If you read my spoiler-free review a couple
days ago, you know that I thought this movie was pretty much amazing. The characters are all handled very
well. The motivations are clear and
consistent. The plot makes sense. The villain is kind of one-note, but that’s
really all he needs to be in this movie.
The emotion of seeing the Avengers at each other’s throats was
huge. All in all, this is an incredible
movie, one that you definitely need to see.
If you’re looking for more than
that (and don’t mind spoilers) keep reading.
The movie kicks off with a bang
as the New Avengers—Captain America, Black Widow, Falcon, and Scarlet Witch—are
in Lagos, Nigeria, to stop Brock Rumlow, a.k.a. Crossbones. Through teamwork the four Avengers manage to
quickly take down all of Rumlow’s mercenaries and reacquire the biological
weapon that they captured. Seeing the
Avengers fight together as a team is a great way to start the movie,
particularly when so much of the movie focuses on tearing this team apart. However, the mission ends in tragedy when
Rumlow activates a bomb in his vest to kill both himself and Captain
America. He fails to kill Captain
America when Scarlet Witch intervenes, but when Scarlet Witch tries to get
Rumlow away from the people on the ground and he detonates in midair next to an
office building, blowing out two floors.
This tragedy, which kills a
number of civilians including members of a mercy mission from Wakanda, serves
as the immediate inciting incident for the Sokovia Accords. Thunderbolt Ross (now Secretary of State)
meets with the Avengers to press them into accepting the Accords as an
accountability measure. Tony Stark is
already on the side of the Accords because he has been feeling immense guilt
for his role in the Sokovia tragedy, and presses the others to sign as
well. I really enjoyed the scene with
all the New Avengers (plus Iron Man) sitting around and discussing the Accords,
and how well it lays out just what the rest of the heroes think on the
political issue. Vision’s position is
particularly interesting, as he echoes a common complaint: as the number of superheroes increases, so
does the number of super-villains and potentially world-ending events. Given this correlation, he favors
registration as a way to potentially reduce the number of incidents.
However, this being Captain
America’s movie, he of course gets the most time to lay out his position: heroes need the freedom of choice. They can’t rely on other people to tell them
what to do; the Accords’ governing body might tell them to do something they
find morally wrong, or refuse to let them help out in a situation they need to
get involved in. “The safest hands are
still our own.” This lesson is driven
home even more at Peggy Carter’s funeral when her niece, Sharon, speaks about
Peggy’s belief in what is right and the need to do what is right no matter how
many people are telling you the opposite (note:
Sharon’s speech is actually a quote from the comic book “Civil War”
miniseries).
Iron Man, War Machine, Vision,
and Black Widow all sign the Sokovia Accords, and Widow goes to Vienna for the
signing, which is also being attended by both the King and the Prince of
Wakanda. Our introduction to T’Challa is
very well done: we see him as an
eloquent diplomat and dutiful son… right before he becomes the King as a bomb
goes off outside, killing several people including King T’Chaka (I kind of called that). This sets T’Challa on
the warpath against the Winter Soldier, who is blamed for the bombing. Everyone tracks down the Winter Soldier in
Germany, where Captain America tries to talk him in before Special Forces
attack. This pits Cap against the
Special Forces—though he doesn’t let any of them get hurt. Black Panther also appears to attack the
Winter Soldier, leading to an exciting chase scene with the three of them (Cap,
Winter Soldier, and Black Panther) running through traffic. The fight finally stops when War Machine
arrives with Special Forces to take them all into custody. This is the first time when one of the
Avengers is actually threatening another Avenger. However, at this point Iron Man and War
Machine are just trying to keep the peace and prevent the world from turning
against the Avengers any more than they already have. This also leads Iron Man to assign Vision to “protect”
Wanda by keeping her in the New Avengers Facility.
Zemo infiltrates the U.N.
facility by posing as the psychiatrist brought in to evaluate Bucky, but he
instead takes advantage of the opportunity to reengage his Hydra programming
and set him loose. The Avengers try to
stop him, but he still manages to escape.
However, Cap and Falcon succeed in capturing him, and he reveals that he
wasn’t the only “Winter Soldier” that Hydra had; they had five more “super-soldiers”
in cryostasis in Siberia, and Zemo wanted to know where the facility was. Suddenly Captain America is faced with a
situation which could devolve rapidly if Zemo were allowed to control these
five “Winter Guard” (I know it's nothing like the comic version, but it's a bunch of "Winter Soldiers," so let's just roll with it): he could completely
destabilize the world in a matter of days.
And unfortunately there’s no guarantee that the Accords would allow the
Avengers to intervene when the information came from the man accused of bombing
the U.N. In other words, this is exactly
the kind of situation that Captain America feared: the Avengers have to intervene, but their
accountability group probably wouldn’t let them. Captain America needs to defy the Accords.
There’s a really good recruiting
sequence as Captain America pulls Hawkeye out of retirement and sends him to
recruit Scarlet Witch (who takes Vision down hard on the way out). Meanwhile, Tony goes to Queens to recruit a
new hero of his own in the form of Peter Parker, a.k.a. Spider-Man. There really isn’t anything bad that we can
say about Spider-Man: he’s a poor kid
from Queens given extraordinary power. He
wants to do the right thing, and he is in awe of Iron Man, who’s pretty much
his hero. Something I appreciated was
that most of the Spider-Man tech was built by Peter Parker. There were some suggestions that Tony would
provide the web shooters—and he does give him upgraded ones—but the basis for
Spider-Man’s suit and web shooters is Peter Parker’s. At this point the battle lines are pretty
much drawn, with the addition of Black Panther on Iron Man’s side (he really
wants to slice the Winter Soldier up with his vibranium claws) and Ant-Man on
Captain America’s side (he fanboys over Captain America almost as much as
Spider-Man does over Iron Man).
I think the most pure-fun moment
in this movie might be when Sharon brings Cap his and Falcon’s gear and the two
of them (finally) kiss. Steve comments that
it’s “late.” And then he turns back to
the car to see Sam and Bucky both grinning at him.
The airport fight scene is
everything that the early reviews said it would be. Everyone gets there moment in the
spotlight. Ant-Man gets a ton of awesome
moments, from hiding on Cap’s shield to pretending to be Iron Man’s “conscience”
to even turning into Giant-Man during the fight to provide a distraction so Cap
and Bucky could escape. One thing that I
really liked in the fight was the use of two particular pairs of heroes to
drive home the emotional stakes of pitting friends against each other. The first is when Hawkeye fights Black Widow
and the two of them are both clearly holding back. Between The Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron it is clear that the two of them have a
history together and are very close friends.
And yet they find themselves on opposite sides of the conflict. They don’t exactly want to fight, but they
both think they are doing the right thing.
The other pair is Scarlet Witch and Vision. As the most powerful heroes on their respective
teams, they inevitably must fight. But a
few moments early in the movie made it pretty clear that they would not want to
fight each other because they have become such close friends (perhaps they even
hint at something more). Finally,
Scarlet Witch gets taken out of the fight and Vision goes to comfort her, at
which point the two of them actually apologize for fighting each other.
Simply
put, I love how the fight is such a huge spectacle but doesn’t lose sight of
the little personal moments.
None of
the heroes are actually killed in the fight, but War Machine does get shot out
of the sky by an errant blast from Vision (who is “distracted” because Scarlet
Witch got hurt). Consequently, Rhodey is
paralyzed, something which doesn’t get fixed before the end of the movie. I really appreciate just how well this movie
shows the consequences of the Avengers’ actions as being physical as well as emotional.
Captain
America and Bucky escape from the airport to go to Siberia, but the rest of
their team gets captured and incarcerated at the Raft, a top-secret prison
built in the middle of the ocean by Ross (and presumably Stark) to house
super-villains and Accords opponents.
Tony finally discovers that Zemo played them and convinces Falcon to
tell him where Cap and Bucky went. Iron
Man follows them to Siberia, and the three of them together discover Zemo and
the “Winter Guard.” However, this is
when Zemo’s true plan comes to fruition:
the super-soldiers were just bait (he killed them). He just wanted Iron Man, Captain America, and
the Winter Soldier in the same room so he could show them Hydra footage of the
Winter Soldier killing Iron Man’s parents.
I’m not sure which is more heartbreaking: the guilt in Bucky’s eyes, the horror in Tony’s,
or the shock and terror in Howard’s.
Tony of course goes ballistic trying to kill Bucky, and Cap tries to
hold him back and make him see reason.
Tony turns on him, however, when he realizes that Cap discovered the
truth (Hydra killed his parents) 2 years ago.
The fight between these three is absolutely brutal, with no holding
back. Iron Man wants to kill the Winter
Soldier, and Winter Soldier and Captain America get so insanely heated that
they nearly kill Iron Man. There’s a
moment right at the end of the fight when Iron Man’s helmet is off and Cap is
kneeling over him with his shield raised, and I thought he might decapitate
him, but instead he just rammed the shield into the ARC reactor, killing the
suit. As Steve and Bucky are walking
away, Tony tells him that he doesn’t deserve the shield that Howard made, and
Steve drops his shield before leaving.
What
really drove the point home was Black Panther arriving shortly after the
others, in time to hear Zemo confess to bombing the U.N. in order to draw the
Winter Soldier out. While the others are
fighting, Black Panther confronts Zemo outside, and Zemo actually apologizes
for killing T’Chaka before revealing that his family was killed in
Sokovia. Black Panther is about to kill
him to avenge his father, but holds up when he acknowledges just what revenge
has done: splintered the Avengers,
nearly drove him to kill an innocent man, pushed Zemo to bomb the U.N. He decides it is not worth it… but still
prevents Zemo from killing himself so he can be locked up by the U.N. I really liked Zemo’s story in this
movie. Yes, his motivation was very
simple and the movie probably could have happened without him. Yes, he is rather one-note. But that’s exactly what he needed to be in
here. My hope is that Zemo will continue
to be around, manipulating from the shadows, and he will eventually break out
of prison and become an even greater threat in Phase 4.
The
movie ends with Tony helping Rhodey learn how to walk again with an
exo-suit. Stan Lee drops off a package
for Tony with a letter from Steve, who apologizes for not telling him the truth
sooner. He also gives him a disposable
cell phone so he can call Steve (and his team) if he ever needs them. Meanwhile, Steve goes to the Raft and breaks
his teammates out. In the mid-credits
scene we get our first glimpse of Wakanda as T’Challa agrees to put Bucky (who
lost his metal arm in the fight) in cryostasis while they figure out a way to
remove the Hydra programming. And in the
end-credits scene Peter Parker returns to Queens and discovers a few more
features of his new Stark tech web shooters.
I loved Peter’s way of deflecting Aunt May’s questions about his black
eye: he got punched by “Steve from
Brooklyn,” whose friend was “huge.” This
definitely seals it for me: Tom Holland is Spider-Man!
Next week
I will delve into where the characters will go from here—there’s quite a bit to
unpack there—but for right now I think I just need to close by saying: This is an incredible movie. Just about everything works
fantastically. The characters are
true. The old characters’ stories
progress. The new characters get
satisfying introductions. And Captain
America’s story is really central to everything. The movie does end on something of a positive
note as Steve is trying to mend fences with Tony, but it’s not a very “happy”
ending. The Accords are still in effect,
and Steve’s team is still on the run. The
Avengers are still divided. I didn’t
think this could be resolved in a single movie, and it definitely was not. I can’t wait to watch it again (and perhaps
again) in theaters!
What did you think
of this movie? Where do you see the
characters/story going from here? Let me
know in the comments!
No comments:
Post a Comment