** Warning Spoilers to follow, proceed at your own risks **
Ok, now that that is out of the
way, I wanted to give my review and thoughts of Captain America: Civil War.
I have always enjoyed the Marvel
Universe. I was never a huge comic book guy growing up… but when I picked one up,
it was usually an X-Men, Avengers, or Spider-man. My cousins were a lot more
into it than I was, and I kind of fed off of them. We played the Marvel version
of Dungeons and Dragons, so we created our own superheroes in the Marvel
Universe. I can accept the idea that there are multiple iterations of the
Marvel Universe, so Captain America, doesn’t necessarily live in the same New
York City as Professor Xavier and his X-Men do, which is different than the one
that Peter Parker lives in. Imagine a world with all of the Marvel superheroes
and supervillains in the same city at the same time. It would be kind of
awkward for normal people to live, but I suppose you would get used to it. I
like to think that I have a better than average idea of what is going on there,
but some of the obscure plotlines, I am not as familiar with.
One of those plotlines I don’t know
much (or anything, really) about from the, comic perspective, is the Civil War.
For this review, I am going to go off of how the movie was done, not how it should have been done.
I like how they have woven the
Avengers’ individual movies (Thor, Captain America, and Iron Man, etc.)
together with the Avengers movies, and look forward to them continuing to do so.
There are aspects of the previous movies that are helpful to have seen them
(but probably not imperative, I haven’t seen the Antman movie yet, so I probably
missed some inside jokes, but I don’t think I missed anything from that movie
in this one).
In a nutshell, the world’s
governments are conflicted when it comes to the Avengers. On one hand, they are
able to stop the supernatural forces of evil, but there is (sometimes
excessive) civilian collateral damage. Sometimes it is extensive. The UN has
decided to create guidelines as to how and when the Avengers can assemble. As
you can imagine, when you take a group of people who have become accustomed to
doing whatever they felt was needed to get the job done and give them a set of
rules they now need to follow, there will be some pushback.
This is called the Sachovian
Accords, after the events in the last Avengers movie. The group is split
between whether or not this is good for the Avengers, and there are some strong
opinions on both sides. Ultimately, a few sign the accords, while others
refuse.
(Warning, spoilers coming... you have been warned...)
As the accords were being implemented,
the UN is bombed, and blamed on Captain America’s friend, Bucky, the Winter
Soldier. An all points with shoot to kill goes out and Cap goes after his
friend, and the battle lines are drawn. The Avengers are divided. Those who are
in favor of the oversight follow Tony Stark and those against the regulations
follow Steve Rogers. A huge fight breaks
out at an airport with Avenger fighting Avenger. It is another example of why
the Accord is important. In the scuffle, planes are destroyed, as well as
ground units (belt loaders, tugs, etc.) and even the tower and terminals are
subject to extensive damage.
Ultimately, Captain America and
Winter Soldier escape, the remaining Avengers opposed to the Accord are rounded
up and sent to a super-secret maximum security prison. The Captain and Soldier
go off on their own to try to prove that he (Winter Soldier) was innocent and ultimately
tag team to beat up Iron Man, then go break the rest of the Avengers out of the
super-secret under water prison they are being held in for violating the Sachovian
Accords. The movie ends with Tony opening a letter (delivered by Stan Lee)
apologizing to him and giving him a phone (really? A flip phone? I get it that
you are a WWII vet, and you don’t grasp tech like Tony does.. but a flip
phone?) that he can use call if and when he needs their help. What is this? The
A-Team?
Here are my thoughts. I know it
was a ‘Captain America’ movie, so he is going to have to be the one that comes
out on top. I wonder how different it would have been if it was an Iron Man
movie, or if it was a more generic Avengers movie. That said, I didn’t like the
way it ended.
I can understand where they are
coming from. No one likes restrictive rules, especially new rules. That said,
there needs to be a checks and balance system in place. It is the same reason
that our Constitution established 3 parts of the government, each with checks
on another.
Overall, it was an entertaining
movie. I would rank it slightly above the middle of the pack among the Avengers
movies (including the individuals). The Stan Lee cameo is one of the better
ones, I still think the best one was in one of the worst movies, Fantastic 4 2,
when he is trying to get into the wedding, but he wasn’t on the list. The extended scene at the end after the
credits foreshadow a new Spider-man reboot, do we really need that right now?
