REVIEW 389: CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR (3D)

Release date:	May 6, 2016
Director:	Anthony and Jo Russo
Cast: Language:	Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Holland, Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Don Cheadle, Anthony Mackie, Paul Rudd, Chadwick Boseman, Jeremy Renner, Sebastian Stan, Emily VanCamp, William Hurt English

Captain America: Civil War is a fun though somewhat forgettable film, but for one completely memorable, hugely entertaining, utterly paisa vasool element. The name’s Parker, Peter Parker.

You have to wonder whether this is the result Marvel Studios was looking for when they decided to introduce a teenaged Spiderman into the ongoing series of money-spinning films from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Civil War’s hero is supposedly that great-looking, sexy, “enhanced” individual, Steve Rogers a.k.a. Captain America, played by that great-looking, impossibly sexy actor Chris Evans. Yet it is obvious that writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely ran out of ideas to sustain a third solo venture for Cap.

The result is a film that should more appropriately have been titled Captain America Vs Iron Man (with a very special appearance by Spidey).

The richness of 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger is missing here despite the presence of a multitude of superpeople. The film’s themes of power, control and accountability are interesting, but they are not explored with much depth. The special effects are top notch though.

Captain America: Civil War travels to Lagos with some members of Marvel’s Avengers team: Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow, Sam Wilson / Falcon and Wanda Maximoff / Scarlett Witch. There they prevent the theft of a biological weapon but in the bargain end up killing innocents when Wanda uses her telekinetic powers to divert a bomb blast into the sky but accidentally destroys a nearby building.

When they get back home, the US Secretary of State informs them that 117 member countries of the UN have joined hands over the Sokovia Accords that will set up a body to oversee their work as Avengers. Tony Stark / Iron Man is willing to submit to supervision, since he still blames himself for the destruction caused by the robot Ultron in the film Avengers: Age of Ultron. Steve, on the other hand, is suspicious of governments.

The group splits over this disagreement. Tony recruits a hitherto unknown Peter / Spidey on his team, while Clint Barton / Hawkeye returns to help Steve’s group.

The film is about the result of this rift.

From the word go it is clear that in Captain America: Civil War, MCU is keen to counter the well-justified charge that it is a predominantly male white universe. Sadly, nothing much changes, despite the presence of three blacks (all men) and two women (both white) in the film’s population of nearly a dozen superpeople. This is what happens when you approach the issue of representation as an obligation in response to criticism rather than out of conviction. And so in Civil War, as with all the other MCU films, white men continue to run the world while blacks and women are charitably permitted to play their sidekicks.

That being said, the half-hearted attempt at representation leads to an over-crowded film with short shrift being given to most characters. Natasha, who is played by the incredibly charismatic Scarlett Johansson, is still on the margins. Her purring voice lingers on long after each of her fleeting appearances, which is a reminder that she – the character and the actress – deserves so much more than to be a satellite player in someone else’s world.  

Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) have some interesting moments together. It’s nice to see Wanda’s character developing because she has such Hulk-like potential in the way she struggles with the consequences of her abilities. Sam Wilson / Falcon (Anthony Mackie) and War Machine / James Rhodes (Don Cheadle) are dull though. And Black Panther / T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) remains a shadowy figure on the sidelines throughout, which is criminal considering how iconic the Panther is in American superheroverse.

The stand-out supporting character backed by solid writing in this film is Spiderman (or should we call him Spiderman-boy) with his exasperating youthfulness, garrulous charm and hilarious fascination with the superpowers he is just beginning to understand. He is an absolute hoot. So is the rest of the Avengers’ bemused reaction to him. It helps that actor Tom Holland is a find.

Spidey is one of Civil War’s two highlights. The other is the account of Tony’s childhood, given through two well-executed flashbacks that are perfectly placed in the film.

Oddly enough, Captain America as the central character gets a lot of screen space but little heft. At the end of the day, the sharpest memory of him in this film remains a visually spectacular fight between him and Iron Man towards the end, and an earlier scene in which he physically prevents a chopper from taking off with the strength of his bare arms. Oh man, what arms! No doubt Chris Evans is gorgeous, and when Tony Stark says he is tempted to punch in Cap’s “perfect teeth”, you know there are few stars better suited to that description. But he is also a fine actor and it seems such a waste that his own story does not lift off in this film.

Take Tony and Spidey out of Captain America: Civil War, and what you get is a series of well-paced, well-choreographed fights with a sliver of a story. A pity because it has so many elements that, if tapped, could have made it way more than just an enjoyable but generic superhero film.

Rating (out of five): **3/4

CBFC Rating (India):	U/A
Running time: MPAA Rating (US):	147 minutes PG-13 (for extended sequences of violence, action & mayhem)
Release date in US:	May 6, 2016

Related article by Anna MM Vetticad: “Boys will be boys and girls will be afterthoughts: The hyper-masculine world of superhero films”

http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/boys-will-be-boys-and-girls-will-be-afterthoughts-the-hyper-masculine-world-of-superhero-films-2703822.html

Photograph courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_America:_Civil_War

  

REVIEW 328: AVENGERS - AGE OF ULTRON (3D)

Release date:	April 24, 2015
Director:	Joss Whedon
Cast: Language:	Robert Downey Jr, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Don Cheadle, Elizabeth Olsen, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Paul Bettany, James Spader, Samuel L. Jackson English

Iron Man, Hulk, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Thor and Captain America … Avengers: The Age of Ultron offers the obvious thrill of seeing this superpowered/super-talented sextet from Marvel Comics all together in one film. But we already got that in 2012’s runaway global hit Marvel’s The Avengers. What does Part 2 offer that Part 1 did not? Answer: really not that much more.

For writer-director Joss Whedon – who helmed the first film too – the challenge was to portray an evolving group dynamic in The Age of Ultron, with each member settling down into this formidable assembly, having had some time since the first film to establish friendships and gauge the competition. Incredibly enough for  a bunch of colleagues this diverse and this gifted, they’re completely apolitical amongst themselves. Sure they have their differences of opinion about strategy, but where are the insecurities? Except for a fleeting moment when we see Captain America through Thor’s eyes, everything’s all sweet and honey between them.

How intriguing that a character exemplifying America’s omnipotence should feel threatened by a pre-Christian European mythological deity. Age of Ultron occasionally holds out such flashes of wry humour and depth, and vignettes of budding relationships, but it does nothing to develop them further. Now why on earth couldn’t we have got more of that in this film, Mr Whedon?

Before going further, it’s only fair to introduce the leads to non-comic-book-geeks among you. The Avengers are a superhero squad that first appeared in print in the 1960s in the US. The individual characters have their own separate lives that had been chronicled in several books before they joined hands. Over the years, the membership has varied. In the two film adaptations so far, the team has consisted of:

(a) Iron Man a.k.a Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr), the eccentric billionaire industrialist, inventor and wearer of a metallic suit of armour fitted with advanced weapons and other gadgets;

(b) Hulk/Dr Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), the genius scientist accidentally exposed to radiation as a result of which, if he gets enraged or agitated, he metamorphoses from a gentle, reticent man into an uncontrollably destructive, green-skinned giant with superhuman strength;

(c) Hawkeye/Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner), an archer who hits the bull’s eye every time;

(d) Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), a skilled warrior and former Soviet agent who defected to the US;

(e) Thor (Chris Hemsworth), the seemingly indestructible hammer-wielding Norse god who can manipulate weather, fly and crush his opposition in ways no human being can; and  

(f) Captain America or Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), an ordinary man enhanced through scientific experimentation during World War II, then kept frozen to be revived for future use. His costume is in the colours of the US flag. His weapon: a metal shield.

They’re a league of potentially fascinating characters played by worthy actors. In this, the second Avengers film, the six must save the world from destruction at the hands of the robot Ultron (voiced by James Spader, best known in India as that delightful devil Alan Shore from TV’s The Practice and Boston Legal). Ultron has human cohorts, the twins Wanda the mind-bender and her brother Pietro the speedster a.k.a. Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, who are the product of experiments on humans. The siblings are played by Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Add to this mix the beautiful-bodied and morally interesting robot Vision, given form and life by actor Paul Bettany who has so far voiced Stark’s butler/assistant Jarvis in the Iron Man series.

This film though, is less than a sum of its best parts. The reason is simple: Age of Ultron’s plus points are dwarfed by an overwhelming feeling of how generic it is. The ‘scientific’ or pseudo-scientific explanations for sundry developments come off as boring, confusing mumbo-jumbo. And despite the pace and energy of the battle sequences, there are no stand-out moments that take the breath away because of an imaginative concept rather than the SFX involved. Remember Christopher Reeve in his Superman avatar freezing a lake with his breath and flying off with the island of ice in his arms to hold it over a factory fire that in turn melts the ice and is extinguished by the resultant shower? Not a single moment like that in this film.

Age of Ultron is better in some of the personal interactions between individual members in the league. Particularly nice is the arc of the twins’ motivations through the story. My favourite scene in the entire film is a party where all the Avengers turn up looking delicious in civilian clothing. Apart from the visual relief and the fact that several of them are stunners, there is warmth and humour in their conversations and some appealing insights into who they are.

Hulk – with his many internal struggles – remains one of my favourite superheroes of all time. Here is a humanoid who can’t control his transformations from Dr Banner to superhero, and desperately fights his strength because, as Romanoff puts it, when he does get into battle he knows he will win. In this film too, Hulk has the strongest backing of the writers. We delve into his inside story, while Hawkeye gets an entire side story (not a sparkling one, but at least it’s there). Captain America has his moments too that go beyond Chris Evans’ good looks.

Iron Man, on the other hand, is dealt with rather superficially. Yeah yeah, we know he’s cheeky, and of course the charismatic Robert Downey Jr makes him funny, but tell us more.

Thor does not develop in any way in Whedon’s hands, remaining the same dull, seemingly invincible, invulnerable guy through the Thor and Avengers series. And Black Widow is dull because the writers seem not to care enough to flesh her out. So busy were they focusing on Scarlett Johansson’s hot body and how her pretty nose peeps out from behind that curtain of wavy hair, that they did not bother to make her a creature we can invest in.

Perhaps another title for Avengers 2 could be: The League of Extraordinary White Gentlemen (With A Token Woman Carelessly Thrown In For Political Correctness). There are a couple of token black people too uncaringly chucked into the blend – Avengers’ boss Nick Fury played by Samuel L. Jackson and another associate played by Don Cheadle – but in this world of white male dominance, they operate on the sidelines.

And please don’t say the team of the films can’t be blamed, since their base material is the comic series. Heard of evolution, anyone?

The entire cast is efficient, as are the leads whose inability to rise above mere efficiency is a fault of the inconsistent writing and not their acting talent. Ruffalo as Banner, Andy “Gollum” Serkis in a memorable cameo as a criminal in South Africa and Bettany as Vision are the only ones who deliver nuanced performances. To be fair, they are the only ones with characters of substance.

Avengers: Age of Ultron has some good patches. Unfortunately, they have not been stitched well enough together. Iron Man, Hulk, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Thor and Captain America remain as physically strong here as they were in the 2012 film. Cinematically though, they’ve waned with the passage of time. This is a film that takes the committed fan for granted.

Rating (out of five): **1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	U/A
Running time: MPAA Rating (US):	143 minutes PG-13 (for intense sequences of sci-fi action, violence and destruction, and for some suggestive comments)
Release date in US:	May 1, 2015

Photograph courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avengers:_Age_of_Ultron