Argument: The popcorn politics of Captain America: Civil War

"Such heaviness is increasingly becoming the M.O. of the ever-expanding Marvel Cinematic Universe. These days, it’s not enough for a caped crusader to clobber a bad guy, all BIFF! BANG! ZORK! Now such movies need a “message” – about the surveillance state, about the tension between liberty and security, about the nature of power itself. This in itself isn’t so galling. After all, cracking the ideological coding of one-or-another innocuous entertainment has long been a favourite pastime of critics and other restless viewers. The issue is the thundering obviousness of such messaging, which tends to slam down harder then Thor’s mighty hammer."

Special to the Globe and Mail