First Hit: The story didn’t hold together and was simply a place to display CGI’s.
The best character parts of the film were in the interchanges between Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans) and Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson). And although Robert Redford as Alexander Pierce, brought a level of sophistication to his part, this film was all about creating HUGE computer generated imagery and having people do battle with the images.
The other interchanges that were engaging were with Sam Wilson/Falcon (Anthony Mackie) and the Captain. Didn’t have the same sense with Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and other characters – he seemed removed from them (or the story) although he was a key piece. I had no interest in the story about CGIs because they are non-characters – only machines.
The film appeared to feature the technology that was being created but so what – it was uninteresting. Was any part of this story believable? Yes, the greed and lust for power. But, after just 12 hours of seeing the film and writing this, I can’t remember anything positive outside of what I’ve mentioned.
Evans is a good but the screen play written for him is rather lame and uninteresting. The scenes with his co-star Johansson were the best part of the film. I suspect it was Johansson that made those scenes work – she was really good. Mackie was perfect as Evans’ right hand guy. Redford was good with what he had, which wasn’t much. Jackson just seemed like he was in a film of his own. Although the scenes included him, he also seem detached from them. Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely wrote a week character screen play while the direction by Anthony and Joe Russo seemed disjointed and without life.
Overall: One of the worse Marvel produced films – they cannot make CGI be a character in this way.