#periphery or daredevil are close seconds

[onpyre]

ok what’s *your* fiona apple song? i’ve seen these for so many artists, but one for ms. apple has never actually crossed my dash. so what’s the fiona apple song that’s uniquely yours? mine’s left alone lmfao

#fiona apple #fetch the bolt cutters #the idler wheel #extraordinary machine #when the pawn #tidal #periphery or daredevil are close seconds #left alone #music

[friendlyneighborhoodspidernerds]

@prinxe-xavin​

Peter had been cooped up for weeks with the power swap running amok on his senses. Now that he was free of that (seriously, how did Daredevil cope?), he was spending every waking second making up for lost time. He spent long hours working on the homework he’d missed, doubled down on his patrols, and when he wasn’t being a student or a superhero, he was just enjoying the city. Which, granted, wasn’t easy.

These attacks -- the “Savage” or whatever the Bugle was calling it, they were everywhere. Everyday it seemed like there was another, more people hurt, more people losing their minds with worry. And the streets were filled with protesters on every side of the debate, all angry. Peter just wanted to take a walk through Central Park, he wasn’t looking for trouble. (Though these days, he wore his suit under everything, no matter where he was going.)

He heard the crowd before he saw it, but when he did, his eyes grew wide as saucers. Tons of people were packed together, screaming, holding signs, shouting at each other. It wasn’t exactly a peaceful debate. The only person who didn’t seem to be joining in was a vaguely familiar face. Peter tilted his head and walked over, realizing where he knew them from. “Hey!” he said, smiling gently at them. “We met on New Years, right? You were dancing.” He glanced back at the angry crowd -- they were on the periphery of it, but still close enough to hear every angry, violent word, and Peter winced. “City’s pretty crazy these days,” he mumbled.

#xavin #xavin: protest #rebuildclosedstarter

[marvelousmoviemarvelthon-blog]

Captain America: Civil War

Jen and I have been on a great run of martial arts/action movies over the past few weeks… The Raid (1 and 2), John Wick (1 and 2), Blade (1, not 2), Hard Boiled, (re-watching) The Matrix; the one thing they have in common is great action throughout.

Why am I bringing up these brutal action movies when discussing a fantasy comic book movie? Well the most important factor of the action in all these movies is that it is realistic/relatable. No matter how fantastical the rest of the movie gets (usually in the sequel instalments), the action is always realistically performed. Realism in action shows the audience that there are real stakes and worries the audience into thinking the protagonist could get into serious harm. It is exhilarating to see hard and intense action scenes being performed by capable actors/stunt-people, and lets every hit feel real, as if each punch or kick is its own plot point in the story of the characters moving the film forward.

Basically, realism = relatability ; as an audience, we understand what the human body is reasonably capable of, in the same way we can read emotionality to understand the stakes of a drama, we feel the intensity with which a character physically fights against their obstacles to overcome. When the audience is fully immersed in the belief of that reality, an action movie is successfully doing its job.

That brings me to Captain America: Civil War; the previous movie, The Winter Soldier, set the standard for street-level action for the MCU. It was hard, fast, brutal and, most importantly, realistic (mostly!). Great scenes as Nick Fury’s car chase (still the best action scene in the MCU) or the fight in the streets of DC against the Winter Soldier, sold the violence as consequential and destructive without going outside the realms of realism created immense tension for the audience. I consider it a legitimately great film for that reason.

Unfortunately, Civil War’s overall success is more muddled.

I’ll start with the good… the action scenes set in Berlin during the first and second acts were the real highpoint of the movie for me. Right from the moment Steve Rogers finds Bucky at his apartment hideout, through the stairway battle, down to running and driving through the streets of Berlin. The stakes and the story have been set, and that is underlined by the realistic and heavy action (a few building-to-building jumps and Vibranium laced cat-suits aside). The inter-twining of high stakes story and realistic action places us in the moment with the characters.

However, for me, the real action highpoint of the movie is the fight scene at the beginning of the second act where the reprogrammed is confronted by a number of the avengers as he makes his escape from captivity. It only lasts just over a minute, but the action is more brutal and better choreographed than at any other point in the movie. Yes, there are a few too many cuts to see a lot of the hits land, you can tell which actors are better trained for action choreography by how long the cuts are in their relative action moments, and maybe there is a bit too much shaky cam to make up for this. But, you can see the desperation on each characters faces (helped immensely by them all being in street clothes) as the situation spirals out of control.

This desperation manifests in the action, the intelligent character-based actions of Tony Stark using his technology to get the upper hand on Bucky, the great moment when Stark re-directs Bucky’s gunshot and the look of relief on his face and subsequent beatdown, Sharon Carter’s karate-style kicks being swiftly followed by Natasha’s more acrobatic form, and lastly T-Challa’s athletic beatdown tries and fails to stop Bucky’s brutal street-fighter style. This moment shines because it wraps up story stakes, characterisation and realism in a well-choreographed action scene, literally the height of the show-don’t-tell philosophy. It is easily the best moment in the Captain America movie, and it doesn’t even feature Captain America!

So, on the other side of this scale is the airport fight. Now, don’t get me wrong, it is a very well-done slice of fan service, but that is all that it is… By putting the street level characters back in their super suits and adding the more comic-booky characters into the scene (Spiderman, Antman, Scarlet Witch and especially Vision, being the worst offenders) the realism, and therefore relatability, is lost. It is a lot harder to relate to action scenes that feature a giant man and a god-like being with a laser beam in his head. This effect reduces the stakes and removes the audience further from the action. We have to be told more often that things are bad rather than seeing it through action.

The three-way battle between Cap’n, Iron Man and Bucky at the end of the movie improves as it removes the super-powered characters and is more closely tied to the core story, but after the highs in the first half of the movie, and the bloat of the airport battle, this one is a bit of an anti-climax. To the movie’s credit, this fight makes up for this by leaning harder on the emotionality of the story moment, but in my humble opinion, it is not enough.

This also speaks to the overall problem of this movie, there is just too much going on. The success of the previous Captain America movie (and a lot of the other stand-alone movies) is that only a few select characters are taken along into the story, allowing for both plot points and character moments to breathe and co-exist. In this movie, the sheer amount of characters and plot (and fan service) we must get through leads to the bloated airport battle and incredible tonal whiplash throughout the movie.

This also doesn’t help with the introductions of the new characters of Black Panther and Spiderman, who are kind of to periphery. Black Panther’s participation in the story is both more effective and appreciated than Spiderman’s. As much as I like Spiderman, I would have preferred he’d been left out of this one for later, in favour of Black Panther’s greater inclusion in the story.

With the impending Infinity war movies on the horizon, the chances of seeing much more realistic and relatable street-level action in the MCU is highly in doubt. At least we still have this movie, The Winter Soldier and the fantastic Netflix shows (especially Daredevil season 1, most of season 2 and Jessica Jones; Luke Cage was a bit more heightened than either of those, and I haven’t even watched Iron Fist yet) to keep us action fans satisfied, even if they aren’t always as effective as they could be…

 The Super-Marvel-O-Score                We gave Captain America: Civil War 81/100 upon initial viewing, but I would possibly rate it a bit lower than that these days…

  Next Time                           Next time… things get real… strange with Doctor Strange, but not nearly strange enough…

  Stray Thoughts                                    

-          I was pleasantly surprised to discover the first Raid movie was a huge influence for the action in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, I think this is plain to see.

 -          By the way, all those movies I mentioned up top should be on any self-respecting action fans movie list, if you haven’t seen them all, you should (asap!).

 -          Spiderman gets some great lines in the airport fight, [while fighting Falcon] "You have the right to remain silent! ", but its Ant-Man who steals the show… "It's your conscience. We don't talk a lot these days."  and "Something just flew in me!"

 -          Baron Zemo gets a lot of truck for being a weak villain, but I like the intensely personal motivations he has as an antagonist. Again, in relatability terms, he is a villain who we can identify with as someone who has suffered the consequences of disaster. It would have been great if we could’ve seen this moment set-up in the Avengers movie and if more time could have been given to seeing his perspective. But at least he isn’t some crazy person/monster looking for a magic stone or something…

 -           It was a good idea for the writers/directors to remove Thor and Hulk from proceedings, realism is out the window when these guys are around…

 -          Easily, the runner-up to the best fight scene in the MCU is the hallway fight from Daredevil season 1, just beautiful brutality…

#the film list #Film Review #film #movie review #movies #marvel #MCU #captain america #captain america: civil war #Iron Man #Black Widow #black panther #the winter soldier #daredevil #fight choreography