‘Captain America: Civil War’ – Can It Really Be Too Good?

Let’s get this out of the way — Captain America: Civil War may have raised the bar for superhero movies over the previous record holder, it’s predecessor Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Below I will explain why I think that, in my usual spoiler-free review, assuming you have seen the commercials and trailers, and know the characters and basic story concept.

If not, you should not read any further, but then you would miss why I said “may be” up above — the movie has its problems, but they are mostly ones of excellence (OK, you would miss me explaining what the Hell that means too).

The movie shares the basic concept behind the comic book crossover series that bears the same name. In both, Captain America and Iron Man find themselves on opposite sides of a government movement that affects superheroes. Both sides draw other heroes to them, supporting the differing sides. Inevitably, a conflict and much fighting ensues.

Differences include the purpose behind the government regulatory action and the trigger point for the conflict to start. And the heroes on either side are different because Marvel Studios doesn’t have access to all the characters the comics did, so it uses those already in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and adds some new ones (Black Panther!) it has the rights to. But the core concept is the same in both forms of entertainment.

Returning from Winter Soldier are two vital teams — directors Anthony Russo and Joe Russo and screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. While the latter pair had a bit of a miss with Thor: The Dark World, that could be laid at the feet of the director or the other three writers of the movie. Clearly they got the Captain America mythos and characters in Winter Soldier. In fact, they know the characters of Steve Rogers, James “Bucky” Barnes, Sam Wilson, Natasha Romanoff and others inside and out, and Civil War picks up their arcs as characters right where Winter Soldier left off (albeit a few years and one Avengers movie in between).

But Markus and McFeely also captured perfectly all of the other characters that come in from the greater Avengers world, and even the rest of the MCU. Vision is spot on, Wanda as well, and while it could be argued that anybody could write Tony Stark dialogue and Robert Downey Jr. would make it work, they still capture Tony in a way that Iron Man 3 struggled to do.

What is a surprise in this film is how well the two writers capture the fun, tense, engaging and constantly interactive team dynamic, in a way that few people aside from Joss Whedon can do well. Frankly, Whedon has no edge over these two for team dynamic action and dialogue, and since they also do a better job of pacing and making the slower moments just as engaging as the fights (as they did in Winter Soldier) I think the scales of nerd writer godhood may be tipping in favor of Markus and McFeely — and I never thought I would say that about Whedon.

As good a job as Markus and McFeely do with existing MCU characters, it is the new ones that shine the brightest. They capture Black Panther on the nose, and Chadwick Boseman makes the Panther the cool, noble, supremely effective warrior king he is supposed to be. But it is Spider-Man that almost steals the movie. And that is a problem.

Tom Holland’s portrayal of Peter Parker is — while casting no shade on the good work by Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield — the best Spider-Man to date. His introduction into the movie and the MCU is wonderful, his action scenes are outstanding, and Holland portrays him as the awkward, badass, comic action hero Spider-Man always should be. In fact, he is so pitch perfect that when Spider-Man is on screen, the movie changes tone completely from a serious spy thriller meets Avengers action flick with great moments of humor, to a hilarious action comedy with some serious elements. It becomes Ant-Man but even better. This is what I meant by a problem of excellence — there is a nearly perfect Spider-Man movie inside a nearly perfect Captain America/Avengers movie and they don’t actually mix that well.

You may not mind, and I sure didn’t, but that makes Civil War less of a coherent, tightly crafted movie than Winter Soldier, so from a strictly movie review standpoint, it loses out to its predecessor. But as comic book movie — I cheered, fist pumped and laughed out loud more than at any other movie of its type. In fact, there are so many cheer-out-loud moments in this movie that it could be accused of blatant fan service, if those moments weren’t so seamlessly woven into the plot, action and story.

Go see Captain America: Civil War as soon as you can, and go see it again so you can catch all the lines you missed while you were cheering, shouting or laughing. Don’t bother with the 3D unless that is your thing, as it didn’t add anything to the movie (and in the case of the location text overlays, was pretty annoying). And, as always, stay until the very end for a mid-credit and a post-credit scene.