Captain America: Civil War without a doubt is one of the most anticipated films of the year. The hype was everywhere and if you were even remotely interested in comic books adaptation movies, you would know it and would have seen one of its trailers.
The Civil War story in the comic book was an extremely dark one. The hunting were ruthless and the hunted usually suffered terrible fates. So I was scared and excited at the same time. To avoid having accidental spoilers coming my way, I decided to see it on the day it came out without waiting for the cheap ass Tuesday discount.
So how did it hold up?
Without giving out too many spoilers I must say I enjoyed it a lot. Nonetheless I will probably need to see it again to catch on to a lot of things – because a lot happened in the movie. And all these things that happened at the same time tied in to the past and future movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. So one sitting of the movie would not be enough for me to pick up all the clues, hints and references. t
The movie picked up where The Winter Soldier and Age of Ultron left behind. The new bunch of Avengers at the end of Ultron are now an operative unit. As they continue to live their “normal” lives, as usual mankind interferes. This is the premise of Civil War. The main question is “Can we trust mankind to take care of the world by having them controlling the super humans who are taking care of them?” “When they said they are afraid what actually should we be afraid of?” It is a great debate in the move and each one of them has his or her strong reason to sign or not to sign on. The truth is when there are greed and politics no one can be trusted. This is something that was shared in common in the conversation between Black Widow and Black Panther before all hell broke loose. Batman Vs Superman touched on the same premise but without the huge back story already created for it, Batman Vs Superman felt like a rush to the destination while Civil War came out as a natural progression of the storyline in this huge Universe.
It is a super hero movie so naturally there are lots of actions and special effects in the movie. The introduction of Spiderman and enlisting of Ant-man have inevitably expanded the games and tricks the Russo brothers can do. Even veterans such as Falcon received an upgrade and not to mention the extended screen time for both The Winter Soldier and Agent 13. The action scenes are spectacular and breathtaking. It is impressive how the movie can squeeze in so many styles of fighting and made every single one of them stood out among the crowd. Every character has a purpose in the fight and that made all those scenes extremely cohesive and meaningful. Some of the superpower combos are well choreographed and appropriately referenced.
Nonetheless a film with all action and no story is still not a good film. That is what I think Civil War did extremely well. As the opening movie for Phase 3 it has a lot to tie in from Phase 2 and a lot to set up for the rest of the movies in Phase 3. It was quite impressive how it managed to weave all the story arcs for different characters in and out without at the same time losing the main plot. Surely a lot of things were handled through different dialogues but it is because of this that when you picked things up you would have that “oh yeah!” or “oh wow!” feel. This kind of reward for paying attention to what they said is the incentive for the audience to pay attention to the dialogues while appreciating all the actions flying off the screen. As I said sometimes you can still get distracted because of the actions and that what makes one wants to go back and see it again to pick up more clues and references.
Relationships among characters had also become very complicated. Sometimes I feel like Tony Stark was the jealous party in the bromance between the Captain and Bucky and thus would try to break them up at all costs. The fact is Civil War is about people falling out after some extremely intense situation that brought them together. One would think the bond would be so strong that they would be friends and allies for life. However, in the real world, politics and egos always come first, so with Civil War setting in the “real” world, it is inevitable that these factors played strong parts to divide this seemingly unbreakable group. When something fell apart from the inside the consequences and aftermaths are a lot messier to deal with. The Avengers certainly tasted it in this one.
Captain America: Civil War reflected that even superheroes could not help themselves. As soon as their common enemies disappeared, personal preferences and politics immediately came into play at the expense of their allies. They might be able to table whatever arguments they had but are they actually working for the benefit of the world that they are trying to protect? That is the question.
If you want to find out whether anyone of them found any resolution in this conflict, you will have to find this out yourself. I am not going to spoil it here. As for me I totally enjoyed it. The hype is quite hyped but then it did not disappoint. As I said earlier I will probably go see it again on a cheap Tuesday so I can pick up more clues and hints as my OCD will not permit me to let things like this left unresolved.
