Somebody at Marvel must have sold their soul to the devil.
That’s the only way I can explain how a movie like Captain America: Civil War, which juggles enough characters to make Batman v Superman and the previous Avengers movies look quaint, works so beautifully. Civil War isn’t just good, it’s the best team-up movie Marvel has produced to date, and possibly the studio’s best film yet. Despite running for two hours and twenty-six minutes (just slightly longer than the Avengers movies), Civil War never ceases to be entertaining. Just about every scene is enjoyable in its own right.
I think, if there’s one secret to Civil War’s success, it’s this. Writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, who have been writing the Captain America movies together since The First Avenger, put a lot of thought into scene construction and organization. Most scenes have a genuine purpose in the narrative, and often have their own beginning, middle, and end to keep the audience engaged. Scenes are sequenced well, and rarely does one bleed into another without any sort of direct or thematic connectivity. This allows Civil War to feel like a big web of interconnected ideas, even when some of them don’t have a real purpose in the narrative.
On a purely intellectual level, you can criticize the movie on this point. Spider-Man in particular has no real place in the story, and serves primarily to set up his own movie (produced by Sony in conjunction with Marvel) next year. But again, the script is smart about making these elements seem connected. In Spider-Man’s case, a scene with Tony Stark sets up the idea of educational grants, and there’s at least a brief conversation about Team Iron Man being outnumbered.
But the real secret to Spider-Man’s success is just how goddamn fun the character is. Tom Holland confidently steps into the role, presenting Peter as simultaneously cocky and star-struck about his involvement. He has some hilarious wise-cracks in the big airport battle (including a great Deadpool-esque fourth-wall breaking comment about Captain America’s shield), he’s fun to watch in battle, and the kid himself is likable enough that we want to spend more time with him.
Black Panther, the other new addition to the roster, is better integrated into the narrative. The writers give him a personal reason to be invested in the events of the movie, which handily bypasses the need to give him any sort of reason to care about the “Sokovia Accords” that lead to most of the conflict. Chadwick Boseman is well-cast in the role, the character is a lot of fun to watch fight, and if there’s one weak point in the character’s introduction, it’s that he’s overshadowed by the introduction to Spider-Man.
As for the pre-established characters, I’m still stunned at how well they’re all integrated. These sorts of comic stories, in which heroes are pitted against each other, can easily feel unearned or convoluted. After all, the purpose isn’t usually to tell a great story, but to get popular characters to fight each other. But what’s so great about Civil War is that both “sides” have legitimate reasons to believe what they do. Even more impressive, every single character has strong reasons, or at the very least strong interpersonal relationships, which lead them to take the side that they do.
This is the reason why I quite like the Civil War’s “villain,” Zemo. Zemo isn’t a god, or an alien, or a supervillain hellbent on destroying our heroes himself. He’s just a man with personal reason to wanting to rid the world of the Avengers, who realizes that he could never get rid of them himself. While he does commit one act that misleads the characters and gets the story moving, what’s really great about his plan is that it preys on conflict that already exists between the heroes. The main seeds for the schism were put into place in 1991 with the Winter Soldier program and with the introduction of the Sokovia Accords. Zemo isn’t an instigator so much as he is a catalyst.
Because the conflict is stemming from legitimate issues between the characters, the movie can occasionally surprise us with its stakes. After the extremely entertaining and light-hearted airport battle royale, I found myself wondering if the whole story was much ado about nothing. These characters were essentially friends with different political agendas, and their wise-cracks and general amicability, even in battle, showed that they weren’t taking things too seriously. But the film really hits hard in its final moments, shifting gears and revealing a new conflict that threatens to tear apart a friendship that has been building for years.
Finally, given that this is a big summer tentpole movie, we should talk a bit about the action. In a word, wow. Anthony and Joe Russo, who did a stellar job in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, have outdone themselves this time. Civil War is a perfect mix of the more grounded, man-on-man action in the previous Captain America movie and the more over-the-top, CGI-heavy set pieces in the Avengers movies.
There’s never a sense that the directors are skimping on fun for a more “realistic” look. Once again, the airport sequence is an absurdly indulgent blast of superpowers and surprises. But there is a sense of weight and reality to even the biggest sequences, and this mixed approach allows both types of action to coincide with each other. It also makes for some terrific smaller-scale action sequences, such as the movie’s first team “mission” and Captain America’s rescue of The Winter Soldier from an apartment building. These smaller moments feel like something out of a Jason Bourne movie, with great choreography, smart use of the environment, and kinetic camerawork taking the place of CGI armies. Personally, I’ll take the former over the latter any day.
Perhaps the biggest drawback to the film, at least for audiences who are not especially familiar with the Marvel cinematic universe, is that it assumes that viewers have a strong familiarity with the material already. To really get the most out of Civil War, one should have an understanding of what came before in both Avengers movies, Winter Soldier, and arguably even Iron Man 3. But for anybody who saw all of those movies (which, given their box office numbers, is a vast portion of the movie-going population), Civil War is unmissable. It affects the ongoing Marvel storyline in some major ways, and stands out as a terrific movie in and of itself. Go see it.