Age of the Geek

By: 
Travis Fischer

The Marvel Way
     There’s a lot to unpack about “Captain America: Civil War.”
     I knew I was going to write about it this week, but had a hard time deciding what exactly to write about. Do I breakdown the philosophical battle between Captain America and Iron Man? Do I apply the film’s conflict with the political conflicts of the real world?
     Maybe eventually, but this week I think I’m just going to dedicate the column to expressing how great a job Marvel Studios has done, not just on their most recent movie, but collectively over the last eight years.
     I’ll admit I had plenty of concerns about this movie going in. Nothing gold can stay. Even Pixar has a flop or two under their belts at this point. I was mildly worried that this may be where Marvel Studios finally faltered.
     All the warning signs were there, starting with the source material.
     In the comic books, the Civil War storyline was an absolute mess. It was an incoherent crossover event that took a good premise and failed to deliver on every level.
     If that weren’t bad enough, then came the unending string of secondary characters. First with the announcement that Captain America would be sharing top billing with Iron Man, a move that seemed uncomfortably similar to Batman being injected into the Man of Steel sequel.
     Then came Black Panther, a move that seemed uncomfortably similar to Wonder Woman being injected into BvS, because everybody loves it when you dedicate screen time of the movie you’re watching to set-up next year’s film.
     Then came Spider-Man.
     Now this Captain America movie has not only turned into a makeshift Avengers movie, but it also has to set-up a relatively obscure character and introduce Spider-Man for the third time in 15 years.
     And somehow, the Russo Brothers made it work.
     “Captain America: Civil War” does what the comic never did by clearly laying out what the heroes were fighting over and making both sides of the conflict sympathetic. Sure, in both versions Tony Stark makes some bad calls, but his actions in the movie are far more understandable than his comic book counterpart, who pretty much immediately goes full fascist.
     Unlike “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” which took good comics and made a bad movie out of them, this film took bad comics and made a good movie.
     As for Black Panther and Spider-Man, one would think their forced inclusion into the story would be a distraction, but it isn’t. The Black Panther plays an important role and gets a satisfying character arc of his own. It’s hard to imagine the movie working without him.
     Spider-Man...OK, Spider-Man could have been done better. Not that there was anything bad about him. Far from it. Tom Holland is a great Peter Parker both in and out of costume and his brief appearance in the movie is easily one of the highlights.
     But it is a brief appearance. He is introduced, takes part in the big super hero brawl, and then immediately vanishes from the movie until the second after-credits scene. For a moment it looks like Spider-Man may take a page from his comic book counterpart and switch sides, but he never gets that far.
     That said, it’s saying something that one of my biggest criticisms of the Captain America movie is that there isn’t enough Spider-Man in it.
     All in all, “Captain America: Civil War” continues the Marvel Studios tradition of taking something that shouldn’t work and making it work anyway.
     Making five unrelated movies lead-in to a single crossover film was unprecedented, but “The Avengers” made a billion dollars anyway.
     Dedicating a movie to a team even most comic book readers barely knew about? “Guardians of the Galaxy” rose to the challenge, proving that you don’t even need name recognition to make a hit.
     Dropping a critically acclaimed director and handing a movie off to a guy who has mostly made romantic comedies? “Ant-Man” should have been a disaster, but ended up being better than average.
     Even the most common complaints about Marvel Studios —  that their movies are too tonally similar and that they’ve become reliant on the audience seeing previous movies — aren’t really flaws. Those traits are part of why Marvel Studios has been such a success.
     Where other studios change comic book stories to work with traditional filmmaking practices, Marvel is adapting traditional filmmaking practices to work with comic book stories.
     There is a lot to be cynical about in today’s world. Aversion to risk seems to have paralyzed everything from politics to media to entertainment. It’s good to see Marvel Studios not only take such risks, but succeed at them.
     Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and ultimately ended up on TeamCap.

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