Review: ‘Captain America: Civil War’

 The thirteenth movie in the franchise known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), “Captain America: Civil War” is most definitely a unique product of movie making in both good ways and bad. While this particular installment of this ongoing saga benefits greatly from many hours worth of character development spread over numerous movies, it also has that feeling of being not so much a complete movie but more of a big budget half step, just another episode in this hugely expensive serialized story. If you haven’t seen the other twelve Marvel movies, then just walking into this movie is very much like picking up a random comic book and just reading a story that is in media res, with characters and callbacks that just come out of nowhere and make no sense in a vacuum. In that way, this movie can not exist on its own in a meaningful capacity without the “Iron Mans” and “Captain Americas” and “Avengers” that came before it.

After a fight in a public space causes casualties, the Avengers are asked to sign an agreement, ratified by a panel representing 117 countries, that says they would be beholden to this international committee, who would decide on a case by case basis as to whether or not this group of mostly American superheroes should be deployed. Basically some official oversight to keep them in check, acknowledging that their actions in previous movies, while meant to save people, also cost many innocent lives. In their attempts to save billions, they have still killed millions. Tony Stark a.k.a. Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) feels much guilt when confronted by a grieving mother, and coupled with everything else going on in his life, sees this agreement as a decent solution to an obvious problem. Steve Rogers a.k.a. Captain America (Chris Evans), still feeling burned by the government from his last movie, refuses to become beholden to some panel, no matter the intentions. This causes a rift in the group as some people agree to sign and others do not.

Because that’s not enough for a $250 million Disney/Marvel blockbuster, Captain America is still trying to help his old friend turned robo-armed super soldier Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) from being a super killer wanted by the government, and his loyalty to his brainwashed and Soviet programmed best buddy causes an even bigger rift between the Avengers. And on top of all of THAT, there’s a weird dude named Zemo (Daniel Bruhl) going around doing some obviously bad stuff, and in classic comic book movie fashion, his plan is finally revealed quite late in the movie, landing like a big twist, and his ultimate plan might be the most satisfying part of the whole Iron Man vs Captain America and Bucky Barnes portion of this film because it isn’t some ridiculous take over the world type of thing and instead is more personal and just interesting.

But “Captain America: Civil War” exists for mostly for one reason, and that is to keep this whole thing humming along nicely, laying groundwork for not only future “Avengers” movies of this scale (and bigger) but also for solo movies for other characters. Here we are introduced to the new King of Wakanda, the Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), and he gets some good screentime and his own character arc, setting up his own film. And we also get our third movie Spider-Man in nine years (Tom Holland), and this time he’s definitively a high school student, very different from the older and more established heroes in this world, so when he meets everyone he’s all wide eyed with wonder, despite the fact that he has his own very impressive abilities. And in just two scenes, Spider-Man is seamlessly integrated into this MCU and new Spider-Man movies will be the result, with one scheduled for release next year.

On top of that, thanks to one large action scene that takes about twenty minutes from start to finish, all of these aforementioned characters are joined by Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Ant-Man (Paul Rudd), War Machine (Don Cheadle), Vision (Paul Bettany), Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and Falcon (Anthony Mackie). That’s a helluva lot of characters, and that’s not even everyone from the previous movies, so just you wait until we get these sequels that are going to end up featuring about 20 to 30 characters at the very least, that’s going to be ridiculous.

Marvel has been pretty smart in differentiating their various movies by putting them in different genres, so “Ant-Man” was a heist movie, “Captain America: The First Avenger” was a World War II movie and “Captain America: Winter Soldier” was influenced by 70’s political thrillers, “Guardians of the Galaxy” is their Marvel space opera, they have been mixing them up quite well, helping to get some of these movies to stand out from each other. The directors the Russo Brothers have stated that this particular film was inspired by psychological thrillers along the lines of “Seven” and “Fargo,” and without going into details or spoilers, there is definitely a “Seven“-esque kind of quality to part of the story that works on this level as a gut-punch kind of moment for a character. While most of the movie retains the same comic book-y look of the other Marvel movies, there are a few moments that do seem to be inspired by a more David Fincher type of shooting style, especially with some particularly underlit shots, and at least here they tried to do a little more visually than they normally provide.

It would be nice if the action scenes were shot a little better. The biggest sequence, teased in all of the marketing, is probably the best scene only because there are so many characters to bounce around to that it keeps the scene moving at all times. But there are other hand to hand fights and action scenes that are shot in close ups with a jittery camera and some quick edits and in a post “John Wick” world this kind of stuff doesn’t always cut it.

Overall though this is definitely an entertaining movie, one in which the characters treat the situations seriously but the movie itself isn’t too serious or grim, with plenty of comedy and jokes interspersed to keep the overall mode from getting way too dour, but it also is very dependent on much of the established MCU, and works more as a stepping stone to more movies than it does as its own movie. It is like the middle episode of a television mini-series; don’t jump into it expecting to understand what is going on, though for people who have been following from the beginning, it should be quote satisfying. For now.