Captain America: Civil War (2016)

“Congratulations, cap. You're a criminal."

I saw this film at the cinema in 2016, at the Silverlink up near Newcastle, with Mrs Llamastrangler. It was years ago, yes, but I hadn't blogged the prequels and wanted to do them all in order, so it hasn't been until this rewatching of the film that I've blogged it. Technicaliies and that.

Anyway, this is a film that is awesome in all the usual Marvel ways. We have top notch exciting action scenes. We somehow have a large cast where every character is well characterised and the dialogue is awesome. We have loads of nods to the fans, hence Crossbones and Zeno, even if the character is a little wasted here.

But at the heart of the film is a massive ideological fault line that divides all the heroes- and it’s easy for me, as a liberal and a Liberal, to emphasise with both sides. My civil libertarian instincts make me want to side with Cap, especially as the argument that heroes are to be castigated for those sad in innocent deaths that occur while they are saving many more lives, as in Sokovia. This is a silly argument. And yet... should not those with power be held to account, as we should do for those we allow to wield political power? Is it not important that potential tyrants not be allowed free rein? Even here, where the Sokovia Accords have the appearance of a bad compromise, I’d hesitate to disagree with Tony Stark here, even if many of his actual arguments are bad ones.

This film has depth. It has comedy- and not all of it with Ant-Man. It has drama. It has tragedy. It has the introduction of both a charismatic Black Panther and a new, young Spider-Man with a hot Aunt May. Marvel films are generally awesome, but this is one of the very finest.

Avengers: Endgame (2019)

“Go to sleep or I’ll sell all your toys!

I don’t care if I’m skipping a couple of recent films for this one; I’ve never been strictly chronological with the Marvel films in a pinch and I won’t start now. The months of spoiler-dodging stop now.

So... wow. A big, blockbuster geeky film that’s three hours long yet doesn’t feature a single Hobbit. And it had me in equal measures gripped, laughing and trying not to cry. This film is indeed as good as everyone says it is.

It also subverts expectations in an awfully clever way. In showing us the true horror of Thanos’ click via Hawkeye and his vanished family, it shows us a Thanos who has forever destroyed all the Infinity Stones and retired- so the Avengers visit him and Thor kills him in a massive anticlimax. Fast forward five years. That certainly wasn’t the obvious thing to do.

Cue the return of Ant-Man eventually prompting Tony Stark, now a husband and father, to invent time travel, and lots of highly entertaining dialogue about how the butterfly effect, and hence every time trace movie ever, doesn’t imply in the Marvel Universe. Time travel doesn’t work as in Back to the Future, says the now-smart Hulk, yet the solution to Thanos’ click is to travel back into the recent past and do a Back to the Future II, which is both clever and hilarious.

And so we get a coda where the Hulk’s click brings the dead back- but the Thanos of 2014 has found out the truth from the future Nebula and has time travelled back to kill them all. It’s good to see Karen Gillan with such a prominent role here, but her story is so very timey-wimey. And it seems to explain why Thanos originally had Nebula tied up, yet history is changed here and the 2014 Thanos has events play out differently. The dynamic between the two very different Nebulas, and Gamora, is wonderful, but this film doesn’t let its big, epic nature get in the way of character, pathos or humour. So Black Widow’s death has meaning. Tony Stark’s final, fatal click, saying “I am Iron Man”, May save the army if goodies from Thanos but gives him a meaningful death, dwelt on properly as it should be; if any character can be said to be the main star of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s him.

Cap, too, gets a suitable exit, spending the rest of his days with Peggy in a beautiful coda.

There’s so much more, though. Fat Thor. Tony Stark meeting his dad in 1970, with a cameo from Jarvis whom we’ve only seen in Agent Carter- at least one of the MCU TV series is sort of recognised as canon. There’s “Scott, I get emails from a raccoon”. Thor getting a pep talk from his mother. It’s wonderful that the film has so much heart, and all its characters are properly used.

A wonderful film, and a fitting end to an age. Let’s hope the future is just as bright.

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

“There’s an Ant-Man and a Spider-Man?”

At last I can stop dodging spoilers. I’ve seen it, at last. And it was bloody good. SPOILERS, mind.

Big, epic films are usually rubbish. Going epic tends to mean you can’t avoid being a bit po-faced and pretentious. This avoids that triumphantly by peppering the film with both humour and poignant character moments- so Thor gets to open up to, er, Rocket Raccoon about all the people he’s lost recently and, hilariously, Tony Stark and Doctor Strange spend the entire film in a willy waving contest while Bruce Banner spends the whole film dealing with what Mrs Llamastrangler described as “symbolic erectile dysfunction”. Peter Quill and Thor are also hilarious together.

The whole thing is structured, shot and acted superbly by the usual suspects, and it’s extraordinary how so many characters can be given meaty stuff to do in a little under two hours, although perhaps Captain America could have had some more screen time. I notice, of course, that Hawkeye and Ant-Man are described as inactive in dialogue. Of the few new faces, Joan Brolin is superb as a faithfully rendered Thanos while Peter Dinklage also turns in a good performance and, indeed, accent, as a dwarf who forged great weapons out of stars- I like how the film is very cosmic but how it all has a fantasy flavour, cut from the same cloth as Asgard. The film is superb, and the only reason some other Marvel films probably better is because they don’t have so many narrative jobs to do.

But the deaths, ah, the deaths! I somehow suspect that the half of the universe who died at the end won’t stay dead but, alas, I fear that may not be true for Loki, Gamora or the Vision...

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

"This isn't freedom.This is fear."

HERE BE SPOILERS

This was an extraordinary film when I first saw it at the cinema on my honeymoon and, even with the main twist spoiled, it's an extraordinary film today. The Russo brothers have done a superb job with what is effectively the spy genre of the Marvel superhero films, but Chris Evans is extraordinary too as a World War II Roosevelt New Dealer out of time, struggling to adapt to a time where nobody cares about civil liberties and the military-industrial complex has grown to monstrous proportions.

We begin as Cap bonds with Sam Wilson, another military veteran with similarly invisible scars, and we get a glimpse of Cap's notepad filled with things he needs to catch up on such phenomena as Star Wars, Nirvana (yay!) and the Berlin Wall, "up and down". It isn't long until his first exciting mission, a hostage crisis perpetrated by Cap's old for from the comics, - moustache-free George Batroc. But cracks begin to show between our SHIELD comrades as Cap and Black Widow are given markedly different mission objectives. Cap's complaint to Nick Fury leads to his being shown Operation Insight-a massive and, in Cap's view, disproportionate armoury. How can this be synonymous with freedom?

It can't, or so it seems, as there is a cancer within SHIELD, one that disdains Cap as much as it disdains liberty: HYDRA. And the revelation of this, and that Cap is suddenly hunted prey, is the most shocking and exciting part of the film.

There's so much more, though; Cap's heartbreaking meeting with the elderly Peggy, the nice bit of exposition in the bunker as Arnim Zola spends his last moments as an uploaded AI life form expositing on how HYDRA's takeover of SHIELD came to be, Natasha's general awesomeness, capped by a kick-ass session at a Senate hearing, the whole sequence with Nick Fury under pursuit in the car that leads him to fake his death. But the film is ultimately about the Winter Soldier; Bucky, Cap's oldest friend. Behind the explosions and the awesomeness the film always has a heart.

There's a lot of Marvel life here- HYDRA's targets include "Bruce Banner, Stephen Strange"- but the film is about two things: civil liberties vs. security and friendship. Hence Cap's new yet strong friendship with the Falcon. Hence Bucky being unable, when the moment comes, to kill Cap. It's an incredible film, but it ends with Bucky still at large...