civil warts

Here's the thing.

As a popcorn movie-going experience, Cap3 is one of the most entertaining superhero movies ever made, full stop. It has heart and humour; exciting, comprehensible action (the airport scene had 12 participants all with different abilities, now THAT'S a magic trick), real stakes, narrative propulsion, coherently dramatized themes and good (if somewhat rushed) characterization for new characters. And it needs all of those things cuz there's several fairly big flaws and the Big Bad's Plan is a Big Bad Turd. So here is a shining example of the good carrying the audience over the pitfalls of the bad even if the bad threatens to sink the whole trip. And saving a 2.5 hour movie from feeling like a 2.5 hour movie. But I just don't agree with folks saying its the best Marvel movie thus far.

The Problem With Bucky
Bucky is still underdeveloped as a character especially as a friend to Cap. Through all three movies Cap is constantly trying to rescue Bucky because...Bucky rescued him that one time in the alley? The most character work we got was in First Avenger but even then the dynamic seemed to be "ah that's just my kid brother, don't mind him, he's alright" rather than lifelong, do-or-die friendship. Cap3 hinges on Cap willing to do anything, including fight allies to near death, for a friend he hasn't seen in 80 years, it would've been good to know why and for the audience to actually care/know anything about Bucky.

Lack of Vision
Why wasn't the Vision in Lagos? This is not well dramatized. Any answer is an unsupported leap by the audience.

William (Butt)Hurt
One quibble I've heard is that no one on Team Cap argues with Ross about the battles he describes - New York, Washington, Sokovia (Sokovia's a country right? What was the city's name?) - despite them stopping/mitigating invasions, massacres, etc. I have less of a problem with that than the fact that Thunderbolt Ross, who in both books and movies HATES the Hulk (and they bothered to bring back the same actor from a previous Hulk movie, thus maintaining continuity) doesn't mention Johannesburg; the one battle that only involved two Avengers, one of which was a super-violent, out-of-control Hulk. And the devastation and collateral damage was actually a plot point in AoU. The Hulk definitely should've been a larger reason for the Sokovia Accords, at least for Ross. You never would've guessed he'd had any history with Banner based on what we saw in Cap3.

A Plan's Just a List of Things That Don't Happen

I like Zemo conceptually. A relatively random victim of the fallout from an Avengers battle, here's the true cost of their attempts at world-saving. Just because they saved most people doesn't diminish the pain of those they didn't. Cap had a line about setting out to save as many people as they can but that doesn't always mean everybody. And making Zemo a "Special Ops" guy does a lot of the "how the fuck did he accomplish that?" patch work. And he's got the magic "Hydra Files" (dumped on the world by Black Widow in Cap 2) that he decrypted to explain away just about anything. That being said...

Here's my understanding of the chronology of his plan:

1. Zemo's family is killed in Sokovia (would've been great to get something tangible about how because Zemo specifically says they were away from the city, so he thought they'd be safe)
2. Decides to bring down the Avengers from within as revenge (he directly and specifically blames Cap and Stark...for some reason) even though Hydra's had a base there for...years? And was the reason for everything jumping off?
3. Learns about the Winter Soldier (Decrypted Files?) discovers he's Bucky Barnes (Decrypted Files?), Cap's good buddy (Decrypted Files?) and Cap would do anything to help him (Decrypted Files?).
4. Discovers (Decrypted Files?) that as the Winter Soldier he *probably* murdered Tony's dad but needs proof via "mission report" from 1991 (NOT in the Decrypted Files)
5. Tracks down Soviet commander in charge of Winter Soldier program, interrogate-drowns him in an inefficient manner but comes up short on the info he needs.
6. Frames Bucky for UN explosion so Bucky will get caught by the Avengers (Cap thinks something's up the moment Black Widow says they're the only ones who could stop him) but given to the UN task force so Zemo can murder/impersonate the psychologist he somehow knows will be called to interview him (despite looking nothing like him).
7. He EMPs the entire city's power grid (knowing somehow ahead of time which city they would hold him in) gets his "mission report" from Bucky about the whereabouts of the other Winter Soldiers (or was that Decrypted Files?) and the assassination of Howard Stark. He also re-activates Bucky as the Winter Soldier and tells him to...fuck shit up? Run away? Cause a distraction?
8. Goes and finds the video (stored in Siberia?) originally recorded by a closed-circuit camera placed in the absolute perfect spot to catch all the brutal violence and emotional angst, despite the attack having happened on a secluded American country road (WHY THE FUCK IS THE CAMERA THERE??? Is it guarding the fucking telephone pole???) and the Winter Soldier being specifically told "no witnesses" (was he taught in Assassin School that shooting a camera erases its tape? Or did he trace the hardwired camera cable to the VCR and steal it after murdering the Starks?)
9. Zemo then relies on Bucky's spotty memory to recall that there's 5 more Winter Soldiers even more deadly than him up in Siberia, despite reactivating his murder-programming he also assumes Bucky will eventually snap out of it and tell Cap this and REALLY REALLY HOPES Cap and Bucky will follow him there. I can’t stress this enough, his whole plan hinges on an octogenarian’s memory.
10. He calls his favourite hotel attendant so she'll find the Interviewer's corpse and his Bucky disguise. Again, he’s REALLY REALLY HOPING all this info gets relayed to Stark in time for Stark to follow (alone?) Cap and Buck to Siberia so he can show Stark the incredibly convenient video with Bucky in the room so Cap and Iron Man can fight each other over Bucky. Mission Accomplished.

Except the only reason Stark goes to Siberia is because an imprisoned Falcon tells him where and why Cap and Bucky are going. And for other than The Script Needs Him To, why would Falcon help him at this point?

How in the holy hell was Zemo planning on getting Stark to Siberia? Was he REALLY REALLY HOPING the discovery of the frame job would bury the hatchet between Stark and Cap and they (along with Bucky) would come charging (just the three of them) up to Siberia? I'm just making that up cuz the movie don't say anything like that.

I'm sorry. This is a straight up shitty plan. With way too many convenient turns, outright clairvoyance on Zemo's part and an over-reliance on assumptions that people will take actions that aren't particularly plausible.

I'm an Agent of Chaos

So basically it's The Dark Knight of the MCU. Crazy convoluted Big Bad Plan but minus the charismatic villain of the Joker. I truly don't understand people saying Zemo's the best villain the MCU's ever had. That's saying more about the lack of villain depth in the MCU's roster than anything else. Try to describe him with more than three adjectives. Dude's mopey, broody and willing to kill dozens of innocents to avenge the deaths of…three innocents.

Everybody Loves Mom

Stark's relationship with his mother isn't fully dramatized either. The movie leans on the universal understanding that "everybody loves their Mom" so when Bucky is revealed to have killed her, we go along with the simplicity of Stark's desire for revenge. Zemo loved his Dad...cuz he was his Dad. Same with wife and son. But Stark had an incredibly fractured relationship with his father, so we can't just assume he and his Mom had a normal, healthy relationship. I'm fairly certain this is the first we've seen or heard of her and all we basically get is a hologram saying "be nice to your father, this is the last you'll ever see him" (AND ME!!! WHY DOESN'T THE MOVIE BOTHER TO SET THAT UP???!!!) We needed at least one beat to show she wasn't a crappy Mom (rare but this movie assumes A LOT already)

Millionaire Genius Playboy Philanthropist Idiot

Howard Stark drives the only samples of Super Soldier Serum completely unprotected with his wife in a regular sedan down a poorly-lit, remote, country road. Well that's a touch unintelligent for a guy who founded the premiere Intelligence Agency of the MCU. Let’s ignore how Russian Intelligence knew the whys, whens, whats and hows of that transport.

Wrapping Up
It is also not well articulated that Stark was held directly responsible by the public for Ultron and thus directly responsible for the Sokovia disaster. AoU actually does the necessary work to portray the Mind Gem itself as the agent of Ultron's creation but Cap3 doesn't mention any of that. Avengers as a group seemed to get the blame for Sokovian casualties (seriously what was the name of that fucking city???) despite literally saving the world, but Stark's had a history of being blamed for his weapons being misused…so why isn't he just blamed? Did the public (or even the UN) know the true story of Ultron?

And the ending undercuts the final battle: it appears Tony and Cap are irrevocably broken, not willing to kill each other but never able to trust each other again. But then we get a VO speech (and a burner phone!) where Cap pulls a Det. Somerset and says "[if you need me] I'll be around."

And seeing all those supermax prison guards suffering from either brain trauma or asphyxiation or both kinda left a bad taste. The music tried to sell it as a triumphant moment but it reads as a massacre. So it's implied that Cap just beat the living shit out of a bunch of government employees who bravely chose to work hundreds of miles away from their families, at a prison in the middle of the ocean, which was designed to house the most dangerous people in the world/known universe. I suppose that's one way to set up Infinity War...