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 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.