Captain America: Civil War

[Velorath]

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.

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.

[Malakili]

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."

[Rendakor]

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.

[Evildrider]

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.

[Malakili]

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.

[eldaec]

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.

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.

[Velorath]

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).

[jgsugden]

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.

[eldaec]

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.

[Velorath]

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.

[eldaec]

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.

[jgsugden]

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.

[eldaec]

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.

[Lakov_Sanite]

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.

[jgsugden]

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

[Lakov_Sanite]

Holy shit deadpool made some cash.

[Merusk]

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.

[eldaec]

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

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.

[jgsugden]

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.

[HaemishM]

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.).

[Rendakor]

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).

[Malakili]

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.

[eldaec]

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.

[jgsugden]

...The plot continuity between them is neither very consistent (end of IM3 vs start of A2?) nor very deep...

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.

[Selby]

I don't honestly think you need to have seen any of these movies to appreciate the rest.

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.

[Merusk]

I still haven't watched Thor 2 or Cap 2 after the  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.

[Khaldun]

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

[MahrinSkel]

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

[Mandella]

I still haven't watched Thor 2 or Cap 2 after the   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.

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."

[Khaldun]

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".

[Margalis]

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.

[Evildrider]

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.   

[MahrinSkel]

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."

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

[Lakov_Sanite]

Thor2 was before gotg wasnt it?

[MahrinSkel]

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