Batman v Superman vs Captain America: Civil War (heavy spoilers)

Do not READ unless you've either seen or do not care about Spoilers.

So DC has played its hand with Batman V Superman recently. The cards they were holding were terribly lacking unfortunately. Marvel on the other hand had a Royal Flush up their sleeve with Captain America: Civil War. The level of competence and script writing prowess. In here I want to talk about the comparisons between these two movies and why one succeeded where the other failed.

Please note while this is going to be heavily one sided, this is entirely on the fault of DC and the decisions it made, not because of bias. I love both franchises, and I hate that one under-performed so glaringly bad in comparison to the other.

With that in mind lets begin.

The biggest dividing factor between these two movies is Motivation. While the motivations of DC’s caped crusaders and villains were very muddled and confusing with a sea of contradictions, the MCU maintained logical consistency among ALL of its characters; which is a feat in and of itself.

Batman’s motivations seemed clear at first. He witnessed Superman fighting Zod and causing city wide destruction that injured people under his employ. This was reason enough to spark his interest in fighting Superman. At least it would be if he were the normal Batman. The Batman in this utterly cynical and joyless movie was a psychopathic mass murderer with a body count about as large as the main antagonist “Lex” Luthor. His disregard for the streets during chase scenes and fights were just as reckless as anything Superman was doing. He even refers to himself as a criminal and seeks to kill Superman in cold blood until hearing his mother’s name triggers a nam level flashback. Superman on the other hand is largely depressed and entirely unmotivated the entire movie. Sure he saves lives, but for every good he does there is some travesty that happens that is entirely not his fault that gets people inexplicably angry with him EVEN THOUGH they all know it's not his fault. Basically he’s a blatant and blaring Jesus metaphor without even a shred of a personality. The Villain Lex Luthor was more confused and poorly conceived than either of the two heroes. His plan was entirely convoluted and contrived to say the least. It was so contrived in fact that much of it happened off screen to save the glaringly lazy writing from having to explain how he did it in the first place. His flimsy anger towards god not protecting from his parents and cartoonish personality were an obtrusive eyesore in an already incredibly flawed movie. Its this ill conceived anger towards a religious symbolism that serves as his whole motivation for his ludicrously implausible scheme, and the two heroes fall for it because they threw logic out the window along with him.

Civil War on the other hand have very clear, concise, and understandable motivations for their two warring parties. Much like in BvS, their previous campaigns in heroism have caused a lot of collateral damage and cost a lot of civilian lives. While BvS chose too show this devastation in the form of an extremely groan worthy cliche of a little girl standing in the middle of Supes and Zod’s destruction; Civil War showed the devastation in a number of believable and heart wrenching ways. Not only did they show accidental casualties from a mistake on Scarlet Witches part, they showed the devastation from in the eyes of the victims families, from their cellphones that captured the fights from ground level and how truly scary such fights really are to normal people, and MOST IMPORTANTLY: They showed it in the emotional responses of The Avengers.
I cannot stress enough how important the emotional impact on what their doing as superheroes has on everyone involved, and how it makes the artificial and contrived reactions of BvS that much more jarring by comparison. The United Nations is reacting to them believably, the victims react to them believably, even the reactions to the Accords by the Avengers were understandable. Captain America believes that being restricted by the United Nations could lead them to become like weapons for the world that could be aimed at things they DIDN’T want to fight and keep from from the fights that they DID need to take on. This fear is reflected in his friend Bucky Barns, the winter soldier, whom was used as a weapon exactly in the way that Cap is opposed to. Tony Stark on the other hand is looking at the destruction they have caused and the lives they have costed and believes that reigning the Avengers in is a complete and total requirement. He is driven to do this by the hurt and angered mother who lost her boy in the accidental blast caused by Scarlet Witch along with all the collateral damage he has caused in his time as Iron Man. The other members of the Avengers each choose their side with understandable reasoning all around.

All in all the motivations of Civil War absolutely decimate BvS in terms of quality and execution. It was clearer, it was far better managed, and it was entirely natural and believable for each of the players involved.

Another factor that sets Civil War above BvS is the Cameos.

DC handled their cameos like they were an afterthought, like they were shoehorned in JUST because they were anticipating a franchise. Between Wonder Woman whom floated in the background for the entire movie doing absolutely jack squat until the final action scene to them literally halting the movie so this same woman could check her F*CKING EMAIL and watch little mini trailers of each future justice league character complete with their own LOGOS (Keep in mind these are supposed to be secret Lexcorp files, why secret files need to have custom logos for each meta human is beyond me), it just completely ripped the average viewer out of the film and left them with more questions than answers. NOT ONLY were these cameos done so abysmally, they were further overshadowed by Batman having a Inception level PTSD Fever Dream where he sees the Flash, IN A DREAM, Giving him a warning about Superman. In another vision (because apparently Batman is clairvoyant now) He even sees a vision of DarkSeid’s alien army invading the planet. How did Batman know what they looked like? How did he get this vision? I don’t know, its entirely jarring and has no segway to even hint that it's a dream until he hops awake, and it leaves you feeling numb and non-pulsed. You don’t feel excitement seeing these cameos, you feel frustrated that they are being shown in such a lazy and immersion shattering way.

Compare that with Civil War and its like Night and Day. Black Panther and Spider-Man were both introduced in the course of this movie. The Panther’s motivations were entirely understandable, he lost his father to the man he believes to be the Winter soldier and he is completely out for blood. His presence and arc in this movie was masterfully done and I’m extremely excited to see his movie. Not only was the Panther done wonderfully, but the MCU Spider-Man is the most true to form accurate depiction of the Web Head to ever grace the silver screen. He’s young, he’s awkward, he’s got jokes, and his rapport with Tony Stark and Captain America was outstanding. They didn’t rehash his backstory like Batman whom had his parents die on screen for the billionth time, they subtly hinted at his motivations for being a hero and really played off that mentor protegee dichotomy between Stark and Parker. I’m really looking forward to what they do with him.

Marvel’s Civil war overshadows DC on a number of other levels like writing, editing, pacing; The only thing that DC did that I could say that was “better” so to speak was some of the more iconic imagery utilized in BvS. There were some very pretty shots in BvS, its a very nice looking piece of garbage, however those few nice shots are completely mired by everything that was utterly wrong with that film. The fights of Civil War were exciting and action packed, but they could have used an extra bit of flare in some parts. Flare does not a good movie make, but it does make an already good scene and movie that much better.

Over all Civil War utterly destroyed BvS in every regard.

And this is not a good thing by any stretch of the imagination.

It’s not that I wanted Captain America to flop, far from it. What I wanted is for D.C to prove themselves to be competition for Marvel. Competition is always a good thing for the qualities of movies and audience interest. When you go to watch a Wrestling Match, you want to see each opponent playing at their very best. You want them to be neck and neck, you want them to compete with every fiber of their being. What we got was Marvel showing its best effort and D.C barely even caring about the fight at all. It was a total victory for marvel, but it’s cheapened by the utter lack of quality of their opponent’s performance. It is not a proper victory when the other side isn’t even trying.

Here’s hoping D.C gets its act together for their upcoming movies; because for each flop they have the more people are just going to lose interest in the Superhero movies entirely regardless of how good the marvel films are. A low performing D.C is only going to hasten audience burnout to its inevitable conclusion, not aid Marvel in any way.

Hopefully when I compare their next movies, I won’t have to be so extremely one sided like I have to be here.

Get your shit together D.C.

What did you think of these two movies? Has Super Hero fatigue set in for you because of under-performing movies Like BvS and Fan4stic? Do you hope that D.C will get its act together and put out actually good movies in the future? Comment below!