Approximately 2 years ago, I wrote this Captain America: Civil War review, just after the midnight release of the movie. With Infinity War around the corner, lets take a look back and see how the reviews of the past, bathed in excitement and hype, hold up all this time later.
I have been waiting for Captain America: Civil War since I walked out of my local cinema on the 27th of March, the day I saw Captain America: The Winter soldier. The second Captain America movie blew my mind by exceeding all expectations and easily being the single best constructed superhero movie I had seen, The film was absolutely Fantastic in almost every way. It was the first time for me that I enjoyed a movie so much I went to more than two screenings in the cinema, in fact I went four times. So when we heard about a year ago that the third Captain America movie would again be directed by the Russo brothers and would follow one of my favorite comic story arcs of all time (Civil War) this movie quickly became my most anticipated movie of 2016. After Winter Soldier, we got Guardians of the Galaxy. Which was for me almost as good as WS, a lot funnier, but not as clever. So this streak of amazing marvel movies made me believe Marvels movies were only going to get better and better so like a lot of people I went in to Age of Ultron with extremely high expectations. Going to my first ever midnight release for AoU I walked out pretty disappointed, don’t get me wrong it was still an enjoyable movie, but it wasn’t any where near WS or GotG. I’ll briefly admit here that I Phantom Menaced myself into really liking this movie for a while, but eventually even I had to admit this movie wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be. Ant-Man was a pleasant surprise, but after Age of Ultron i was still a little worried about Civil War to say the least. I was afraid Civil War would partly have similar problems to AoU, even having more characters in the movie to give them all the proper screen time and do their individual story arcs justice. The first Civil War trailer looked marvelous and got me properly excited for the movie, but so did the AoU trailers back in 2015. I didn’t like Batman v Superman (I personally rate it a 6/10) all that much and thought it really suffered because it tried to fit too many characters and other stuff in like Age of Ultron did. Early April I immediately pre-ordered my tickets to see an early screening of the Captain America trilogy in my Cinema. So a few days ago the wait was finally over, which all things considered wasn’t even such a long wait if you keep in mind most Marvel sequels take about three to four years to come out and Civil war only took two. So at 12am the movie started with me deep down still having some worries for another AoU or BvS, after 2 hours and 26 minutes I’m happy to say all my fears were completely washed away.
Honestly this movie can actually be described in just a few words; Spectacular, Amazing, wonderful, that’s all you really need to say. This movie is easily one of the best superhero movies and movies I have ever seen, I think it will satisfy almost anyone’s expectations. This movie is easily as good and I think for a lot of people even better than Winter Soldier. Civil War hits all the right notes and both directors deserve a lot of the credit. Anthony and Joe Russo somehow managed to find a way that makes all 17 prominent characters matter. Every character has their own story arc, some arcs are of course bigger than others, but everyone in the movie has their moment to shine. Whomever you’re favorite is out of all the heroes I guarantee there is a moment in the movie you will love with him or her in it. I think the Russos are some of the best directors out there at the moment and they really should get a little more recognition for making all these characters work in such a good movie. The cast of Civil War is terrific, newcomers Daniel Brühl, Chadwick Boseman and Tom Holland all knock it out of the park. All the other actors and actresses do a great job, but much of the movie is carried by the amazing performances of Robbert Downey Jr., Sebastian Stan and Chris Evans who really carry over their internal conflict and emotions to the audience. Also want to give a little shout out to the two prominent female characters, Elizabeth Olson and Scarlet Johansson who’re both fantastic portraying their emotionally scarred characters. Black Panther is an absolute bad-ass and makes me so excited to see him in his own upcoming movie. Of course I need to take a moment to talk about the beloved web slinger and I’m so happy to tell you that this is definitely the best onscreen Spider-Man and Peter Parker there is. I loved Spider-Man, it’s like they peeled him right of a comic book page that’s how good he is. Marvel nailed the casting with Tom Holland, great job Tom. Caps third movie also includes the best (superhero) action scene in cinematic history, I’m talking about airport scene where both teams face off against each other which you probably have seen in the trailers. This scene is I believe almost 20 minutes long, but you’re on the edge of you’re seat the entire time. The Russos really made you feel split between Tony and Steve making both heir sides seem like the right and wrong one while you’re inside getting ripped apart between the two. Civil War has heart and the story, characters, conflict are all so well build up and pieced together while still being naturally incredibly funny that it’s almost impossible not to like this movie.
You could very well argue that this movie hasn’t any, but now I’m going to discuss some few minor flaws the film has for me. If you didn’t notice already while I was very enthusiastic about both Black Panther and Spider-Man I didn’t say a word about Zemo. Unfortunately this is because Zemo is probably the weakest part of this movie, there were two things that I didn’t particularly like about Zemo, but still he was far from awful. The first flaw being that Zemo was nothing like the comic book Zemo, don’t expect a sword or purple spandex because other than their name the two don’t really have much in common. Please don’t interpret this the wrong way because Zemo turns out to have some really good motivations and when everything is out his evil plan is a good one even though it does hang on a few hopeful coincidences. The second thing that bothered me is that Zemo just wasn’t necessary for this movie, the heroes conflict squaring off with each other is compelling enough. If you make a few minor script changes Zemo didn’t have to be in the movie while everything could have played out as it did. My other flaw for this movie isn’t an actual flaw, but more something I missed. As have been set many times this is more of an Avengers 2.5 then a Cap 3 even though Steve Rogers definitely took the center stage in this film. I loved this movie, but I’m still hungry for a real Captain America 3 (or 4 maybe?) where his personal relationships with characters like falcon, black widow and Sharon Carter get explored some more like they did in Winter Soldier. So because off all these characters I still desire a more Cap focused movie, but hey, you never know what comes around in the future.
Civil War makes you laugh, Cry and leaves you amazed when you walk out of the theater. I highly recommend you go see this movie, it’s to enjoy for superhero fans and regular movie audiences alike. Civil War is one of the best if not the best superhero ever to come out and I know some people are hesitant with high ratings because “nothing is perfect” but I’m going to go ahead and give this movie a 10/10 rating because this is as close to perfect as you will ever be. Captain America: Civil War is a master piece and makes me much more so excited for the upcoming Russo directed Avengers: Infinity War movies.
Rating: 5/5
