If I go crazy

then will you still call me Superman?

– 3 Doors Down

Please do not snort glowing, green rocks, kids!

Even if you aren’t a nerd, you probably know about Superman.  The big, tough guy who wears his patriotic underpants over his tights, whose secret identity can be bought at Lens Crafters, and whose greatest weakness is Kryptonite, a green space rock.  The fun thing about superheroes is that you can identify with these guys, whether it’s wanting to be like them (for Superman flying, not wearing my underpants over my pants) or having a weakness.  And we have many weaknesses.  Internet, binge-watching competitive cooking shows, heroin, or secretly liking Justin Bieber.

You’ll note I didn’t add liking Trump to this list.  That falls under the category of “evil-doer’s minion”.  Justin first must get into politics to qualify for that.  I’m thinking 2030 or so, but don’t worry, by then we will probably all be extinct.  Accentuate the positive!

Supervillain? Or his own minion?

Anyway, I recently went to see Captain America: Civil War in the theater with Thing One who had only been nagging about this since the beginning of time.  Okay, I was wanting to see it too because I like all the humor mixed in with this latest series of Marvel Comic Books movies.  Superman is from another comic company called D.C.  The best way to tell them apart is that Marvel got bought out by the great Empire of Disney and makes really profitable movies, while D.C. . . . doesn’t.

Tell all your troubles to super mutt there.

What I like most about these movies, in spite of never having read the comic books, is all the humor combined with unbelievable violence that never seems to really affect anything.   Also it might be because the guys are super hot (get it?) and wear tight outfits over their muscles.  I am not a dirty old woman.  For your information Captain America was born like in the 30s or something but was frozen in ice like a popsickle for years because – who cares?  And Thor is totally a Norse God so he’s like several thousand years old, give or take you know.  I want to be a Norse Goddess in my next career.

As you can see, these back stories make complete sense, so we definitely want these guys to have realistic problems.  And this movie did it.  If you don’t want SPOILERS, and I do mean this both in revealing secrets and in the way I give this review (SARCASTICALLY) then you might want to run, RUN!

Okay moving on.

Hot guy on hot guy action! Wait I didn’t – mean it that way. . .

This movie took a while to get started.  Like a long time.  There was this Russian guy, and this other Russian guy, and this dude called Bucky (no really) who was Captain America’s best friend back in World War II but is now an insane assassin but Cap knows there is still GOOD in him even though he kills lots of people.  Even more than Captain America does!

And turns out people are bugged about the death and destruction while superheroes fight the super villains and save everybody!  Except those dead people.  I always assumed that they went back and found the people safely ducking and covering under the smashed cars, then did Habitat for Heroes and rebuilt the buildings.  Not really, I honestly didn’t care.  But now the U.S. government IS caring about killing random people (this is a first) and decide they need to reign in the superheroes.  Maybe it’s because the government prefers to kill them themselves?

After they wake up from their naps, that is.

That’s what Captain America is thinking.  Why trust the government even though he was a loyal soldier back in the 1940s and was eager to fight Nazis for freedom?  And Iron Man (played by the adorable, snarky, sarcastic Robert Downey Jr.) normally does whatever the heck he wants partly because it annoys everyone else, especially his teammates.  I love people who purposely irritate others and get away with it!  But this was not the Iron Man here.  This Iron Man wants to give it over the government.  Why?  Because they had his girlfriend Pepper (no really) played by Gwyneth Paltrow (no really) leave him and people come up and yell at him for killing their children while saving the damn planet and this has him all depressed.

SEE? You’re even making the kid cry, Robert.

Noooo.  Iron Man is what makes these movies so much fun.  This is like turning Tigger into Eeyore and expecting the same dynamic.  But it’s not really about the other Avengers (Thor and the Hulk are off playing a round of golf or something) but a Captain America movie.  That’s why we have Russians and Bucky.  Bucky, Bucky, Bucky.  Right, well, part of the group are meeting at the United Nations building to sign some contract and KA-BOOM big explosion.  The king of *Uganda – for some reason the U.S. is suddenly paying attention to violence in Uganda – is kinda dead.  Oops.  Luckily Black Widow, one of the two women in this superhero movie, has survived the massive explosion with, I’m not kidding, a bit of dirt on her cheek.  Her hair is great, her suit is fine.  She hasn’t even broken a nail.  At least there was unintentional humor there.

Before explosion.

After explosion. We makes spies explosion proof these days.

Now in the advertisements there was much to do about Captain America and Iron Man beating the crap out of each other.  So I was sort of waiting for that.  It took a long time.  Really long time.  Most of the time Cap is trying to protect Bucky from people wanting to kill him for pretty good reasons.  It turns out Bucky is not at fault, though he was for all the other deaths like oh . . . Iron Man’s parents.  OOOOPSIES.  Iron Man doesn’t take seeing video (by the random Russian guy) of his parents being tortured all that well.  So runs after old Bucky, who Captain America protects, so then he starts whackin’ on Captain America, who whacks back, and so forth.

Finally Captain America darn near kills Iron Man, and leaves him there.  Cause justice and the American way?  Bucky gets frozen again – oh yeah he was frozen too – and later Cap writes a letter saying gee sorry Iron Man, want to rejoin the club?  And why not, right?  And it just ends there.

Look, I’m sorry, okay?

Oh there were some good lines here and there.  They get a couple of new characters, and when they are all fighting each other and asking if they’re still, like, buds after this, it’s got that same old feel.  Humor and violence.  But still, it’s not my favorite of the series (and there are a lot of these movies to watch – you actually need a list to figure out the order of all the movies about various characters.)  The politics were confusing, like real politics, as was a lot of the story.  But maybe my main problem was that everything around me is depressing, and depressing is my Kryptonite.  For turn your brain off fun,  I recommend the first two Avengers movies, or the Iron Man Movies, or anything with the name “Robert Downey Jr” in it.  Or whatever you actually like to watch.

Robert Downey, Jr., please cheer up.  Heck with Gywneth.  I am available anytime.

-Alice

* Edited to Add: Thing One informed me the country is Wakanda, not Uganda.  So it just sounds like an African country.  My bad.  In my defense, I think the U.S.  wouldn’t care about Wakanda either.

For some fun, check out this video.