Today I had one of my grandsons over for a visit and after lunch Camera Girl asked if he wanted to watch the movie, “Catch Me if You Can.” And he said sure, so I went looking for it in the DVDs. But mysteriously it was missing. So, she gave me a lot of grief because she said if I had said we didn’t have it she would have rented it at the library. So blah, blah, blah … I said okay let’s watch “Captain America – Civil War.” And he said sure. Well aside from the commercials (I recorded it a couple of days ago) that I had to annoyingly fast forward through it was the typical Marvel Universe CGI extravaganza. Well, mostly. Since it wasn’t billed as an “Avengers” movie it didn’t have the full ensemble; Hulk and Thor were missing. But with all of the minor heroes and the addition of Bucky (aka the Winter Soldier), Black Panther, Ant Man and Spiderman it was pretty damn crowded.
And because the title included the words civil war, what most of the action scenes consisted of was the heroes divided into two opposing factions battling each other. So, Iron Man and his crew were battling Captain America and his backers. Now it’s not a hundred percent clear whether they meant to kill each other. I guess we’re supposed to assume not.
But here’s the thing. The offensive and defensive capabilities of these various characters are woefully mismatched. Even without Thor and Hulk who are basically unkillable, the abilities of the minor characters who are basically normal human beings without any special armor or weapons, are laughably insufficient to either harm the stronger characters or even survive a serious fight with them. Take one obvious feature. How does someone who can’t fly fight with someone who can? And there are plenty of other problems like that. It leads to an absurdity where the weaker characters are just dancing around trying to avoid being squashed flat by the heavy hitters. And this looks ridiculous. It looks like a jar full of hornets buzzing around in a jar, to no particular result. And this is especially egregious with the female characters. Even though somehow Black Widow (basically Scarlett Johansson in tight leather pants) is able to easily fight and kill a half dozen much larger men without effort, it defies all the laws of physics that she can attack a man in an armored suit that’s so heavily built that it allows him to survive anything short of an artillery shell going off in his lap. He shouldn’t even notice her attack and she should basically break every bone in her hands punching him.
Now of course superhero movies are based on the idea of fantasy. So sure, let the girl fight her way through the bad guys. That’s what we expect. But in general, the mixing of unkillable and highly lethal characters with humans whose only superpower is wearing a spandex costume, just doesn’t make very entertaining cinema. The only time these movies make good watching is when two powerful and very evenly matched characters are set against one another. So, in the original Iron Man movie Tony Stark and his former partner; Obadiah Stane have powered suits that at least are in the same ballpark of capability. This allows brains and experience to allow the fight to resolve itself in an interesting way. In the original Captain America film Steve Rogers and Johann Schmidt are both super soldiers (biologically enhanced) and therefore on a relatively level playing field. In the original Thor movie, the antagonists are both immortal Norse gods. This level playing field in each movie makes the conflict less improbable and more interesting as theater.
So, I am not surprised that stacking more and more heroes and villains of completely unequal and confusing capabilities just makes the action scenes an unholy mess with very little tension or enjoyment. And now it seems the audience has grown tired of all this crowded hyperactive choreography. It’s grown stale and annoying. And the numbers are going down at the box office. Maybe it’s time for the Marvel Universe to try something revolutionary and unprecedented; storytelling.
