Marvel’s latest superhero flick Captain America: Civil War had another monster run at the box office this past weekend. The film hauled in $72.6 million domestically and added another $84.2 million abroad, driving its global box office gross past the $940 million mark. Cap’s latest adventure is set to surpass $1 billion this week, and it has already pushed Marvel’s cinematic universe past $10 billion in total box office sales.
Civil War has been praised by critics and fans alike, having managed a 90% critic score and a 91% fan rating on popular movie site Rotten Tomatoes. But nothing is perfect, of course, and Captain America’s latest film has some pretty big holes that have left fans scratching their heads.
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You’re not alone if you walked out of the theater with some serious issues after seeing Marvel’s latest movie. There has been far more positive chatter surrounding Civil War than negative comments, but there’s little question that a few problems have left many fans puzzled.
We began exploring conversations surrounding some of the movie’s bigger plot holes and other problems, and it led us to a fantastic thread on question and answer site Quora. In it, user Justin Tsang does the best job we’ve seen of diving into five of the biggest areas where Captain America: Civil War failed.
Digging through the meat of Tsang’s answer, we find the following broad strokes (this should be fairly obvious, but spoiler alert):
- “Very weak development/explanation of Baron Zemo.” We couldn’t agree more. This was one of Tsang’s biggest complaints about the movie, and it’s one of ours as well.
- “Killed off Crossbones too early.” Again, we’re in total agreement. The Winter Soldier actually spent a fair amount of time developing the Grumlow character, and he definitely should have stuck around longer.
- “Motivation for supporting the Accords.” This is a great point that we hadn’t even considered.
- “Numerous physics inconsistencies.” Moving to the technical side of things, Tsang lists four key areas where Civil War got physics all wrong.
- “Plot holes.” Last and most certainly not least, there are some pretty big plot holes in Marvel’s latest flick. Tsang goes through four of the most glaring ones in his writeup. Here they are:
- Vision was taking a nap for the first 90% of the airport fight. I completely forgot he was even present until he sliced a building in half in a last-ditch effort to stop Captain America and Bucky from getting to the Quinjet. Even if he didn’t really want to hurt anyone or get involved, he probably should have been confronting Wanda, or at least stopping her from interfering with everyone else.
- Bucky just happened to make Howard Stark’s car crash exactly in front of where a camera was stationed? And then he decides to shoot the camera AFTER he kills him and his wife? Also, SHIELD let Howard Stark transport five super soldier serums in the back of a trunk without any sort of protection/escort. Sure, Bucky would have killed them all anyways, so it wouldn’t have changed the result, but all the more reason they should have added a few guards. Details!!!
- Captain America’s stance on killing. Bucky throws a guy off a stairwell and Cap reprimands him, but in the first fight of the movie Falcon shoots two guys and blows up two more with missiles.
- Ending. Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised, but a shield-less Captain America and a one-armed Bucky are able to infiltrate an underwater prison facility and incapacitate everyone? Perhaps Black Panther helped, but either way, they made breaking everyone out look way too easy.
Tsang’s full answer is on Quora and it’s definitely worth a read. There are also a couple of other answers in the thread that pose some interesting ideas on areas where Civil War came up short.
