Well, Marvel has finally made their 2099th film, "Captain America: Civil War" and because of it, I have officially lost faith in the franchise. From the unoriginal opening action scene to the unwarranted introduction of the innocuous, pre-teen Spiderman to the incessant puns and bad jokes, this film might be the worst Marvel film of all time. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting that I’d be saying that because despite the fact I thought the Marvel franchise was ridiculous since Avengers 1, I actually liked "Captain America: Winter Soldier". It was well-written, exciting, and felt more like a tame Bourne film than it did a cheap superhero cash cow. "Civil War", however, did not live up to its predecessor.
To begin with - SPOLIER ALERT! - there was no civil war. The end of the trailer where Team Captain America and Team Iron Man were charging at each was really just the opening of a friendly brawl. The only thing that Team Captain America and Team Iron Man disagree on is whether or not the U.N. should monitor the superheroes’ actions. This is a pretty small scuffle and it isn’t a big enough deal for the characters to want to really fight. Some of the conflicts and arguments in the Avengers 1 and 2 were closer to starting a war than this minor problem. This makes for cringe-worthy battle sequences with characters apologizing to one another as they fight. Hawk Eye, at one point, pauses his combat with Black Widow to ask, “Still friends?” to which Widow jokingly replies, “Depends on how hard you hit me.” It’s baffling to me how any writer could write a story called "Civil War" without finding any real conflict for the characters to fight over.
It is not until the end of the film, that one character actually has a reason to kill the other. Without spoiling what that reason is, I’ll say it was clever and had it been revealed within the first act of the film there would have been a story that we actually could care about. Instead, we got a glorified "Smash Bros." tournament. Thus, "Civil War" was not only a bad film but a tragic waste of potential.
Despite everything though, "Civil War" has received a whopping 90% on Rotten Tomatoes and I haven’t heard a single Marvel fan say anything bad about it. It appears that like Trump Marvel can get away with anything. On the bright side, there are still writers who write stories that people can engage with and care about. Marvel just won’t hire them.
