‘Captain America: Civil War’ (2016) ****/*****
What’s so civil about war, anyway?
Superhero movies are in a strange place right now. Fox’s X-Men franchise is long in the tooth and would be looking dead in the water if it wasn’t for their recent success experimenting with the foul-mouthed and absurd Deadpool. Meanwhile, Warner Bros’ DC Comics Universe is having terrible trouble establishing a foundation they can build on, and it’s looking like their best and maybe last chance for success could come in the form of their own filthy, foul-mouthed group of B-list characters, the Suicide Squad. Is it possible that we’ve entered an age where superhero movies have to get raunchy and ultra-violent if they’re going to capture the imagination of mainstream audiences? Not according to Marvel Studios, whose juggernaut of a film universe seems to somehow just keep gaining momentum, even as they stay the course that was set out on 8 years ago.
No matter how many sequels to their big superhero successes Marvel churns out, and no matter how many new franchises they spin off of what they’ve already established, nobody seems to be growing tired of their schtick. If anything, their A-list heroes have gotten more interesting as they’ve had a chance to develop over the course of several movies, and the new heroes they keep adding to the mix seem to be just enough excitement to keep everything fresh. That’s certainly the case with Anthony and Joe Russo’s second go at making a Marvel movie, Captain America: Civil War, where we not only get the deepest look yet at what makes Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr) and Captain America (Chris Evans) tick as characters, but we also get a couple of the most exciting new character debuts that the Marvel Universe has ever done.
The reason this third Captain America is called Civil War is that it separates the Marvel heroes into two camps and pits them against each other. Why are they fighting? Iron Man thinks that, after all of the havoc that the Avengers have wreaked across the world, they should sign papers that would put them under the control of the UN. Captain America doesn’t agree that they should be taking orders from anyone, especially since the world’s governments have issued a Wanted: Dead or Alive (but mostly dead) decree against his former best buddy, The Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan). That’s the initial disagreement, at least. Things get more complex, heated, and personal from there, to the point where two different teams of Avengers end up beating the crap out of each other at an airport in what’s probably the most exciting super-powered brawl that’s been put on film yet.
Depending on how it was handled, putting so many superheroes together on the screen at once could have been either Civil War’s biggest asset or its biggest misstep. Joining the three we’ve already mentioned in battle is Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Falcon (Anthony Mackie), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), Vision (Paul Bettany), War Machine (Don Cheadle), Ant-Man (Paul Rudd), Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), as well as newcomers Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) and Spider-Man (Tom Holland). That’s a lot of characters competing for focus, and it would have been very easy to give the majority of them short shrift. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine a movie like this devolving into a murky mess of endless subplots, ill-advised asides, and distracting bits of franchise building either. It doesn’t though. Even with all of the star power the cast brings to the table and the Russo brothers’ ability to stage action that’s kinetic and immediate but never confusing, it’s the screenwriting of Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely that proves to be Civil War’s biggest asset. Not only did they fit everybody in, they somehow made sure that everyone got a real character arc, and they made sure that all of their subplots existed in service of the central story. Civil War is a big movie, and it’s a long movie, but it rarely feels overstuffed or bloated.
That’s not to say that the script is perfect though. The Civil War filmmakers prove to be excellent jugglers, but when you have this many balls in the air you’re bound to drop one or two of them, no matter who you are. The good news is that every little negative that you notice gets counteracted with a positive though, so the film never loses you. Because there are so many characters to establish and subplots to set up, the film’s first act can feel pretty start and stop, like you’re watching a movie that keeps pausing and redoing its first scene, but that just means that the third act is all the more satisfying once all of these conflicting elements so seamlessly come together. The inclusion of Spider-Man feels last minute, and his role in the fight doesn’t make much sense from a character perspective, but that’s counteracted by the other new character, Black Panther, fitting in so perfectly that he becomes the centerpiece that the film’s emotional climax is built around. There are also a problem or two with the film’s timeline and geography — how characters who were in different places manage to get thrown back together somewhere else at the exact same time — but everyone’s motivations for joining the fray are so well-established, and the action that takes place once they clash is so satisfying, that Civil War is never in danger of becoming the boring sort of movie that leaves your disengaged mind with nothing better to do but linger over plot holes.
What is it that keeps audiences so enthusiastically coming back to these Marvel Studios movies, while everyone else in Hollywood struggles to find a superhero formula that consistently works? Quite simply, it’s that their focus is on character. They know who their characters are, they know what fans love about them, and they know how they would react, no matter what the situation they get thrown in happens to be. It’s the reason that Iron Man and Captain America can be on the opposite sides of this fight than they would have been if they had it when we met them in their origin movies, but it still makes sense, and neither of them has to come off as being the villain. It’s the reason that the second we see Boseman’s Black Panther speak and move it instantly feels like the regal hero has jumped directly from the pages of the comic book to the big screen. It’s the reason that, even after sitting through five Sony-helmed Spider-Man movies over the course of the last 14 years, the second that Holland’s Peter Parker shows up in this film, it somehow feels like you’re finally getting to see Spider-Man in cinema for the first time. Most importantly though, it’s the reason that going to a Marvel Studios movie feels like spending time visiting with old friends. As long as Marvel can keep that party vibe going, it’s hard to imagine audiences failing to show up for anything and everything they want to stamp their brand on.
