Captain America: Civil War — Review
Civil War? Really? Didn’t over a half-million Americans die the last time we had one of those? This movie is about group of superheroes who argue about some legislation and then rough each other up a bit in the proceeding conflict. None of the characters whose names you know die. I’d call spoilers on that, but come on, you know they all gotta come back for their sequels and spinoff entries.
Do I have Marvel fatigue much? I guess a bit. But for my money the last few entries to Disney’s ever-profitable cinematic universe (excluding ‘Age of Ultron’) all found something new to bring to the table as a minor but acceptable means of justifying their existence and keeping the same-old proceedings exciting. I felt as though this story ultimately did very little by comparison, basically serving as a placeholder movie before the next ‘Avengers’ sequel.
So apparently all the Avengers’ world-saving over the last few years has caused a sizable amount of collateral damage. This is easy enough to imagine, but for purely dramatic purposes it would have been nice to have seen some of that in the last few pictures. There was a moment in ‘Ultron’ in which Captain America went through great pains to save a woman in a car from falling to her death. He did, and it was a heroic enough sequence, but considering where (the filmmakers knew at that point) they were trying to take the Cap’s arc, it might’ve been better for the story if she fell. Then we could’ve had a quick beat of Captain America real shaken up and beginning to question if everything he and his team was doing was actually for the greatest good. Hell, it would’ve made even more sense to give Iron Man a moment like that, as he’s the one pushing for government interference in ‘Civil War.’
In fact setting up the stakes of civilian casualties may be the one thing Zack Snyder’s horrendous Superman movies have done better than Marvel’s films. If anything ‘Man of Steel’ over-prepared us to be okay with its hugely-destructive Superman being put in check considering we’re supposed to root for the guy. While in contrast all we’ve really seen The Avengers do out in the field (up until the new movie) is save people.
Anyway, William Hurt, returning from the Hulk movie you forgot you saw back in 2008, arrives on scene early on to introduce a UN-approved superhero code that puts our heroes at the mercy of the government. Iron Man is in, Captain America is out — you’ve seen the previews, you get it. Also in play is a mysterious manipulator played by Daniel Brühl (a good actor with a reliably evil face). Chadwick Boseman shows up as a clawed ninja dude called “Black Panther” to set up his eventual spinoff. Paul Rudd shows up as Ant-Man to crack some jokes.
And as I’ve said, since most of the movie (actually a lot more than ‘Batman V Superman’) has the good guys fighting each other, you know the stakes are gonna be pretty low. I’m also not quite buying the dark and politically-tinged tone this movie tries to have in some places. I’m not saying superhero flicks shouldn’t aspire to be about something, but when you’ve got a movie in which a giant Paul Rudd kicks a jokey Spider-man around an airport, it’s probably good to know the boundaries of how dark you can reasonably go with this same story.
Speaking of Spider-Man, he was actually my favorite part. As played by the young British actor Tom Holland, the third live-action take on Stan Lee’s tights-sporting web-crawler is a hugely enjoyable comic relief in this sometimes over-serious movie. I’m slightly skeptical of how well this goofy rendition of the character might transition into a movie that’s just about him, but for the time being he’s great fun indeed.
You might think at this point that (apart from the new Spidey) I disliked the movie. Not true really. I had issues with aspects of the plot and tone, but I can’t say that directors Anthony and Joe Russo (‘The Winter Soldier’) don’t put on an enjoyable show for us. ‘Captain America: Civil War’ certainly delivers the signature Marvel goods when it comes to the action and the jokes, all while existing rather shamelessly to get our asses into those seats as nothing really significant happens until (possibly) the next movie.
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