aNewDomain — Somewhere in Tinseltown (or Marvel headquarters) there’s a massive wall chart representing original and reboot/revisionist timelines for all things Marvel.
Maybe it’s based on a computer model representing characters, events, dates, crossovers, and reboots.
The system supports various ways to render different views of the Marvel universe: everything that happens to Captain America past, present, and future, Tony Stark’s backstories; all villains; locations on Earth, in space, and elsewhere.
Maybe there’s also an underlying model that calculates plausibility scores of different scenarios.
But we are talking about comic books here — not real world war games.
Captain America: Civil War plays like someone sat down with a keyboard and mouse with such a program and filled out a storyline requirements profile with the goal of maximizing the number of characters that can be shoehorned into a movie with just enough focus on the main conflict, the “Civil War” among the Avengers and their buddies.
Oh yeah, let’s also include a different version of Spider Man along with a more contemporary Aunt May.
The resulting movie is a mess.
It goes to such great lengths to include as many characters and event references as possible in as many physical locations as possible (due to t
he growing importance of international over domestic sales) that it even throws in a Marvel character funeral for good measure. It’s as if they put it together using criteria like this:
Select desired method of inclusion from the following list:
(a) physical interaction with main characters
(b) mention in conversation by a main character
(c) reference by secondary character
d) an on-TV mention by CNN anchor
(e) funeral
We get the massive fight scenes, the annoying shaky cam, the implausible close-quarter fighting, the by-the-numbers-music, and attempts to seriously focus on the concept of collateral damage and accidental deaths while maintaining a light enough tone to raise a laugh or two.
I actually preferred Batman v Superman and the recent Fantastic Four over Captain America: Civil War.
And while I respect how Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans have managed to create likable personas for their characters, in Captain America: Civil War they are swimming upstream against an almost suffocating tide of fan service and entangling toy sales marketing.
For aNewDomain, I’m Dennis D. McDonald.
Here’s the trailer:
For aNewDomain, I’m Dennis D. McDonald.
Cover image: AlphaCoders.com, All Rights Reserved. Inside image: Fair use, via Wikipedia Commons.
This review originally ran on Dennis D. McDonald’s DDMCD site. Read it here.
