Captain America: Civil War VS Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice: WrestleMania

I feel like there are ways to make this post’s title more cumbersome than it already is.  Then again, I have my doubts that the Blogger dashboard would allow that; it’d either reject my attempts via a character limit, or trigger the bomb embedded in my brain stem.  Not 100% how that got there (or how I know about it), but it’s something I’ve learned to live with.

But let’s not dilly-dally any longer.  There’s something that’s been on my mind, even beyond the question of “Why is Captain America: Civil War better than Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice?”  Granted that’s a legitimate question, and one I’ll try to answer in this post, but it’s important to go over all of the circumstances.  This is one of those cases where, in order to go forward, you have to go backward.

So before we do anything else, let’s talk about Man of Steel.

Always we will fight as one

Till the battle’s won

With evil on the run

We never -- oh wait, since I’m about to talk about Man of Steel, I guess I need to switch to a Hans Zimmer-approved theme song.  Yeah, I guess I’d better do that now.

Oh, and SPOILERS.  Cover your ears now.

Captain America: Civil War: SummerSlam (Part 2)

How does Marvel keep getting away with it?

Cinematic dominance.  Legions of fans.  Hundreds of millions of dollars with one release after another (typically, and that’s before factoring in stuff like merchandising).  The resources and confidence to be able to announce a buffet line of future movies.  The Marvel Cinematic Universe is on a serious hot streak, and if I had to guess?  Considering that Captain America: Civil War has won a place in the hearts of critics, casual moviegoers, and fans -- including yours truly -- I’d say that the streak’s still somewhere between “blazing” and “infernal” on the thermometer.

It’s easy to look at Marvel and get salty.  Very easy.  It’s not the perfect company, and its products aren’t exactly the apotheosis of art.  It’s hard to look at the MCU and pretend like it hasn’t inadvertently harmed the film industry, i.e. with a glut of superhero movies and forcing competitors (such as they are) to foolishly push their own cinematic universes.  And while it’s not a one-to-one comparison, the MCU has helped codify the idea that recognizable names = huge returns of investment.  Ready for a new Jumanji movie?  Too bad, idiots!  Here it comes!

If we absolutely must think of Marvel as the worst -- as a factory instead of a suite of artists -- then I hope you can meet me halfway and agree that it’s the best of the worst.  The reason why Marvel “gets away with it” is because if nothing else, it follows a fundamental rule proven in Civil War: you can’t spell “character” without “care”.

I was standing on my own

But now I’m not alone

SPOILERS!  ASSEMBLE!

Captain America: Civil War: SummerSlam (Part 1)

You know, sometimes it’s hard to come up with subtitles for these posts (especially when there’s already a subtitle built into the title).  This was one of the harder ones, for sure.  It would’ve been easy to go with something pithy yet meaningful, like “No, You Move” or “End of the Line”.  In terms of the movie’s context, there are even more examples I could’ve pulled from.

But I decided to christen it “SummerSlam”, because within the first ten minutes -- if that -- Captain America drop kicks a dude thirty feet away, while Black Widow seems to have picked up a few moves from Rey Mysterio.  Also, the whole movie is pretty much about a big punch-up between a colorful cast of characters, so why not compare it to a major wrestling event?  Besides -- and this is the important bit -- there are a lot of moments where Captain America: Civil War becomes less of a fist-pumping spectacle and more of a brutal, painful, heart-wrenching treatise on why fighting your friends can go so wrong so fast.  We could use a little levity.

It’s fine, though.  Civil War is exactly what I wanted -- which doesn’t say good things about me, but who cares? 

Our world’s about to break

Tormented and attacked

Lost from when we wake

With no way to go back…to a time before you weren’t SPOILED by the SPOILERS in this post.

(That’s how the song goes, right?)