Captain America: Civil War is, in many respects, the best entry in what is now the Captain America trilogy. This is a rarity. Third entries in superhero movie series (ex: Superman III, Batman Forever, Spider-Man 3, X-Men: The Last Stand) are almost always inferior to previous entries and, with a few exceptions (ex: The Dark Knight Rises, Iron Man 3) are pretty mediocre films in general. Civil War stands apart from most of these films because unlike them it 1) is helmed by the same creative team as its predecessor and 2) feels like a true continuation of that story rather than just a new story featuring the same characters. Only The Dark Knight Rises and Spider-Man 3 meet both of these criteria. This is probably the best thing about Civil War, it really builds on its predecessors and, in some ways, reflects back on them, featuring revelations that make you see the previous entries in a new light. It also does a really great job juggling all of it's various characters and giving everyone some fun scenes and important things to do while still focusing on the central conflict between Cap and Iron Man. This conflict is really well fleshed out and the writers make a good case for both sides, so much so that I found my self flip flopping a little on who I really agreed with.
With that said it does have some problems. For one thing certain characters, Spider-Man in particular, feel shoehorned into the movie. I don't particularly mind this because the scenes with Spider-Man in them are really well done and Tom Holland kills it in the role but it's fair to say that this movie does not give every character as strong of an arc as Winter Soldier did. Another issue is that the villain plot is a little contrived and overly complicated at times.
If Civil War isn't narratively the strongest of the Cap movies it's certainly the most inherently comic book in its sensibilities. In fact you'd be hard pressed to find any superhero movie that so effortlessly captures the feel of the comics that inspired it. The big action set piece at the airport in particular is geek's dream come true and surpasses both the battle of New York from The Avengers and the apocalyptic battle with the sentinels in X-Men: Days of Future Past for its creative and well balanced use of various characters power sets (it probably helps that they are fighting each other). For this reason, more than any other, I'm willing to cut the film some slack for its flaws.
Score: 9/10
No comments:
Post a Comment