'Captain America: Civil War' SPOILER Review

Image from Forbes

By Darian Scalamoni

I’d like to start by saying that this review will contain SPOILERS that will talk about important plot points within the film so if you don’t want to be spoiled please do NOT read on.

Ever since the birth of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, fans of comic books and movies in general have wanted to see superheroes face off against one another. Whether it was on the pages of comics or on screen for all to see, it is something that is essential to have all of these enhanced people fight for the sole reason that it’s something the fans begged to see. Thanks to Marvel Studios, we finally have been lucky enough to see a war between heroes in a film.

I still remember the day this movie was announced and the internet exploded, now I can finally say not only is the film fantastic but it lives up to the hype it had surrounding it for over a year. It is a direct sequel to Captain America: The Winter Soldier while also serving as the third film in, debatably, the best trilogy in comic book movie history. Civil War takes place a year after the events in Sokovia that happened within Avengers: Age of Ultron and it fires on all cylinders from the moment the film starts.

It all begins as Captain America (Chris Evans) is on a mission trying to take out Crossbones (Frank Grillo) followed by his team of Avengers; Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Falcon (Anthony Mackie). The mission is almost accomplished completely if it isn’t for an enormous mistake committed by Scarlet Witch. This mistake made by her leads to the government trying to intervene and regulate the Avengers with a document titled the Sokovia Accords. Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) believes that the team needs to be put in check due to an encounter with a mother whose son died during the attacks on Sokovia in Ultron, so he agrees to sign the Accords. Steve Rogers, however, does not agree to sign the document as he believes it takes away the Avengers right to choose to enter situations or act on a situation that could be life threatening to people all around the world. At this point in the film, it’s hard to generally pick a side because Cap and Iron Man have amazing points and counter arguments for their reasoning to sign the Accords. As early as the first half hour within the movie, you can already tell that the team is extremely split with half of the avengers siding with Stark and the other half siding with Rogers. Though the action pieces in this film are tremendous (more on that later), the disagreement between the team is extremely intriguing due to the weight of the situation and intense nature that builds along the film between characters. The enthralling conflict continues to build as the re-emergence of The Winter Soldier (aka Bucky Barnes, played by Sebastian Stan), who is behind the attack that kills more innocent people leads to the introduction of the first new character within the film, Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman). Boseman’s portrayal of Black Panther is powerful, contained and he is a welcome addition to the MCU. You truly get to see his abilities though as he chases Bucky through the city of Vienna trying to take him out, which leads to their arrest.

Another interesting dynamic between characters throughout the film is the potential budding romance stemming from Scarlet Witch and Vision (Paul Bettany). Ever since the birth of the Vision, fans wondered how he would interact with the other heroes as he tried to drift towards humanity in the future films and this is our first taste of that. He is a very protective android who just wants to understand what it’s like to be human. He’s curious, sweet and has good intentions but in Scarlet Witch’s eyes, he is sort of babysitting her as he won’t allow her to leave the Avengers basin due to the extent of which her powers can be unleashed. She happens to unleash those powers later in the film as she buries Vision layers beyond the soil as Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) comes to rescue her to battle at the airport. At the same time that all of this is unfolding, a mysterious man by the name of Zemo (Daniel Bruhl), is trying to discover and understand a mission that the Winter Soldier had in 1991.

Does this sound like a lot so far? That’s because it is but the amazing thing about this movie is that it never feels overstuffed. Marvel films have always been filled with plenty of action and humor but when the filmmakers and writers are able to add stakes, drama and personal human intuition within the story and characters, it makes the movie that much better. Screenwriters, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (Captain America: The Winter Soldier) handle the content in such an organized format that feels fluid and establishes plot, characters and even some twists in the film.

This builds towards its eventual course of action which is a physical conundrum between Team Cap and Team Iron Man. The airport battle seen within the trailers is not only the best action sequence in a Marvel movie but quite possibly one of the best action sequences in any movie ever. That’s not an over exaggeration either as the Russo Brothers (Captain America: The Winter Soldier), are able to have twelve superheroes battle it out in teams of six that ultimately lead to 30 fight sequences between separate characters. Yes, it is that awesome. Some of the amazing things we see within the fight sequence is our first appearance of the new Spider-Man (Tom Holland) in the MCU, who plays the webbed slinger brilliantly; as well as Hawkeye firing a tiny Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) on an arrow to get inside of Tony Stark’s suit. None might be better though than the “splash page” moment within the airport scene where all of the heroes run towards each other to bring their battle to the next level.

The finale of the battle though is the moment where the movie tonally shifts back from fun and playful to serious and somber as a misstep by Vision leads to War Machine (Don Cheadle) being shot down thousands of feet from the sky and hospitalized. While this is going on, Captain America and Bucky get to a chopper and head towards Siberia where Zemo wishes to discover the origin of Bucky becoming an assassin and what we find out to be, a Winter Soldier army. Tony and the US government arrest Cap’s team putting them in Raft (an underwater prison that rises above sea level) which leads to animosity towards Stark. On his way over to the prison though, Stark discovers that earlier he had made a mistake as Zemo was under a disguise that made him appear to look like Bucky when he committed the bombing at the UN building. This leads to Falcon telling Tony where Steve and Bucky are as he goes to apologize and help them take down Zemo.

Throughout the film, the Russo brothers keep cutting back to the mission that one of the Winter Soldiers acted out as he causes a car to swerve and hit a tree. In the trunk of the car, there is a supply of the super serum used to bring Bucky back to life, makes him an assassin and ultimately help build the Winter Soldier army. They continue to show repetition with this scene as we later discover, thanks to the master plan by Zemo, that Bucky was in fact the one that acted out the mission and the people in the car are none other than Tony Stark’s parents who are murdered by Barnes. Tony is broken by seeing their death unfold but matters are made worse when he discovers that Cap had known the whole time. This leads to the final action scene as Iron Man battles the longtime best friends from Brooklyn in a scene that is emotional, grim and shows the real anger behind someone who just watched his parents die right in front of him.

All in all, the film is an enormous accomplishment not only for its scale but also the way the film felt so personal and contained for each and every character. I talked about Spider-Man and Black Panther earlier but the story is propelled to new heights and carried on throughout thanks to incredible performances by Chris Evans in his most contained Cap performance and Robert Downey Jr. as a Tony Stark we’ve never seen before. Though the film isn’t perfect as we see in the way Zemo’s plan works out a little too perfectly, it leaves the MCU in a perfect place for future installments to follow. Almost all of the characters had a real reason for being in the fight for freedom and regulation of superheroes which led to an audience reaction that made people weep tears of joy by how well done this film is. I have nothing but confidence in the Russo brothers’ ability to adapt the Avengers: Infinity War comic book arc on screen due to the amazing job they did on this movie. 

Overall I give this film a 9.5/10.