Captain America: Civil War review
I’ve been having trouble getting my thoughts completely together on Civil War to be honest. That’s not exactly a bad thing, since the only thing I can really say with certainty is that yes, the movie is good, but I’m kinda having a problem measuring exactly HOW good it is in relation to the other Marvel movies; or maybe more accurately how much I LIKE it in relation to the other Marvel movies.
See the quality that sets Civil War apart from the other Marvel movies so far is kinda more hard to quantify compared to the other Marvel movies. For example I can usually describe the other Marvel movies like, “Guardians of the Galaxy is the funny one, The Avengers was the first big pay off movie, Winter Soldier is the tense-spy movie one, Iron Man 3’s the odd-ball that people are split on, and Thor and Thor 2 are the one’s with Loki.” But the only real way I can really describe Civil War is honestly, well, the “grown-up” one. No, not in the sense that everything’s suuuuper duper serious or that no-one cracks a joke or anything, more that just this time the actual thematic subject matter at the heart of Civil War is actually some of the most mature stuff to come out of the MCU ever; and just to put that in perspective, Iron Man 3’s major plot elements basically all revolved around a series of suicide bombers. Yikes.
Civil War when you get right down too it is all about friendships being broken and the affect that has on people. The movie revolves around a central conflict between Iron Man and Captain America after a routine Avengers mission led by Cap accidentally leads to a bomb going off near a building and a large amount of people dead. The United Nations and various world leaders agree that this incident, along with the respective final battle scenes of Avengers, Winter Soldier, and Age of Ultron have resulted in too many civilian casualties for it to go unnoticed. This leads to the Avengers being pressured into signing a document that will put the Avengers under the direct control of UN, who will only allow the Avengers to go out on assignment after a panel has deemed it necessary.
Iron Man’s all for it, Cap doesn’t think it’s a good idea, and the rest of the Avengers have to end up choosing sides in the issue. The situation is then further complicated by ANOTHER bomb going off during the actual signing of the document with Cap’s old buddy Bucky Barnes (aka the Winter Soldier) being blamed, eventually culminating in Cap and several other Avengers (and ex-Avengers) going rouge in order to find out who the real bad guy is manipulating everything behind the scene’s.
Neither side exactly wants to go to war with each other and neither side exactly thinks the other is flat-out wrong, but neither side feels its a good idea to just let the other have their way. This results in a lot of friendships being tested, bonds being broken, new characters coming into play with different perspectives and motivations, and it all culminates in a genuinely emotional and weighty third act that’s probably gonna change the landscape of the MCU for some time.
Amazingly the best part of this whole movie is that it feels almost laser focused. Civil War may not technically be a legit Avengers movie but it feels like the perfect answer to the somewhat overcrowded and overstuffed Age of Ultron. (which isn’t to say Age of Ultron is bad, I still think it’s really good) Too-wit, it’s got the one element a lot of the MCU movie’s have kinda been lacking, focus.
It’s clear that The Russo Brothers understand every character and what makes them appealing and certainly do go out of their way to make sure everyone gets their own little “awesome” moment, BUT they also understand that this is Cap and Iron Man’s movie first and foremost and to keep the conflict centered on them; which is certainly more then I can say for DC’s elephant in the room. *ahem* Now like in Winter Soldier, that does sometimes involve moments where the characters grab the metaphorical mic to reveal the curtain on the big theme at play, but sometimes these things don’t have to be subtle to be effective. And again, The Russo Brothers really understand these characters, how they think, and what to do with them.
Surprisingly it’s probably Iron Man I came down sympathizing with the most. The movie gets across almost immediately that in-spite of all the character development Stark’s been through after Iron Man 3 and Age of Ultron, Tony Stark is still a very VERY broken man with a lot of guilt he’s still working through who’s under a lot of emotional pressure. There’s no attempt to make him the villain here, all the movie really wants you to do is see his side of the situation. Heck, even the actual villain of this whole piece is actually incredibly sympathetic. Possibly Marvel’s best villain since Daredevil’s Kingpin, despite the fact his plan relies on him somehow being able to predict everyone’s reaction to each subsequent event in the movie.
The acting’s great all across the board here as usual, everyone gets moments to have their own little character arcs, and somehow this never really breaks the flow of the overall narrative or detracts from the overall arc of the story. And did I also mention this movie’s funny? Yeah! This movie despite all the pretty serious character business still manages to have some of the absolute funniest moments of the year. In particular Falcon and The Winter Soldier manage to have possibly the most entertaining reaction to something Cap does that’s probably gonna be GIF in like, 5 minutes.
Lastly, this probably went without saying but the action is pretty freaking fantastic. You’ve all probably heard how the airport scene is the greatest comic-book movie action scene to date and, while I did feel it kinda broke the flow of the movie for a minute by being REALLY REALLY one-liner heavy, yeah that scene’s awesome. Literal jumping off the comic book page stuff, actually does still kinda work within the context of the theme and story, and overall just a real accomplishment from the Marvel team in general. It’s great.
My problems with Civil War are fairly small and personal. I’m not gonna act like this is guaranteed best of the year material or even that this is one of my all time favorite Marvel movies to be honest. But it’s probably one of the best examples of why this whole shared continuity MCU thing has been allowed to work for this long and, to be honest, why it’s probably not gonna go away any time soon. It’s a pretty dang fun ride and you should definitely check it out.
… Oh and by the way, SPIDER-MAN IS AWESOME!!!
The Media Fire gives this movie 8.9/10
