Captain America: Civil War (2016)

Directed By: Joe and Anthony Russo

Starring: Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr, Scarlett Johansson, Elizabeth Olsen and Anthony Mackie

When the government tries to institute a sort of oversight in the Avenger’s Initiative, a schism grows amongst the Avengers. Tony Stark believing they should accept the oversight, while Captain America is not so agreeable. When an enemy from their past resurfaces, they will have to try to put their differences aside to meet him, either peacefully or not.

I finally got around to seeing Captain America this past weekend. Usually I’ve been pretty good about seeing the new Marvel films when they’re released, but I admit I was slacking a bit on this one. I’m hoping to be seeing a lot more movies as they come out this summer, instead of having to wait a bit like I did when I was in school these past semesters.

Anyways, I went into this movie kind of skeptical. I have been a big Marvel fan, ever since the first Iron Man back in 2008. Admittedly that’s not really that long ago, but I have watched almost every Marvel film put out since then (the only exception being Ant Man, which I’m planning on watching within the next few weeks). However recently, as the installments begin to rack up, I’ve felt like the originality has begun to dwindle. Avengers: Age of Ultron was good, but not great, and while I always enjoy the characters involved, it seems occasionally that they have begun to value action over substance. (Again I said occasionally)

So I feel like the newest installment in Captain America’s series, answered a few of those critiques, but not all. The premise was actually pretty well done, and the somewhat of a twist at the end surprised me, although I imagine some saw it coming.

My two main critiques with it were, duration and motivation. This movie just seemed a little bit too long. I have nothing against long movies, in fact I enjoy them. But a long movie done well doesn’t feel long at all. Movies like Interstellar, The Wolf of Wall Street, or Schindler’s List are all over three hours, but don’t feel like it. They keep you on the edge of your seat and make you forget how long you’ve been watching. In this movie, it seemed almost a bit too drawn out. Some of the fight sequences were verging onto Transformers level of time. And while yes it is fun to watch for a while, leaves you a little tired of it after a while.

My other gripe with this movie is motivation. A friend of mine mentioned to me a few months back about how he likes to think about each character’s motivation for doing things during a movie, and how that compares to the motivations of other characters. That is a very interesting thing to do, especially when it comes to this movie. Without spoiling anything, by the time we were nearing the end of the movie this got a bit confusing. The main feud is between Iron Man and Captain America with the rest of the group and allies taking either side. But the problem with that is, the audience doesn’t really feel like the stakes are that high. Yes its fun to see all of the Marvel characters battle it out as if this were some fighting video game, but it doesn’t really lead to substantive film. When they are fighting an enemy, there is some fear of what could happen if something goes wrong, but the audience knows that when they fight themselves, the only thing that could perish would be friendships. Maybe that was what made some of the action sequences seem so tedious, was that there was no real fear of consequences.

One of the things I think this film did really well however, was keeping the focus on Captain America. With the amount of star power in this lineup, this easily could have been Avenger’s 3: Thor and Hulk are on break. But no, they had a good combination of Captain America backstory as well as his relationship with Bucky, with the added bonus of 11 other superheros. Well 9 plus Black Widow and Hawkeye, because I refuse to believe they count.

Don’t let the critical paragraph fool you, this was still an entertaining movie, as Marvel movies typically are, I just feel like it could have been a little bit better. But that is such an easy thing to say so flippantly, what do I know? I still recommend that you see this movie if you haven’t already (I know I’m very late) because if you like Marvel films, you’ll find this one enjoyable as well.

I’m interested to hear what anyone else thought, and we can have more of a spoiler involved discussion in the comments.

And stay tuned for a review of Batman vs Superman (another one I’m very late on) which will hopefully be posted later today, followed by one on Deadpool (even later). I’ve been in a bit of a superhero mood lately.

Score: 7.8