Captain America: Civil War 2016
I saw the first Captain America movie, but missed the second. I understood this one would really be an Avengers movie with all (or most) of the superheroes. Once again, Ironman has a really big role. While this is a good movie, I still have a lot of complaints about it, and I think maybe generally I’m just getting tired of the genre. I was never one to read comic books and while this movie tries to be a little more intellectual, with a somewhat political plot, there is just too much bizarre science and government involvement just like in past movies. Having all the heroes together means none of them really develop a whole lot, and the cast just keeps growing and growing. While the new characters are interesting, I’m not sure more is better.
It is hard to do a good political movie, even harder to do one with fake politics involving public accountability of superheroes. There are some mild statements being made about unchecked power, accountability, and maybe tangentially this relates to collateral damage from today’s very real drone strikes and the police killing innocent people, but I think they were afraid to make that too heavy or nuanced. This is still an action movie, but it sags at times when it dabbles in politics and the central issue of some superheroes submitting to regulation vs. others that refuse, seems a little forced, especially since all of these guys have the same objective of stopping bad guys, nobody really suffering from character flaws.
The other story involving a bad guy is fine, but I missed out on the last Captain America movie, so I had a hard time caring about the Winter Soldier stuff, and the bad guy was okay, but you don’t really know what he is up to or why until almost the end. There is lots of shaky cam and it seems like the movement is jittery like they are leaving out some frames to get a jittery look, but it makes it look kind of fake. I opted to watch in 3D, which is neat as long as you are concentrating on it and they are taking good advantage of it, but you get used to it and it doesn’t seem to add much. A lot of the movie was filmed in Atlanta, but I didn’t recognize anything even though some of the places are real. The scenes from the market in Nigeria were filmed outdoors in Atlanta, but only with tons of props.
So enough of the complaints. The movie still works and is worth watching. They hire some very good actors who can hit things out of the park when they get something they can sink their teeth into. The characters are likable even if they aren’t always developed (most of the superheroes are just side characters, but Captain America, Ironman, Black Widow, and the Winter Soldier get significant roles). So it’s still fun on one level, with a little depth to the story that some will like and some will find annoying. There are a few light moments, though maybe not enough. It’s entertaining, so I’ll give it a B+ despite all my nitpicking.
Update: I bought the Blu-ray for this movie along with a couple of other Marvel titles at Redbox. I watched it to get ready for Black Panther, which just came out (early 2018) and after watching Captain America: Winter Soldier which I had not seen when I watched this the first time. Concentrating on the Black Panther character, he has a very prominent role here, though maybe you don’t learn anything but the basics. Also, this was the introduction of the new version of Spider-Man, which would result in Spider-Man: Homecoming which I thought wasn’t that great. I had also filled in more background by watching the disappointing Ant-Man and gleaning a little insight by watching Iron Man 3. This movie is a real hub for the entire Marvel universe, but it comes at a great cost: it just isn’t that good. The main plot about the superheroes disagreeing with each other about whether they should be run by the UN is terrible. Blaming them for collateral damage misplaces the blame from the bad guys who caused everything (with the exception of the Age of Ultron stuff maybe, I need to go back and watch that). Then after artificially breaking them up, they need them to pull together which you know is going to happen. The bad guy’s plot is also terrible, extremely elaborate and deadly with an incredibly low chance of working. They introduce a whole squad of winter soldiers for no apparent reason. So the whole movie is just noise. There is no way I would give this a B+ again, but I don’t think I should lower the original score. I will say that it looks and sounds great on Blu-ray.
Written: 08 May 2016
Owned on: Blu-ray, Digital