Captain America: Civil War

Last night I went to see the latest instalment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Captain America: Civil War.

Let me get this out of the way immediately: this is the best Marvel movie to date. Simple as that. Now let’s see why this is.

Of course this post will contain some spoilers here and there, so only read it if you have watched the movie already!

We knew from all the trailers and videos that this would have been basically an Avengers movies as all the heroes (except from Thor and the Hulk), were going to be together. We also knew we were going to see some new heroes, in the form of Black Panther and Spiderman. So the big question was: how all these people are going to interact with each other without the movie feeling too overcrowded?

Well, the Russo’s brothers definitely pulled off a great treat for the Marvel’s fan!

In Civil War the main story line is about the US Government trying to regulate the action of all those super heroes, creating a sort of super U.N. task force. Not everyone likes the ideas and this will ended up splitting the Avengers in two side, Captain American vs. Iron Man; hence the Civil War.

In addition to this, we still get the Winter Soldier plot and this will also contribute in creating more distance between the two main heroes, with the full revelation of who killed Tony Stark’s parents.

And, to make things even more complicated, we see Black Panthers having beef with the Bucky until almost the end of the movie as he gets trapped in the main twist as all the other Avengers.

Despite all the underlining drama, the movie still has plenty of space for comedy, which is this case is brilliantly delivered by the two main cameos of the movie: Ant-Man and Spiderman.

The two are affiliated with different teams. Ant-Man gets recruited by Hawkeye for Team Cap, while Peter Parker is recruited directly by Tony Stark for Team Iron Man. Of the two, Spiderman is the one that comes through as the funnier of the twos, being brilliantly portraied by Tom Holland. Thanks to his references to real world movies and his seemingly genuine surprise and excitment for all the things super heroes, Spiderman/Parker manages to make the movie feel closer to you as the audience.

It also worth noticing how Marvel already managed to create a better Spiderman in this 10 minutes cameo that what Sony has been able to do in 15 years of so of trying. We knew the shortness of the appearance was mostly due to the to production houses getting a late rights agreement; but despite everything this was still a solid performance and a great ad for next year standalone Spiderman re-introduction: Homecoming.

Civil War is also able to deliver some great dialogues that really makes you feel involved in the ideological fight between the two sides and it makes it really difficult for the audience to actually pick a side. Even the heroes themselves are having troubles picking sides. If the movie poster clearly separates the Avengers right down the middle, the more the story proceeds, the more that line gets blurred and they start to mix again, ultimately being truthful to their own character and historical relationships.

I’m certainly glad Thor and the Hulk were not in this fight. Thor being a God from another planet wouldn’t have not fit really well in this very Earthly dilemma. On the other side instead, the Hulk doesn’t posses the “finesse” needed to participates in such a fight. Hulk smashes as we know. Hulk doesn’t read a 200 pages treaty.

Finally, the movie closes leaving us with only a partial closure and as always tends a hand forward to the future chapters in the story. Steve Rogers is hiding in Wakanda with his new friend Black Panther, putting the Winter Soldier to sleep (literally under ice), but he also tends a reaching hand toward Tony Stark in the form of a comically old flip-phone and the post it: I know you’re mad and this is crazy, but call me maybe?¹.

Speaking of the feature, we then see the second post-credit scene in which we go back to Queens in NY, to see how Peter Parker is dealing with the post-symptoms of his first big fight and we also see the spider symbol make its first appearance, remarking the fact that a new Spidey is finally in town.

Overall, as I said at the very beginning, this is a great Marvel movie, arguably the best in the series so far. Speaking of series, this movie of course slot inside the wider arc of the MCU but it also does a good job at standing as its own movie and story. If you’ve seen all the others movie it helps, but if you hadn’t, you won’t feel lost. Which is always good.

If you want to get more of Civil War, I would suggest you listen to the latest The Incomparable podcast, which does a great job at recapping the movie.

7.5/10