Today I had one of my grandsons over for a visit and after lunch Camera Girl asked if he wanted to watch the movie, \u201cCatch Me if You Can.\u201d\u00a0 And he said sure, so I went looking for it in the DVDs.\u00a0 But mysteriously it was missing.\u00a0 So, she gave me a lot of grief because she said if I had said we didn\u2019t have it she would have rented it at the library.\u00a0 So blah, blah, blah \u2026 I said okay let\u2019s watch \u201cCaptain America \u2013 Civil War.\u201d\u00a0 And he said sure.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Well, mostly.\u00a0 Since it wasn\u2019t billed as an \u201cAvengers\u201d movie it didn\u2019t have the full ensemble; Hulk and Thor were missing.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 So, Iron Man and his crew were battling Captain America and his backers.\u00a0 Now it\u2019s not a hundred percent clear whether they meant to kill each other.\u00a0 I guess we\u2019re supposed to assume not.<\/p>\n
But here\u2019s the thing.\u00a0 The offensive and defensive capabilities of these various characters are woefully mismatched.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Take one obvious feature.\u00a0 How does someone who can\u2019t fly fight with someone who can?\u00a0 And there are plenty of other problems like that.\u00a0 It leads to an absurdity where the weaker characters are just dancing around trying to avoid being squashed flat by the heavy hitters.\u00a0 And this looks ridiculous.\u00a0 It looks like a jar full of hornets buzzing around in a jar, to no particular result.\u00a0 And this is especially egregious with the female characters.\u00a0 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\u2019s so heavily built that it allows him to survive anything short of an artillery shell going off in his lap.\u00a0 He shouldn\u2019t even notice her attack and she should basically break every bone in her hands punching him.<\/p>\n
Now of course superhero movies are based on the idea of fantasy.\u00a0 So sure, let the girl fight her way through the bad guys.\u00a0 That\u2019s what we expect.\u00a0 But in general, the mixing of unkillable and highly lethal characters with humans whose only superpower is wearing a spandex costume, just doesn\u2019t make very entertaining cinema.\u00a0 The only time these movies make good watching is when two powerful and very evenly matched characters are set against one another.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 This allows brains and experience to allow the fight to resolve itself in an interesting way.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 In the original Thor movie, the antagonists are both immortal Norse gods.\u00a0 This level playing field in each movie makes the conflict less improbable and more interesting as theater.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 And now it seems the audience has grown tired of all this crowded hyperactive choreography.\u00a0 It\u2019s grown stale and annoying.\u00a0 And the numbers are going down at the box office.\u00a0 Maybe it\u2019s time for the Marvel Universe to try something revolutionary and unprecedented; storytelling.<\/p>\n