Review: Captain America: Civil War

Note: First posted to my Facebook page May 8th, 2016.

This won’t have much in the way of spoilers. Let’s get this out of the way. Lots of people will compare it to Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice due to the stupidly long name, they’re both about heroes fighting each other, they both have extra characters, and they both came out near each other. But they are very different movies. Civil War is about responsibility and consequences. Batman V Superman was about… something… I think.

Both movies were hyped up. Some said that Civil War was the best superhero movie. Some said it was even better than The Dark Knight. But while Batman V Superman was actively a bad movie, Civil War just didn’t seem to impress me. It wasn’t a bad movie. There were quite a few good scenes in it. It just didn’t live up to the hype. I left feeling very underwhelmed. This is a movie where I might look up some scenes on YouTube, but not really rewatch a bunch of times, like Deadpool.

Speaking of Deadpool, holy fuck are there a bunch of superhero landings in this movie. Anyway. Spiderman and Antman played the comic relief. Black Widdow kicked fucking ass. I mean she was taking on ten dudes at a time, all without super powers. Black Panther was cool, except that the CGI made him look like he was made of rubber. He also seemed to be the most mature of the characters. He should be leading the Avengers. Vision was barely in it. Scarlet Witch was important, but didn’t have enough scenes. Falcon wins the Best Moves Award. And War Machine was in it. I feel like he was the Kasich of the movie.

Captain America is reactionary. He doesn’t plan ahead. He doesn’t think about the big picture. He doesn’t care about the consequences. He just acts.

Iron Man spends most of this movie doing the opposite. He’s haunted by his consequences and what his actions have done. He spends most of the movie trying to reason with Captain America, but when all else fails, he fights. He’s the superhero version of Teddy Rosevelt’s “speak softly and carry a big stick”.

Winter Soldier was a huge part of this movie, and since I haven’t seen the first two Captain America movies, I just didn’t care. Sometimes he’s brain washed. Sometimes he’s himself. And I just would have locked him up and be done with it.

This movie was mediocre. I don’t know if it’s because the hype, or because the movie just didn’t impress me. It didn’t set anything up for Marvel’s Phase 3, except for maybe Spiderman and Black Panther. All it did was focus on character development. We really got to know how Captain America and Iron Man think.

I’ll watch it again. Maybe I’ll like it better the second time around. 3.5 out of 5 stars