Sami on Captain America : Civil War

Okay, so I went into Civil War worried about several things: 

• The movie being too grim
• How they were going to handle the divide in the team and how annoying and contrived it was going to be
• How much boring and depressing politics was going to be in the discussions about that bill
• Why Nat wasn't on Cap's side
• How they were going to handle having so many people in a movie that's supposed to be about Cap

But I really don't think I needed to worry. Captain America : Civil War is not a perfect movie, and not as fantastic as Winter Soldier, but it's still really good and better than Age of Ultron. Spoilers ahead, so don't keep reading if you don't want them!

I really hated the marketing that kept trying to force everyone to pick sides. I think it was unneccessary for the fans to be divided as well as the team, and my favs were spread out across both sides. So that was part of why I wasn't super happy about the idea of everyone splitting down the middle, but in the actual moment of the movie--though I still don't like the advertising--it didn't matter that much. Everyone was just doing what they thought was right, and Cap and Tony actually were forcing everyone's hands, so it was in-line with the theme and the feel of the film itself.

Also, one of my least favorite things about the way this Phase has been going is Tony being more and more afraid of everything. It's fully understandable, and I think it was handled well in his own third movie, but in Ultron it was making him make really stupid decisions, and in Civil War, though he was dealing with it by trying to atone for those stupid decisions, it made him come across as an asshole, manipulating the people he was trying to protect.

The part of that that struck home the best, for me, was where he considered the Avengers his family and just wanted to keep his family together--because his original family hadn't stayed together very well at all. They could have played up the idea of family a little more and not the idea of government oversight--which is distasteful, the way the real world is, but I guess that is why it's there to begin with--but whatever. When Tony was a broken kid looking for a home, that's when he didn't seem like a jerk, and that's when I liked his half of the story best.

I didn't like that all his reasoning was so small--you want to pinion your own wings because you have no self control and you want to keep your girlfriend from dumping you? That was handled better in Ironman 3, and I thought it was resolved. The family angle was bigger and more grand, if you ask me.

Cap's half of the story was more emotionally true, I feel. He'd been looking for Bucky since he lost him, and now he finally had the lead he'd been searching for, only to get it at exactly the worst possible time to be associated with the Winter Soldier. And he did anyway, because Bucky needed him. I like Steve as a rebel for good--he saw exactly how corrupt the government had become last movie and he didn't want a part of that this time...but all his talk about taking your own blame? How exactly was he going to do that for all the literal and emotional damage he has helped cause? Come on, Cap. You gonna go and rebuild those dozens of buildings yourself?*

Bucky is where the heart of the movie was. Sebastian Stan did such an amazing job with all the variations on a character that barely talks--creepy, brainwashed Winter Soldier; shell-shocked survivor trying to lay low and disappear; almost-Bucky trying to deal with what he'd done and figure out how much blame he should get, since he's aware that he's been controlled, but also that it was literally him who did those things. In the reveal scene with Tony's parents, that came to a head: he knew Howard before all this. They had friends in common even if they weren't friends themselves. And he killed him because he was told to and as Winter Soldier, he couldn't not.

Hearbreaking.

It would have been nice to see what Bucky would have done with four other Winter Soldiers, but it was clever how that was side-stepped, and it showed the villain's deviousness really well: he knew exactly how to push all their buttons, and they all fell for it. Now they're all divided and it seems like most of them don't even know just how manipulated they were.

It's a movie about manipulation, I guess.

All the really fun stuff came from everyone else, and there was lots of everyone else involved. Almost too many, but they were handled pretty well, with everyone getting a few moments to shine.

Wanda being still too untrained to really do this super-hero stuff, and her being so upset about her mistakes was a good sign on how her character is going. I really liked how Steve took her under his wind as sort of a little sister. And I liked how totally smitten Vision is with her, but how they didn't force her to like him back the same way, yet. The fact that she's the only one who has a chance against him is encouraging that they're equals if they go with the romance angle, but it also sets them up against each other if they go with comic-stories for either of them about being overpowered. Because damn is Vision unstoppable, and if she can match him, that means she's unstoppable, too. In the big airport-faceoff, both of them were pretty alarming.

Nat actually made sense being on the side of signing the Accords, but I was so much more happy when she switched sides like I'd hoped she would. And it was refreshing not having to have her be the stand-in for missing love interests...though the whole Sharon Carter thing was weird. I loved Nat and Clint basically playing along and not actually fighting each other when everyone else was being super serious about the fight. Clint is a gift, and why don't the two of them have their own movie yet?**

Ant-Man was so much fun, even though his mask made him look like a weird robot baby. I love Scott, and I can't wait until his second movie. All the current fun in the MCU is in these side heroes, and he brings a lot of it here where it's needed to balance the tragedy that is Bucky Barnes. 

Spiderman was GREAT, but not how Tony went and paid him off and threatened to expose his identity to get him to work on Team Ironman. Like. The kid is still in high school. He's an infant compared to these guys you're setting him against, and that's crazy irresponsible and potentially dangerous. Good thing he's damn near indestructible.

Rhodey did not deserve any of this.

Sam Wilson's "I really hate you" was probably his best line in the movie, but my fav part with him was when he and Bucky, both pretty large dudes, were crammed into that tiny car, waiting on Steve. Oh, my god, so much fun, both the argument over seats, and the bro-nod after that weird Steve-Sharon kiss. So great.

And Black Panther! Considering how most of his screentime was devoted to kicking Bucky's ass, he did really well with an enlightened revenge arc--he really seemed to be learning the lessons that everyone else was sort of not learning; he pays attention and lets other people make mistakes instead of making them himself, and that's really interesting in a superhero story. Also, it's amazing that both sides basically respected that he's an actual king and kept his honors.

I think Civil War actually wrapped up the Steve-and-Bucky trilogy more than the Captain America trilogy we thought we were watching up till now, and the main purpose was to mix up the teams more than to tell either Steve or Bucky's stories, but it's a pretty good movie for all that. This obsession the MCU has with everything being OMG THERE'S TWO--yeah, I got tired of that with the two SHIELDs and two HYDRAs, and I'll be glad when they get that out of their system and stop with it already, but it'll be interesting to see how a UN-sanctioned Avengers team and a rogue Avengers team will interact. 

Which one is going to recruit each of the new heroes as they pop up? Which team will Hulk and Thor side with when they get back***, assuming they're not going to just be problems for the teams to deal with? If they are problems to deal with, how will that go with half the team being their friends and half being people who came after they disappeared?

I love that so much of this movie was about the absolute damage these people cause, but it would have been nice if they'd maybe not caused more and proved the point that they do need to be kept in check--it would have made Cap's view stronger if he'd told his team NOT to destroy that airport, those planes, all that cargo and people's belongings, all those cars...Like, did you not listen at all to that totally basic part of the UN powerpoint? 

I also love that Bucky's "I'm not going to kill anyone" became like a theme for the movie. The badguys killed people, but the goodguys made a point not to...though they were totally destroying property, still, and probably breaking a lot of bones.

Things I really want to know now:

• What is going to happen to Bucky? Who can help him--both with his arm and with all the Hydra mess inside his head?
• What happened to That Book? Are there other copies of it, or is that the only one? 
• Just how freaking awesome IS Wakanda? I'm really looking forward to Black Panther now! I wanna see that one lady actually get to kick someone's butt.
• Will Seb get his wish and get a love story with Nat?
• Can we trust whoever is in charge of Zemo now? And what's going on with his plan, all creepily alluded to?
• Where are Steve and Co going to set up shop now that they're technically criminals, even if they're still acting as heroes? What resources will they have?****
• Who else was at that mid-ocean supermax? Did they get out, too?
• Are the new Avengers going to get their own movies? I mean, I want Nat and Clint to get one first, but then, can we get Wanda and Vision?
• Also Falcon. Doesn't that nerd deserve a movie of his own after all he's been through?

Still lingering stories I want to see come back:

• I mean, Zola can't just be gone, right? Am I really supposed to believe that he uploaded his brain to thousands of too-early-tech computers and survived for decades developing an algorithm to track very specific people, and then he'd just let himself get exploded like that?
• Hulk. Like, where. What's he doing? Also Fury. Also Thor. Also, where the heck was Maria Hill--doesn't she work for Tony's security firm they've not done much with now?
• How does any of this affect or interact with SHIELD? Because that show is practically in an alternate universe, it has so little effect on the mainstream, and it's getting annoying. Are we going to have to have three more seasons of this before the Inhumans movie forces them to just admit that Coulson is alive and everything is really stupid with his agency? Come on, this is exactly what SHIELD is supposed to be dealing with, and the Avengers have been without backup for YEARS now because of all this fuckery on the show.
• Are the Secret Avengers / whatever the heck the Inhuman team on the show is called ever going to have anything to do with the other Avengers?
• Why are they not making shorts anymore? Because seriously, they could do a lot with these movies that don't exist as shorts--a few Nat and Clint side-missions, Rhodey and Falcon and Wasp and randoms crossovers that they can't work into the movies, etc could all do great things in the shorts. Hell, they could made a whole series based on those who who were recruited after Avegners by Sitwell, and what they've been doing since SHIELD fell!

So, overall, I really enjoyed the movie (despite any complaining above), and I'm excited to see what happens next! I just wish that there had been more actual attempt not to destroy every single thing everywhere, when that was one of the points of the Accords half the movie was fighting. It's going to be super interesting to see how a world that technically doesn't have a superpowered Avengers team anymore--since one half is in hiding and the other half has to get permission--is going to deal with all the weird stuff coming up in the next few movies. 

And I'm super-interested in what's going to lead up to the Infinity Wars and the union of the cosmic MCU and the earth-MCU.

*I would, however, pay good money to see a movie where some ex-Shield nobodies who were used to the grunt work set up a massive construction firm dedicated to cleaning up after superhero fights. You listening, Feige? I'd write that for you.
**I'd write that movie, too, though I'd probably wind up writing them as a triad with Clint's wife, and get shot down on that.
***Weird that the Avengers don't know where either of them are for what could be two years? When will Hulk get his own movie? Weren't they looking for them the way Steve's been looking for Bucky?
****Hank Pym really doesn't like Starks, so maybe he'll foot the bill?

In which I have all the Bucky Feels

*

Last night, since everything in the world is on reruns because Sports**, we watched The Winter Soldier for the evening's entertainment. And you know, I saw it in the theatre, but I haven't seen it since, and between the viewings I had like a year of Tumblr pointin out tragedies to me. So here's all the Feels I was getting:

Other than Bucky:

- Peggy! I forgot that she was old and sickly and forgetting that she was talking to Steve in the middle of talking to Steve! I read a fannon post somewhere that had the idea that Shield gave her something that looked like dimensia, because she knew too much, and that made me even sadder.

- Natasha! Like, how sad she looked when Fury died, and what that meant about how important he was to her. And that moment when she didn't think she deserved the effort Steve put into keeping her alive? Oh my god. I don't ship those two specifically because I love how they function as friends--how he believes in her and how she's always amazed by it. How he's so genuine he inspires her to be honest and honorable, and how she sort of gets protective of him. Glorious.

And then onto Bucky. Bucky is a big old ball of horror and confusion and tragedy.

Like, he must've thought that Steve failed to save him back in Cap1, and who knows how hurt he was when Hydra got him. Did they tell him it happened on purpose? That Cap didn't try hard enough?

And then in the movie--he's framed as the villain, but he's a straight up victim. He's kept young and alive, but whereas Steve was frozen the whole time and woke up effectively the same a he was when he went out, Bucky doesn't even know who he was. His very identity was taken from him along with his arm. It was bad enough in the beginning, but once he starts trying to remember, it get so much worse, because then he starts to know how much he's been manipulated, starts to become aware. 

He's been an operative for fifty years, at least. How often did they wipe his memory, painfully, because he was startin to see how the world changed and he didn't? How often because he was starting to remember? 

And that fight at the end--Steve refuse to fight him, and he's so confused he gets angry. Like, that's his purpose, his only reason for being, as far as he's concerned (it seems), and Steve, who he looks afraid to remember, refuses to participate because of who he was before. Because of something he's not allowed to know--something he's probably subconsciously holding onto but suppressing. And by that point, we know for sure that he's remembering, and he's so outraged, so horrified about all of it, that it's heartbreaking.

And then after! After, Hydra has fallen, Shield has fallen, he's gone AWOL, and what does he have? A bad history of extreme violence, a lot of lies, and a lot of questions. He has Steve, but he doesn't know that, and might be actively avoiding him. 

It's a lot of Feels. I mean, I thought the Loki Feels took all the space in my heart, but apparently I have bottomless reserves of Feels.

And now, going into Civil War, and the idea that Steve will go looking or Bucky and might die (or thereabouts), and knowing that in the comics, sometimes Bucky is Cap... How will he deal with all this? Who will want him back under control and who can he go to for help staying free? Does he remember on his own? How much more horror can he hold?

Ugh, good job Marvel! Angstiest of all the angsts!

NOTES:

*I need to make more headers for this blog because really, ALL of these posts are Geekery...

**Ugh

Captain America: The Winter Spoilers!

(gif from here)

This is so not a spoiler free blog, so if you haven't seen the movie yet 1) what the heck are you waiting for, 2) stop reading right now, and 3) if you're still reading, you've been warned and any spoileration is totes on you. And there's SO MUCH I want to talk about.

So! In whatever order it occurs to me!

They mentioned Steven Strange by name!
I'm one of the ones rooting SO HARD for a Doctor Strange movie. I haven't read a huge number of his comics, but I have loved the ones I have read, and I feel like he's off the wall enough that he'd be awesome on screen. Also, he wears the most ridiculous outfit in the comics, and I have a burning need to see how they make it less dumb but still look like him.

He's on the list, too, which means he could become of threat to evil-Shield, and that's already making his super-interesting. Also on that list? The Hulk. Which gives awesome nods toward the idea that sooner or later the avengers are gonna have to take Hulk down--and with Tony and Bruce being Science Bros, that's gonna be HARD.

SHEILD IS DOWN!
And it is spectacular! Coulson and Co have been chasing the edges of this thing all season, and they really know more than Cap does at this point, even though Cap is the one who brought it down with his bare hands in one day. Or did he? Because he took out the main building, he exposed the leadership and the conspiracy, the destroyed the three deadly new weapons...but Shield is global, and Hydra has held out for ages, so who knows what's still around and how they'll react?

I smell a Cap 3 in the works already, even though it'll literally be, like, three or four years before there's a gap in the schedule for it.

Cap is so cute.
Through the whole thing. Not as awkward and naive as he was before, but still sweet and a little unsure and adorable whenever he doesn't have to destroy something large with his bare hands because he's been hanging out with Hulk and picked up some destructo-power. I mean, that plane? Pure Hulk Smash. But he maintains his integrity, and he has cool one-liners, and he wrestles with the weight of who and what he is and where he finds himself--and he still won't ask a girl out because maybe she'll say yes, and he jokes with the other old soldiers, and he remembers things without getting mopey over them.

I just want to squish his face. That notebook of stuff to get to know alone qualifies for a face-squishing.

Bucky!
I mean, I knew who the Winter Soldier was about the moment they told us the name of this story, but still. There wasn't a lot of non-mind-controlled stuff with him, but the dude played what he had really well--the fierce brainstorming, the conflict, the resistance when it started coming back. And in the meantime, he was about the most badass single villain we've seen (who wasn't Loki, who is only mostly a villain anyway).

Speaking of, he's sort of in a Loki-adjacent relationship--brother/brother-like that went bad and now needs to be redeemed. Though, not being a god of chaos and mischief, I bet it'll go better in the end for him. I'm SO looking forward for Cap 3 and seeing how he does as a free agent in search of meaning and memories, while also sort of being where Cap was in Avengers, time-wise, since he was active through the last 70 years, but wasn't aware of it and so has to adapt now.

Maria Hill continues to kick ass!
She is such a great example of a woman in a man's world who can hold her own without being exactly the same as a dude. She's still a lady. She cares about things in a womanly way. But she will totally kill you if you get in her way while she's busy being loyal as a second in command to someone who went rogue and no one knows why. Beautiful.

Fury is so much more badass than we even thought.
Action!Fury is something I wanted to see before, not just BehindTheScenesInCharge!Fury. This time, we got it in spades, and it was great. Also, I'm pretty sure that zappy-carvy thing was actually a lightsabre. Just saying.

We also got emotions other than annoyance and anger, we got compromise, we got real human interaction (he had a grandpa? he didn't just appear whole and angry?). And we got him facing down the one person who he thought he could trust the most, and finding out that the one he thought he was in control of was actually the one he needed to trust. That's a lot of emotional stuff going on for our Fury.

Agent 13!
Her name is Sharon! Maybe Sharon Carter, relative of Peggy, cannon girlfriend (at some point) of Cap? Even if she's someone else entirely, she was believable as a guarded but friendly neighbor, as a badass chick in the ranks, and as a brave rebel when things went south. She survived the climax, she moved on, and she's still there when the movie ends, so I'm hoping for Big Things in Cap 3 for her!

Falcon is so neat.
Saucy, irreverent, super-capable, brave, caring, very human, and still also very much a super hero in his own right. I hope he gets his wings back. I hope he is there in Cap 3. I hope he gets a movie of his own! I hope he gets to meet Rhodey and they can talk about how annoying it can be, being the sidekick when you're super capable on your own.

Someone write that fic for me.

The tag! The Twins! Loki's staff!

Holy crapballs, that was an awesome tag! Not only did we get straight-up Nazis still doing whatever stuff they do, telling us that we still have Hydra, that it didn't entirely merge with Shield, but we got nefarious studies done on Loki's staff, and THEN we got QUICKSILVER AND SCARLET WITCH! They're supers who were apparently made, rather than born, and so far they're as separate from the quandary that is Magneto-belongs-to-another-studio-that-is-currently-using-him--but they're there! And they're nuts. And they're likely to be villains.

The second tag, while informative, really could have been Coulson showing up and telling Cap "I'm alive, I'm doing what you're doing, and I'm with you", but I guess that was too much to ask, what with the fact of his show and all.

Will Loki want his staff back? Is it Asgardian or Chitauri or Other or a merge, and what will the mean old Nazis do with it? What have they already done with it? How much of what they did with it was involved with the whole Insight thing? Does it have anything to do with The Twins?

Super-spy-ness x 1000000!
Which is exactly what a movie set in Shield that finds out no one can be trusted should be! It's also what I wanted Agents of Shield to be all along, so maybe now that can happen--what with the last ep happening concurrently, as far as I could tell*, and Coulson basically doing the same thing Cap is doing, though from the other direction.

Weird targeting system ready to take out twenty million potentially awesome new characters!
This was amazing! A dead Nazi scientist who survived his own collapse by duplicating his mind on fifty thousand reel-to-reel computers, came up with an algorithm that used modern documented and surveillance technology to study people's pasts and predict and manipulate their futures**, to identify people who will later be a problem for Hydra, and take them out now! It's a stunningly complex and super-techy-cool idea to be the heart of the conspiracy (as far as we know), and I really hope that Zola had backups of himself. Because he was totally not worried about that bunker-buster that took him out, and he isn't yet a screen in a big thug-belly yet.

And now there's a list! A list orders of magnitude bigger than the one that Coulson was working off of, though potentially from the same place, or working on the same ideas. A list of people who could become heroes and villains and mega hackers and whatever else might mess up Hydra's plans, and that is so evocative.

Natasha and Steve flirting!
So cute. Mostly because Steve was like "um, what?" and Nat was like "I'mma just gonna mess with you some more". Also because I read a lot of Steve-tasha fanfic after the Avengers and all of it was not at all like the actuality of them flirting. It was adorable, without ever really becoming a thing, and her trying to set him up with someone while simultaneously flirting with him, while also saving the world? So much fun.

Wonder where Clint was?
My bro read an article that says he was missing for a reason and that we'll find out what that reason is eventually***, but what made me think of it was that when they were in the middle of Questioning All The Loyalties, he wasn't even mentioned. Not even by Nat, who is his closest friend, as far as I can tell, who wouldn't question him, and certainly not in any way that she'd have to defend him.

And now I'm super curious about that.

Nat just in general.
I really like the idea that he trusts her, that he can see through the layers of snark and artifice and know that she's trustworthy, and that it's surprising to her, since she basically just has Clint and Fury and not much else in her life, when the Avengers aren't around.

AND! She got to use her zappy things, she got to be a total badass, she got a little sliver of backstory, and a whole lot of exposure that hasn't fallen out yet, and she was loyal even when no one else was. She was open and sweet and killer and dangerous and hackerific and self-sacrificing and basically just wonderful through the whole movie.

Not all the avengers were on that lost tho.
I don't remember exactly, but it was just Hulk, I think. Tony has been helping Shield with their tech****, Cap, Widow and Hawkeye work for them, Thor is off the grid because he's off world most of the time, which means that the one with the most power in the team is the one that's most exposed if this List goes wonky and someone starts tracking down those people for some reason.

And now I want that to happen. And I want Bruce to have to find and team up with other people who WERE on that List, and form his own team to survive the fallout of Shield being torn up and exposed--because you know the various pockets of crazy there are now going to go off on their own, trying to do whatever they were meant to do, but in their own way.

Poor old Peggy!
She was a heartbreaker--and then she broke my heart. I love that Steve found her. I love that he visited her and held her hand and treated her like she was still the young lady he knew, that he could have loved. I love that he stayed with Shield because she helped found it.

What if when they reassemble the Avengers, they just all bring all these new people with them, and they're like "what, he's cool."
I mean, Tony has Rhodey, who is a hero in his own right, and Pepper who may or may not have an adapted form of Extremis***** and who has worn the suit and could use it (and did, in the comic, at some point); Cap has Falcon and maybe Bucky if he can get him back; Clint and Nat have each other, and maybe Agent 13, and almost definitely Hill; Thor has Selvig and Jane and Darcy and Ian-the-intern; Hulk has Betty, maybe, and probably someone else. Who knows what the connection with Guardians will be, but Antman was actually a member in the comics and comes with his own team and allies.

So what if they just all join up in, like, Avengers 3? What if what we're headed for is the mega-team the comics has, with dozens of people who can answer any call, even several at a time?

That'd be awesome, that's what.


So what do you want to talk about from Cap 2? I'm up for any and all discussions!


NOTES:
*Jemma went to the Triskellion without Fitz and was cut off because something was happening, and they don't know about all this yet because they were dealing with their own something, which hasn't fallen out yet. Which means maybe Simmons can have something to do with the recovery and some first hand info about what happened there to bring back to Coulson and Co, and they can start lacing all the disconnected facts they've been chasing together.
**Imma call it that The Clairvoyant is part of the Algorithm or reads it, and that's how he Knows Stuff and also how no one ever sees him. Also that Coulson was right about Pusher From X-Files not being the actual one.
***I hope in a short. If not, I hope it means he's getting his own movie set up and they just haven't announced it yet.
****And he is going to be so pissed when he finds out they were The Enemy All Along, and that they've been using his tech for Evil when he specifically and explicitly stopped doing that himself.
*****I'm going to keep saying she does, and that she's living with it and learning to use it so she's not a helpless bystander to Tony's adventures anymore, and that she just hasn't been called on to save the world yet, until such time as cannon proves me wrong. And maybe even after that, depending.
Also, speaking of that, the wrap-up stuff at the ends of the movies isn't instant; it takes a while to take a widget out of your chest, scavenge your old collapsed mansion and fix your girlfriend; it takes a while for Hill and 13 to get new jobs; it takes a while for Thor to clean up the mess and come back to Jane. So those parts could be concurrent, and that's why they don't mention each other--they might not know about each other yet, since they're all working it out for themselves, still. I think I'm very interested in seeing how the Official Timeline***** is going to look by the time Ultron happens...
******Also this one: http://www.slashfilm.com/infographic-marvel-movie-universe-timeline/