Alright, we are going to TRY and keep this from becoming a three parter. Last time, we touched on Phase 1, as well as most (and I emphasize most) of the sequels to those films. Now we’re on to the rest of the series, so lots of ground to cover. Starting with the same base I started with last time: This is not the place for an in-depth, full out review of every movie. This is, however, where it seems to be the best place for me to pause and give some of my thoughts and feelings towards the series as the whole. Admittedly as part of a series, I have a lot of movies to get through! It will be somewhat character-focused, because as someone who wants to be entertained, I am highly dependent on the characters, it’s just a fact. And I hate the Guardians, so this is NOT the place for GG talk, you 80’s babies, I’m sorry. But I will try to otherwise be fair!
We’ll just skip Iron Man 3 and Thor: Dark World, I already gave my impressions of those, though I will add a mention that at this point, those two franchises were starting to show their weak points. Not past the point of redeeming, but fraying. We were still lacking in strong female heroes, and we were relying purely on the momentum of the first Avengers movie to get our way to the next arc. And then we got Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
Ya’ll. Black Widow and Agent 13 live!
Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson, and Bucky Barnes are a joy to watch, there is no doubt about that. But we finally got introduced to two fairly powerful female agents: Sharon Carter in her debut, and she was minor but fun, and then Natasha was finally able to escape her Every Woman shell. We got to see an actual personality to her, her sense of priorities which are wildly different compared to Steve’s and even Sharon’s, because this Natasha is first and foremost an assassin who now works for the good guys. Finally, Natasha could stand on her own. Add in the welcome dynamic between all the boys, and it was like a breath of fresh air.
And then Joss wrecked it. I told you all, I don’t like him anymore, and you are about to find out why. Short answer: Avengers: Age of Ultron. On the more minor, personal level, he confirmed the Ultimate Hawkeye route, which you all know that I am so hardcore on the Bobbi/Clint train, this is a betrayal of the highest order. But even if you push past all of that… This movie was a mess, and it had a lot of potential. Ultron was a great villian, and for all the obstacles of Pietro and Wanda due to them technically being X-Men, they did a great job in-story of modifying them. Pietro’s death even hit me hard!
But it was so much just throwing one-liners at each other, some of them working and some of them not, and with massive plot holes. I guess they just relied on people watching all the side shows and everything else for some of the small things? But I barely kept up with any of it at this point besides knowing some of it existing, so I felt like I was constantly missing something. And Black Widow, who had just come out of Winter Soldier as a better character…was the love interest? And a kinda shitty one at that. (Traci called this, I was shocked that my canon ship somehow became the crack ship and her crack ship became canon. Still am.) This movie felt like a pretty big step backwards for me.
Ant-Man did not help matters. It felt like trying to combine Iron Man and Thor, so not only was I getting the “My main protagonist is an idiot, ugh,” issues, but also second-hand embarrassment like I got from the other. Add in that I don’t like bugs, and yeah. This felt like a wash for me. Not even the fact that, for once, we weren’t focusing on a romantic interest as a reason to change but instead a family including a cute daughter, was enough to pull it back. I was crossing my fingers and praying for something to try and save this universe for me.
And as much as it broke my heart… Captain America: Civil War did it. There weren’t just a bunch of snappy one-liners going on, but an actual heart happening. And yeah. It hand-waved some hard set facts–such as the fact that there is no way the governments were able to create those Accords that fast–in order to make it work. That had to have been something waiting in the wings for years. But I bet that’s still waiting to be fully played out. I love the idea of these heroes trying to wrestle with their accountability. I loved how letter of the law versus spirit of the law had to be discussed, and like real life, no one was able to stay calm about it. And even when they are finally all on the same page again… Tony Stark dropped the sarcasm and the guilt and the need to be the smartest guy in the room to admit that he couldn’t let this go, because of his mother. It was raw emotion, and I left the movie wanting to cry.
Thank God, at this point, the MCU started to pick up again. But darn it all, I’m not going to be able to cover it all here. So I guess we are going to get a third part to this mess, so look out for that this weekend when I wrap up the rest of Phase 3, at least that’s been released.
…You know, this gives me time to finally watch Spiderman: Homecoming. Maybe this isn’t a bad thing.
Rebecca M Horner 