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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
In retrospect, Loki going full on hammy Saturday morning cartoon villain was the single weakest turn for the character. I outright prefer him in Thor: The Dark World than I do in The Avengers. Currently, the more films Marvel makes that I've fallen for, the more I've begun to think lesser of The Avengers. "Seinfeld" Is Unfunny and all that.
Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?Avengers was a breakthrough as the first successful large-cast superhero team-up movie. There was an assumption prior to it that a superhero movie couldn't work if it had to juggle too many characters (e.g., Spider-Man 3, X-Men 3), and Avengers proved that wrong by being a massive success. That said, it has zero depth; it's a great popcorn movie while never rising above the level of the popcorn movie.
Winter Soldier was excellent because it brought in wider (and very pertinent) themes around the security state. An additional stregngth was that its plot kept you guessing - unlike other Marvel movies, where you can guess the broad strokes of the film by ten minutes into it (or just based on trailers), in WS I spent the first half of the movie not knowing what would happen next, which was very refreshing. The characters were well-drawn: Cap was done well enough to make me like him despite intensely disliking the country for which he's named. It gave characters like Nick Fury and Black Widow space to shine, rather than just having a hero and his sidekicks. The action was fantastic. And overall, it was an extremely tight movie - there were no scenes that felt unnecessary or dragging, nothing that felt too drawn-out or exposition-filled. That's very rare for a superhero film.
Civil War had its weaknesses, but it did manage to get me to agree with bith the main characters on some points and disagree with them on others, and deel that they were fighting for more of a reason than just Poor Communication Kills - something that, again, is rare for a superhero story where the heroes fight each other. Zemo's plan did not seem overly convoluted to me: it's fairly simple as long as you accept that the Sokovia Accords and their fallout were not a part of his plan. His goal was to verify for himself that Buccky killed Tony Stark's parents; obtain video evidence of that moment; and use it to break the Avengers apart. How he did that was something he seemed pretty flexible about.
The emotional power of the fight in Russia is one of the big things that makes it among my favourite MCU movies, despite not being as tightly or cleanly plotted as Winter Soldier.
edited 24th Feb '18 11:47:17 AM by Galadriel
And honestly, while this is an unpopular opinion, I had trouble getting excited for Avengers because a lot of the pre-Avengers films were either average or forgettable. Neither Thor or TIH managed to sell me on why I should care about their respective characters, and IM 2 did nothing to make me care about Black Widow either. That sort of me left unable to really enjoy the film because I just didn't care about a lot of the people in it, so the teamup did little for me.
I don't think my opinion would be as sour on it now for multiple reasons, and I recognize that it's an notable piece of cinematic history and a landmark of the MCU, but I don't consider it one of the better MCU films and never have.
Why would there be? All of the interesting parts of Clint Barton were starched out for this, and I quote, "Hee-haw, farm-owning, boring-ass, domestic-ass, Jeremy Renner motherfucker."
My various fanfics.I dunno, maybe it's because I went into Winter Soldier expecting a political thriller, but I was able to predict almost every plot point in the film. Oh no, Nick Fury is "dead". Oh no, they're on the run. Oh, they're going to go back to a place in the first film because nostalgia. Oh, Nick Fury isn't dead. Oh, half of SHIELD is corrupt, who could've seen that coming? Oh, they're going to recruit the guy Cap casually made friends with earlier? Oh no, evil SHIELD has taken over good SHIELD and needs to be stopped.
Pretty much everything aside from the HYDRA part, which didn't actually change my predictions any. Also, the Winter Soldier himself has very little impact on the plot aside from being The Dragon.
Civil War would've been a stronger film if the "there're more Winter Soldiers" subplot either led up to something or was removed entirely.
I disagree. I think it was a pretty clever way to trick the viewer into thinking there's going to be an Enemy Mine situation with the two factions then pull out the rug. It's the device Batman v. Superman did to lazily end its conflict (oh no there's a monster so we're friends now) subverted in exchange for a more brutal clash.
edited 24th Feb '18 2:33:19 PM by Tuckerscreator
Either of those would have ruined the moral ambiguity. The purpose of the Winter Soldiers' plot was to serve as exactly what it was: an excuse conflict. A trumped up fake threat for Cap to rush out half-cocked to try and battle, creating the dilemma of
- Pro-Reg: Cap was wrong, straight up. Throwing caution to the wind to chase Zemo was a mistake.
- Anti-Reg: But what if he wasn't? What kind of harm could that have caused?
- Pro-Reg: But he was. What kind of harm did he cause chasing a snipe hunt?
- Anti-Reg: But what if he wasn't?
edited 24th Feb '18 2:34:57 PM by TobiasDrake
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Ehh... but at the same time the final clash is a personal one, not over ideals. Not sure if that floats your boat more but you could argue it's still a cop-out (though much less of a copout than Enemy Mine)
I will say that the conflict isn't helped by the preceeding incompetence of the "world council". It's hard to stick the Avengers with collateral damage when the Council wanted to nuke New York and it's even harder to take it from Tony when basically the entire preceeding movie could have been avoided had he just listened to his teammates.
edited 24th Feb '18 2:39:48 PM by Sigilbreaker26
"And when the last law was down and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat?"I think they could've emphasized this more in the final scene or in the battle, but what I got over it was that the battle was still over ideals in the sense that it becomes clear Cap's own personal judgement is faulty. His stance throughout the film was "we can't trust the government institutions to handle our power responsibly, so we will trust ourselves". But then it being revealed he's been keeping major secrets from Tony proves they can't trust each other either. And Steve realizing his own bias results in him giving up the Captain America mantle.
edited 24th Feb '18 2:47:35 PM by Tuckerscreator

Since the person who raised this point said that Civil War and Winter Soldier are objectively superior to Whedon's work because of Age of Ultron, I feel the need to point out two things:
1 - It's unfair to attribute only Age of Ultron to Whedon and ignore the first Avengers.
2 - "Objectively" means based purely on measurable empirical evidence and not on subjective qualities. Because I'm neurotic about the use of that term, there are two objective metrics we can look at:
Rotten Tomatoes Score:
Box Office
edited 24th Feb '18 10:37:31 AM by TobiasDrake
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