Ok, let me just preface this by saying that I loved this movie. It’s a movie set in the Marvel cinematic universe, so that’s not a hard thing to do mind you, but even compared to the movies that were used to set this film up like Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Avengers: Age of Ultron, this film still manages to stand on its own and deliver a thrilling and action-pack experience.

However, with all that being said, there are two issues that I had a problem with. The first is a minor technical nitpick that more irked me than anything else, but the second is a massive problem that holds the film back from being even better and could have potentially ruined the film.

Warning, this will be spoiler heavy, not just for Civil War, but more than few of the Marvel films that directly tied in with this film, namely Captain America: The Winter Soldier and both Avengers films.

First off, this film jumps back and forth between locations all over the world. That is not the problem though. The problem is that whenever it does this, it introduces the new location by overlaying big, bolded white text of the country name over the entire screen, beating you over the head with it. Most films introduce a change of scenery using subtitles near the bottom of the screen, just large enough that viewers can still read it but it isn’t shoved into your face. By the third time, which is not even close to the last time, you’re sick of it.

The big issue is however, that if you stop and think about it for a few moments, you realize that the set up for this movie is unbelievably weak. I’m talking wet tissue paper levels of weak, with the structural integrity of dry kindling.

Ok, if you’ve never read the Civil War storyline that this film is loosely based on, here’s the short version. During a raid on a home hiding Marvel supervillains, one of the villains suicide bombs himself, not only killing a good number of heroes pursuing him, but also a nearby elementary school full of children. This sparks an outrage amongst the governments of the Marvel Universe, leading to the Super Hero Registration Act, splitting the Marvel universe down the middle.

The storyline ended up leading to major backlash, since none of the writers were in agreement on which side was correct, leading to motivations and characters wildly shifting between books. In some books, the Registration was described as comparable to a driver’s license: fill out a few forms here and there and you’re good, just now there are consequences if your powers end up causing problems, while in others it was forced conscription, where those with powers were forced to enlist as the government’s soldiers or be tried for treason. Same with the Anti-Registration group, were they were either freedom fighters fighting for the protection of civil rights, or out of control vigilantes or, worse, terrorists. That’s not even getting into the stories that spawned from Civil War, like the infamous One More Day, which, if you’re a fan of Linkara like I am, then you have an idea how that turned out.

This movie tried to add it’s own spin on this, tying in the other movies to try and support their argument, but all they end up doing is coming off as whiny jerks whose only complaint is they can’t monetize and control the Avengers for their own selfish purposes.

So, after a brief flashback involving the Winter Soldier, the film opens up in the fictional African nation of Wakanda, which is pretty much the only place in the world you can find large quantities of the metal Vibranium, the stuff that Captain America’s shield is made of. It’s so valuable, that Wakanda has a tight lock on the control and shipment of Vibranium, which has allowed the nation to develop their technology far beyond the rest of the world, which considering this is a world with Reed Richard and Tony Stark, is no small feat.

Captain America/Steve Rogers and his team are here hunting the villain Crossbones, a previous Hydra lackey who hunted down Cap in Winter Soldier and was horribly disfigured after the Battle of the Triskelion. They eventually manage to stop Crossbones and his goons from making off with a biological weapon that was being held at Wakanda’s Centre for Infectious Diseases (why it was there to begin with I have no clue), but as a final act Crossbones’ attempts to suicide bomb himself in the middle of the marketplace in an attempt to take Cap with him. Due to quick thinking by Wanda/The Scarlet Witch, she is able to contain the blast and hurls it up into the air to avoid harming anyone, but loses control at the last second and accidentally sends it crashing into a nearby skyscraper, ultimately killing eleven people and prompting the Wakandan government to demand retribution.

The problem here is that the Wakandan government should be thanking Steve and his team for getting involved. Yes, eleven people died and that’s still a tragedy, but consider for a moment how bad it could have been if they hadn’t gotten involved. Crossbones would have made a clean getaway with a biological weapon, which would have gone on the kill thousands, if not millions of people. Hell, during the fight in the marketplace, one of the goons was perfectly willing to release the contaminant in the packed market, which would have killed himself and the hundreds of people in the area, to say nothing of the number of casualties if it had spread and also not including all the people Crossbones would have fried when he blew himself up in the crowded market. I don’t have an exact number, but I’m positive it would have been higher than eleven.

Worse still, the media treats Wanda like some kind of monster, an unstable powder keg just waiting for a spark. Yeah, tell that all the people she saved. I’m not saying she didn’t make a mistake, but she should have known that something like this would happen at one point, and the only thing she can do is learn from it and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Oh, but it gets worse. Or stupider, take your pick.

After this, Steve, his team and Tony Stark meet up with the Secretary of State, Thaddeus Ross (Goddammit Ross!). Marvel fans will recognize him from the Hulk film, where he was a stalker with a crush levels of obsessed with capturing the Hulk, to the point he authorized the injection of the unstable super soldier formula into one of his soldiers, the same soldier who would go mad and mutate into Abomination. In the comics, he later becomes the Red Hulk, so “clearly” this guy is a level-headed and trustworthy individual!

Anyway, Ross introduces the Registration Act, which has been renamed “The Sokovia Accords”, or just “The Accords” for short and was named so for the city in Age of Ultron that Ultron turned into a floating landmass that was destroyed during the final battle of the film. In short, the Accords not only hold the Avengers accountable for their actions, but also makes it so they are now under the control of the UN council, and can only act after the council has deliberated and given the okay. I’ll get into the problems with this set up in a moment, but the big problem comes when Ross tries to validate the need for The Accords by bringing up all the damage the Avengers have caused in the past, which consist of the Chitauri invasion of New York from Avengers, Battle of the Triskelion from Captain America: The Winter Soldier and the Battle for Sokovia from Avengers: Age of Ultron.

And it is here where any sound reasoning for this act crumbles to dust and is blow away in the wind.

See, here’s the thing: Yes, the Avengers caused untold amounts of damage in all those examples and the number of casualties greatly exceeded potentially hundreds of thousands, if not more. The problem here is that the ultimate outcomes of all these battles were the Best. Case. Scenarios.

By the time the Avengers showed up, things had long reached what is known as a “Godzilla Threshold”, which is a situation in which any solution, no matter how absurd or extreme, couldn’t make things any worse than they already are. Or, to make it simpler, imagine Godzilla is rampaging through your city. Would launching a nuclear warhead into the middle of the city at the rampaging monster in no way, shape or form possibly make this situation any worse? If the answer is yes, then you’ve reached the Godzilla Threshold.

Let’s break down this idiocy, shall we?

Let’s start with New York. By the time the Avengers arrived, a full scale invasion was well underway, the city had already been desecrated by the giant Leviathans and hordes of invading aliens, and the death toll was increasing by the second. Avoiding casualties by this point would have been impossible, so the Avengers worked to not only stop the invasion before it could spread beyond the city and put the entire human race at risk, but also save as many people as they could.

But wait, it gets better! In this situation, the League of Shadowy Government Officials, who are supposedly the good guys, were more than ready to nuke the city of New York off the face of the globe and would have done so if the Avengers hadn’t stopped them. Not only was there no guarantee that this would stop the invasion in its tracks, but they were perfectly willing to kill 8.5 million people and cause far more damage than the Avengers in the process, which is already more than the number of deaths the Avengers have caused by the time of Civil War. In the words of Samuel Jackson:

Point to the Avengers. Next up, let’s move onto the Battle of the Triskelion from Winter Soldier.

Over the course of this film, we learn that Hydra has been infiltrating S.H.I.E.L.D. ever since its creation, and has been orchestrating a plan over the decades to make the world as chaotic as possible with wars and the like, so that the human race would willingly give up their freedoms and submit to Hydra’s regime. To this end, they engineer Project Insight, consisting of three Heli-Carriers in low orbit that would allow them to use satellites to target anyone on the planet Hydra deems a threat, which could be anyone from the President of the United States to your High School Valedictorian and kill them with but a push of a button. Once online, the Heli-carriers lock on to thousands of innocents just minding their own business and was literally a second away from killing every one of them before Captain America and his team took control of then and took out the Heli-Carriers with their own guns.

While there still was a good number of casualties, most of them were either Hydra goons who deserved it or loyal S.H.I.E.L.D agents who gave their lives to stop Hydra. Again, the number of casualties were far less than the thousands of unsuspecting people who were a second away from be fired upon, one of whom was the President. Are you seriously trying to tell me that Cap shouldn’t have stepped in, knowing that it would lead to Hydra slaughtering thousands and enforcing their tyrannical regime with their kill-satellites? Are you normally this stupid, Ross, or is this a special occasion?

Another point to Captain America and the Avengers. Oh, but I’m not done yet. Time to move onto the Battle of Sokovia from Age of Ultron.

In the end, Sokovia was destroyed and thousands of its people died. Again, none of these events are any less tragic, but you know what’s a worse death toll than that?

One in the billions. Seven billion, to be precise, since anyone who’s seen Age of Ultron knows that Ultron turned the city into a floating landmass in order to turn it into an extinction level event and wipe out the human race. If the Avengers had been under council like the government wants them to be, the representatives would still be squabbling “We should do something!” and “Should we do something?” right up until Ultron dropped the city on the planet. There wouldn’t be anyone to complain about the number of deaths then, since everyone would be dead then, now wouldn’t they?

Going back to the Battle of New York, the government could have easily tried to nuke Sokovia, since they could have easily written the citizens as “an acceptable loss”, yet the Avengers risked their lives to not only stop Ultron and save the earth, but save as many Sokovian citizens as they could.

Now tell me, between the government and the Avengers, who clearly holds more value for human life? Third point to the Avengers, but I’ve still got a few more nails to drive into this coffin before I’m done.

I can’t begin to tell you how bad of an idea it would be to have the Avengers dictated by council. There are the squabbling bureaucrats I also mentioned, which would end up with the Avengers sitting around twiddling their thumbs while thousands of people died because they had yet to given the okay. Not to mention that I can easily foresee more than a few outright denying the Avengers permission for petty or selfish reason, leading to tragedies getting for out of hand that could have easily been prevented. If they think the damage the Avengers caused was bad, they’ll be in for a big surprise.

But you want to know the worst part of all this? The Accords appear at first to be built up as the main conflict of the movie, the reason Steve Rogers and Tony Stark are even fighting in the first place, just like in the comics. In reality, The Accords end up being little more than a sub-plot at best and are dropped by the halfway point of the movie, which only the barest of mentions afterwards. In fact, the only thing the Accords served to do is introducing the nation of Wakanda and by extension, introduces Prince T’Challa a.k.a The Black Panther into the film.

Better yet, Tony’s reasoning for siding with The Accords is just as paper-thin. Following a presentation, he runs into a woman who whines that he murdered her son in Sokovia and that makes him human scum.

Oh boo hoo, let me play you a song on the world’s smallest violin. Yes, I’m sad this lady lost her son, but she is completely ignoring all the lives Tony did save, including stopping Ultron from whipping out the human race. Complaining like she does here just makes her come off as petty and whiny.

And, for some reason, this one event shakes Tony to his very core and he puts up no resistance to signing the Accords. I’m reminded to similar events that took place in the Superman comics and Mass Effect 3, all of which were just as stupid.

In one Superman story, Superman is giving a speech when a distraught woman suddenly walks up and slaps him. She then goes into a tirade about how Superman is a jerk for not taking time out his busy schedule saving the world to come and use his laser vision to perform surgery on her husband, who was dying from an illness that apparently only Superman could deal with.

Yeah, how dare Superman risk his life to save the planet instead of coming down to help someone he has never met, had no idea was sick, and couldn’t have helped anyway since Superman has no experience performing a surgery, and likely would have microwaved the guy’s internal organs. Lady, to quote George Takei, “You are made of stupid.”

Similarly, in Mass Effect 3, Shepard has seen some serious service in his/her fight against the Reapers. Defending on how you play the game, Shepard might have seen their entire squad wiped out before being tortured, was forced to abandon one of their teammates on Virmire and might have lost some of their teammate during the raid of the Collector Base. Including the events of The Arrival, Shepard knows he might not be able to save everyone.

And yet, Shepard begins developing PTSD and Survivor’s Guilt because they watched a Reaper kill a single kid, a kid Shepard knew for less than five minutes. As I said, Shepard knows death is a possibility and one of the major themes of Mass Effect 3 is that “it’s impossible to save everyone”, so why is this one kid shaking Shephard to their very core?

Going back to the film, the real reason why Steve and Tony end up fighting pops up very early on in the film too: Bucky Barnes, otherwise known as The Winter Soldier. Throughout the film, Steve puts himself in harms way to try and rescue his best friend, putting him at odds with the authorities and Tony, all of whom are instructed to shoot the known Hydra assassin on sight. Even when it’s revealed that there is something more at stake, all Tony sees is that Steve is aiding and abetting a known fugitive and that makes Steve a fugitive by proxy. This makes The Accords even more pointless in the end.

If I haven’t made it clear yet, this reasoning is so weak that it could have potentially damaged the movie. And yet, I still enjoyed the movie regardless, because everything else is strong enough to support itself even with such weak foundation. The characters, both new and returning, the visual effects and especially the ultimate confrontation between Iron Man and Captain America all add up to an enjoyable experience that deserves the praise.

Even so, it doesn’t completely hide this massive stain on an otherwise excellent movie. Just like the comics it was based on, the Registration Act ended up amounting to nothing, and here’s hoping they trash it prior to Infinity Wars.