Captain America: Civil War
Captain America: Civil War is a film with multiple agendas. The latest chapter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is Marvel’s attempt to make a self-interrogating superhero film, one that explicitly considers the uses of power and its possible consequences. We’ll get to the other agenda in a moment, but you might remember another recent film which pitted familiar characters against each other in attempt to explore a superhero’s role in the world. Civil War, directed by Marvel vets the Russo Brothers, is a more entertaining piece of work by leaps and bounds than Batman v Superman. By this point Marvel knows what its people want, and this latest outing is better shot, better paced, and lighter in tone than the bloated DC effort. Also, it isn’t dark outside all the time.
With the obvious comparison out of the way, how good is Civil War really? The answer is a qualified “Not bad”; the story springs along efficiently but the script by multiple writers doesn’t go deep on the political questions the film wants to address. A opening fight in Africa leads to a moments I don’t think I’ve ever seen before in a film like this: A superhero (Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch) whose powers have gone awry is immediately confronted with the consequences of her actions. That incident leads the Secretary of State (William Hurt) to issue an ultimatum to the Avengers. Either they sign a treaty and accept United Nations control or they will be considered outlaws. The central conflict is between the pro-treaty Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) and Captain America (Chris Evans), who’s deeply distrustful of institutions after the events of The Winter Solider. A large cast of other characters including Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Falcon (Anthony Mackie) are forced to choose sides.
A film in which Captain America forms a sort of do-gooder Hole in the Wall Gang as a thorn in Iron Man’s side sounds promising to me, but Civil War quickly abandons the political for the personal. Captain America — who was just fine working on behalf of a government in WWII — is motivated not by principle than by a desire to help his friend Bucky aka The Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) evade capture after Bucky is blamed for a terrorist attack. The backstory about Bucky’s unwilling participation in a super-solider program is laid on smoothly enough and there’s a crackling fight/chase scene that starts in an apartment and movies to a highway — the action scenes find new ways to use urban space — but once Bucky enters the picture the idea of the film as a political argument goes away.
Several times in Civil War one character says of another some variation on the line, “He’s not gong to stop.” (Yes, it’s always he. Black Widow and Scarlet Witch don’t have much to do here.) As the action builds to an airport fight involving even more characters (What’s up, Ant-Man and Hawkeye!) it becomes clear that in fact they are at some point going to stop. The lack of a sense that anyone could die saps energy from Civil War; it’s never clear what anyone’s end game is and that includes the film’s ostensible villain (Daniel Bruhl), whose plans are both admirably human-scaled and not that well though out. What’s more important for the film’s core audience is the way Civil War serves as a delivery system for new Marvel characters. (Here’s that other agenda I mentioned earlier.) Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) enters the story when his family suffers an Avengers-related loss, and a young Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is recruited to web up and join the fray. Both of these characters will headline their own films soon, and both are charismatic enough here. What they don’t do is make up for the overall lack of focus. As Marvel builds out its world I wonder if future films will find a way to be as grounded as this one wants to be.
