Cast: Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Chadwick Boseman, Tom Holland, Paul Rudd, Daniel Bruhl
Director: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo
Imagine you are a kid. You have a lot of toys and then your friend came over and gave you his favourite toy. And your parents got you one you didn’t know was in the market yet. You just want to play with all of them. But you have only two-and-a-half hours. That, dear Marvel fan, is Civil War.
The Sukovia incident has happened. Super heroes are not good news. Then an Avengers mission goes bad. Real bad. The US Secretary of State Thaddeus Ross (William Hurt) brings an ultimatum to the Avengers: Prepare to be monitored by a UN team or prepare to be enemies of the world. Before the decision is finalised there is an explosion at the UN and King T’Chaka (John Kani) of Wakanda is killed. And the murderer seems to be the Captain America’s (Evans) old pal and the Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan). It’s Captain America vs Iron Man and even hell can’t handle something this hot.
Civil War in the comics is a spectacle that has a lot of after-effects in the Marvel canon. The movie storyline may be different, but both can still be told simplistically as Cap vs Iron Man. The fun is finding out who is on which side.
Civil War is supposed to be a Captain America movie. But you just can’t pin it down as thus. Not when the Marvel machine is in full flow. Let’s take the gang for a ride. But it should not detract from the Avengers movies coming along. Hence, Thor and Hulk are dropped. Boo! But that doesn’t mean we have a shortage of epic characters. We still have Chris Evans actually being billed ahead of Iron Man (Downey Jr). Black Widow (Johansson) and Hawkeye (Renner) find themselves on opposite sides. As does Scarlet Witch (Olsen) and Vision (Bettany). Iron Patriot (Don Cheadle) and Falcon (Anthony Mackie) choose the obvious ones. And why don’t we just add in the latest Marvel superhero, Ant-Man (Rudd)? Damn the list does make your head spin.
For an organisation that made films that were white, whiter, whitest, a major plus point would be the introduction of Black Panther (Boseman). A watershed moment, if you may. Boseman brought the right amount of grace and gravity to the role. The flip side was a villain that was anything but epic. Helmut Zemo (Bruhl) lets down the movie. And this is why the latter half suffers in comparison with the first. Once again, after Winter Soldier, the Russos just cannot hold on in the home stretch.
Emotion is not the Russos’ strong side. Action and spectacle is. As also the wow moments. Where fanboys slip into delirium. There is an airport fight scene that will be long held as the benchmark to be crossed in a Marvel movie. The dialogue is crisp and the effects top of the line. The money shots are there aplenty. This is probably the Marvel movie that you want to live in, as you watch it.
However, that doesn’t automatically raise it to the top tier of all Marvel movies. That happened on November 24, 2014, when the hacker group Guardians of Peace leaked a bunch of mails and documents from Sony pictures. In it was a series of mails that would have sent any rabid comic fan into the emergency room. They were discussing the possibility of getting Marvel’s biggest superhero, Stan Lee’s greatest legacy, a certain web-slinger, into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. We went to see Spider-Man. Tom Holland proved to be an inspired choice and suddenly things were looking okay. For a movie titled Civil War, it was ironic to see the internal cinematic rights of Marvel characters get a peaceful solution. (Update: Of course all that has now gone down the drain!)
Stan Lee cameo: Tony Stank? Well, trust Stan to make such a joke work!
Post-credits scene: We are definitely visiting Wakanda, says the first post credits scene. And Spidey is here to stay, says the second one.
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