The Single Biggest Mistake Each MCU Film Has Made
18. Captain America: Civil War: Under-Explaining Some Motivations
The Movie:
A widely anticipated entry, this may not have been a massively faithful adaptation of the comic book arc it's based on, but it's still a powerful, brilliantly-rounded blockbuster loaded with great spectacle.
Civil War is definitely one of the MCU's biggest triumphs and, following the crushing disappointment that was Avengers: Age of Ultron, it restored faith in MCU team-up movies. It wasn't all perfect though, although most of the flaws, such as too much banter during the airport fight, Martin Freeman's jarringly poor American accent and occasionally off pacing, are fairly small.
The biggest issue is that some of the motivations aren't properly explained. The reason why the airport fight scene doesn't hold up so well on repeat viewings is that it feels completely pointless. It isn't clear why Cap and Stark are fighting each other when they could just have a civil meeting and discuss the situation calmly. It also isn't clear why Cap is quite so insistent on going abroad just because of a bunch of super-soldiers in Siberia; it's not like they're a world-ending threat or anything.
The film stills works on a dramatic level thanks to the incredible finale in Siberia, but in the second act things do feel a little confusing and the lack of exploration into the motivations of Iron Man or Captain America does come dangerously close to undermining the film.
Fix:
This one was easy; just some slightly more in-depth writing in some places.