Some thoughts about Captain America: Civil War

Which side would you choose?

An accident caused by one of the Avengers has caused the loss of several innocent lives and now the world has decided to control superhumans and while Iron Man is ready to follow the law, Captain America thinks there must be another way. What none of them know is that there might be another person manipulating their actions.

Okay, I'm warning everyone. Here comes SPOILERS.

One of the most anticipated superhero movies from this year is finally here and considering that this year is full of them, that's saying something. This includes myself because in my opinion, the Captain America movies have been some of the most solid stories that Marvel has released for their cinematic universe, that's hardly the only reason though.

Since the first trailer, this film has been heavily hyped not only as a Captain America story but also an Avengers one and is pretty obvious due the amount of characters they managed to incorporate in this story, I was amazed of how Marvel was able to hire many of the talented cast they have created during their line of superhero movies including fan-favorites like Iron Man, Black Widow, Hawkeye and The Falcon and newcomers like Black Panther and more surprisingly, the new incarnation of Spider-Man. Directors Anthony and Joe Russo had a lot to deliver here so did they succeed?

Well, for the most part they did but that doesn't mean is flawless.

The story takes place following several plot-points from the previous movies Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Avengers: Age of Ultron. The world is still suffering the consequences of Ultron's attack while Captain America and his team are trying to stop Crossbones and his terrorist group from causing more damage which accidently will make things worse and unfold a series of events that will cause the destruction of the team and nothing will be the same.

Is a simple premise that I think offers some interesting points. As most people should know, the plot is based on Mark Millar's Civil War crossover event that put a lot of the characters against each other and while the story indeed follows some key elements from the book, it still takes several liberties with the direction.

For one, I must say that I didn't hate the characters here as much as in Millar's story. In the book both Captain America and Iron Man acted like self-entitled douches that were willing to destroy their friendship of years and put a lot of people at risk just to win an argument. While the characters in this film do present some aspects like those, they still show enough empathy towards others and demonstrate that they still care for each other. I don't have as many complaints about how the heroes act here as in the comic.

However, that doesn't mean that the characterization is perfect.

The way how Iron Man (Played once again by Robert Downy Jr.) decided to accept being monitored by the Government just because a woman told him that her son died in the accident that caused the Scarlet Witch is an overly contrived manner to set the direction of the story considering that this is hardly the first time that Tony is blamed for the death of others. Yes, this is something that also happened in the book but I wish the motivations would have been explored in a more natural way instead of being so forced.  By the way, "forced" is a word that you will see a lot during these thoughts and whenever someone talks about the movie, the fact that before that key moment happened Tony revealed a bit of his backstory about the death of his parents makes it even more evident as we will learn later.

Captain America (Portrayed by Chris Evans as you would expect) acts in a more rational and calmed way. The problem is that the reasons why he rejects the Government so much are not quite well-explained and for that matter they lose a lot of the strenght to support their decisions. Once again, the motives behind the protagonists' actions are not convincing enough to actually be engaged in this whole conflict.

The rest of the classic cast fare a little better with Scarlett Johansson returning as Black Widow and showing a serviceable enough reasoning by joining Tony in his mission while at the same time still conserving her own vision. Sebastian Stan also returns as Winter Soldier/Bucky Barnes and he portrays the role solidly by exploring more of his past and how that connects him to his current behavior. Anthony Mackie is back as The Falcon and he's definitely one of my favorite characters in the movie, his interactions with Bucky are simply hilarious and makes me think the two could sustain a whole film themselves. Don Cheadly continues his role as War Machine and he's quite frankly, an asshole, he constantly acts like a douche to anyone who is against the Government and threatens a lot of his former friends, I was actually kinda happy when it seemed like he died during one of the scenes. Jeremy Renner still depicts Hawkeye and remains entertaining as an everyman. Paul Bettany still portrays Vision and his personality is expanded thankfully. Elizabeth Olsen is back as the Scarlet Witch and she actually shows more of her traits here than in her first role in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Paul Rudd as Ant-Man made me laugh a lot during several of his scenes.

So many great side-characters who provided so many wonderful moments.

Then again, there's a bad-side to it. There are too many characters and this eventually becomes a problem once that we're introduced to new ones.

The first appearance of Black Panther played by Chadwick Boseman and the actor does a decent job with the character, the thing is that there's not a lot to appreciate here. We see a few glances of his personality and while they create sort of an idea of what we should expect from him, they're not enough to actually be invested in him, especially compared to the rest of the cast who deserve more of our attention. In fact, his presence in the film is not that important. His father was murdered apparently by Bucky while the culprit is in fact the villain of the film, this clearly creates a reason to inject more conflict between Panther and Bucky but is not something really relevant to the progress of the plot, not even him stopping the major antagonist is relevant since the guy was pretty much defeated at this point. In many instances you feel like this was forced (Aha! That word again) just to introduce him to the Marvel cinematic universe and prepare him for his upcoming movie.

And of course comes one of the biggest attractions of the film, the new Spider-Man portrayed by Tom Holland. I'm going to say this, Holland is not bad for the role, I think he's more based on the Tobey Maguire incarnation in the character who was a bit more geeky but he conserves some of the aspects of the Andrew Garfield incarnation like the sense of humour during battles which I feel creates a nice mix between the nerdy and funny sides of Peter Parker. His presence in the story, while also a bit forced, doesn't feel as obtrusive as Panther due that he doesn't appear in as many scenes and the writers don't try to make people believe that he's important for the plot (which is something I can't say about the already mentioned character).

The big villain is Helmut Zemo played by Daniel Bruhl. He's depicted as a sympathetic antagonist which  people who are familiar with the character in comics will realize that is pretty wrong. In the books, Zemo is an egocentric supremacist who wants to conquer the world by any means necessary not matter how many lives he will sacrifice to do it. Giving him a tragic background is not enough to make a character more interesting and I feel that the real Zemo has enough personality to be an entertaining adversary. This was kinda misguiden.

However, I can forgive some of these portrayals since the interactions between most of the cast is So. Damn. GOOD!

The conversations and especially the fight scenes are quite well-executed due that every character is depicted as competent in their respective skills, each one of them serve their purpose and was an absolute joy to see them use all of their classic techniques to win. I feel that the humour helped a lot to these segments due that a lot of the jokes that happened during the big battle between the Avengers teams were so funny, so nicely presented that made the fight memorable despite that technically was just a dumb brawl. In those terms I actually think that this movie was more successful than Avengers: Age of Ultron.

But here comes another complaint, that stupid twist at the end.

Remember that part when Tony talked about the death of his parents? It turns-out that it was only to create yet another conflict just when he was about to help Captain America due that Bucky was the one who murdered his parents. This was really poorly planned in my opinion due that, aside from that early scene, there wasn't a proper set-up for this moment, the plot-point wasn't explored properly nor escalated adequately due that it wasn't brought back until this particular scene. This is another (say it with me) forced direction that doesn't really have enough weight to be interesting.

You might think that after saying all this I wouldn't really recommend this flick but you would be wrong.

In the scenes where it succeeds, it REALLY succeeds. The action scenes are perfectly-paced with a lot of enjoyable interactions between the characters to make them even more engaging. The battles are well-choreographed and the special effects are solid. Most of the heroes are still quite likable and definitely make you want to see more of them (and even see them in their own films).

As a whole, I think the flick is very thin in plot and contrived as hell but is still quite entertaining a lot of times. As a blockbuster movie, it does what it should and makes me realize that the Captain America line continues to be the most consistent in that regard.