old Stark stuff making the case he made earlier pointless.

We see some of them in prison for breaking the accords. He also broke them. Why does he not end the movie in prison?

[Neon Ignition]

The entire approach to Civil War felt wrong, Civil War should have been a beginning to a phase worth of a content rather than a single film concept. Cap gets sold short a lot in the film and the often discussed Airport fight is such a glaring example of what's wrong with the film. You have so many characters, even the introduction of Spider-Man, and yet it's one of the worst action sequences in the MCU because its so soulless and void of agency. At worst it displays all the issues mentioned, at best it shows how ineffective they are as let alone face off against Thanos, they can't even stop a plane from taking off.

Cap: "He's my friend"
Stark: "So was I"

... where you though?
Like has been said, it's like the Russo's are test bedding their Avengers credentials. A concept in search of a film. Nothing feels earnt in it and it's to credit of Evans etc that it remains watchable despite how conceptually poor it is.

The film should have opened with the reeling effects of the end of Ultron, then led into Stark discovering Winter Soldier had killed his parents. The group then begins to turn on each other with government involvement about the disbanding of superheroes etc that would then lead into helping to better justify why a threat like Thanos would force them back together.

[prinnysquad]

3 v 1

Man this is gonna be tough. But thankfully, I can do this all day.

I appreciate all the comments lads, but I have always taken a very different approach to this film.

For starters, the incident that brings out the Accords is the straw that broke the camel’s back. This was made pretty clear in the film, and the seeds for it were planted in newsclip footage in The Avengers. Secondly, as I put forward in the film thread, it was also the straw for Stark. He’d maybe lost that hubris at this point when confronted with a grieving mother. It’s flimsy but it worked ok for me, undemanding wretch that I am. After his previous efforts to balance his tech obsession with his faith in his own ability to use it for good had gone awry, he felt drawn to the need to undergo some nominal accountability, if he were to continue this obsession.

[prinnysquad]

I’m going to have to post in snippets, lads. Daft lad is giving me mere minutes between kick offs.

[prinnysquad]

I really am ok with the turnaround of Stark. Characters are meant to be complicated, and his about-turn is an attempt by an arrogant oaf to try and take more responsibility for actions, and avoid screw-ups. Sure, it’s a convenient switch, but to make it makes him less one dimensional. I can appreciate how others may see this totally differently. Likewise, his plea to Ross to bring in the malcontents was fine. He’s dealing with the problem in-house. If he avoided this confrontation, then the Avengers would be truly spilt - possibly for good, because outside agencies would be involved. He knew it could result in violence and destruction (exactly what the accords were meant to prevent) but at least this time he had official sanction to do it, and it was the last throw of the dice to bring the team on board. Had he not tried, and the Avengers had knacked up an international police force, then they would be truly outlaws in the eyes of the UN.

As for the airport fight - I think it’s exhilarating and a superb spectacle. We’ve seen the Avengers smash up aliens and robots. This was a different game. A game where they attempt to subdue rather than defeat. Pulling punches is unavoidable in the context, and I think it’s a great sequence.