(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

I know the reviewers say it’s great…the great Grae Drake loved it…everyone who went and saw it seemed to love it…but…I didn’t love it.

I might be suffering from what Ken has accurately called “Superhero Fatigue“…where there are just too many superhero shows/movies out there…and also, I feel that every single one of these movies is just a continuation to the next movie…there’s never a resolution…it’s always, “something else is headed our way”.

On the surface…I SHOULD HAVE LOVED Civil War…I’m definitely team Captain America…I think Winter Soldier is the coolest of them all…and throw in Elizabeth Olsen & Scarlett Johanssen, and what would I not like….oh, and Paul Bettany as Vision is just icing on the cake.

Civil War had it all…but left me in the dark. In that incredible airport fight scene…I kept thinking, yeah, this is great…but what are the stakes? None of these superheros can get hurt…I never understand why Iron Man is ever injured…his suit is iron…he’s indestructible so nothing bad ever happens to him. Spiderman can’t be killed…Captain America is pretty much invincible as well…so what are the stakes? They can’t even be hurt, so when they’re being tossed around into buildings, they’re not even hurt, so there are no stakes in this fight. It’s just 20 minutes of getting tossed around with no outcome.

Also…was Vision flirting with Scarlet Witch? Is that possible? Does Vision understand that? I’m not even sure Vision knows…and please, don’t bother trying to explain it. So much in this movie was “well, I don’t know”…Vision says…”I’m not sure what this thing is on my head”…well great, if you don’t know, then how are we to know?

I feel Marvel chickened out in this movie…this was built as Captain America v. Iron Man…I expected one of them not to make it out alive…I expected someone to not make it out alive. Nothing. They didn’t even have the guts to kill off Iron Patriot…heck, the bad guy doesn’t even get offed. Oh, and really? That’s your bad guy? Weak. That’s what the first Avengers movie was so good…Loki was a great villain. Ultron & this random dude (when you can’t remember the villain’s name, that’s not good)…were not great villains.

Back to “What are the stakes?” If I lived in that world…am I affected by a disagreement between Iron Man & Captain America? Besides the fact that it would be all over TMZ & Buzzfeed, is my life impacted at all by this? No. Nothing in this movie really affected the public…except for the bombing in the beginning, there was no threat to anyone.

For a movie where it’s all about “Are the Avengers safe for the public?”…we never see the public. Imagine how great that airport battle scene would have been if there were innocent bystanders near? There are stakes there…there’s a risk.

Towards the end…I thought this movie was going to redeem itself…when Captain America had Iron Man pinned down, and brought the shield down…I thought, holy cow, here it is…and instead…Cap just breaks Iron Man’s suit. Oh no…the consequences…now Tony Stark only has 15 other Iron Man suits to choose from. Oh, the humanity.

There were 2…only 2…scenes that made me really smile…1) when Bucky asked Sam to move up his seat…and 2) when AntMan went big, and just the look in Paul Rudd’s eyes when that happened. That was fantastic. It was exactly what the audience was thinking at the same time.

These movies are just missing something…they’re missing the risk of something terrible actually happening to our beloved superheroes. Had Iron Man met his end…or had Winter Soldier not survived…I would have walked away from Civil War thinking, holy cow, that was intense…instead, I walked away thinking “Well, they completely destroyed an airport…which is exactly what led to this issue in the first place”.

By the way…I’m a huge fan of the Winter Soldier…but if you had told me that “Bucky” from the first Captain America movie would be having this much of an impact some 5 years later, I would have told ya you were nuts. I

Now…with that off my chest…I can officially say…I can’t wait for “Captain America: Infinity” (or whatever it’s called) in a few years.