f13.net

We're close enough to release that this deserves discussion outside the Marvel thread.... I'm agreeing with others that we probably don't need threads for a Marvel movie until we get filming underway.  My bad on the Dr. Strange thread...

Recent rumor:

Honestly, does this movie need more characters? General Ross, if present, will probably be in the end credits. Or maybe he's General Ross in the actual movie, and Red Hulk in the credits. Either way, he's probably just setting up a not yet announced Hulk sequel.

Well, Sam Jackson isn't scheduled to be in the movie.  Which seems pretty strange for him to be left out.  Also that Red Hulk stuff is really probably people just reaching for rumors.  If they were to introduce another Hulk, it should be She Hulk.

Let me guess... this rumor comes from a "reliable source" (otherwise known as Latino Review)?  :why_so_serious:

Rumor or not, they need to learn the lessons of Avengers2, that thing was a bloated mess.

Ross is confirmed through Marvel casting.

Hulk sequel is off the board for a while.  Although Marvel has rights to a Hulk solo movie, the distribution rights for a Hulk solo movie are not Marvel's.  As such, they'd be giving their pie to someone else.  Why do a movie where you give up a portion of the profits when you can do a different movie and get all the profits - and still use the character you have limited rights to as a selling point because it is not a solo film.  It is unclear, as far as I know, how long the distribution rights are screwed up.

I think Red Hulk is a horrifically dumb character and hope to never see him in the movies. I don't really buy into this rumor anyway because I don't think the audience wants a rehash of the Hulk/Iron Man fight only a year later.

There are going to be opposing sides.  They need an anti-hulk or else he's an "I win".  Without something like the Red Hulk then you get the exact same fight again, because what besides the Hulk Buster can stand up to him?

I'm still a bit annoyed that the Hulk Buster worked.  Since it didn't seem to right up until he fell over.

I was actually rather pleased that it worked.  I'm tired of the worn out trope of "thing designed to beat something fails spectacularly at beating it."  This is especially true regarding Iron Man's -buster line of suits.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the comics, don't they stand at or near a 100% fail rate?

Also in avengers one the hulk actually gets tired of killing aliens and smashing loki to the point of exhaustion at the end.  The simple answer is that the MCU power levels of the hulk vary from the comics, he's just not an unstoppable god in the movies like he is in the comics and I'm fine with that.

Not sure I read that scene as exhaustion, more of getting shot at by every fighter the Chitauri had.

The easiest way to read the Hulkbuster scene, of course, is just to say 'Hulk wasn't in his own comic at the time'.  If he had been, he'd have won.

Well Banner did help design it.

(http://orig12.deviantart.net/9946/f/2013/015/7/0/science_bros__by_hallpen-d5rl0ax.png)

The problem in the comics has always been that if a certain thing can be used to beat the Hulk, it's like kryptonite only in a universe where everyone wants to beat Superman--you'd have to have lots of scenes where the Hulk outthinks or outwits the user of whatever it is, which breaks the character. Even the "strongest one that is" has to have some things that can seriously threaten him, otherwise he's boring, but most of the things that can risk become boring in their own right.

Also, Ultron.  How'd that work out ?

Pretty good if you factor in the creation of the Vision?

Unless, like in the comics, Vision is just the Trojan Horse for Ultron later.

CHECKMATE.

Or he bothered to make a backup disk.

Although Stark is credited as the one who made Ultron, is it really his beyond the name?  It appeared to me that he just completed what Strucker had started.  He wasn't even the one that really did too much, it was more the AI mixed with the mind gem that ended up becoming Ultron.  Even Ultron's army was already in the process of being made at the Hydra base.

Yes.

I read that as Hulk stopped being influenced by the Witch, he started to calm and become less Hulky, and then Iron Man sucker punched him.  You see the Hulk go slack jawed before he gets hit that last time.

The hulks biggest thing that threatens him is himself. He is such a wild card that he is nearly as often an opponent as he is an ally simply because he normally is such an out of control rage beast he has a very tenuous grasp of friend and foe. When they make him smart enough to overcome that is where the problems come in. In the form he is in the avengers movie he is about perfect. Some slight control but overall you only want to stir the pot of crazy if the situation is so bad and its such a target rich environment that he simply has a higher likely hood of punching enemies than friendlies.

While true, he is at least shown in the movies to be able to control himself and (when not mind controlled) regards the other Avengers as 'Not Targets'.

I think the Hulkbuster scene in AoU worked and made perfect sense. They wore the Hulk down but the Hulk also finally got enough of a sense of the damage he'd been doing that he calmed down enough to be put down by the sucker punch from the Hulkbuster armor. The MCU has done a very good job of making the Hulk beatable while still making him insanely powerful enough to be a threat to everyone and everything. Hence the reason he's only used on a "Code Green" level threat.

I now really want a scene near the beginning of A3 where, at the end of the opening fight as everyone is starting to calm down after the victory Thor goes up to the Hulk to congratulate him and an exhausted Hulk just reactively punches him full force and sends him flying. As well as opening scene comedy I think it would be cool to see that Hulk really is unpredictable and potentially as dangerous to his allies as everyone else.

Didn't they do exactly that in Avengers 1?

--Dave

Edit: Yes; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrDXseJRJIk

I never noticed Thor drove the spike deeper into the beast's back. I need to watch that movie again.

Yes, he did.  Say what you like, but Avengers 1 and 2 were VERY good for powers stunts during the fight scenes.  It really, really, really looked like they spent ages training to be a proper team.

Which, of course, is ironic, because according to the timeline of the movie, they really, really didn't.

Hulk knew it was Thor though.  It was payback/teasing because of their earlier fight on the helicarrier.

Yea that wasn't about loss of control, that was Hulk going 'haha fuck you blondie'  :why_so_serious:

Yup and hulk also knew it would not really harm thor so it was more like a mischevious brother wacking another brother type shot.

The 'core of the sides' in the Civil War seem to be clear based upon some poster: http://www.joblo.com/movie-news/captain-america-concept-art-draws-up-the-sides-for-marvels-civil-war-825 (http://www.joblo.com/movie-news/captain-america-concept-art-draws-up-the-sides-for-marvels-civil-war-825)

Thunderbolt Ross is in the film but no fucking way are they doing Red Hulk. Unless they're stupid. If they're smart, they'll stay away from the Abomination as well. Those are Latino Review-style 'speculations', meaning somebody who knows comic books is just throwing a bunch of references out there and figuring they'll be right on a few of them. Same way Jeane Dixon used to make "psychic predictions".

I'm assuming that Black Widow is a mole, but maybe not.

If we're ignoring spoiler tags....

Scarlet Witch isn't mentioned, but I believe we know she is in the film.

As for whether the Hulk / Red Hulk / Abomination third act is speculation or more: I called it a rumor for a reason. 

If Jeph Loeb is involved (the guy who created the whole Red Hulk stupidity), it may not be that far-fetched a rumor. Dear GOD, I hope not, though. The Red Hulk was blindingly stupid.

Those pictures are supposedly marketing art for merchandise liscensing.  Since Scarlet Witch and Spidey are not under full Marvel control they are not pictured.

After avengers2 i am beyond worried about the Size of the cast here.

They have so many characters, and ones that aren't getting solo movies, that they really need to put them in other movies for more exposure.  It's not as big a problem for having established characters pop in, but when you have to introduce new ones as well that's where the problems come in.  Although the story for this one kind of needs all these different heroes for the premise to work.  My biggest question is what's happening with all these actors contracts in terms of how many films they are signed for. 

I think based on the premise of the film all they need to establish is that the Avengers are recruiting (even franchising) and that we've had a huge uptick in masked heroes. Unless any of these guys are important for the plot just leave them as unnamed_henchman1 for whichever side and let geeks have fun IDing as many as possible and then bitching that Richter deserved a much fuller role because of his long and engrossing backstory and how the way he looked at Tony for 2 seconds before the fight broke out was totally out of character and he was so badly written.

Or whatever geeks do.

Hulk and Banner supposedly not in CA:CW according to translated article.  http://www.blastr.com/2015-9-3/mark-ruffalo-reveals-hulk-was-cut-captain-america-civil-war-heres-why (http://www.blastr.com/2015-9-3/mark-ruffalo-reveals-hulk-was-cut-captain-america-civil-war-heres-why)  However, this does not explain why he was on set...

So I just saw an interview with Chris Evans talking about how he only has one more Marvel film in his contract and that it is most likely his last one.  I think next to RDJ he'll be the one I am saddest to see go.

I'm wondering how the reorg and potential opening of the purse strings might change that... I think most of us know how they'll handle the character at the end of Civil War and those of us familiar with the Infinity Stones might have some theory about Cap's final appearance under contract under the current plan, but could they change that course and get him to come back here and there for a few more bucks....

One more after Civil War, Avengers 3 and Avengers 3 2, or just Civil War?

He signed for 6.  3 Caps, 2 Avengers +1... it was confirmed that the cameo in Thor 2 did not count.

Yeah not sure if they wrangled everyone into having the next two part Avengers movie to count as one in their contracts.  If not, Cap may die in the first Infinity War movie. 

I expect Cap to age like he has in the comics rather than die, with the mantle being turned over to either Bucky or Falcon, like has happened in the comics.

And yet in this interview clip (http://collider.com/chris-evans-eager-to-extend-marvel-contract-past-avengers-4/) posted today it sounds like he'd love to do more Marvel movies and is humorously aware that a lot of the movies he's done outside the MCU stuff hasn't been great.

Also his directorial debut Before We Go isn't getting the kindest reviews so that might help as well. I think passing the mantle on to Falcon or Bucky would only be a very short term solution anyway. These guys are all around the same age (Mackie is the oldest by a few years) and by the time Infinity War wraps up they will all have been doing these movies for quite a while so they likely wouldn't be getting many more movies out of Stan or Mackie than they would with Evans. at the end of the day, they need at least some of the new characters like Black Panther or Captain Marvel to be hits so they don't have to worry about trying to recycle Cap or Iron Man.

If we're going to speculate: Flashback scene for a later project, like they did with Lucy Lawless in MAoS (in one episode for the season she was there for shooting, in three through flashbacks the next season).

--Dave

Or he could just be visiting the set?   :oh_i_see:

Or post  credit cameo. I had vaguely thought he was going to appear in GotG2 and begin to link Thanos as an avengers antagonist, but based on nothing but wild guessing.

Gunn for the third time confirmed that Hulk will not be in GotG2.  
https://twitter.com/JamesGunn/status/641004448303550469

Well, what would HE know about it?

Let's see what latino review has to say about this.

But will we see Banner.

 :why_so_serious:

(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/511yvPZKKUL._SX324_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg)

 :heart:

Anyone interested in a good chuckle should go through the Marvel Universe thread for the discussion of Civil War up and through the announcement it was coming. I'd forgotten just how opinionated some people were.

I went to a random page in the marvel thread and saw JG mentioning how he was going back in the thread and looking at comments. 

I think we're in a time loop boys.

Also I stand by everything I've ever said about Civil War as a story. It's complete shit. I trust the Russo bros. to make an entertaining movie, but they're going to be hamstrung a bit by the fact that the basic framework of the story, no matter how much you rework it, isn't great because by necessity it's going to require some characters to act like fucking idiots. Unless there's some elaborate fake-out here, Stark is going to have to end up siding with the government he's been desperately trying to keep his tech away from in his own movies and Captain America is going to have to decide that it's ok to disobey laws we don't agree with. And they both have to decide at some point that beating the shit out of each other is a reasonable way to solve the problem.

I'm willing and hoping to be surprised, but as a comic story to me Civil War existed solely to have all the heroes fighting each other even though it didn't make a bit of sense. Millar's attempts at being topical were just a masturbatory topping to make the story seem deeper than a kid playing with action figures. Likewise, Civil War here in the movies seems like the MCU version of an editorially mandated story that's just an excuse to have the Avengers fight each other (even though we already saw a bit of that in the first Avengers movie). Just come up with a contrived way of splitting them into two roughly equal teams, oh and throw in Black Panther and Spider-man while you're at it as well.

Ultimately I would have preferred Cap 3 to have been a follow-up to Winter Soldier rather than a follow-up to AOU.

"Tony, why are you siding with the government now"
"Are you blind? We work for Shield - we've always sided with the government."

OR

"Who do you think I've made all my money from, selling my weapon systems to"

OR

"New information forced me to re-evaluate"

OR

"People change."

Done. Remember how Thor couldn't get back to Earth in Avengers 1 but then he did, with the explanation being one thowaway line of dialog?

That whole part with thor is still stupid, the movie was just good enough to make you forget that. 

Handwaving something away doesn't somehow make it good writing or consistent characterization. Good to see that all these years later you still haven't grasped that point.

Edit: Also, your handwavy dialog examples require Stark to be a fucking idiot, which again, is not consistent with the character. Shield was infiltrated by Hydra so it's not a good example of why they should sign on with the government and the entirety of IM1, the very fucking core of it, is Stark getting away from being weapons manufacturer for the government. Sure you can remove one of the core concepts of the character with a line of dialog, but why the fuck would you? You can have Thor show up as a frog and explain it with one line of dialog, but it doesn't mean that you should.

Beyond that, I'm not even sure what you're trying to argue with me here. I didn't say they can't have Stark take the government side. I specifically said that Civil War is a shitty framework to work with and that the reasons for what sides the characters choose are going to be contrived, and your counter-argument is to list a bunch of contrived justifications? What the fuck point do you think you're making?

Why would Stark with the government?

"Tony! Captain America has gone rogue and is aiding and abetting the Winter Soldier -  a known enemy of the state and Hydra lackey. Can you help us take him down?"

Alternatively, I would not be at all surprised if, unlike the comics, Stark is not on the side of the government at alll after leaving the Avengers at the end of AoU.

Strike that - there's probably a reason why the posters have him standing aside War Machine.

"Oh, you mean the guy I saved the world with twice now? Living legend of WWII who is in charge of the current team of Avengers? Yeah, oddly enough I have his number, here let me get this straightened out real quick."

"Ok, yeah I talked to him and it turns out that Winter Soldier guy is his best friend who was brainwashed for awhile after Hydra got a hold of him. Apparently his handler was the former Secretary of Defense Alexander Pierce, so it might be best if we just let Cap handle this one."

So... nobody wants to own where they were wrong? OK.

Don't forget that it looks like Winter Soldier killed Tony's parents...

I love how personally Velorath takes it when people don't like the same movies he does. It's so precious.


If you want these things you're watching the wrong movies. That's my point. Tony Stark will join the government because a few lines of dialog weakly justify it - which is the explanation for 90% of things that happen in these movies.

I'm not saying that this hand-wavey explanations make sense or are great writing - I'm saying they are par for the course, what will happen, and are no more egregious than dozens of other things.

The Nova Core's big plan in Guardians was to form a giant space net out of manned spaceships. These are turn your brain off movies.


"Oh no, residual Ultron nanites are blocking communication!"

Edit: Wasn't Iron Man not going to join the Avengers at the end of IM2, or be just a reserve member or something? The continuity between these movies has never been good.

If up to this point the plots and characterization had all made sense I might agree that yes, Civil War is stretching things. But that's not the reality. Our reality is that Hydra can practically take over the world in one movie then in the next movie they've been completely defeated offsceen (I guess in the TV show lol) and Hydra is now just Ward and two swarthy-looking extras that happened to be hanging out at the same bar.

Our reality is that a guy dies and then is brought back to life immediately because they need a movie actor to put in a TV show, or that Nick Fury can have a spare helicarrier buried in his lawn or some shit.

What happens in these movies is just whatever needs to happen to get to a set piece.

There is one person on these boards that cares about this and I know it's not me.

Don't keep me in suspense. Who is it?  :why_so_serious:

(http://i.imgur.com/LjxHHMe.gif)

No, you just have a combination of smugness and stupidity that bothers me. Even now you had to resort to writing this rather than acknowledge that your previous post didn't actually argue with anything I said. I'm not sure why you'd even try arguing with what I said in the first place mind you, because my point was that I probably won't like Cap 3 as much as Cap 2 as I think Civil War is a bad story to use as a framework. That you felt (and continue to feel) the need to argue that kinda makes you the one who takes it poorly when people don't like the same stuff you do.

This new angle you're taking though, telling me I shouldn't have liked a lot of other movies I liked I'm sure is going to work out great for you.

Margalis never claimed you shouldn't like something. He just wrote that you shouldn't be surprised by some of the things Hollywood does that piss you off.

In direct response to saying I prefer good writing and consistent characterization as opposed to handwaving stuff away he said, "If you want these things you're watching the wrong movies.", which implies that those things aren't present in the MCU movies and thus I shouldn't like them if that's what I'm looking for. That I think he's wrong that many of these movies lack good writing/characterization is almost besides the point, but just to address it, his examples are either small parts of the movie like his GOTG example, or some of the most widely disliked movies in the series like his IM2 example. Drastically changing a core concept of a main character (and again this is only speculation since the movie isn't out yet and I've already said they could surprise me) impacts my enjoyment more than a scene with an energy net made out of spaceships. I can say "well that scene was kinda dumb" and still enjoy a movie.

I'm not surprised at various things that Hollywood does that piss me off and I'm not sure why that would be a response to anything I've said. Given that Civil War hasn't come out yet, it's not like I'm responding in shock to something that happened, I'm saying that I'm expecting some things about the movie I'm not going to like because I'm expecting it to be written around the idea that Cap and Iron Man need to fight at some point. Margalis argues that "What happens in these movies is just whatever needs to happen to get to a set piece.", but I doubt that they started off the GotG script with "Guardians fight Ronan on Xandar" and then worked backwards from that. Of my favorite MCU stuff (IM1, GotG, Cap 2, Avengers 1), I'd say only Avengers feels like it was written around the set pieces.

Beyond that, near the beginning of my initial post I said "I trust the Russo bros. to make an entertaining movie". I'm not arguing that Civil War is going to be shit or that I won't be able to enjoy it on any level.

You're doing it again.

You really need to get a grip and realize that we're talking about movies, not your life's work. You aren't writing these movies, you're just a nerd who watches them. You seriously need to chill out.

You got very angry because...I snarkily wrote some dialog illustrating how Marvel will handwave away the actions of IM. That's it. Rofl.


You're being disingenuous. Let's review what happened here:

1. I poked a little fun at Marvel writing
2. You sperged out and said that I don't know what good writing is, making the discussion personal for absolutely no reason
3. I pointed out that my example dialog wasn't SUPPOSED to be good writing, just Marvel writing

Do you still not get that the dialog I proposed is not the dialog I would write if I were writing a Marvel movie from scratch and is instead a cynical "this is how Marvel handwaves away everything" point? I thought it was very clear when I brought up that Marvel handwaved away the end of Thor 1 with ONE line of dialog.


This is how you responded to my silly post:


See the problem? Why are you getting so personal and butthurt about a post that was just taking the piss out of Marvel movies a bit?

Maybe you should grasp the point that we're talking about silly movies here and can your baby rage.

 :popcorn:

Using that line might actually be worth getting slapped in the face by my wife.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43NWzay3W4s

1st official trailer dropped.  My god that looks awesome.  :awesome_for_real:

Chris looks kind of wimpy.

Oh wow.  Hype train incoming!

Sebastian Stan.  :heart:

YUP OKAY ON BOARD.

Didn't look so much 'civil war' as '8 guys fight about what their annoying friend did' . But I'm reasonably confident it'll work out.

Having no investment in the comic storyline the scale of this is just fine for me because it's to scale with the MCU.  All aboard the hype train!

Is that Black Panther at about 1'50"?

Yup. Costume looks really good.

Looks like BP was fighting the Winter Soldier, so my guess is he's on Iron Man's team.  Interesting to see what appear to be the teams, too.  Cap, WS, Scarlet, Falcon versus IM, War Machine, BP(?) and who else?

Hawkeye was with cap, I think Widow is with IM.

I knew I'd forgotten someone on Cap's team.  Now I'm wondering how each person ends up on what team. 

Pending side switching, the teams are found earlier in the thread.

Apparently Spiderman will make an appearance as well. And yeah, I think Widow is on IM/the governments side

So the plot is "America's Son" decides to abandon the US because they're trying to kill his friend?

I guess it works but seems weak.

not... quite. America decides to register super powered people and Cap sides with the group that think that's un-american, given what he saw during WW2 and the Jewish people and Japanese-Americans.

I get that's the plot of the comic book, but it only had brief mention in the trailer which sets things up as I described.

Cap: "Hey they're going to kill Bucky! I have to save him!"
Fed: "You can't just run around like a vigilante!"
Cap proceeds to act like a vigilante
IM: "Dude, you're acting like a vigilante and a bad bro."
Cap: "He's my friend though!"
IM: "So am I, bro, wtf!"

*Geriatric Beatdown*

That's the comic plot. The trailer at least implies that it is more personal in the movie version.

Watch it again. The whole premise is centered around his best friend, but they also drop a BIG volume that is likely hte Registration Act on him and saying something to the effect that supers have been running around unchecked, but that time has come to an end.

I'm guessing the actions of Bucky and the events from Avengers 2 are going to jointly get us to this point.

It definitely personalizes it a lot more, but I think it's simplistic to say it's JUST that.

That was terrific. Here's hoping it's an inch as good as Winter Soldier.

Trailer left me thinking they'd they be better off naming this for Bucky rather than for a shitty comic series with a different plot. Something like " Captain America : Winter Soldier ".

Also, kind of intrigued as to the fig leaf explanation for Black Panther getting involved. Assuming he is Wakandan in this version, and on the US Government team for some reason...

The name of the registration legislation he drops on Cap is the same name as the village that Ultron almost turned into a floating extinction event in Age of Ultron. I'm gathering that the big building explosion in the trailer is blamed on Bucky/Winter Soldier and thus Cap tries to defend his friend, and everything snowballs from there.

Ah, good point. Plus, there will likely be another acting agent that is likely the reason behind the scenes.

Vision is supposed to be on Iron Mans team also, otherwise the team with SW would win easily.  I Imagine the effects simply aren't done to have him in the trailer.

Trailer looks good (especially the beat down at the end), but I'd like to know where jgsugden ranks this as far as MCU trailers go.

Watching again I notice the 'legislation' is has a UN stamp on it and describes itself as an 'accord'.

Which probably helps solve some script issues around why Captain America is against it and Iron Man doesn't object, as well as why Black Panther gives a shit. Could even be an interesting angle if Disney are willing to include a thread about American exceptionalism or open the question around where institutions like SHIELD get their authority (yeah, I doubt it).

Presumably they get their authority from the vaguely defined World Security Council we've seen in some of the movies.

One would think that Superheroes being allowed to act unrestricted as vigilantes across the globe would have been addressed immediately after IM1 given that he was operating in countries outside the U.S. (and of course the fact that there is no reason that superpowers or advanced technology should put you above the laws every country already has in place). I don't think there's anything the Civil War script can do to make it any less of a dumb plot point.

Tony getting his ass fucking kicked.   :heart:

(http://i.imgur.com/QjDkG1El.jpg)

Right behind the trailer for your mom's amateur porn. I Marvel at what she does with a baseball and a bat... a live bat (at least before it goes in).

I call for a ruling from the referees, Mom/Sex insults are uncreative and useless, and this one is trying way too hard.

--Dave

Fair enough. Nothing related to his Mom's porn should be hard.

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/82533/jeopardyfail.gif)

I can see them tying in Cap's opposition heavily to the events of Cap 2, where approval of massive oversight and governmental apparatus to improve people's security nearly led to Hydra taking over. Basically any large government oversight in the name of security is going to be screaming Hydra to Steve for a while. I'm not sure why Tony would be so in favour though, Iron Man has been all about him keeping his toys secret and personal unless it's about pulling capes under the aegis of the Avengers programme and he would have control. I could buy Tony seeing putting him in charge as an overall good thing.

Much like the retarded comic, the motivation of Tony Stark makes fuck all sense.

Which is why I like watching him getting the shit kicked out of him.  Frankly, if it's a full 3 hours of RDJ getting the shit kicked out of him, I'll be happy.

I'd assume it isn't about bringing it under the Avengers given the choice they made to have IronMan declare he was leaving the Avengers at the end of that film.

Of course, he declared he was retiring from being Iron Man at the end of IM3 as well, then promptly forgot all about it, so who the fuck knows.

Yeah, pretty sure it's a global thing.  The team is made up of a lot of non-Americans and the police initially after Bucky weren't American either.

Tony agreeing to the idea of oversight might have something to do with his unchecked actions nearly resulting in the end of the world in Avengers 2.

Oh man, trailer makes it look like War Machine dies (and thus puts Tony over the edge).  Going to be kind of mad if they do that.   :cry:

Looks pretty good overall though.  It's going to be hard to do the Civil War story line without looking silly, but the angle the trailer takes might work out.

War Machine is part of the new Avengers team, as of the end of A2, so I doubt he dies.

Decent point, but that could just mean he sides with cap, and Ironman ends up accidentally killing him while they skirmish, and pushing him into "So was I" territory.

Hopefully not!  But who knows what they're doing.

I'm still assuming bucky is the next Cap. Ergo, not dead. Otherwise I don't understand why they carried his character this far. Neither of the films he has been in needed him, and nor does this really, we aren't short on Avengers already or potentially responsible for bad shit.

The trailer seems to imply Bucky stays in nondescript street costume for CA3 instead of a good-winter-soldier outfit, which you can either take as evidence, or as Latino Review level speculation, your choice.

Oh, you mean war machine, which you clearly stated.

Reading comprehension is hard after a couple of bottles of red.

I'm thinking this may be his motivation and if so, it's a fuckload better than anything the comics had. Of course, there could also be some Infinity Stone influence as well so I'm reserving judgement on that until I see it. Given how good Winter Soldier was, I'm willing to give these guys the benefit of the doubt.

No, come ON.  This is a guy that broke the fucking rules about oversight TWICE in Avengers 2 and GAVE NO FUCKS WHATSOVER.  This is a guy who built Ultron and then said 'Hey, let's try again'.  This motivation is fucking stupid, stupid, stupid.  I would think he would feel MORE vindicated because he actually managed to make Vision, rather than agreeing to this bullshit.

Just a film constantly punching him in the dick.  That's all I want.

It still fits his personality.  He wants everyone under control, limits applied, and quantities known, but will rebel himself when someone tries to do the same to him.

That hypocrisy is his major flaw.  It's also why I'm going to be rooting for team Cap the whole time.  Bucky doesn't give a "it's him or me" ultimatum, either.

In The Dick.

Yeah I think they can sell the pro-reg side being the wrong side much better by going with a hypocrisy angle. If the kind of people (Tony, SHIELD, etc.) who have consistently been doing dumb shit that nearly wiped us all out are the same ones saying heroes need to be registered and they need more control because of X (which is likely a false flag type operation by bad guys) it makes Cap's side look far more reasonable.

One of the big issues the comics version of this had is that with their continuity and set up, really, the pro-reg side had it right. The whole thing felt kind of like a set up by someone who was really in favour of NSA wire tapping and thought Watchmen was an awesome story that should totally be realised in Marvel managed to sneak a pitch past the editorial board who half-way through realised that this would fuck their whole universe up and hit the 'maximum evil' switch for Tony's side.

That's more or less what happened. The lead writers/editors have said as much in interviews after the fact, that they went overboard on the pro-reg side because without it the argument was oversight and regulation vs. consequence free vigilantes. Where if you really thought about what and how Superheroes operate, it is in fact utterly fucking insane.  :why_so_serious:

I've brought that up with a bunch of people recently when discussing the upcoming civil war movie.  How, in reality, its totally silly not to force people who can punch buildings to death to register and act under regulated authority before they go out beating up people they personally think are 'bad', without any oversight.

Everybody seems to think that's dumb, the vigilantes are just helping with stuff the cops ignore/can't do anything with, and it's similar to registering Jews or Japanese or some shit.

So I guess I'm actually the strange one.   :awesome_for_real:

You are.

It's dumb because alien invasions are cool, and sentient, destructive AIs are cool but bureaucracy isn't cool. It's the sort of neckbeardy nonsense I expect to see in comic books, and not the ZOMGEXPLOSIONS I want in my summer blockbusters; I expect the movie will still be decent because none of the MCU movies haven't been, but I doubt it will one of the best.

(http://i.imgur.com/PCMSBPG.gif?1)

I want to point out again that in (movie) comic land, the massive fuck ups we've seen have come equally from large institutional bureacracies with oversight as they have from costumed crusaders. We've seen nothing in the movies to indicate that rogue superhumans are more dangerous than easily manipulable, overly empowered government bodies. Stever Rogers has always been that quintesentially American ideal that the lone individual needs to have a level of freedom of action to prevent the worst excesses of democracy. Without dragging this into politics (because there's a lot of real world stuff there no-one likes) that ideal rubs up pretty well with superheroes.

In a universe where the government agency tasked with overseeing global security has come within a whisker's breath of handing the whole globe over to HYDRA and was only stopped by the actions of a small groups of individual heroes, I can see why Captain America might not respond favourably to being told that all small groups of individual heroes need to come under the surveillance and control of a government agency tasked  with overseeing global security. Honestly CA2 and A2 set up Civil War a lot fucking better than the comics ever came close to. We'll see how they actually handle it. I laughed at jgsugden when he first talked about the rumour but I think they've done a good job of setting up a fundamentally worthwhile plot concept. I continue to hope they only share the name and plot concept with the comic book version.

Registration in a super hero universe is kind of silly anyways.

Local governments aren't going to be happy with a world government telling their heroes what to do.  Anyone that doesn't exactly toe-the-line is going to be on the outs and forced to oppose this world government so it will be an ever growing list.  The only people who can contest such an extraordinary person is another super-powered being, which is just going to lead to more violations in their apprehension.  What happens if a world leader is also a super and they refuse to register, do you invade a sovereign nation with other heroes or are they granted diplomatic immunity?  If the latter, then what's stopping any of these questionable heroes from going out and taking over a country?

Then what do you do about aliens?  "Hi Mr. Thor who isn't a member of any nation on Earth.  Can you please register and submit it government regulation?"  Does the whole Kree battleship in orbit need to register, and if they don't, do you declare war on them?

All it does is create a never-ending downward spiral.  Make a book with some guidelines and ask heroes to try and follow it?  Sure.  Try to make literal gods take an oath and sign their name to a stack of forms?  Not likely.

The Marvel villains are terrible so they need an excuse to have the heroes fight each other instead. It happened in Avengers 1, Avengers 2 and GOTG, now there's an entire move predicated on it. Overthinking the logic seems silly to me. Iron Man is just plot device guy, he does what the plot requires - there's no larger explanation.

It will almost certainly turn out that some lame supervillain is pulling the strings and making them fight each other anyway, and the finale will be them all teaming up or some shit.

The problem is that the issue highlights a lot of stuff that's generally brushed over in comics to make a better story.  Real life vigilante actions are not like comic book superhero stories, and as comics have tried to move away from goofy stories for kids and towards complex dramas for adults, they've held on to a lot of those weird conventions that don't make sense in a more realistic context.  In real life you need oversight on this kind of stuff because people fuck up, but in fiction the main character is always right because the viewpoint character always wins in the end, and the government is always evil because it's more dramatic when vast sinister forces are arrayed against our outnumbered brave heroes.  By making this a main plot point the author is essentially just writing a story about how unrealistic their previous writing is, more than they are highlighting any real issues with regulation or bureaucracy.  The only reason the anti-registration side seems even REMOTELY plausible is because we know that the main characters all have plot armor and won't make significant mistakes.

It would be like if we got an Indiana Jones movie where Indy was accused of collaboration with the Nazis because there's no way one guy could have beaten up all those Nazis by himself.  Yes, we know it's not realistic, stop drawing attention to it, dammit.

That's where things like the DC grimdark movie shit just goes so wrong. The creators hate the very concept of superheroes because superheroes are SILLY in any sort of realistic context. If you can't reconcile the fact that superheroes require a certain level of "Ahh fuck it, not important to a fun story," you really shouldn't be writing them. Looking at you, David Goyer/Brian Michael Bendis. Just accept the conventions of the genre and have fun with it. Since Watchmen/Dark Knight, there have been a TON of superhero stories that have dry humped the meta concept of superheroes to death. None of these twats are going to suddenly redefine the genre like Watchmen did and frankly most of them should stop trying. It's no longer original and the number of writers in comics that are just trying to do good superhero stories without worrying about all that bullshit is dangerously low.

Actually I think Civil War as a storyline in the Marvel (or DC) universe has the potential to be entertaining by subverting the 'realist-subversion of comic book tropes' trope. Basically in any kind of realistic look at the universe of course we would want heroes registered but in MCU large government agencies have been responsible for a fair bit of terrible stuff happening due to subversion, etc. One of the bases of Watchment was that masked vigilantes might need a body to oversee them but that body was just as liable to corruption or immorality as those they oversaw. Comics are, basically, about good winning out, happy endings, etc., etc. so it doesn't actually stretch incredulity that in that context you'd want some level of oversight but you'd also want to allow individuals the freedom of action to challenge any such authority in case of subversion by hostile forces like HYRDRA. To sell an anti-registration case you just need to tone down the basis for a pro-reg movement (ideally having it be suspicious and working as an ultimately false flag situation) and have a non-coercive alternative to offer.

The comics didn't really do either, which mean the pro-reg side were the good guys until they started performing unholy science experiments and killing random people just because. I think the movies are set up to actually play with the Watchmen style tropes that DC seem unable to move past or really even understand and I think they could do a good job with the concept. We'll see if that faith is misplaced but having Steve and Buck beat the crap out of Tony could be fun enough to ignore the rest of it.

Optimism Rising... http://www.cinemablend.com/new/James-Gunn-Has-Seen-Civil-War-Here-What-He-Thought-103157.html (http://www.cinemablend.com/new/James-Gunn-Has-Seen-Civil-War-Here-What-He-Thought-103157.html)

Literally the only movie I'm looking forward to in 2016 the fact that the trailer screaming "NOT THE SHIT COMIC NOT THE SHIT COMIC" is giving me some joy.

Not looking forward to Rogue One, or Dr. Strange?

Or Deadpool, or Zootopia, or Zoolander 2?

Aaand that really looks like it for movies in 2016. Gonna be a shitty year.

I dunno I have some hope for X-Men: Apocalypse.  Also Hail Caesar could be god damn amazing.

I'll give a Disney once chance with the pre-OT but post-prequels star wars. Dr. Strange sits in a lower tier than Ant-man. While ant-man "sounds" bads the actual source material and the many depictions *not ultimates not fucking ultimates* are classic and compelling. Doc Strange? McGuffin. He fixes problems with magic, I mean stupid problems that shouldn't have been written in the first place with magic. And he just kinda does it. Wanna reset your shitty nonsensical event book that killed several characters pointlessly? Just call doc strange he'll fix it. Wanna undo some weighty catastrophe that will change the marvel universe forever? Oh you remember our good friend doc strange he'll snap his fingers and fix it. And while he's not a walking plot device he'll use his magic powers to shoot lasers at your face. And no not kidding he just shoots lasers from his hand and they hurt. Alot. You get more "magic p@wer" from run of the mill hogwarts brat.

Well they only said that "Hulk" wasn't in the film.  Doesn't mean Banner doesn't pop up to be sent off into space by the Illuminati.   :awesome_for_real:

Ok watch this new trailer all the way to the end. No spoilers from me!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2P4DkHxXNQ

Also, this film looks more like an Avengers story than a solo Captain America story, even if Cap is playing a lead role. That's fine with me though.

UNDEROOS!

Christ, suckered in AGAIN.

Dammit. 

Some of the action is Avengers level, the story is Captain America focused (according to reports).  In other words, the other heroes in this are about as active as Sharon Carter was in Winter Soldier.  She had action scenes, but it was clearly not her story.  

Wouldn't you need to have 'left' to actually be drawn back in?  :why_so_serious:

Very true.  They haven't put a foot wrong for me, in honesty.  Some ups and downs, but even the downs were fucking awesome.

The previous trailers made this look a bit shit though ;  this one, not so much.

This one gives a lot better context for the conflict than the others, plus more Black Panther and Ant-Man, which is a really good thing. Plus, the ending.

Yup.

The costume sucks a bit tho.

I feel like a LOT of the scenes in the trailer are just like, made for the trailer and taken utterly out of context. The whole team face off scene, I'm like 50/50 on that just being early in the movie as a training exercise or something, super hero dodge ball.


I'm guessing they still need to do the final CG pass or whatever.

BWAHAHAHA!  That was so unexpected.

Can't wait for the movie.

Fake Edit - it's too bright or something.

The Underoo quality is discussed on this thread already - there is a story reason for it.

Wait, Underroo-man was on the other side of the conflict in the comics.

Actually he started on Stark's side and switched to Cap's side.

And the problem with the Underoos was that it was way too shiny. It didn't look real.

Ah okay, missed that part of the story.

Don't worry, it was shit.

I mean, really, really shit.

That is an insult to shit. Secret Wars was the worst Marvel crossover since Bendis started doing crossovers with Avengers Disassembled, even though it wasn't written by Bendis.

Secret or Civil?

As a general rule I find the quality of any Marvel comic book to be inversely proportional to the degree of crossover going on.

Civil. Secret Wars actually has some good bits to it outside of the really crazy concept and Hickman OVER 9000 cosmic bullshit.

No deadpool??? What is this crap?

Reviews are good.

Reading between the lines it seems a lot like winter soldier but with more guys you've heard of.

Which is all fine by me.

After all the tv spots lately the hype for this is real.  I also have to think that someone at WB has to realize their take on the DC properties is total shit atm.  Civil War is still at 98% on Rottentomatoes with 58 reviews.  BvS was already at like 30% by that time.

Saw it and felt it was one of the more mediocre MCU offerings, I think I actually preferred Ant-Man all things told. It wasn't bad in any way and there were some really good bits, I actually liked the plot points that focused on Cap. The Civil War part was what turned me off completely, the big fight scene in particular seemed to go on a bit long and was just too much of a mish-mash. No-one really wanted to kill anyone else, heroes weren't being particularly focused... the stakes didn't feel high and I was way too aware of heroes not using powers in any sensible way  The whole part with multiple heroes was something they jumped into without any real lead up, it kind of makes sense if you shut your brain off but if this is setting up the second wave Avengers it did a pretty terrible job of giving a reason to be together beyond 'because'.

I saw it tonight and was very pleased.  I love the way the Russo Brothers handled each of the characters.  Holding back significant spoilers for the moment, but a few takeaways:

1.) I think this was the best version of Hawkeye we've seen.  There was not a lot of him, but I think they get Hawkeye more than Whedon did.
2.) Prior to this movie I did not have much of an opinion on the Black Panther movie.  Now I do and I'm looking forward to it. 
3.) Either the Russo Brothers are really good at picking up random elements and weaving them together or Marvel has been planning to build to this movie since the beginning.
4.) Sadly, this movie made it incredibly clear that the MCU is the movies... and the TV series are fan fiction built around the movies.  There were a dozen places where they could have woven elements from the TV series into this movie and made it cohesive... but they went a different direction.  There were two clear avenues in this movie to tie elements from MAoS into the movie and they didn't do it, even though both elements that could be tied in have been around since they were working on the script of this movie.  Until elements form the TV weave back into the movies, it is not a cohesive whole like we were once promised.
5.) Both of the two new heroes in this movie were amazingly well done. 

I enjoyed it, the last two fights are pretty damn good, the final one even packing some real emotional weight for a superhero movie.

The middle action scenes, like Avengers 2 and more and more MArvel movies were fucking long and boring and put me to sleep.

I enjoyed it on the whole, but once again they have trouble coming up with anything like a genuine antagonist to match the charisma and appeal of the main characters. By the time we got to the last act, I found myself so puzzled by some of the undercurrents of the plot that it started to intrude on the film itself.

To wit:

There's something I don't get about the final conflict.

Wondered about that too.

I kept expecting a HH from the Secretary of State because, wtf, the accords were so against American IRL policy that was the only way I could reconcile it. Ok, Comic Book movie, USA actually agrees to let it's powerful military members to be bound by some international agreement. Cap actually decides not to be Team USA. Whatever. It all seemed contrived to me just to set them against each other.

I agree it was lesser than the last several stand-alone Marvel movies. It runs into the same problems as all comics; convoluted reasons for things happening because THIS crossover book/ movie is only using these characters and these bits of story. (A reason I'm happy Mutants are separate from Tights, even if it's only due to licensing.)

Still had fun watching it, but affirmed that I just don't like the concept of the ensemble movies. I'm a stand-alone fan.

Spidey was well-woven into the movie. Some scenes in the airport fight it was obvious he was a second-thought and CGI'd into scenes filmed before the announcement. I expected his entire appearance to be just some bullshit like that. I was pleasantly surprised at his use and integration. I still don't buy Marissa Tomei as May.. maybe she'll get an Oscar for it, though.   :awesome_for_real:

Yeah it was a the biggest "Look at me, I'm a distraction!" play ever.

I haven't seen Winter Soldier yet, so I now I have to go back and fill myself in. This was even darker than I suspected, and I was surprised at how emotional I felt  My poor 7 year old was quietly weeping when that happened, which may have influenced me. Liked Hawkeye and Spidey. The rest was decent and watchable, but it wasn't in my top 5 MCU films.

I love how Stark and Cap have basically switched sides from where their arcs started.  I loved all the secondary characters getting their time to shine and having great lines.  What i didn't like is the ridiculous plan the villain had.  It basically relied on making himself into a near carbon copy of Bucky so he would get the blame for the bombing, being able to replace a UN interrogator without anyone noticing, and then playing that video while Bucky just happened to be standing right in front of Tony.  Things would have gone very different if Tony had seen that video and had time to calm down before reacting, specially since he's been mind controlled himself.

Non-spoilered review: Best Spider-Man movie yet!!

No way to talk about other points without spoilers, so...

The best thing about the movie, tome, was that the Russos managed to care for each character and give all of them a meaningful place... but it was clearly still a continuation of Winter Soldier. I am eager to see how they handle dozens of powered characters in Infinity Gauntlet.

Blast from the past...

He's not entirely wrong,  civil war as told by the comics is just the worst.  This movie kept certain core concepts but re-wrote practically everything.

The movie kept Captain America vs Iron Man, which was the lone interesting part of the concept.

I definitely wasn't wrong. I just saw this today and it was nothing like the shit pile that the comic book was. The only commonality between the two was the conflict between Cap and Iron Man. Other than that, they threw away everything wrong with the comic and made a damn good movie. I'm not sure yet if I like it more than the Winter Soldier, but it's close if not better than WS.

It's very much a winter soldier pt2 and I almost think they need to be lumped together because of how the second compliments the first.

I liked it. I think Winter Soldier was a tighter movie, but Winter Soldier didn't have to be the springboard for two other superhero films.
As movies with a dozen+ characters go, this was way better than Age of Ultron.

As for whether peop,e were right or wrong about Civil War, you can go back and read what was said at the time by clicking on the links in the above posts.There were a lot of strongopinions. Funny opinions, now.

Considering the fact that the opinions were basically "The original story was shit, if they use anything other than the main gist of Iron Man fights Captain America, it will suck" were actually right, and apparently Marvel thought so too - I'm not sure what you're on about.

The movie was great. Did Zemo fall under the category of "had lots of shit he couldn't have planned for worked out perfectly?" Sure. I'm ok with that. I thought things flowed pretty organically and not once did I stop in the middle of watching the movie and go "WAIT A MINUTE, THAT'S HIGHLY IMPLAUSIBLE!" It worked well as an action adventure super hero movie. In contrast to BvS: DoJ, it dealt with some weighty issues without ever feeling dour and depressing. It had some great action and great character moments and it wasn't afraid to have fun. The additions of Black Panther and Spider-Man were great - both characters were pitch perfect adaptations of their comic counterparts and both actors chosen to play the roles fit them perfectly. I look forward to seeing where they take these characters in the future, because the ending was a lot more "Empire Strikes Back" than "Return of the Jedi."

The posts speak for themselves.

Sorry. I didn't know I needed to do homework before giving my impressions of the movie. Thanks for correcting me. I'll try to do better going forward.

Caveat: The previous paragraph was sarcasm. Don't fall into this trap.

You mean posts like the one you predicted the third act would be Thunderbolt Ross as Red Hulk leading the Thunderbolts to take out Team Cap?

Please just stop.

Your ranking might change when you catch up with your backlog. You've basically watched Return of the Jedi before watching The Empire Strikes Back -- you're missing a lot of the emotional buildup. Plus Winter Soldier is just great.


Although I agree that Winter Soldier was a tighter script, I'm honestly rather amazed at just how well they did on Civil War the more I read now about the frequent rewrites required by the constantly shifting cast line-up. Downey was going to have no or a small part (I guess it wouldn't have even been Civil War if that had happened) but then he wanted back in. Then, "We have Spider-Man! Yay! Write him a big part oh no we've lost Spider-Man rewrite to give Black Panther a major part annnnnnndddd we've got Spider-Man back."

On top of that they were adapting what to hear tell was not the best source in the Big Book of Marvel Stories, so even more credit to the writers for managing to come up with their own, better, story.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/may/9/captain-americas-heterosexual-virility-lamented-by/ (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/may/9/captain-americas-heterosexual-virility-lamented-by/)

 :oh_i_see:

Yeah, I was wrong there.

Not a hard thing for some people to say.

That is a synopsis of what may LITERALLY be the dumbest fucking article I have ever not read fully.

Okay skip the Moonie Times, here's the Vanity Fair article:

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/05/captain-america-civil-war-steve-rogers-sharon-carter-bucky-barnes (http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/05/captain-america-civil-war-steve-rogers-sharon-carter-bucky-barnes)

Basically, they (parts of the MCU fanfic community) whining that the canon just wrecked their favorite 'ship, having Bucky and Cap confirm their heterosexuality by reminiscing about the girls they used to know.

That this got virtual ink in a publication like Vanity Fair is disappointing. It's slash-fiction grousing, barely even worthy of attention for people who like fanfic.

--Dave

Might as well quote the enquirer, everything online might as well be a tabloid these days.

Nope, I was right. The Vanity Fair article was fuckstupid on a whole other level of fuckstupid.

Definitely plot holes and perfect timing/coincidences that helped the villain, but who gives a fuck, the fights were cool and good character moments.  Can't ask for a whole lot more in a superhero flick.

I can forgive a lot just because of that last fight scene and RDJ's lines, especially that last one.

Looks like spiderman was planned at least as early as July 2015

http://imgur.com/hSm3EdF (http://imgur.com/hSm3EdF)

To anyone wondering, DCU is on suicide watch. Cause holy shit this was sex. Pure and simple I haven't wanted to see a movie twice in 2 years and this glorious fun that jokes and takes itself seriously without skipping a beat.

Worldwide opening of $679 million dollars, which is only about $100 million less than BvS: DoJ has done worldwide to date. Yeah, DC/Warners guys are crying on their significantly smaller piles of money.

I just added to the pile again. I actually liked it better on the second viewing. There's so much good stuff in this movie.

Between Community and Winter Soldier, I was already a bit of a Russo fanboy. They're definitely the right choice for the Infinity movies. I'm looking forward to it  :grin:

They already gave Affleck oversight over Snyder for the Justice League movie.   :awesome_for_real:

As mentioned many times over, the setup for conflict felt weak. Besides that I liked the movie. Fight scenes were cool, Spidey and Panther were great, Young Aunt May feels wrong but I was okay with it.

I'd also really like if there were some extended cuts of the VW Beetle scene :why_so_serious:

Thank god they didn't follow the comics.  I was sooo afraid for a second that Peter would have to reveal his true identity, as done in awful comix narrative.

Great flick, great production team.  More Marvel please. 

Having actual space aliens invade our planet through a rip above one of the most populated cities win the world is probably a wake up call for major countries to realize we are not only not alone but there are clear hostiles out there beyond the power of any one government to defend itself against. I can see a united nations becoming more competent and more needed simply because clearly there are threats to the entire world that are not only possible but have actually happened.

In reality, what would be more likely to happen is the Avengers simply stop ever doing anything, as bureaucracy blocks every attempt they make to intervene.

Not to mention that nations weigh sending the Avengers based on any advantage they might gain over not sending the Avengers.

In short:  It'd be a shitshow that would eventually force the Avengers to simply ignore the dictates of the accords.  Or, you know, let humanity go extinct because Putin thinks dropping a city on the planet would only kill weak westerners and not super strong russians.

Let's not pretend it wouldn't only be the Russians doing that.

"The invaders are only attacking the African nations in the Seringetti. Why should we risk our most valuable assets to stop them? Let the Chinese handle it for now. The Avengers can intervene if the Chinese are unable to fulfill their protection agreements in a few weeks. We'll monitor the situation until then."

I certainly wasn't implying that.  Simply giving an example off of the top of my head that sounded, probably, more amusing than it really is.

I was picturing something like the UN Security Council, which, I think, can be blocked on most actions by a single veto.

Except both the Chinese and the Russians would be fine in that scenario also.   :oh_i_see:

You could make a pretty fair argument that Captain America didn't need to be involved in the opening incident, that human beings can still deal (or fail to deal) with that kind of terrorism. If Cap's busting Crossbones in Lagos, you kind of have to figrue he could just as well go rescue captured women from Boko Haram while he's in the neighborhood, etc.. But that's where the line that Spider-Man draws is important (and why I think he'll eventually drift to Team Cap anyway): you can't just wait until a threat has already happened--if you have the power, you have to try and do something about it. The non-Accord Avengers could stick to a rule of engagement that limits them to enhanced bad guys, but given that at least some of the Avengers themselves are just guys with fancy military hardware, that's a hard line to draw in the MCU at this point.

Anyways, while only sort of scanning over these posts so I don't spoil to much, I'll just vent my anger that this film remains unavailable in English language in Russia still with no relief in sight.  Meanwhile, Age of Apocalypse will have English language release on day one.

I'm sure this has to do with Ukraine beating Russia in Eurovision somehow.

Think of it as additional motivation to learn Russian.

(https://zbeads.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/grumpy-cat-no-1.jpg)

You've already got the right mindset down, halfway there  :awesome_for_real:

Saw this last night, finally. Aside from the complete lack of casualties, it was pretty good. Much better job integrating the wider cast of Avengers while still keeping the focus on Captain America and Bucky. Spidey was great, and I can't wait for his standalone movie.
 

#Wakandanlivesmatter

#I'mtheboss

I meant of like, real named characters.

Meh, you don't have to have character deaths to create drama/tension.  I think a death would have kind of overshadowed the ending and been a reason for everyone to come back together in some fashion.

I'm kind of the opposite.  Comic book "deaths" always make me roll my eyes.  Captain America's death was supposed to be the emotional climax of the Civil War comic I think, but it undercut the entire story because EVERYONE in the audience knew they'd be bringing him back in some (ridiculously bullshit) way and make the whole thing irrelevant.  It's pretty much the cheapest way to engineer forced drama and they've pushed that button so many times I have a hard time giving a crap about it anymore.

Death or not in that last fight I really believed despite my knowledge of RDJ being in spiderman that Cap might actually kill Tony.  To me that damn good film making, to make me completely second guess real life for the world they built.

I kept expecting them to kill Ant-Man in the airport scene even though I know there's a sequel with Wasp coming out. So yes, good tension-building that didn't need a big hero death.

Why are people so obsessed with people dying in the MCU. These are superheroes not soldiers. The idea that regardless of the number of bullets, lasers, and god like beings crashing in the foreground generally doesn't resolve in anyone with a colored shirt dying is very much part of the genre. Repetition is built in, even if it doesn't make real world sense why the batman is constantly punching the joker in face. Comic books only treat hero deaths as a way to pass the torch to another character, usually shuffling backstories or ethnicity to create  someone new. Only story that comic book line that killed people permanently was the young justice/teen titans comics, which is a comic book trope in and of itself. That any young hero below the age of 21 dies and doesn't come back.

I don't think that's what people mean when they talk about dying.  What people want is consequences, to know there are real stakes because in many superhero movies you know the good guy wins and at the end it's back to the status quo.

Sure, and that can happen when you are fighting bad guys like in Ultron, but in this case a death would have just meant the end of the Avengers franchise. The only one who was actually trying to hurt someone in that fight was Black Panther, everyone else was just playing around. It would actually be weird if anyone died.

I thought the ending brought home some serious consequences without needing a death. I mean technically,


Those are pretty big consequences for the universe.

#GoodFranchiseMgmt

In a world where we have the Ghostbusters Reboot on one side, a dirt bike jumping Star Trek on the other, I *yearn* for more MCU films.  Having a predictable night-out-entertaining-flick is worth endorsing vs. a maybe-it-won't-suck-as-much-as-the-trailers-indicate drek.

Saw this yesterday finally, and absolutely loved it.  :heart:

Even after having read this thread all along and knowing about some of the issues other folks had with some things, nothing in the movie felt forced or particularly bothered me.  I certainly wasn't expecting what Zemo did when he got to the hidden base, but that whole fight between Cap, Bucky and Iron Man.. that was just pure WOW!  I really did think for a moment that Cap might kill IM there instead of taking out this chest piece.

For having so many characters in it, they really did a good job of not slighting anyone nor did anything feel glossed over either.  It really was a very personal movie with everyone having to decide what they wanted to do with regards to the Accords. T'Challa and Peter Parker both felt like they belonged and weren't add ins or afterthoughts.  The white eyes of his mask changing shape was a bit weird though; that stood out to me.

I did laugh a bit at the off hand remembrance about picking up girls or something between Cap and Bucky.  I was waiting for that scene to see the context because I've seen complaints about it for "ruining" the slash dynamic that they supposedly had by reinforcing their hetero-ness.   :uhrr:

Just saw it again in a packed theater still. Even better the second time around.

And blame Stark for Spidey's eyes, he's always gotta add something just a little more cool.

I just saw this too, but thought it sort of sucked. Too much of it was just establishing characters that served no plot purpose other than to line up and punch each other on cue. Hawkeye, Vision, Scarlet Witch, Ant-Man (not that they wasted any time setting him up), and Spider-Man all could have been axed and you wouldn't notice anything was missing.

The bit during the big fight scene where both sides formed up into straight lines and then ran full speed towards each other was incredibly stupid. Hawkeye and Spiderman suddenly deciding to be melee brawlers for the sake of (I assume) a trailer shot does not fall under rule of cool.

The villain mastermind stuff was completely contrived, and this is coming from someone who thought Loki's scheme in the first Avengers was well-done. Real teams of people in real life break up over stupid squabbles all the time; they could have just let the movie be about that without it needing to be a secret plot.

I think you may be putting more into the villain's plot than there was. He wasn't trying to do the whole Sokovia Accords thing. He was just trying to contrive to find evidence that Winter Soldier killed Stark's dad, and in that, create a rift between Stark and Cap that would destroy the Avengers. The other shit was just collateral damage.

Finally watched Winter Soldier last night. This movie makes a hell of a lot more sense now. Also, WS was awesome and I am annoyed I waited so long to see it. At the 1:17 mark when Bucky flips onto an SUV/Hummer, it sideswipes my car's twin- made me laugh. As did the epitaph on NF's grave.

Zemo's plan could have gone wrong a thousand different ways.  If Cap just agreed to go quietly with Tony as long as the collected Avengers all went to deal with the 4 Super Soldier threat first, Zemo would have been toast.  They needed a few more controls on his plan to show he knew he was getting Stark, Cap and Winter Soldier together with nobody else present before he decided to stay there.  Heck, even showing him watch news coverage of the hero battle could have done that....

Regardless, I loved the film in general.  They handled moving a lot of protagonists to supporting roles very well.  Every hero in the movie had moments to shine, but it was still clearly a Cap and Iron Man story (I bet that had BvS not been coming out this would have been called Captain America versus Iron Man: Civil War).  I loved the development of Stark, Cap and the entire universe.  The worst thing about it, to me, was that it put the final nails in the coffin for the claim that the TV shows and movies are part of the same universe.  When this movie ignored the TV storylines when there was so much room to address them (even if it was only a line or two of dialogue referencing the growing numbers of Inhumans), it made it clear that the MCU are the movies and the TV is fan faction.  Such a missed opportunity.

  

If more avengers showed up he may very well have released the other winter soldiers.  The thing is with Zemo and his plan/s we don't really know what other contingencies existed or how many things did go wrong/right.  All we do know is most of the movie wouldn't even happen the way it did if the hydra agent just gave zemo the mission report in the beginning.

Right. I still see Zemo as just being *very* good at playing things by ear -- nudging situations along into one of multiple possible positive outcomes for him. Sure he was planning, but the first scene with him shows how flexible he was. Hydra agent won't talk? Well I've got the book now, so I go with plan B (or C or D or E).

That was part of my problem; I haven't seen WS or Age of Ultron so I wasn't up to speed on any of the heroes. Maybe I'd have been more okay with all the minor characters coming along for the ride if I'd had more of Bucky's background to ponder.

As my girlfriend said when she got home after seeing this: "I really am not into movies that are made just to set up other movies... I'd rather not invest 2+ hours watching a glorified TV drama." To which I smiled. I am glad I didn't invest my dollars and time into this movie series. Had enough with LoTR.

Ya, I really hate it when books have chapters that set up the next chapter I am reading. Totally annoying.

You have to love it how personally people take it when someone has the gall to not like a precious geek property quite as much as they do.

I think not liking it is one thing, but it's odd to complain about the 13th film in a series of interlocking franchises (and the 3rd movie within its own franchise) interlocking with other movies.

This sort of thing has been escalating. I have to admit it's starting to feel a little burdensome to keep up with all the movies so I know what the hell is going on in each new one.

2 or 3 movies a year is sooooooooo hard to manage.

The stuff involving the Avengers is escalating a bit, but of the last four movies Marvel has put out, two of them (Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant Man) tie into the other movies a bit but are otherwise pretty stand-alone and easy to watch without having seen any of the other movies. I would imagine that Dr. Strange will be the same way and GotG 2 will likely just require having watched the first one.

That said, even with something like Civil War, I'm not sure what would be that hard to follow about it if you hadn't watched some of the other movies. Also I kinda feel like Age of Ultron is the main stumbling block for people having trouble keeping up because it's one of the most recent and also one of the most forgettable. Those who watched Cap 3 without watching Cap 2 can't really complain. For the AoU stuff you may not know who some of the side characters are like Vision or Scarlet Witch, but there aren't really any major plot points you need to remember the details of and they cover the broad strokes in Civil War.

It's not like it's the end of the world, it just gets to the point where it's just overdone. The cinematic universe thing is have an adverse effect on the individual movies now. It was neat to see the origin stories and then have them all get together as the Avengers. Now it's like "Well, we have Ant Man now, let's shove him into this movie for 10 minutes."

I disagree, I like the connected universe a lot. They only come out with a handful a year and I like going to the movies, so they keep me engaged in the universe by tying them all together.

A big reason I love these movies is the connected universe between them all.  Hell, they wouldn't be making as much money if they weren't.  They've managed to make a string of 13 movies raking in over 10 billion dollars and not have a shit show of a movie among them.   

Also if you hate the MCU for this, you are probably going to be hating a lot more movies cuz there are shared universes popping up everywhere now.

It's not the worst thing ever. The more important thing, however, is that they've hired talented people and given them good funding to make quality movies. However, I think they've been fighting to keep the whole thing from collapsing under its own weight. The origin stories are better movies because the have single main characters with well defined character arcs, tend to have nice clear plots, etc. The more they've branched out the less focus the movies have.

I don't "hate" the MCU. I just think that the whole project is starting to creak a little bit owing to the fact that the movies constantly need to have the bigger picture in mind, which sometimes prevents them from having clearer narrative structure and character arcs.

Connected I can enjoy.

Falcon appearing in Ant Man was cool.

I'd pay good money to see a movie based on 'Black Widow and Hawkeye' or 'Punisher and Spiderman' or pretty much any two or three heroes chosen at random.

Feeling the need to put every damn character in a film is not so hot. Same problem the comics have.

I'm not really looking forward to Infinity War.

It very well might collapse on itself at some point. Once they get past Infinity War do they try to build to something even bigger after that or do they let the franchises breathe for a while?

In addition to liking most of the movies I appreciate the ambition of the MCU and that it has accomplished something largely unique in film (you could argue that the old Universal monster movies were similarly interconnected although not nearly to the same extent).

You have to recognize that this is a special case film in which you needed to have as many characters as possible to support the premise. You could have done the Cap and Iron Man story without all these other characters, but it would not have been Civil War.

Disney get to choose the storyline, there was no earthly reason to make a film called civil war unless the underlying goal was having as many characters as possible. If they had made the Cap VS IM story, it would likely have been a better film. Its not like there was some great pent up demand for a story named-after-but-nothing-like the comic book civil war.

Unlike AoU though I don't think this movie was diminished at all due to the number of characters. Just about everybody had something to do and had as much or as little screen time as needed. 2+ hours of just Cap v. Iron Man I think would have gotten tedious. Some of the best bits of this movie were side characters like Spider-man and Ant Man easing the tension a bit.

Captain America spent 2 hours fighting Red Skull, then 2 hours fighting a computer virus.

I'm fairly sure Iron Man would have had sufficient charisma as an antagonist.

They could also have made an Armor Wars movie, a Cap v Taskmaster movie, or a few hundred other things. They didn't want that story. They wanted the story that broke the MCU up... and that story works as Civil War.

I can't come up with a single character I'd have cut. I wish they could have added more from TV.

That is exactly it, they wanted to make another movie with loads of characters so they picked a story that did that. Not the other way around.

Reasonable people can disagree on whether that is the best use of creative energy.

Or maybe they just wanted to make civil war.

Think about the bigger story they're telling over the first decade of the MCU and you'll see why this movie has to be a version of Civil War and had to have a bunch of heroes fighting a bunch of heroes.  This is late in the second act and you need to break things down before you can pull it back together in the climax...

Hail Hydra

... and current #s for how well this film has done:  Numbers (http://www.boxofficemojo.com/franchises/chart/?id=marvelcomics.htm)

Holy shit deadpool made some cash.

Yep. Which almost guarantees the second movie will suck due to studio meddling that will come with an increased budget and expectations of producing similar numbers.

I disagree that they *need* any such thing. If they want to break the heroes apart at the start of the infinity war story, take 30 minutes to do that at the start of the film - or in fact, simply acknowledge that the heroes were are already split apart at the end of the last damn film. Infinity War is not inherently a story that needs to be the same length as the entire Henry VI trilogy.

They are choosing to allow the balance to drift towards more crossover, much like in the comics.

As I said above, reasonable people can disagree on what is the right proportion of massive crossover films, but the idea the story required this doesn't really fly. I think both the films and comics would be better if they did less crossover than they are currently doing, but I doubt it'll stop me watching them any time soon.

My point was that *if* you are telling a larger story over 10 years of movies, this is the appropriate point in which to introduce this element for this type of larger story. 

In a team movie, you often get 30 minutes of the team coming together, 30 minutes of them being a heroic team, 30 minutes of them falling apart, and then a climax where the come back together to beat the bad guy.  In the 10 year story, Age of Ultron began that third phase and this movie put it in full effect.

Of course, you could do 25 separate movies with no overlap and then have a movie where all the heroes come together in just one movie, but that is not what Marvel is doing.  They're doing a combined universe that is meant to mimic what they do in the comics.  They see a value in a comprehensive overlapping universe of films and they seem to have a lot of people that agree with it.

Or in other words, the appearance of some characters in ostensibly solo character films serves as an effective marketing vehicle for future smaller solo character films (like Ant-Man and the Wasp, Spider-Man, etc.).

I probably wouldn't have seen the upcoming Spiderman movie if they hadn't handled him so well in Civil War, and I only watched Ant-Man because I heard he was in Civil War (watched AM the night before).

I had to watch Winter Soldier finally the week before finally because I heard it was pretty important to the plot. That was actually the best thing about Civil War - it got me to finally watch Winter Soldier, which was a pretty good example of how to do one of these movies that still matters in the universe but isn't so jumbled.  Still haven't seen Ant-Man.

I don't honestly think you need to have seen any of these movies to appreciate the rest. The plot continuity between them is neither very consistent (end of IM3 vs start of A2?) nor very deep. But you should watch Ant Man because it is a fun movie.

But it was nice that they used that inconsistency in this film as a reason why Pepper blew Tony off. Hero addict couldn't quit and she dumped his butt.

I saw Iron Man 2 when it came out and haven't seen any others.  I was lost throughout most of it, no clue for anyone's motivations or anything that was going on - the friend of mine who wanted to see it kept explaining things to me (I'm sure that annoyed her).  Turned me off of comic book moves.

I still haven't watched Thor 2 or Cap 2 after the  :uhrr: that were IM2 and 3. I don't feel I've missed anything by doing so.

Hell, I could have avoided AOU and this movie would have made as much sense as with it. All I'd be missing was the origin of Vision and SW and do those really matter? They recapped the entirety of Vision's relevance with his questions about the gem that makes him live.

Cap 2 is totally worth seeing. Thor 2 not at all.

Pretty sure the only thing about Thor 2 you will ever need to know is that Loki is Odin at the end. And you'll only need that if you're going to watch Ragnorak (which will probably be important to the meta plot and Infinity War in a way that none of the other Thor movies ever have been).

--Dave

As people here keep implying, Winter Soldier is arguably the best movie in the entire series. It works on both the comic book level and the seventies political thriller level, while being totally modern. It is well acted and brilliantly paced -- it's hard to find much to complain about with it (although some managed, as I recall).

I liked Thor 2 better than Thor 1, but YMM certainly V. I suspect you wouldn't care for it, and MahrinSkel just spoiled the big reveal. But I thought it was worth it as "Loki's Story, part 3."

The Loki bits are the best parts, but they end up underscoring how hard it is to escape the "boring villain wants to destroy the world/universe" trap. For all superhero movies--I thought this was one of the most accurate things critics said about X-Men Apocalypse. It's getting old. Gotta have villains whose plans still urgently need stopping but where the stakes are not "the world will end".

Yes, Thor 2 is the worst as far as being the typical "nonsense laser energy threatens to destroy the world" plot. Here's a guy that you've never heard of before, who just about destroys earth, and then we never speak of him again.

It's especially silly when contrasted with how often people say "REMEMBER NEW YORK!!!" in these films.

It happened in London.. Us Americans care not for what happens across the waters.    :why_so_serious:

I regret nothing. Seriously, it is literally the last 5 seconds of the movie and probably the only bit of it that will affect anything else in the MCU. If you want to see Loki doing his Xanatos Gambit thing, then the movie is worth watching even knowing that is the end state, but if you were that into Loki then you would have watched it by now.

They didn't even reference it in GotG, when it would have been relevant.

Cap 2 is a really good movie you should watch if you like anything about the MCU, and shows that the Perfect Boy Scout doesn't have to be a boring character (or be given the grimdark "subversion" treatment). "Before we get started, does anyone want to get off the elevator?"

--Dave

Thor2 was before gotg wasnt it?

Yeah, and in the credits scene they introduced the Collector. But in GotG they didn't mention it, even though it meant there was another Infinity Stone knocking about somewhere close.

--Dave

Unless the Collector is forwarding any stones that come into his possession to Thanos.

Best bit of Thor 2 was when Idris Elba soloed a fucking starship.

I liked the imigary of Thor 2 and I enjoyed it for what it was. But yeah, the whole "Ima going to destroy the universe!" was utterly meh to me at this point and it was full of Deus Ex Machina and plot holes. You can miss it if you want.

Thor 2 was also really ugly in parts. Like the part where they are on the surface of the dead brown planet - just looked bad.

You cast one of the greatest scenery chewers of our time as the bad guy, then give him 5 lines of subtitled dialog and the emotive range of a malevolent tree stump. Who the fuck thought that was a good directorial decision?

--Dave

It actually worked a lot better if you watched it without subtitles.

Thor 2 was such a trash movie that i barely escaped the theater before vomiting.

I thought Thor 2 was decent, but forgettable.

This.

One of Thor 2s weaknesses was indeed the Big Bad being both under and over developed. And no, we really didn't need the whole universe in danger bit. But the bad guys not being the focus is one of those things Marvel is known for, and this is no exception.

But that granted, this was still a fun movie. Good dialog and humor, Tom Hiddleston being top of his game as Loki, neat visuals and good action. It's a comic book movie that does not rise far above its genre, take it or leave it.

One of *my* pet peeves, and this might well just be something idiosyncratic to myself, is that I simply don't care much for Natalie Portman. I don't think she's that great an actress inside or out of genre films, and she and Chris Hemsworth have zero chemistry as far as I can see.

Oh, and as far as the London alien attack being instantly forgotten, well, to the best of my memory it never became generally known that the universe was in danger there. One alien ship crashed/attacked one dockside in the UK and was smashed to pieces by Thor. Thank you Thor.

There was an episode of Agents of SHIELD where the agents had to clean up the mess.

Well good news, Portman wont be in Ragnarok.

Nice.  I really REALLY hope Marvel can get away from requiring a love interest in every one of their god damn stories.  They even managed to splice one in for 5 seconds in civil war, but thankfully there was so much going on they couldn't go beyond that.  Can we just have a story where dude or girl goes out and fights shit?  Do they always have to magically find a fuck buddy while doing this?

TBF, the character of Agent 13/Sharon Carter always WAS a love interest in the comics, as well as an almost sidekick, and they had been hinting at the attraction as far back as the first scene in Winter Soldier.

Oh I know.  And they they handled it in the Cap movies way better than the others, since it took up a minimal amount of screen time but still gave him some character development.  I was directing that comment at the broader cinematic universe.

Still, every single marvel hero has banged multiple people over there many decades of comics.  Unless the love interest is reeeealllly important to the characters story (like say, Spiderman) you don't have to include it.  Nobody will actually miss Jane Foster or Agent 13 if you just skipped them.

Well Jane Foster is pretty damned important in Thor nowadays. 

There was a cracked article where they pointed out that Villians tend to be very moral and faithful to their partners, sometimes to an obsessive degree, whereas the heroes tend to have a black book the sise of the Telephone book. It's a function of the camera being constantly on the Heroes and the need to figure out something for him to do when he is not smashing face, whereas the villains tend to have a lot more down time off camera. Insert new cute chick is a lazy way to keep things moving.

And yeah, Portman was pretty weak sauce in Thor 2.

In the comic books, that's a function of long-running serial storytelling of any kind. If your character's adventures run on and on for forty years without the character aging, you bet he/she is going to have more than one romantic partner in most cases, unless "family man/woman" is a central defining attribute of the character. It doesn't just happen to superheroes, it happens to their supporting casts (who also appear in most or many issues). It doesn't happen as much to villains because villains only appear sporadically and many of them get cursory attention at best to their full family or social world anyway.

Think about Spider-Man:

Ok, two major monogamous relationships. (Gwen Stacy, Mary Jane).
Several major recurrent hookup relationships.
A few unrequited obsessions.
Many many short-term dates/relationships.

His villains:

Green Goblin (Norman Osborn version). Wife rarely if ever mentioned--she is said (vaguely) to have died, or in some versions, is implied to have left. In one gross story that most people prefer to forget, Osborn is said to have had sex with Gwen Stacy as well. Otherwise largely desexualized, substantially due to mental health issues. And he's one of the people we know a lot about, in relative terms!
Venom (Eddie Brock version). Former family man, divorced due to financial troubles after getting fired as a journalist. Takes no interest in any social life after beginning crusade against Spider-Man due to mental health issues.
Kraven. Has a wife that I think we don't know anything about, and at least two children. Has a lover (a voodoo priestess) who is rarely seen. Takes less interest in family life (after originally being largely motivated by family) due to mental health issues.
Doctor Octopus. Was dating someone seriously early in his history, before being a villain. Tried to marry Aunt May once but it was a plot. Otherwise takes little interest in women (except when he was in Peter Parker's mind, hello comic books) due to mental health issues.
Vulture. Despite being old, generally doesn't seem to have had much of a family or romantic life in the past. Also has little interest in women due to mental health issues.
Electro. Generally hasn't been given much of a life outside fighting Spider-Man. Went out of his way to debunk a rumor than a young electrically-powered supervillain was his daughter, saying it wasn't possible. But not sufficiently obsessive to keep from dating!
Sandman. Unlike the film, doesn't seem to have been married or have children. Does seem to have a fairly ordinary social life, especially during periods of semi-heroism, so who knows. On the other hand, made of sand.
Rhino. Relatively late in his career as muscle/thug villain, found monogamous love with a fellow Russian! So there we go. Though she was murdered later. And then maybe resurrected.

I think this basically hold for most comic-book villains. Spider-Man's folks are actually a more varied lot with richer family backstories than most, in fact, and not that many of them have any love life at all, let alone a faithful and moral one.

But the Joker is faithful to Harley Quinn...  :why_so_serious: (lets leave aside the beating the crap out of her part...)

And Freeze is still trying to cure his wife.

Now these 2 were created out of whole cloth by the Batman Animated series, so that's not their long term mythos. The "Dark Knight Returns" even suggested the Joker was in love with Batman.

And you are right its simply because the Villains have less character dev time than the heroes, but it is one of the Ironic factors of the Hero villain relationship

In some tellings of the Joker origin, he had a wife prior to his insanity. In fact, he turned to a life of crime as the Red Hood to financially support their marriage after his failed attempts at stand-up comedy.

No she really, really isn't. Thor is a multidimensional thunder god, which is why even in the comics between him and green lantern, they often don't have their girlfriends just magically showing up. Because its cheesy as hell. In green lanterns case it general results in the immediate death of said girl friend when super power alien super criminal whose M'O is enslaving worlds figures out the emerald god of justice still keeps his love ones inside a shitty technologically backward backwater.

Which is also Man of Steels problem, in a reverse way. Lois Lane is important. To Clark Kent/Super-man not to journey-man jesus wanna be with identity issues who hasn't decided to be either. Just ramming her into the story because we already know that clark kent and lois is a thing is lazy writing. You can't have your cake (reboot the character) and eat it to (assume all his relationships stay the same because...destiny??), and expect no one to call bullshit. Is Clark Kent a virgin in this universe? Because that's the only reason why I can fathom superman going Tarzan meets Jane on her.

Characters like spiderman can afford a love interest but spiderman is your every man hero. He really can't help but to shit where he eats and we don't fault him for that.


Spiderman and batman are rare examples of actually developed enough rouge galleries for you to get even some data on relationships past i hate the hero. I think with villians there is this moralist thread where we assume as readers that no woman would date a supervillian. It's the price of their villainy to be forever alone, unloved by anyone despite amassing power and wealth. When in the real world it'll be the exact opposite. It's almost as if comic books were written by lonely good guy nerds pining for hot red heads that accept them for who they are  :awesome_for_real:

You realize, and as far as I know still is, she is Thor right? 

You mean how Doc OC is spiderman? Or how the falcon is captain america but the actual steve rodgers is still around but a hydra agent? I mean I guess the new trend now is that all the shitty contradictions are no longer unceremoniously killed in order for the old version to be brought back. But I'm talking about the MCU which is decidedly not the comics.

I hear superman is also dead.

You were replying to a statement that was explicitly about the comics. But carry on, you will anyway.

Actually, not only is he not dead, Lex Luthor is wearing Superman armor, Superman from Earth-something is in the current DC Universe with his wife Lois Lane and their hybrid alien son (who is being pursued by someone for something very X-Files-ey) and then there's the Earth-1 Superman from the New 52 who is the younger Superman. That's not even getting into the Supermen from other universes in the Multiverse. Also, one of those Supermen is dead? I don't read the Superman books and the Rebirth book was very goddamn confusing.

New-52 Superman is dead. Because he ate Kryptonite to get his powers back or something. I dunno, I don't read that shit any more, just read about it. I doubt I'd have a clearer understanding from reading it.

The fastest way to turn me off of a super hero story, whether it be in book, comics, TV, or movie form, is to take away the hero's powers.  That shit frustrates me so badly that I end up never watching or reading that material ever again.  The recent flash is an example.  When Barry gave his power to Zoom, I stopped watching the show, even though I knew he would get his powers back. I just couldn't take it.  Taking a hero's powers is such a shitty plot device.

Yeah, comics are stupid.

I don't mind a short arc of 2-3 issues where the character is fighting the Parasite or some other villain whose schtick is stealing powers and the hero has to figure out a new way to solve the problem. As with every trope, there's a smart way to do it if you're a good writer. I remember an arc on Nexus where the Merk took back the powers he gave Nexus because he wasn't happy with the pace of his assassinations--that was a great story. But most of the time, it's as lazy as pretend-killing, evil-twinning, amnesia-having and all the other repeated devices.

The problem with the Flash wasn't so much the trope, it is all drama on the show now revolves around Barry doing something absolutely rock-solid stupid.

Saw it yesterday.

It's a better ensemble movie than Avengers: Age of Ultron. By far better.

I liked the villain (I'm not objective though the actor is German) and how the movie undercut expectations several times (e.g. at the end where the villain kills the other winter soldiers instead of reviving them). It has a lot of great character moments and even the bit characters like Spiderman and Ant Man get their shining moment.

The story is inane drek though, because the whole civil war arc is and always has been drek. They make the most of it and given the source material they had to work with the result is actually OK for the most part. Granted it's because they mostly ignore the civil war plot in lieu of character interactions.

Even the Rousseau Brothers couldn't turn the civil war arc into something that is not stupid though and so a lot of protagonists completely act out of character for large chunks of the movie for the sake of Drama. They also conveniently locked everyone else away in a magic underwater super prison (impenetrable for everyone except Captain America) just so that only Iron Man, Cap and Bucky are left over for the final confrontation.

They did what they could to salvage a story out of the mess that is the Civil War comics and it's a great movie whenever they largely ignore the overarching plot and decent when they don't.

The redeeming feature of the Civil War plot is that at the end of the movie, the Avengers are divided. This gives the writers and directors a launch pad for the first Infinity War film. It could also be worked into the stories for Ant Man, Black Panther, etc.

Is everybody on Team Cap already in the prison by the time Cap and the Winter Soldier arrive at the base in Russia? Tony could also have taken along the Vision to Russia if he'd asked--and of course the Black Panther *does* go to Russia, just not to Tony's knowledge. Tony is the only one who goes to Russia because it's personal for him at that point--he wants to apologize to Cap for not looking into the Winter Soldier thing more carefully, and see if there's a way out of the hole they've all dug, but Zemo screws that reconciliation up by showing the tape.

Sam Wilson told Tony where they were going, on condition that Tony would go alone, and as a friend.

Not that he had any way to enforce that, or even check up on him.

Easily the most stupid part. Falcon had absolutely no reason to tell Iron Man - the person responsible for him ending up in that super hero guantanamo bay - and Stark had no reason to heed the condition of a traitor and criminal. In the real world the only words out of Sam Wilson's mouth would have been "go fuck yourself". Which would have ruined the villains plan.

The plot only works because everyone is acting out of character. A hedonistic libertarian billionaire with delusions of grandeur and an alcohol problem sides with the government and IM's characterization is not even the worst offender here.

Traitor? Criminal? According to who, the UN? Fuck the UN right in its ear.

Falcon sends Tony to Siberia because he figures Steve could use his help vs the threat he thinks they're going up against, which is the Super Soldier Squad.

Tony sides with the Accords in the first place, because he wants to shift the blame for the collateral damage that he has both directly and indirectly caused. Next time something awful happens, he wants to be able to say "hey I just went where they told me." It's a terrible impulse, and I think he's started to figure that out by the end of the film. But, he's also driven by his nightmare of alien invasion. He pushed the Accords because he wants to keep the Avengers together and functioning, for when <something> (i.e. Thanos) comes knocking.

Alcohol problem. We haven't seen him take a drink since IM2, and he thought he was on death's door at the time. He's had some character development.

I actually buy Tony's acceptance of the accords completely because of how badly his fuckups have shaken his confidence. He already had that crisis of confidence in IM1 when he discovered how his weapons had been used for terrible purposes by the people he's supposed to have been fighting. It made him be Iron Man. After the death and destruction of Ultron, he realizes he needs some kind of check and with Pepper not there to act as his conscience, it makes total sense that he'd foist that responsibility off onto some kind of world government, especially knowing (or believing) that the next big thing is going to be an alien invasion.

Steve's resistance to the accords also makes sense because he saw first hand how organizations can be corrupted from within, in the form of Hydra. Plus the whole Bucky couldn't have done this thing.

Yeah, I think both IM and Cap are acting perfectly consistently with the characterization arcs they've gotten in the films. They both make sense to me. I just wish that their big brawl at the end hadn't required such a convoluted set-up. E.g., all it needs is the tape to set it off, rather than a string of unlikely events.

My opinion:  It only looks convoluted because you're thinking of this as a plan where a bunch of planned steps worked out, rather than one man creating chaos to try to engineer a situation where he can drive a wedge into the Avengers.

Here's a good analysis of just how weak the plot is if you try to see it from Zemo's point-of-view. Zemo is not a character, he's a (convoluted) plot device. (I actually really like this guy's suggestion that every really good movie should have a hidden parallel story inside of it that is the antagonist's story.)

https://unseenfilms.blogspot.com/2016/06/guest-post-isaac-cates-on-captain.html

Again, I think the mistake that writer makes isn't that he's not right from a story point of view, it's that he assumes the character of Zemo's actions have to follow a logical plan. I can easily sort of handwave that entire article away by saying that Zemo has had a break with reality due to psychological trauma and thus his actions might not be rational, nor his reactions to events outside of his control, or even his end goals. All he cared to do was drive a wedge into the Avengers any way possible. The Winter Soldier provided that wedge and for all he knew at the beginning of the movie, that's all he'd need if he created enough chaos so that the protagonists were fighting each other. The climax probably wasn't even necessary to his "plans." He likely didn't even know about the incident that was on the tape until he spoke to Bucky, he just needed more ammunition from the bunker.

I'd agree, but offer the counterpoint that it's the only way Superman is actually interesting.

Good Spider Man but it was awful to have him shoe-horned into the movie. Didn't fit at all. He was def Spider Man during his fight scene, quite well done but like that scene with him and Stark was so awkward and ill suited to what was going on.

Could have left Ant Man out too would not have been missed.

The film to set off the final fight part was by far the weakest bit. Also didn't like them making it so that Vision accidentally hurt his "own side" instead of actually having someone go too far and seriously damage someone. That was a cop out and a half.

Better than Age of Ultron. Not as good as WS1. Felt very much like the set up pitch and not even for just one thing. Set of Black Panther stand alone, check. Set up Spider Man stand alone, check. Set up future Avengers drama and/or write IM out of future movies, check. Remind you Ant Man exists (I liked his movie but he didn't feel like part of the MCU to me) check.

And so on. Wonderful film considering they had so many outside things to worry about while making it.

Jesus, I thought he fit beautifully. I don't even see how someone would feel that he didn't fit or belong, unless they let all the Too Much Information that everyone going in to the film might have about the contract status of the intellectual property cue or prompt that feeling.

For me, the litmus test is: if this character was left entirely on the cutting room floor, would it affect the plot in any way? They spent a lot of time (relatively) setting up Spider-Man's character only to have him bounce around and make some quips in one fight scene and then vanish from the rest of the movie. He didn't make the movie worse, exactly, but his scenes were just this weird diversion that had no reason to be there.

I got about 1/3rd of the way through this and stopped watching because it was incredibly tedious. Wife had fallen asleep and I was getting there. Does it improve after that point?

The frequency with which arbitrary sets of superheroes punch each other goes up. Does that count?

You're right in that Spider-man was shoehorned in, but I thought it was done pretty well, considering. I think this was covered up thread, but here is the backstory for those who care.

Years ago, Kevin Feige stuck his head in the writers' room and said, "Great news, we've got rights to Spider-man, add him to Civil War." Writers went "OK" and wrote a huge part of the movie for him. Black Panther was only in this version as a cameo to set up his own movie.

Year later, Feige stuck his head in the writers' room and said, "Bad news, we lost the rights to Spider-man. Write him out." Writers went "OK" and re-wrote all the Spider-man parts to Black Panther. Chadwick Boseman's contract is also re-written to compensate him for the bigger role.

Months later, Feige stuck his head in the writers' room and said, "Great news! We've got rights to Spider-man again! Put him back in!"

At this point production had already begun, scenes were being shot, Boseman was pretty happy with his expanded role, so considering all that I really thought they did a great job of adding Tom Holland to the cast and Spider-man to the action. And as far as the scenes between Stark and Aunt May, well, it helps if you know that Downey and Marisa Tomei themselves had a bit of a thing, long long ago, so their flirting was kind of an in joke, but even so I thought their chemistry was so good that it made me totally fine with "hot Aunt May."

Now all that said, I'll have to note that I cannot share faith in your litmus test. I'm just not sure that movies need to be min/maxed. Sometimes scenes that add nothing to the plot add a *lot* to the enjoyment of the film. For instance, Zombieland. Bill Murray's entire fifteen minute "cameo" did absolutely nothing to further the plot, but, IMHO, was the best thing about the movie.

Enh, maybe. I've not loved the last couple of 'big' Marvel folms I've seen - by which I mean this and Age of Ultron. I find I don't care about most of the characters. Too many of them are 'too big to fail'.

If you didn't like this movie your either done withe the genre or enjoyed batman vs superman.

Batman vs Superman was total drivel. I enjoyed Deadpool & Ant Man though.  :nintendo: <-- just cos I couldn't be bothered copypasting a shruggie.

No mystery there. Sounds like you enjoy the funny/parodyish comic genre movies. How about Guardians of the Galaxy? That one had a lot of humor too.

But believe it or not, as ripe for parody as you might think Captain America could be (and would be in pretty much anybody else's hands), they chose to play him straight, and pattern his movies more off of 70s action/political intrigue flicks than the comics.

Personally I think the decision was smart, and the movies have been vastly entertaining to me. Clearly, YMMV, but it does certainly highlight the conundrum where one guy's perfection is another guy's boring waste of time...

Most of the Captain America comics of the last decade have been modeled more on the 70's action/political intrigue, particularly the Ed Brubaker stuff. He hasn't really been the kind of over the top white bread vanilla boring super hero for a long time. The movies have taken that approach and done wonders with it.

That's good to hear. Unfortunately, comics have been so unevenly written in the past few decades that I've pretty much given up on them (I did make the mistake of trying to catch up on the comic Civil War line, and quickly regretted it).

What Cap story runs would you recommend, besides the Ed Brubaker?

None, really.

The old Roger Stein/John Byrne issues were a short run but good. After that Cap was written by Gruenwald for a long time and it's pretty awful stuff and very very Boy Scout Cap.

The other great Cap story pre-Brubaker actually happened in Daredevil--Frank Miller's short run where the Kingpin discovers Daredevil's identity. The Avengers get involved near the end, when the character Nuke appears, and Captain America is pivotal for one issue that turns into a better profile of Captain America than it is of Daredevil. Before he went totally shit-the-bed, Miller could still hone in like a guided missile on what made characters iconic.

Don't get me wrong, I've been watching and enjoying superhero movies for ever, it's only recently that I've started to find the blockbuster, centrepiece offerings from Marvel and DC a bit lacking. Marvel in particular seem to have gone off the rails a bit (DC have never really been on them) and are, IMO, bloating their films with too many crossovers and interconnected plots.

Besides the Ed Brubaker stuff, I actually do recommend the Mark Waid run. It got ended earlier than it should have and was decent but then almost anything Waid writes is good, IMO. I think it immediately preceded the Brubaker run.

Yeah, it's not terrible. But Brubaker immediately shifted the tone in a way that made the character and his situation very appealing and decisively moved off "Captain America is the nicest guy ever" take on the character without losing his moral strength as a central theme.

I think it is fairer to say they are so on the rails that the rails are starting to show a little.

They maintained quality by sticking to the template. Unfortunately it means they are sticking to the template.

And yeah, too much crossover - basically the same thing they trip up on in the comics, so at least its authentic. Isn't to say I don't enjoy them etc.

Civil War was 50% Cap 3, 50% Avengers 3. That gives it a pretty good reason to feel like it was continuing something. However, we've seen a lot of different types of movies in the MCU. Heist Movie, War Movie, Space Opera, Monster Movie, Family Drama, Political Thriller, Comedy... all mixed with  a heavy dose of action hero. We're fine. I've enjoyed everything in the MCU films and have high ecpectations for everything in process.

I think it just feels like there's too much crossover right now because they transformed a Captain America movie into an Avengers movie not that long after the previous Avengers movie and then we have Infinity War looming. IM3, Thor 2, and Cap 2 worked within their respective franchises, and GotG and Ant Man (and presumably Dr. Strange) were stand-alone stories as well. Stark will be showing up in Spider-man, and Hulk is in the next Thor movie, but that seems fairly reasonable.

I think on one level this is a smart hook: that you want to see a story advance, to see what happens next. It's almost the logic of the old-time movie serial amped up to have each segment costs tens of millions of dollars to create.

However, this only works if the story advances and doesn't recycle or spin its wheels. Which is where superheroes get into trouble, typically. You can only really have Spider-Man throw his costume in the garbage once, have Thor face Ragnarok once, have Doctor Strange's cape get ripped and need to be fixed by an extradimensional tailor once, etcetera: it gets old. More importantly, the characters need to get old if this is really about telling a long-form story in installments. The lessons they've learned need to stay with them, the character growth they've undergone needs to be remembered.

There are other ways to go, but they won't support this many movies at this frequency. You could have something like the Bond franchise: one film every three years, where some are really good, some are sort of good, some are pretty lame, but people go to see them because it's a familiar and comforting thing. You recast, you change the mood slightly, but you stick with the familiar elements: the martinis, the cars, the women, the deathtraps, the villains.

You could really, really segregate the different films radically and not be telling a connected story, making each one a completely separate invocation of a different genre. Marvel Studios has done that some--political thriller, heist movie, etc. but I think they know that they'd eventually come to a point where there weren't any other subgenres to spread into and where some of those subgenres weren't very compatible with a superhero who is meant in any sense to exist in a universe with other superheroes for intellectual property synergy. Superhero rom-com: that can be done, but if it's really good, one might wonder, why the superhero? Superhero horror: can be done (Hellboy, sort of) but at some point a superhero's power subverts some of the basic requirements of the horror genre about the relative powerlessness or desperation of the protagonists. Superhero satire: it's been done, and if you do it too well, you undercut your whole shared universe. Superhero found footage: been done already, probably can't improve on it. And so on. This approach can only get Marvel so far.

The only way they keep the goose laying golden eggs for a good while yet is by telling a serial story. They can make each installment feel different in terms of genre callbacks and aesthetics, they can bring new characters and settings in to keep it lively, but folks will keep coming past a certain point only if they want to see what happens next. And that takes Marvel having the willingness to have a next[/i: to let things happen that are new, to have some characters change in permanent ways, to have some characters fall or be replaced, and so on. The moment they start talking reboot is probably the signal that the superhero trend is finally dying off.

No. We've had a bunch of comedy adventure films. Winter solidier was not a political thriller, Ant Man was not a heist movie. There is nothing wrong with this.


I'd agree with you - it's just a matter of degree. CA3 probably came a bit too soon after A2, and both had too many characters, that doesn't mean the basic idea of a couple of films about Tony Stark and Steve Rodgers having a pissing contest was a bad one.

Having Hulk in Thor 3 feels like a better balance because there will not be another dozen avengers fighting for screentime.

The degree to which Cap 3 is a political thriller, Ant-man is a hesit movie, Incredible Hulk is a monster movie, etc... is debatable.  However, the directors, reviewers, and most fans put these labels on the movies.  Saying these movies are all just comedy adventure and not these other things is the minority position.  If you think Cap 2, Ant-man, GotG and Cap 1 are essentially the same film at their core, I can't agree with that statement.  They're very different films.

They are certainly different films which portray different events.

In the same genre.

I think they have fairly different moods, though. The house style is about the relationship between comedy beats, plot, and action--that's what makes them seem similar, even formulaic. It's not so much genre. The film that's gotten the closest to having a style of its own is Guardians of the Galaxy; the Thor movies have been the closest to paint-by-the-numbers. I think the interesting 'counterfactual' of the MCU so far is what an Edgar Wright Ant-Man might have been like. I suspect Ant-Man would have been a slightly less likeable character and the visual style and pacing would have been farthest from the Marvel house style.

I think they're probably going to need somewhere down the line to take a James Gunn-level chance when interest starts to flag a bit. Maybe that's the next phase after Infinity War, loosen up and let some more idiosyncratic stuff in the door. People really will get tired at some point, even if the films remain technically proficient and well-tuned.

Wasn't someone a few pages back saying that IW is going to have 70+ characters? That doesn't sound like it solves the problem, the MCU is basically a pyramid scheme run in reverse when it comes to putting people on screen.

That said, if Ragnarok is as daft as they seem to be pitching it, then it could be good fun, but then the Thor films have always seemed to be the ones which take themselves less seriously.


Sooner or later people want closure. That is one of the things that makes Nolan's Batman trilogy so fantastic. You're along for the ride and then the story ends.

They've been building towards a mas crossover event since Iron Man was released.  If you think that having too many characters in the film is going to be the wrong call, you've missed the entire buildup over the past decade.

Exactly. I'm also guessing the final act would have been weirder, had fewer EXPLOSIONS, more thematic relevance, and been less boring.

Even Guardians of the Galaxy struggles in the last 40 minutes.


I'm not sure they need closure as such, they just want films to contain new stuff. A closure story is an easy way to write one more film, but isn't at all necessary. Iron Man 3 or Dark Knight Rises didn't need their terrible epilogues to provide 'closure'. They just needed the studios to stop making films about either character before they ran them into the ground. Or at least wait a few years till everyone has moved on and got nostalgic.

Ongoing plots need closure. In this context Marvel's ultimate mitten of bullshit needs to be built and broken. But I don't really care if Thor just stops showing up.

It's not like Disney are short on characters.

It amazes me that people are still so pessimistic.

People have been predicting that Marvel is headed towards a cliff since the beginning.  Lakov Sanite ...
... even Marvel optimists have thought this machine was going to fail....
Marvel is doing it right in the cinemas.  They are building stories that people want to see.  Ant-man - which is a hard concept to sell, was plagued by bad press when Wright left, and basically was rebuilt at the last minute - was their closest thing to a flop - and it still made 4 times the budget.  Their worst movie is light years better than the recent DC offerings. 

At some point, you kind of need to accept that they're doing it right.

Disney generally knows how to make successful movies. Disappointments like Alice Through the Looking Glass and Pete's Dragon aside, they've got the top 4 grossing movies Worldwide so far this year (and while I don't expect Dr. Strange to do huge numbers they have Rogue One on the way this year as well). In a world where the Fast and Furious franchise has gone on for 15 years so far and the critically despised Transformers movies have installments 6 and 7 on the schedule already, it's hard to imagine a scenario where audience fatigue is going to be the catalyst for change.

The bigger issue would be if their newer franchises like Dr. Strange, Black Panther, and Captain Marvel haven't achieved much success by the time Downey, Evans, and Hemsworth move on. Spider-man's inclusion in the MCU is a boost at least going forward.

They are spending tens of millions each time and I don't begrudge them playing it safe. I'd do the same.

It limits their ability to do anything except follow the template. But that is only going to make nerds like us mildly bored and the films somewhat forgettable. I'd agree it is not a bad business strategy and unlikely to result in a flop any time soon.

As for whether the new characters will be as successful, if they are as well marketed as Thor and Iron Man were, then of course they will be. Only Captain America, Spiderman, and Hulk had any meaningful recognition before Marvel and Disney built what they built. If they can sell Thor then Dr Strange and Black Panther are no problem.

This is the situation for 95% of movie releases though. It's something that games and films have in common - the costs for AAA/blockbuster releases has got so high that they have to be as risk-free as possible. Indie films & games are where the innovation happens.

Broadly yes.

But even more so for Star Wars or MCU than other blockbusters.  If Disney fuck up an MCU film it puts the whole money train at risk. If they fuck a standalone film its a big deal but not as big a deal.

Which is presumably why GotG and Ant Man are a lot safer than Deadpool.

A different facet on that... That is why it took Fox a decade to sign off on the risk presented by Deadpool... but that was.a smaller risk than what Marvel has done in the MCU over and over.

Can someone clarify for me how Marvel is so risk adverse with their Gun crazy Space Raccoon, replacing Wright in the very last minute, introducing magic into the MCU, and making Ultron the villain of Avengers 2? People act like Black Panter, Captain Marvel, and Doc Strange are new risks after Marvel already sold us on Thor, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Ant-man.

Marvel disappointed me by failing to cording te TV with the movies better. Beyond that, in Feige I trust. I have read very few Doc Strange comics in my day, but I'm looking forward to that film more than anything else in theaters this year.

Thor wasn't exactly a risk, he has been a pretty popular character for years. Ant man I will give you.

Step back in time.  Thor was released in 2011.  There had been Thor pitches being pushed forward for 2 decades by Raimi, Goyer and a bunch of others, all of which failed to get off the ground because they couldn't get people to believe it could work as a profitable film.  The effort that turned into this film was green lit in 2006, two years before they knew whether Iron Man was going to be a success.  They cast a relative unknown in the Title Roll.  While the character of Thor is known from mythology, it is not one of Marvel's A list characters (Spider-man, Hulk, Captain America, The X-men, Fantastic Four were all far more popular.  The Avengers characters were basically considered second tier Marvel properties until Iron Man... that is why they still had rights to them... nobody else wanted them).  The confusion between the myth and the comic character was a problem.  The director they hired: A guy known for Shakespeare, not action. All of this added to a very high special effects budget to pull off the cosmic/mythic setting and elements. 

RISK.  Well managed risk that paid off, but risk ... and if you think that just having the character be well known is a lock insuring the franchise is going to do well, I have FOUR FANTASTIC reasons to believe that not to be true.

Yes, besides Guardians of the Galaxy, I think Thor was their biggest risk on first hearing about the project. He's only well-known now because of the success of Avengers. Before the movie came out, I had no hope they could turn it into an interesting movie or a profitable one.

Thor was also a big risk cause they had Kenneth Branagh direct it.
 

On the other hand, MCU didn't have any established capital when Thor was announced, wheras later films could have put what IM, Thor, and CA built at risk. Plus Thor 1 had a really strong strategy for keeping it light and relatable.

FWIW I'd say the biggest single risk they've taken was Thor2. The risk being they seem to give the writers their head and ended up straying way further toward unnecessary, unrelatable, and off-brand high fantasy.


I don't know, this is with hindsight of course, but assuming they checked they were all on the same page about what Thor was going to be, hiring Kenneth Branagh to direct anything seems much lower risk than a guy whose only movie credit was an indie from 1995 (Thor 2), a guy whose last notable work was Jumanji (Captain America), or a director whose last film was Movie fucking 43 (GotG).

Turns out Disney are pretty good at hiring directors (except on Thor 2).

I'm not even sure Thor 2's problem was direction. I think it was a weak script and a weak buy-in from the MCU planners. They didn't really know what the point of that film was except to throw in another Infinity Stone and to keep Tom Hiddleston on board.

Definitely whomever decided that the right thing to do in casting Eccleston was to put him in heavy makeup and give him virtually no lines to deliver needs to think again, though.

Thor 2 was a spectacular remake of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings that I would have enjoyed if it had made any sense.

I believe I described it as "casting one of the great scenery chewers of our time, and then giving him 9 lines of subtitled dialog and the emotive range of a malevolent tree stump." Eccleston was probably the only thing about the movie that interested me, and in the end he could have been offscreen the entire time and nothing else would have needed to change.

--Dave

Thor 2's problems are so wide ranging its hard to pin them all down. Inconstency of tone, too many (mostly female) characters that had no purpose beside being a mcguffin for other characters, really poor choice of locations, awful pacing, the only interesting character being entirely peripheral, plenty of unnecessary exposition, no arc for the main character,  no real sense of threat because the antagonist is so abstract and subplots were just weird.

On a first watch I quite enjoyed the explosions - espeicially the attack on Asgard. So the visual effects guy gets a pass (at least until the godawful bit in Greenwich).

But you rewatch it and start to realise it would be more fun to watch a Red Letter review of the problems than it is watching the actual film.

I didn't even realise that Christopher Ecclestone was in the film

Perspective:

Thor 2: Tomatometer 66, Audience Score 77
Incredible Hulk: Tomatometer 67, Audience Score 71
Iron Man 2: Tomatometer 72, Audience Score 72

BvS: Tomatometer 27, Audience Score 64
Suicide Squad: Tomatometer 26, Audience score 67
Man of Steel: Tomatometer 55, Audience Score 75
Watchmen: Tomatometer 65, Audience Score 71
TMNT: Tomatometer 38, Audience Score 50

I think Thor 2, as a Superhero Movie, is pretty fine.  The worst of Marvel is pretty fine.  They wasted some opportunities and did not give us their best work, but relative to the non-Marvel competition, it is art.