It’s hard to believe it’s been ten years since the Marvel Cinematic Universe began. And here we are, along with Robert from To the Escape Hatch and CT on Nerd Lunch doing a third “Countdown to Avengers” series. AND, we are joined by a new blogger, Jay from Life vs. Film. You can check out the start of this series with Robert’s post about Avengers: Age of Ultron. Robert, Jay, CT and I are all splitting the films up in anticipation of May’s Avengers: Infinity War. With this film and next year’s Avengers 4, the expectation is that we will be done on some level with this iteration of the MCU. But I doubt it’ll go away completely.
For now, let’s talk about what I came here to talk about…Captain America: Civil War.
Quickly, before we start, my hot take on the first two Captain America movies. The first one is a good, but not outstanding origin movie with lots of great performances including Evans, Atwell, and Weaving. I liked the movie more than I expected and I liked Chris Evans as Cap a *lot* more than I expected. Winter Soldier was a game changer not only for the MCU but for this version of Cap as well. We see Cap in a modern movie kicking all kinds of ass and being awesome. We also get the introduction of two more awesome characters in the Winter Soldier and Sam Wilson, aka Falcon. And while the movie is a great action movie, the political intrigue subplot is well played out as well. The Winter Soldier movie was an eye opener and made Chris Evans’ Cap my new favorite MCU hero over Iron Man.
Fast forward to Civil War. Some may even call it Avengers 2.5. The Avengers taking sides over the fate of Winter Soldier. The first appearance of several new characters. I was pretty excited to see it going into it. And it more than delivers. As these movies have gone on, especially the Avengers movies, I think one of my favorite parts are the cold openings. Usually we see the group in the middle of some mission, working together, bantering, being “The Avengers”. The teamwork and dialogue in these scenes are so fun and I love it. Civil War doesn’t disappoint. It opens with the current Avengers, plus Wanda and minus Tony, in Lagos trying to stop Brock Rumlow from stealing a biological weapon. We get to see everyone in action, Falcon has Red Wing who gets to shine in battle. Lots of really fun stuff here. Then the drama starts with the thrust of the plot and the entrance (and return!) of General Thunderbolt Ross (shout out to The Incredible Hulk movie!).
The crux of the plot makes sense. Honestly, even the split of the heroes makes sense to me, each hero going where their natural proclivities lie. I love the return of Clint. I know his character gets a lot of crap from fans, but you know what, I like Renner and I like his portrayal of Hawkeye. How we haven’t gotten a Black Widow/Hawkeye team up movie is beyond me. We also get the appearance of Scott Lang from Ant-Man (which CT reviewed a little while ago) and he’s great in several *almost* show stealing scenes (Giant Man!). They continue to build out Winter Soldier’s character. He gets better and more interesting every single movie he’s in. And if I don’t get a Winter Soldier/Falcon buddy movie at some point, we will have words, Marvel.
There’s so much to unpack I’m not sure where I want to go next. How about the debut of Black Panther? I’ve read comics since the mid-80s, I’ve never really read Black Panther but this particular iteration of him made me a fan and the Black Panther solo movie further cemented that. The debut of the new Spider-Man? Amazing (pun intended). Tom Holland *nails* Peter Parker. And he *nails* Spider-Man in the suit. Again, the Spider-Man solo movie cemented *that* even further. There’s not much I don’t really like about this movie. The action set pieces are drop dead gorgeous. When Cap goes to confront Bucky while special forces are busting down the door to his apartment…fantastic. Perfectly staged. And the Berlin airport sequence? I don’t need to expend any more words describing how awesome that whole sequence is.
So I said there isn’t really anything I don’t like about this movie. Let me amend that a bit. I feel like, and this has been a progression since Iron Man 2, Tony Stark is more and more becoming a crazy asshole. I mean, I know he was always an asshole but his heart was in the right place and he was still lovable. Continuing that progression here, he seems to go off the deep end a bit with these Sekovia Accords. He acts like if the team had been under oversight from the beginning, then the people who died in New York, Sekovia and Lagos would have been saved. Like, if the UN had oversight over the Avengers, then that kid building sustainable housing in Sekovia (Alfre Woodard’s son) during the Ultron incident wouldn’t have died. I posit that if the UN had been involved that not only would he most likely still have died, probably millions more would have died as well. But I also get this progression as ever since New York, Tony has been on edge with PTSD, then he created Ultron, causing all that death and destruction. I totally get why he’s overcorrecting here. But it just makes me love it more when he goes to Russia to bury the hatchet with Cap, and then it completely breaks my heart when he sees the video of his parents getting killed and it starts all over. Such a powerful ending to this movie that I really hope when we get to the next Avengers movie that these issues are addressed in some form. I don’t want these things to be brushed aside easily. They really need to address the ending of this movie HARD (they don’t at all in Spider-Man: Homecoming or Black Panther).
So, as it stands, this is very nearly my favorite MCU movie to date. And that’s a loaded statement because this movie lives on the backs of almost the entire 10 years of history of the MCU to date. But that’s what makes it so special.
But I wasn’t the only one with thoughts on this movie, here are some final thoughts by CT:
Cavalcade of Awesome 