It is my
great pleasure to inform you all that it in fact was not a horrid convoluted mess.
But I get
ahead of myself. The story goes thusly.
In the
aftermath of Age of Ultron the world in general and Sokovia in particular are
not all that hyped about the Avengers any more. Sure they did save the world..
or at least New York from giant armored space whales, but since they have not
had much in the way of wins… Between Iron Man getting his house blown up and
thrash a commercial dock, SHEILD trying to take over the world by the way of
Hydra (or the other way around depending on point of view). Captain America dropping
three very expensive experimental aircrafts on a fairly populated area and no
to mention the rogue AI trying to annihilate an entire country… An AI created
in part by Tony Stark. And as the movie opens they manage to explode a building
when trying to capture a terrorist. To say it has been a couple of rough years
is a mild understatement.
So the plan
is to turn the Avengers in to a UN/Nato attack dog. This is done by the way of
equal amounts of guilt and threats and for ol Steve Rogers this does not really
mesh with the idea of them being a global force for good. So there you have the
schism. But most people agree it could perhaps be a good idea to at least appear
to fall in line. As this debate is going on Steve is informed that his almost
dame and favorite British spy Peggy Carter has passed away and while visiting
her funeral gets some words of “wisdom” from Peggy’s niece Sharon aka agent 13
aka Steve’s old neighbor. So while Cap and Falcon goes on a buddy road trip the
rest of the Avengers gear up to attend the signing of the so called Sokovia
Accord.
Here we
meet T'Chaka, the current king of Wakanda and his son T´Challa. He seems like a
nice guy and as such T'Chaka very quickly get an explosion in the back making
T´Challa the effective king. Fortunately for him he does not only get the
throne of one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world but
he also get a super suit and the alias of Black Panther. This is good as he
seek to avenge his father. Go him.
Our buddy
cop team of Cap and Falcon get involved in this when it looks like the Winter Solider
was the one pulling the “trigger” and Cap want to save his old buddy seeing how
pretty much everyone else he knew is dead. We do have to remember that Cap
might be closer to 100 years chronologically but he is still a 25-ish year old
nerd. This will also be important to remember once we get to Caps romantic
sub-plot… if you like to call it that.
So with the
issue and the motivation set up for this “civil war” the avengers set out to
beat the ever living crap out of each other. As the story unravel we see that
much of this fuzz was for a former Hydra agent by the name of Zemo to get
access to the Winter Solider so he could find information on a very special
mission that the Winter Soldier did back in the days. Turns out that Bucky was
not the only Russian super soldier and that he did in fact kill Howard Stark.
The plan here seems to be to drive a permanent wedge between Tony and Steve and
in turn split the Avengers.
So Cap and
Tony kick the snot out of each other and then Cap and Bucky makes off to
Wakanda where they put Bucky on ice until they can figure out a way to break
his brainwashing.
So… The
movie is good in fact I would say it beats A2 by a mile and does so with about
the same size of cast. Maybe it is because the story is much more personal and
the conflict more anchored in… Well… Reality if that is the word to use. Sure
we have to play with a lot of plot convenience and among other things I feel
that Cap´s motivations are forced. But at the same time as I said we have to
keep in mind that Steve is a young man who has one person left in the world
that can relate to him and see him as the person he was before he became Cap. I
would go pretty far for a person like that. Same goes for his rather hasty
romantic sub-plot with Sharon Carter, forced but not entirely out of character.
Sure it is a bit weird but she is the closest he will ever get to the love of
his life. Not a healthy basis for a relationship but again he is a young (and
in some way emotionally underdeveloped) man on the rebound from a lot of shit.
To seek solace in familiarity is not unheard of.
Now I of course
have to link back to the comics arch that provided name and over all story to
this film… As expected they share very little beyond the name but the movie
still do a very good job at hitting key points from the comics. The Stamford
incident (one of the most emotional gut punches in modern comics history in my
mind) where a villain out of hand blows up a good chunk of a town called Stamford
including a school full of children. The super-person superMAX iirc called
sector 42 or some such, Spiderman (did not do much in the movie but is kind of
important in the comics) and the whole bit with Cap realizing that he is in
fact going out of control. These moments all translated in to the film in one
way or the other.
So it was a
worthy end to the Captain America saga and a way to redeem Avengers age of Ultron
for being a messy messy thing. It is with confidence I now turn my eyes towards
the future of the Marvel cinematic universe.
//T
