Captain America: Civil War

You ever see that really old movie?

+: the payoff to eight years of the MCU, sweeping together almost every major character whilst effortlessly incorporating new entrants; utterly character-driven

-: probably incomprehensible without prior films

There’s probably still no mentioning this film without contrasting it to Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), released less than two months prior. What’s remarkable, in retrospect, is how this film is not only better, but obviously better. You don’t even need to watch the films: the trailers will do.

The trailers for BvS:DoJ are inexplicable, i.e. they’re pretty much impossible to explicate. Some are clearer than others, but for the most part, they lay out the same premise that led into the ad breaks for Harry Hill’s TV Burp: I like Batman, I like Superman — but which is better? Fiiiiiiight!

Marvel Studios, on the other hand, are very clear about why the Avengers are fighting, both in trailers and in the film, without ever giving away the plot. There are political reasons (the Sokovia Accords) and personal reasons (“he’s my friend” — “so was I”). Things have to make objective sense, sure. But they also have to make subjective sense, too.

And Captain America: Civil War just gets this. When Secretary Ross visits the Avengers HQ and delivers his video evidence, there are four pieces of footage, and four meaningful sets of reaction shots: New York, where War Machine wasn’t present to fight it; Washington D.C., where the Falcon was present; Sokovia, where we first saw the Vision and Scarlet Witch, then Tony Stark watching his great failure once again; and finally, Lagos, where the Scarlet Witch in the foreground and Captain America in the background are framed to perfection.

35 minutes in, we get the first sight of T’Challa; even within the first shot, Chadwick Boseman had the bearing of a superhero. And Black Panther wasn’t an add-on, either; he arguably gets some of the most badass moments in the film (he almost succeeds against the Winter Soldier without the costume; “the living are not done with you yet”) and turns out to be one of the few adults on either side. His origin story is complete, too.

The other might be Spider-Man. It says something about the MCU how, at this point, Spider-Man is a mere cameo. Tom Holland’s take on the character emphasises how Spider-Man is more of an aspiration than a reality; crucially, he doesn’t really have any context going into this fight, and his ideas about ‘responsibility’ could easily place him on Captain America’s side. You can see, in retrospect, the whole of Spider-Man: Homecoming unfold from here.

At this point, I’m probably supposed to mention the airport fight, except it’s mostly awesome for all the obvious reasons, not least that it’s a giant set of double splash pages come to life. Like much of this film, it takes some of the basics of Mark Millar’s original storyline and adds some sense to what was a nonsensical execution in print (the “plant yourself like a tree” speech goes to Sharon Carter, which does a lot to temper Steve Rogers’ potential douchiness in this film). In Civil War #7, Captain America moves a superhero fight to the middle of the city, and once and only once several blocks are on fire does he realise he’s causing collateral damage (not that Iron Man is smarter or better). Here, both sides exercise some basic common sense: the airport gets evacuated.

The greatest thing about said airport scene, however, might be what it does to the film itself. As mentioned before, by Age of Ultron, Marvel needed to subvert the third act of the superhero movie — they didn’t need to reinvent the wheel, but they needed to paint it in new colours, and start selling different trims. Ant-Man decided to go the most obvious route of shrinking the action — in the most literal sense possible — and then to push this approach to an extreme. In Civil War, the approach was to go smaller in approach, to reduce the vast theoretical of the Sokovia Accords (wisely never spelt out in full, unlike the tangle of contradictions of the comics’ SHRA) to personal conflict.

The main criticism of Civil War seems to have been that it doesn’t really change much, and seems to walk back what little it does. This isn’t really correct — for one thing, of course Captain America would attempt reconciliation. But more than that, Civil War isn’t really the start of something. For one thing, Ultron’s promise to the Scarlet Witch (that “we will tear them apart from the inside”) turns out to be true — it’s still the Age of Ultron. By this point, MCU films had a beginning and an end, but not the beginning, the ending.

High Points: you could cover a wall in stills from this film, throw a dart and be 99% likely to hit a right answer. But, right now, let’s say… (throws dart) Black Panther meeting Zemo.
Low Points: having been set up in Winter Soldier, Emily VanCamp’s Agent 13 is pretty much superfluous in Civil War, there to confirm that Captain America is Not Gay and Not Asexual.
Curios: the Avengers, with Hulk’s ‘lullaby’, having essentially figured out how HYDRA brainwashes the Winter Soldier. Also, Captain America steals another car.
Flagrant Product Placement: MIT, Tony Stark’s bizarre choice of phone, Russia(?)
Connections to Elsewhere: almost everything prior except Guardians of the Galaxy; leads into Spider-Man: Homecoming in particular, but also Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War.
Stan Lee Cameo: as a mail delivery guy, referring to Earth-199999’s most famous superhero as “Mr. Stank”. C’mon, Stan. Get your act together. (8/10)
End Credits: the Winter Soldier is held in cryogenesis — cue sweeping panorama of Wakanda (7/10); Peter Parker explains to Aunt May about the ‘fight’ he got into (8/10).

10

Next: Doctor Strange (2016)