Captain America: Civil War

2016 may go down in cinematic history as the year superheroes stopped punching bad guys and started punching each other. Captain America: Civil War is the second and better of these movies, if only because it's the more personal.

After an attempt to stop Brock Rumlow in Nigeria ends with collateral damage the United Nations wants to put The Avengers under their rule. Tony Stark aka Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr) is all for it but Steve Rogers aka Captain America (Chris Evans) wants to stay independent. Battle lines are drawn and sides are chosen over the proposed Sokovia Accords. Things get worse when Steve's friend turned brainwashed assassin Bucky Barnes is accused of bombing the signing of the Accords, killing the King of Wakanda. The King's son, T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman), under the guise of Black Panther, wants revenge. Stark wants to put Bucky down. Steve wants to help his friend clear his name. This set up drives the rest of the film.

Yes, there's a lot more of the Avengers in the movie. In fact, this is basically Avengers 3 more than Captain America 3. On Team Iron Man is Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Vision (Paul Bettany), War Machine (Don't Cheadle), Black Panther, and--making his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut--Spider-Man (Tom Holland). Team Captain America has Falcon (Anthony Mackie), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), Bucky, and Ant-Man (Paul Rudd).

One would think that with that many characters and a 2 1/2 hour running time, the movie would be too much and too bloated. Surprisingly, it's not. It's multitude of characters and storylines doesn't overwhelm it or feel forced. It's not like some of the more unfortunate DC attempts of "oh, look...it's (insert Batman villain)! Oh, look! It's (insert Justice League hero #1)! Oh, look, it's grainy video of (insert Justice League hero #2)." It's not even like the Marvel Netflix shows that attempt to convince you they're part of the same MCU as the movies by vaguely name-dropping a character without actually mentioning them by name. It remains a slick, taut thriller that manages to pull its various storylines together cohesively in the end. It all clicks and clicks wonderfully, especially under the direction of Joe and Anthony Russo, the directors of Winter Soldier.

About that ending. No spoilers but this movie duplicates the feat of last year's Ant-Man. There's no apocalyptic situation, no extinction level event going on. The fate of the entire world and life as we know it isn't hanging in the balance. There's no wanton destruction with possibly thousands of unseen lives lost. What there is a simple but brutal fight between former friends. To say that it's as tense if not more so than the finales of almost all the previous Marvel movies is to undersell it. Oh, sure, there's a big superhero on superhero brawl earlier in the film where all the heroes fight each other. But that's not the finale. That's the scene we expected when we came in. The finale is much more personal. You don't root for a winner in these fights. We like all these characters and just don't want to see anything bad happen to any of them.

That may be the secret power of this movie. We have been invested in these characters since the MCU started with Iron Man in 2008. The result is that we like all of these characters. Civil War not only recognizes that fact, it exploits it. The movie never demonizes any of its heroes. We can get behind any one of them at any given time. Most iconic brawl movies clearly delineate who we should ultimately root for in the movie. When you have Ant-Man on one team and Spider-Man on the other, how in the world do you choose who to root for?

On the topic of Spider-Man, Tom Holland has the promise to be the best screen webhead yet. The youngest actor to play Peter Parker and his alter-ego, Holland actually looks like a nerdy high school teenager. He also brings Spidey's banter to life in a hilarious way that neither Tobey Maguire nor Andrew Garfield pulled off. It actually makes one excited to see Spidey's next movie. As for this movie's other major introduction, I never was that interested in the character of Black Panther until this. But like Holland's Spider-Man, Boseman's Black Panther is a fascinating character. Since this movie is almost an origin story, I really want to see where the character goes next.

Some may say this isn't quite as good as The Winter Soldier. If that's true, it's through no fault of the movie's own. It's just that Winter Soldier was just that great. But it's almost like arguing whether The Godfather or The Godfather Part II is a better movie. It's still an amazing movie that has much to say about loyalty, friendship, sacrifice, and the cost of revenge.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

The end of 2011's Captain America: The First Avenger found the WWII era superhero in the modern world. This first sequel picks up on that thread, highlighting the differences between the world Captain America left behind and the modern world.

Chris Evans returns as Steve Rogers, now working for S.H.I.E.L.D. and becoming greatly disillusioned with it. When he finds Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) downloading files for Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson in one of those few movies where he doesn't say MF) during what was supposed to be a rescue mission, he confronts Fury about his lies. Fury tells Rogers about a new S.H.I.E.L.D. initiative known as Project Insight: three new Helicarriers designed and programmed to eliminate America's enemies before they can do any harm. This, needless to say, doesn't sit well with Rogers.

When Fury can't access the files, he visits Defense Secretary Alexander Pierce (Robert Redford). Not long after, he's attacked twice: first in the streets then later in Steve's apartment. After Fury seemingly dies, Pierce and S.H.I.E.L.D. turn on Cap, making him a fugitive. With war veteran Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) and Black Widow as his only allies,  Cap investigates Fury's murder and makes the disturbing discovery that old nemesis HYDRA had secretly taken over S.H.I.E.L.D. over the decades and were planning to use Project Insight to eliminate their enemies. Worse yet, their number one assassin--the infamous Winter Soldier--is Steve's best friend, the long presumed dead Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), now brainwashed and with a cybernetic arm.

Evans cements his place in comic book movie history as the definitive version of this character. His Rogers is a character whose values have not kept up with the world around him. We're living in a post-9/11 world where in some ways we've forsaken freedom for security. The movie replaces 9/11 with the end battle from 2012's The Avengers but the parallel between what happened in the years following is not lost. Rogers is a character who has gone from living in a world with easily defined bad guys to a world where the distinction is harder to make. Evans does not fail the character, making him moral enough to stand against Project Insight even before we learn its a tool of HYDRA's but conflicted about fighting his former friend.

He also has a great chemistry with Johansson's Black Widow. In fact, this may be the best of her appearances as the character. She's always been fun to watch in these but this is the most interesting she's been.

Stan is physically awesome as the Winter Soldier, a frightening and mysterious force of nature. His battles with Captain America are brutal and nasty. They're also well shot. The ability to follow the action in an era where directors favor cuts that are at best confusing in nature is a definite plus.

As for the others, they are exactly what you would expect. Anthony Mackie is an excellent update to a character who looked a little too disco. Emily Van Camp as Steve's neighbor who isn't who she seems to be at first is also a plus but could have used more screen time. And Robert Redford is Robert Redford. Does anything need to be said beside that?

If the first Captain America was a serial style WWII adventure film, The Winter Soldier is a 70s style paranoid political thriller ala The Parallax View. The only major difference between this and those films is the number of things blown up.  Directed with style by Joe and Anthony Russo, the twists and surprises in the movie elevate it above standard comic book fare. There is humor to counter the action, too. The best running joke in the movie is Widow constantly suggesting hook ups for Rogers.

You can argue if this or The First Avenger are better but at the end of the day, it's splitting hairs. The Winter Soldier is the best Marvel sequel, period. Captain America is the best Marvel franchise, period. With the Russos in charge of not only the forthcoming Civil War but the next two Avenger movies, things are looking pretty good for the MCU.

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

Captain America is one of those characters that's always had a bit of an interesting screen history. By interesting, I mean depressing. His first on-screen appearance was in a 1944 Republic serial, played by an actor named Dick Purcell. It's not a bad serial per-se, but it has absolutely nothing to do with Captain America. In it, he's a D.A. who wears an outfit that sort of looks like Captain America's outfit and who punches crooks out of windows without even attempting to save them. After that, there were two TV movies in the 1970s. TV movies that were so bad, even my 8 year old self didn't like them, and my 8 year old self had occasionally rotten taste in movies and TV. There was movie in the 1990s with Matt Salinger that pretty much went straight to video and which I've never really had the fortitude to try to watch. So when Marvel announced yet another crack at the character, I inwardly groaned. So imagine my delight when this not only turned out to be the best screen version of the character, but one of the best comic book movies ever.

It's 1942 and WWII is at a fever pitch. Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) wants to join the fight against the Nazis but has enough medical issues to get into the Guinness Book of World Records. Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci) recruits Rogers into the SSR as part of a Super Soldier experiment conducted by Erskine, Col. Chester Phillips (a hilarious Tommy Lee Jones) and British agent Peggy Carter (gorgeous Haley Atwell, who made such an impression she got her own TV show). Erskine's experiment is a success but the scientist is killed by an agent of Hydra, a Nazi offshoot run by Johann Schmidt, aka The Red Skull. Schmidt has just stolen a very dangerous artifact known as The Tessaract and is using it to build super weapons with which to conquer the world.

Rogers is demoted to selling War Bonds until Hydra captures his best friend Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan). He then takes it upon himself to take the fight to Hydra. Along the way, he's assisted by Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper), who's son Tony will eventually become Iron Man, and Dum Dum Dugan and his Howling Commandos.

The thing that makes this movie stand out is the fact that it's an origin story we haven't seen a million times already. It's not Superman and the destruction of Krypton. It's not Peter Parker being bit by a radioactive spider. It's not Bruce Wayne watching his parents be murdered. You can make that argument for Iron Man and Thor, I suppose, but they don't have Captain America's frustrating film history behind them. For fans waiting to see if the character would ever appear in a good movie, the answer finally became yes.

The cast, as it has been for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is top notch. Evans performance as Cap is as iconic as Christopher Reeve's Superman was. Evans, unlike many of his contemporaries, is playing a hero who actually wants to be a hero. He isn't mopey, brooding, or nuts. In an age when even Superman can be moody, it's kinda refreshing to see a straight out good guy.

Hugo Weaving may not have liked his experience with the MCU playing the Red Skull but he's just behind Tom Hiddleston and James Spader as Marvel villains go. Assistant Armin Zola (Toby Jones) would return in other MCU properties, including the aforementioned Agent Carter.

Perhaps the best thing about the movie is that it's period appropriate. It's easy to forget that many of the iconic comic book characters started in the 30s and 40s. As a result, they don't always translate down the line. The Green Hornet is one of the better examples of a period specific character who doesn't do as well later on. Captain America was a product of WWII. His first comic book cover had him punching Hitler in the face. So it's great that this movie recognized that and went with it. Sure, due to The Avengers, they had to find a way to get him into the modern world, but by not modernising the origin, director Joe Johnson and Marvel gave us something fresh, fun, and different.

3-D Thursday: Marvel's The Avengers (2012)

In terms of great comic book movies, it can be argued that the genre didn't really find it's legs until the early 2000s with Bryan Singer's X-Men and Sam Raimi's Spider-Man. Some have argued as far back as Tim Burton's Batman, but Burton's Batman, like Richard Donner's Superman (1978) was more of an anomaly then a standard bearer. Actually, I tend to think that comic book movies didn't truly hit their stride until 2008's Iron Man, which started the great run up to what is probably the genre's best film ever: 2012's spectacular Marvel's The Avengers (the actual onscreen title, by the way).

The Avengers is a crossover movie with the heroes and/or supporting characters of five previous Marvel movies. The loose umbrella of films that came previously became known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Nothing like it had ever been attempted in the movies before. Surprisingly, despite the risky endeavor, the film works beautifully.

Iron Man, Captain America, Black Widow, and the Incredible Hulk--or more specifically Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff, and Bruce Banner--are called upon when Loki, brother of Thor, steals the Tesseract, a mystical cube he intends to use to conquer the world. Loki has also taken over the minds of Dr. Erik Selvig, who he plans to use to help him harness the power of the Tesseract, and a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent named Clint Barton, code name Hawkeye, who he plans to basically use as an assassin.  Thor joins in when Loki is captured to try to make him give up the cube. But as Nick Fury points out, Loki seems to be the only person who wants to be on the Shield Heli-carrier.

The problem with comic book movies in general is that so few people know how to make a good one. Too often have comic book movies gone for camp or at least what they think is camp, such as the dreck that mostly made up 90s comic book movies, or else they tend to just be about explosions and fights like X-Men III: The Final Stand. Amazingly, Richard Donner laid out the blueprint for how to do it right in 1978, but too many people have missed that blue print. Luckily, Joss Whedon wasn't one of those people.


Donner taught these movies how to have a sense of humor but also a genuine sense of menace and Whedon improves on that idea with The Avengers. Yes, there's some funny bits in the film, but Loki and the Chitari are not jokes, even if Loki makes a couple of wisecracks himself. If Tom Hiddleston's Loki isn't the best comic book villain of all time, he's in the top three for certain. Maybe Heath Ledger's Joker and Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor edge him out, but it's pretty close.

This is Robert Downey Jr.'s fifth appearance as Tony Stark/Iron Man, while everyone else except Mark Ruffalo as Banner is on their second appearance. Downey has made Stark his own and turned a character not many people cared/knew about before his movies into a major player. Chris Hemsworth likewise is the living embodiment of Thor. Ruffalo becomes the third actor in the past decade to take on playing the Hulk and while I really liked Edward Norton in the role, Ruffalo is easily the best. Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow shows she can play with the big boys and surprisingly doesn't look ridiculous doing it. Chris Evans is the best actor to ever play Captain America and I frankly can't wait for Captain America: The Winter Soldier in a couple of months. Samuel L. Jackson and Clark Gregg do their usual bits as Nick Fury and Agent Coulson. Actually, Gregg has been the glue through most of these movies as the only two he doesn't show up in prior to this are 2008's The Incredible Hulk and 2011's Captain America: The First Avenger. He's a fan favorite and gets one of the best scenes in the movie when he squares off against Loki. Although the funniest scene in the movie is still Hulk meets Loki.

Whedon's film also improves on the idea of a comic book team up movie. If you really look at prior films like the X-Men, most of the movie relies on a couple members of the team, with the rest basically the useless army. The Avengers, however, gives every major player something to do and not just once in the movie. The movie treats every major hero equally, giving them all bits of business, good lines, and heroic things to accomplish. The same can be said of the actors playing those characters. The only one who tries upstaging the others is Hiddleston, and well, he's the villain with a flair for the theatrical.


As far as the 3D goes, it's a conversion from 2D. It happens to be one of the best conversions, but it's still a conversion and as such is bound to fail when compared to movies shot in Native 3D. The conversion manages to eek out some decent depth, but the pop-outs would have looked far more impressive had the movie been shot that way. Unfortunately, this is a situation that is not about to change with Marvel movies.


Is Marvel's The Avengers the best comic book movie ever? I think it just might be. Every so often a movie comes along with a sense of "wow" to it that just captures the imagination. This is one of those movies. I've already seen it half a dozen times. I try not to rewatch movies too often in order to keep them fresh but I find myself wanting to toss this in every few months. It's a great film with the right balance of story, humor, and action to please any movie buff.