Captain America: Civil War (Rewind/Spoilers Review)

Yes, I do realize that I never did a spoilers review for Captain America: Civil War. This movie came out earlier this year at a time when I was traveling for work and I didn't have nearly enough time to write a full fledged review as well as a Spoilers review. I also thought at this time that I was going to try my hand at video reviews, something that I'm still trying to get into but haven't mastered it entirely. But with the release of Captain America: Civil War onto home video, I thought I'd get myself a copy and do another review to serve two purposes. The first one of course is to give you my thoughts on this film with no spoilers holding me back. The second one is to actually determine whether or not I thought this movie was really good.

Looking back at my review of the movie, I couldn't help but get the feeling that I was underwhelmed by this film. Its just strange given the fact that a lot of this movie is exactly within my wheelhouse. Its got great action, its got great characters that I'm already familiar with, and it starts out with some really good ideological struggles that Batman v Superman could only hope for. So why did I forget about this movie shortly after I watched it? Why was the Spoiler review so hard for me to dole out? This is what I'm trying to figure out today.

Here's the thing, while I'm not exactly proud of my Captain America Civil War review. I still think it puts all my thoughts in perspective and gives a pretty baseline opinion on it without giving spoilers. This is going to be a rewind review but will have spoilers. So if you haven't seen the movie (which I'm not sure why you haven't) you should check out my first review. This is going to be a rewind review for sure, but it will have spoilers.

In case you forgot the plot, Captain America Civil War centers on Steve Rogers (played by Chris Evans) leading the new Avengers that consist of Black Widow (played by Scarlett Johanasson), Scarlet Witch (played by Elizabeth Olson, my entire first review I accidentally called her Elizabeth Taylor), Vision (played by Paul Bettany), Rhodey or War Machine (played by Don Cheadle) and Falcon (played by Anthony Mackie).

In the beginning, the Avengers are facing an old threat from The Winter Soldier in Crossbones (played by Frank Grillo). I thought this opening sequence was a great reintroduction to the team and was a great way to show the Avengers in action. All the other movies have been life or death outings,

it was nice to see the Avengers facing a threat that wasn't threatening to destroy the world. The encounter ends in Crossbones blowing himself up and while Scarlett Witch is able to prevent larger casualties, there are casualties, including some Wakandan global workers. Causing the Avengers to be put under scrutiny.

Quick note on Crossbones: While I think the opening sequence was good and perhaps it was better they didn't try to force Crossbones into the rest of the movie, I think it would have been good to have him as a potential villain in the future. Not a huge knock on the movie, I just think if you have the talent of Frank Grillo and an interesting character like Crossbones, why would you let that go?

The fallout of the event causes the world governments to come together and draft the Sokovia Accords. They utilize Tony Stark (played by Robert Downey Jr.) to be the face of the Accords and him and Secretary of State Ross (played by William Hurt) try to convince the Avengers to sign the accords and have The Avengers be regulated by the United Nations.

And again, I still think the part of the movie where the Avengers debate the pros and cons of signing the accords is one of the better parts of the movie. A second time around, I had a little bit better of an understanding of the different sides, and I will say, Team Iron Man does make a really good point as

to why the Sokovia Accords is good for the Avengers. I even think they should have taken these arguments even further and make you question which side you would take if you were put in that position. As it is, they do a good job at describing both sides, but at the end of the day, this is a Captain America movie, you're going to be on his side.

Then Bucky Barnes or The Winter Soldier shows up (played by Sebastian Stan). He is implicated in the assassination of the King of Wakanda and the father of Black Panther. This of course leads to the government wanting to hunt down Barnes but Captain America thinks he's the better choice to bring him in. Of course Black Panther takes it upon himself to go after the Winter Soldier in what leads to a really cool chase.

It of course goes without saying, but the action in this movie is on point. I almost don't feel like I need to bring it up because it is a point that Marvel has continuously been able to knock out of the park. Its almost to the point that I feel like the action is just as formulaic as the rest of the movie is that intense action sequences that 8 years ago would be cutting edge, are now just run of the mill.

I haven't seen Jason Bourne yet but I'm pretty sure that's an industry wide thing and the reason that movie didn't do too well at the box office. Action sequences have just reach a whole new level that awesome sequences that we at one point thought were ground breaking are so run of the mill now that a franchise like the Bourne franchise can no longer just ride the action. Its something we've seen so many times that we're used to it.

Going back to Captain America. Its not like its bad fighting choreography or bad action sequences, they're just standard and don't really stand out in comparison with all the fighting we've seen in Superhero movies, not only this year, but for the past 8+ years.

Anyways, after Captain America, Falcon, and Bucky all escape, but not after a quick appearance of Zemo... and believe me, we will talk about Zemo. The two sides start to gather their teams together. Captain America gathering the likes of Scarlett Witch, Falcon, Hawkeye (played by Jeremy Renner), and Ant-man (played by Paul Rudd) while Tony gathers Black Widow, Black Panther, Vision, War Machine, and the highly anticipated Spider-man (played by Tom Holland). And yeah, I'll talk about Spider-man more in depth. He's important to the movie, but not really important to the story.

And all this gathering leads, very quickly into a huge battle at an airport where its Team on Team and its a great show down.

I both love this scene and at the same time do not like it.

On one hand, it is a great team clash of some of the best heroes in the business. Again, the action is done very well and you're excited throughout the entire battle, especially when you get to see everyone have their own moment to shine. You get Scarlett Witch being a grade A badass. You get everyone matching up against the other, Captain America versus Black Panther. Hawkeye versus Black Panther. Ant-man versus Black Widow. The Winter Soldier against Iron Man. And then you have Spider-man. And while I'll talk more in depth about him later, we definitely don't need to worry about Spider-man's action sequences under the Marvel banner because he is just down right entertaining. And then of course you have Ant-man turning into Giant Man. And yeah its a lot of fun.

But then there are the issues.

While its very cool to have these characters taking sides and coming to blows, you can tell that this is more about the spectacle than it is about the ideology. Say what you will about the motivations behind the fight between Batman and Superman, you felt like these two were trying to kill one another. While the airport fight is a lot of fun, it feels like everyone is pulling their punches. You don't really feel any impact with this fight and you're almost certain that these guys are all going to be friends and fight side by side with one another in Infinity War.

Think about the fight between Thor and Iron Man in the Avengers.

In that fight, its funny and everything that Iron Man and Thor can't get along and therefore they come to blows. While I enjoy these fights and they do fit with the rest of the movie, you kind of get the feeling that this fight is never going to cause any kind of rift in the group and you see Thor and Iron Man fighting side by side later on in the fight in New York.

While I think that fight works in the context of The Avengers, this airport fight didn't feel like a Civil War. It feels more like a Civil Dispute.

I'll talk a little more about that in a little bit but I want to finish the other things worth mentioning in the movie.

After the large fight, the movie takes a little bit of a down turn and I'll tell you why in one word. Zemo.

First off, Can we talk about how much of a missed opportunity the other Winter Soldiers were? Bucky mentions this huge conspiracy that Hydra were developing other Winter Soldiers and they were as powerful if not more powerful than him, and what happens to them? They all die. If they wanted Zemo to be a more menacing villain, at least give him a team of super soldiers to protect him while he does his evil work.

But that's the reality of Zemo. He didn't need to be in this movie. I think that Daniel Bruhl is a very good actor and I think he could have been a more menacing villain. Instead he's just kind of this weak villain who is almost more of a victim than he is a villain.

But the larger issue I have with Zemo is that he took all the opportunity from this movie for Tony to actually be the villain.

You might be saying to yourself, but Connor, Tony can't be the villain, he's Iron Man, he's the good guy. And while that is true and in different cut of this movie Tony would not be the villain, he would be the movies main antagonist.

The best parts of this movie comes when the Avengers have differing ideals on the Sokovia Accords. Its the great arguments made for and against these accords and in a larger sense, how much control the governments of the world have over the Avengers and whether that's something that should be considered. And at the beginning of the movie, you can definitely tell who's on what side and for what reasons.

Tony works perfectly as the representative of expanding government regulation because of his past, because of the things he has done. He feels regret for the events of Age of Ultron, he's seen what happens when he gets out of control and it makes sense he's in favor of the Accords. Rhodey being in favor of the accords also makes sense. Vision being in favor of the Accords also makes sense and it builds the team.

Now in the comic books you had more people passionate about registration bill to the point where it broke up The Fantastic Four, families were split, relationships were broken. And what's more, Tony and Steve fought because of what they believed in, not because Bucky killed Tony's parents.

And that's mainly where the idea of the Accords not meaning much comes from. Its supplemented by the fact there is so much switching of sides in this movie and everyone pretty much moves to Captain America's side. Again, its a Captain America movie so technically he's right, but at the end of the day, there's really only one Avenger who really believed in the Accords and that was Rhodey.

In the comics, clear lines were drawn and people only switched when they saw the lengths Tony was willing to go because this is what he believed. But at the end of this movie, even though the fight between Cap, Bucky, and Tony was really good, it wasn't about the Accords, it was about the fact that Bucky killed Tony's parents. At the end of the day, I didn't get the feeling real sides were being drawn over these accords. Hawkeye and Black Widow are making quips to one another during the fight, Vision ends the fight holding Wanda in his arms. The only person who stayed true to their character throughout the movie was Rhodey. And I think Rhodey should have died in this movie.

Civil War had a perfect opportunity for Tony to start off fighting for what he thought was right and just be pulled deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole leading us to the point where we actually thought he was going to kill Captain America at the end instead of just wanting to kill Bucky.

Throughout the entire movie, Tony is pulled more and more towards Caps side and they only fight because of a video of a brain washed Bucky.

The real tragedy would have been to see Tony's resolve in these Accords strengthened by the death of Rhodes, stating that perhaps Captain America is more dangerous than he thought. Only to be confirmed by the fact that he knew Bucky killed his parents and didn't do anything about it.

A more convincing last fight would have been these two wanting to straight up kill one another because they're standing up for what they believe.

Say what you will about Batman v Superman, at least you felt like those two wanted to kill each other. Maybe they stopped that fight for seemingly stupid reasons...

But at least it had two heroes fighting because they believed that they were right and the other was wrong.

The reason I don't put Captain America: Civil War as my favorite Superhero film of this year is because it was too safe. It had the potential to be the best comic book movie of all time, but ended up just playing it safe and everyone kind of being friends at the end. You know Tony is going to call up Captain America for Infinity War and at the end of the day, Civil War isn't going to have that much of an impact in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

If Marvel had taken the risk to make Tony the bad guy, giving him a more compelling story, I think Civil War would have been riskier and a much better movie.

Now... its still really good.

Its still got a lot of action that I love and it builds off of characters that I love as well. I just don't think its as strong as it could have been and didn't quite live up to the hype I think everyone was building it up to be.

It does leave a lot of questions though for the future. If Steve relinquished his shield and is no longer Captain America, is he going to be a different superhero in future movies? Will there be another hero to step up and take the Captain America mantle for the public's sake? Is Steve gonna become Nomad? An alter ego he took on during the 80s... and you can tell.

And what about Spider-man? How did he fair in his first outing with the Marvel cinematic universe? I will answer that question along with some other questions about his role in the MCU in my next post.

But for now, I will say, upon a second watch of Captain America Civil War, I still enjoy it. I am however able to pinpoint the issues I have with it and am able to say what they got right, and what they got wrong.

But what do you think? Do you think Captain America: Civil War is as good as you remember? Do you think Steve Rogers will become Nomad in Infinity Wars? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as send me your requests for future films I should review. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

I'll leave you with this. In case you were wondering why Thor wasn't in Civil War, here's a fun mockumentary explaining what he was up to during the movie. Enjoy!