Let’s hear it again for the Marvel Express Train of Success! If you think Civil War was going to be the end of the streak…nope. In many ways this corrects the “repeat” complaint I did have over Ant-Man (Iron Man 1) and Age of Ultron (bore some resemblance to Avengers 1). Those were still great, especially when you compare them to the horrendous Bats v. Supes mess. I just feared Marvel movies getting into a rut on recycling their plots too much.
Although this is primarily a Captain America movie with Iron Man and Black Widow as the guest stars, it’s practically Avengers 3 thanks to all the cameos, introductions (Black Panther and Spider-Man join the Marvelverse) and screen time. Another impressive job by the directors at keeping all these characters/egos juggled into a cohesive narrative. In the past, animation was the only way achieve this. The score? Marvel is now 13-0, if you start from Iron Man and ignore Amazing Spider-Man (Sony), X-Men and FF4.
The premise isn’t terribly new. Civil uses the premise posed by The Incredibles and why Batman fought Superman…superheroes create a ton of collateral damage in their wake against their enemies. The focus here is human casualties, there’s no discussion about property damage as The Incredibles brought up. After the opening action-packed battle between the Avengers and Crossbones (I thought it was Taskmaster) results in some deaths, Cap and the gang must accept UN supervision. Obviously there would be no movie if they all agreed. The re-emergence of the Winter Soldier (aka Bucky) provides even further reason for Cap going AWOL and Iron Man leading the call to cooperate. The other details…you’ll have to see because Disney did a good job hiding the rest from all the trailers! Maybe they’ve mastered the art of surprising the audience like they did with The Force Awakens.
For me, this was the more suitable Avengers sequel despite how much I did like Ultron. There was a real schism amongst the superheroes on what their roles are. Vigilantes or World Cops? I personally sided with Captain America since in real life, if the UN got involved, they’d fall under the Security Council and given Russia and China’s contrarian attitudes toward world peace/security (Iran and North Korea respectively), the Avengers would be sitting on their thumbs forever. Besides, there was a huge McGuffin at the beginning. The Avengers could’ve pointed out how many would’ve died if Crossbones succeeded based upon what he stole. Plus, where the hell was Vision? His ghost-like abilities would’ve made it a short fight.
Now it’s not continuous action, action like say Star Trek: Into Explosions. There are slower moments, exposition, arguments, drama, etc. They just don’t bring the pace to a screeching halt. They help move the story forward, namely why is Iron Man prominent in Captain America’s movie?
The bad news. No more Captain America movies with no new Avengers in 2017 neither.
The good news is Doctor Strange later this year, Spider-Man is next Summer in the Marvelverse with Iron Man as his mentor and Guardians of the Galaxy 2 will be the Summer of 2017 kickoff.
Alamo Extras (which were new, they repeated some lately): Sixties Marvel cartoons showing Captain America meeting the Avengers and the origin of Baron Zemo; Iron Man meets an anime character; Mego toy commercials!; the exploits of a “real life” Iron Man in Germany; Animals dressed as Captain America; Scene from the Late Seventies TV movie of Cap America, Death Too Soon; Indian Super-Man and Spider-Man Bollywood number; Spider-Man in Turkey; Metal Man clip, it’s an Iron Man rip off; a Chinese medical ad for urinary-tract infection medicine starring an Iron Man rip off; Pizzaz commercial (a magazine like Teen People in the Seventies); BDB’s Avengers kung-cubit; Captain America can take a beating set to music; the 1987 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade showing Marvel’s float/skit; Parody of the Avengers using Ken Burns’ Civil War documentary for the audio over movie scenes; the movie was then prefaced with a contest between two attendees representing the factions.