Captain America: Civil War Review

I'm totally calling it right now: Bucky Barnes is in the Black Panther movie. I'm not sure what he's doing in it, but he's in it. Maybe he'll cause political turmoil when it's discovered T'Challa has him in deep freeze. Maybe he'll be the sidekick T'Challa calls in to help. I don't know, but we've got almost two years to speculate.

So I spent the most of the credits trying to guess what the post-credits scene would be. I was hoping for Carol Danvers, but I figured if she was in there I would have seen it somewhere on the internet. After that, I was hoping for SHIELD, but figured that probably would have found its way to my screen as well. At that point, I decided it was likely either Doctor Strange or Guardians of the Galaxy since both of those had been filming recently and any post-credits scene filming could be passed off as filming for the movie. I'm not sure why I wasn't expecting Spider-Man. I mean, he's one of, if not the, most popular character in Marvel.

I'm still waiting for MCU Kate Bishop. Realistically, there are two people Clint would have rounded up for the fight besides Scott and Wanda: Kate Bishop and Bobbi Morse. I mean, the only reason Kate wouldn't appear is that makes too many heroes and then Marvel would have to acknowledge that something resembling the Fraction comics exists in the MCU. I guess I'll just have to hope for an appearance in Agents of SHIELD season 4. There's also no way he isn't besties with Philinda, but they've obviously got their hands full and can't go doing illegal stuff now that they have government sanction again. Also, either side could have called in Daredevil or Jessica Jones, who are at least somewhat publicly known.

Bucky said there was no way to get Hydra out of his head, but can't they just use the TAHITI protocol? Just have Bucky join SHIELD for a few episodes while FitzSimmons works out how best to proceed. Coulson could definitely use another tactical agent. Barring that, last I checked, Wanda is telepathic. Couldn't she just wiggly-woo Bucky's mind back together?

Speaking of Wanda, I'm disappointed that the term "wiggly-woo" was never used in the dialogue. I know it started out mostly as a behind-the-scenes thing to describe Elizabeth's unscripted hand movements, but it would have been such a great thing to include.

That speech by Sharon definitely played a role in Steve's decision to oppose the Sokovia Accords. It was basically Sharon saying that Peggy would always stick to her principles and refuse to compromise, which is exactly what Steve did. I mean, there's no way Steve isn't going to hold the Carter women's opinions to a higher standard than anyone else's.

I saw the fact that Tony wasn't the main villain coming miles away. I mean, first of all, some press release months ago went and said Rumlow and Zemo were the main villains. But then the trailers and promotional material went and almost completely ignored Zemo. They made it look the real fight was Steve vs Tony. I mean, we even saw the moment where they called a truce, but it was made to look confrontational. Zemo spent most of the movie looking for the information he would use to manipulate Tony. Someone on Tumblr pointed out (and I don't remember the promotional material for Winter Soldier enough to know how accurate this is) that the trailers and clips for Winter Soldier (which has the same writers and directors as Civil War) lied about a large portion of the plot and completely omitted the resurgence of Hydra. I knew right away then that the focus on Tony as the villain had to be at least somewhat false. I mean, obviously they had to have enough footage of it to make multiple trailers and clips. But even the line about Tony wanting to punch Steve in his perfect teeth was largely a jab at Howard's glorification of Steve. The footage of Tony firing some missiles was cut together with Rumlow shooting at Steve to make it look like Tony was shooting at Steve (though now that I think about it, he was probably shooting at Steve anyway).

So the Avengers are what now, a rogue criminal group? The only ones who aren't on the lam are Tony, Rhodey (who's hospitalized), Vision, Black Panther, and Spider-Man. Everyone else is either MIA, a criminal, or in cryogenic deep freeze. The next time we see any of these characters will be next year's Spider-Man movie, so we'll have to wait until then to see what the status of the group is. Unless Feige, the Russos, or Agents of SHIELD confirms it ahead of time. I mean, we could only have to wait until Tuesday to find out.