It’s been a wild ride here at The Cinema King, getting amped
up for Captain America: Civil War by
engaging ourselves in a Grand Marvel Rewatch of the twelve-picture Marvel
Cinematic Universe. Marvel’s latest (and longest) film, Captain America: Civil War is also its biggest in terms of stakes,
cast, and moral complexity, and it’s a dazzling super-triumph.After years of operating unchecked amid several major global events, The Avengers find their powers under scrutiny by a United Nations resolution that seeks to oversee their operations. Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), feeling guilt over his complicity in the creation of Ultron, signs on almost immediately, but Captain America (Chris Evans) has grave reservations about signing away his liberty. The rest of their teammates are forced to choose sides in the conflict when Cap’s childhood friend Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) comes out of hiding, further splitting the team as regards Bucky’s responsibility for his actions as the Winter Soldier.
Civil War manages to be both sweepingly epic and deeply personal, with far-reaching consequences stemming out of what is essentially a clash of personalities, a philosophical difference of opinion about the nature of individual power. And what’s really striking – shout-out here to directors Anthony & Joe Russo and screenwriters Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely, because they deserve it – is that the film never sacrifices one for the other. We get wonderful character beats and big-scale action sequences. One minute we’re in the kitchen with Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) as hosts of an adorable impromptu cooking show, and the next we’re in Leipzig for the airport sequence which is even more awesome than the trailers let on. (Honestly, the airport scene might be Marvel’s best action sequence to date, worth the price of a DVD, and eerily reminiscent of Whedon’s two 360-degree shots of the Avengers collaborating.)
And yet, for as much as the film valorizes character development, delivering some of the least opaque motivations for superhero characters yet, I really must quibble with the title of this film. Captain America: Civil War is not quite a Captain America movie – at least, not in the way that Captain America: The Winter Soldier was. In some part, this is due to the inclusion of RDJ as Iron Man, because Downey steals the screen whenever he shows up, but it’s also because the script is uncannily fair to both sides of this conflict. Both Stark and Cap have lines that might convince a fair-minded viewer to change their own opinion, and the film has neither a cop-out “villain orchestrated it all” twist nor any out-of-character beats like the comics source material (in which Tony Stark put Daredevil in a space prison). Civil War is balanced, and it may be difficult to digest for that reason, and kudos to the filmmakers for never cheapening the weighty debate.
Indeed, a better title would have been, simply, Marvel’s Civil War, for the film is unmistakably a waypoint for the franchise as a whole. There are beats in here that pay off all the way back to 2008, bringing everyone from Ant-Man to Thunderbolt Ross into the fray, and Civil War introduces Spider-Man (Tom Holland) and Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) to the MCU in ways that make me incredibly excited for their standalone films. Holland in particular is the new definitive Peter Parker, capturing the webslinger’s inability to keep quiet without letting us forget that he’s perhaps too young for this. Civil War feels very much like a slice of a universe, but while Cap is undeniably a star it’s difficult to say he’s the star.
Ultimately, this is not actually a bad thing. It’s at worst a misnomer, but I’d rather have a film with a handful of fantastic characters than a film that limits its focus unnecessarily. I think we can all agree, for example, that The Force Awakens didn’t necessarily need more Luke Skywalker, especially if it cost us a few scenes with Poe Dameron. Whether it’s Captain America 3, Iron Man 4, or Avengers 2½, Civil War is too exciting, too much fun, and too engaging to write off on a technicality. It leaves you wanting more, a sage move for a ballooning franchise like this one. It sends you out of the theater debating over which scene was the coolest, to be sure, but it also sends you away with a moral question that’ll take up most of the car ride home.
1 comment:
I thought it also worked as a sort of second part to Age of Ultron. Besides picking up in the direct aftermath, it continued character arcs that began in AoU, particularly with Iron Man, and with Vision and Scarlet Witch, both of whom were introduced last time but didn't get a lot of time to grow (AoU was a little overstuffed). I saw it as a kind of rough test run for the two-part structure they'll employ in Infinity War, and I think it was successful.
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