Captain America: Civil War

It’s happening and I’m finally beginning to accept it. It all started when I noticed this new internet challenge of the running man being butchered by these kids online. College students everywhere stop in the middle of what they’re doing when the song "I Want to be Your Lady Baby" by INOJ comes on and begin breaking out this remixed version of what used to be the running man. Well, me being the old kook of this town, had to point out to everyone that would listen that they were in fact not doing the running man but were actually doing the Roger Rabbit. And I also had to point out that I remember when that song went from being awesome and terrible to just plain terrible, but now it’s apparently awesome and terrible again. Now before I move on, I guess I should also point out that I do find the song and these online videos both hilarious and irresistible and that I did spend ten hours the other day trying to convince my friend to make one with me; so I can’t be that old, right?

Well just the other day I had these three really cute girls, who were all in their mid 20’s, come up to me to ask if they could take a picture with me and my homemade version of the Stanley Cup (it’s hockey playoff time). I of course said yes and after we finished taking the photos, they all laughed in approval of the fun moment and said to me "Thanks sir!’ as they went on their way. Sir? Sir?!?!?! I had just been sir’d for the first time in my life outside of a professional or sexual setting?!?! What the hell just happened? Did they trip over some random old guy’s cane when we took the photo? I guess I should just accept the fact that it’s official; old age is here and it’s a lot darker place than I ever imagined it would be!

Well the point of all this is that I couldn’t get these life changing moments out of my head for the first two hours of Captain America: Civil War. I kept hoping that they’d have an anti-aging superhero pop up and kick everyone’s ass in the middle of the film’s big climactic scene! It didn’t even have to necessarily be a power so to speak, they could’ve just given him a magical chain to put around his neck like Melisandre has. But sadly this never happened.

I did eventually get over these awful experiences and was finally able to settle into the movie, but the story writers didn’t do me any favors with the first hour of the film. Someone should tell them that a Marvel movie will never get nominated for a non-technical award at the Oscars, so please tone it down a bit with the overwrought set ups to their stories. I get that they don’t want this franchise to turn into a campy mess but please, we also don’t want to see No Country for Old Men in bright colored tights either.

The set up was nice and works well for the overall story arc (I say that because the first act felt like 20 episodes) but they definitely could have cut about 20 minutes out of it. For some reason they have no idea how to properly use Vision or his powers, so he’s just stuck being this overly proper British version of Neo from the Matrix. "I can use… paprika?" (In Keanu Reeves voice). And for some reason Captain America has this unabashed love affair with Bucky aka The Winter Soldier. I mean, I get that they were childhood friends and all but Cap will seemingly destroy every other friendship he’s made since then to save his life, regardless of what he’s done in the past. "Oh, you’re the one who was behind all of the Atlanta child murders? It’s ok, that wasn’t really you. Let’s get you out of here!" That didn’t really happen in the film but it’s not too far off.

In addition to this, the United Nations is looking to take away the Avengers’ right to complete autonomy after a string of recent incidents left too much collateral damage behind. Ironman agrees with them but Cap doesn’t, and this of course leads to some division amongst the Avengers. Things start to escalate when the world looks to bring in Bucky after he’s apparently behind yet another terrorist attack and Cap decides to defend him in spite of the evidence presented before him. It’s at this point that Avengers pick sides and we have the epic battle that we’ve all been waiting for.

And boy did they ever deliver in that regard! The action and the display of their powers is everything that we could have hoped for. I don’t want to tell you who had the coolest scenes as I’m well aware of the fact that there are some people who have purposely lived under a rock to avoid seeing any spoilers; so you won’t get any here. But for the rest of us, it just sucks that studios ignore the fact that this movie would’ve made a billion dollars anyway had they not told us about the surprise arrival of a few new superheroes. Thankfully though there’s a really cool plot twist at the end that I, for some reason never saw coming, so at least they left us that! And you do get to stare at Scarlett Johansson and Elizabeth Olson for two and half hours, so I really can’t complain too much.

So having said all that, I must give this movie a rating of very, very FRESH!