Captain America Civil War

Marvel knows how to please audiences and after seeing how Warner Bros. largely failed to please the general public with Batman and Superman's first big-screen debut together, audiences are going to question if with Civil War, (which is essentially "Captain America v Iron Man") will it really be worth investing time and money into another hero-on-hero mega-budget superhero flick.

Well, this is Marvel's answer to DC's failed attempt, and they know these characters, we've seen most of them around in a few movies now over the past 8 years or so, (some of them more recent and some of them for the first time in this film's cinematic universe). And I truly believe the film is a triumph. Unlike the last Avengers film, there are not really any subplots that don't serve as an important piece to the overall story, directors Joe and Anthony Russo did a great job weaving action scene and character-driven scene together to drive the story forward in 2014's Captain America the Winter Soldier, and they do the same here. What makes this even more impressive is that they are handling roughly twice the amount of characters than what Winter Soldier had, but they do it as near-perfect as you could expect from a big-budget, studio-produced blockbuster these days. Though it had it's strong aspects, Star Wars the Force Awakens was a big money maker for Disney, but as a film, it left much to be desired. This film surprised and impressed me, more than any big budget film in the past 12 months save for Mad Max. It was better than Ant-man. Better than Age of Ultron. It was better than Furious 7, Jurassic World, Force Awakens, Batman v Superman and even Jungle Book which I also was impressed with. The film doesn't take any huge risks and does play it fairly safe to being what we've come to expect from Marvel, but it knows what the formula for success at Marvel is and it works with it. It knows how to still be impressive and wholly satisfying while still playing things fairly safe. Marvel, they takes risks with certain movies, and being that this is called "Civil War" which is based on a Marvel comic where major characters DO die, the movie doesn't quite follow that and is really more like a "Civil Dispute".

And then there are moments where Tony is acting like he and Steve used to be friends even though earlier in the film he explains to Cap how his father always talked highly about him to Tony and that he just wanted to punch him in his perfect teeth. There are moments where this built-up rage shines through Downey Jr's performance as Stark, after he finds out a truth regarding his parents, that shows Robert actually put a lot of care into this character, more than we've ever seen from him since Iron Man 1. Lately it has felt like he's been phoning in his performances, but not here. Here he really acts the hell out of what the script asks of him, and counter's Chris Evans' strongest performance of Captain America to date, too.

Lots of other big players here, Jeremy Renner, Scarlett Johansson, Paul Bettany, Elizabeth Olsen, Sebastian Stan, Paul Rudd, Anthony Mackie, and Daniel Bruhl gives a strong performance as a villain character who isn't given the most fleshing out or devotion to, but he serves the story well enough and it will be interesting to see if he gets any future roles down the line.

If you're a fan of Spiderman, well the studio finally worked a deal out with Sony that allows them to use Spiderman in their shared cinematic universe and he is a very well introduced character played by young actor Tom Holland who probably does the best job as this character we have seen on screen yet, he fits in very well and plays off the other actors very well and proves to be quite a visual spectacle in the film's second act. He gets his own film next year and I look forward to seeing how it turns out, as this film introduced the character properly, and you could tell the directors had a full understanding of what makes this character so great. Overall, if you're looking for a superhero universe to stay committed to and always have faith in, I'd say just stick with Marvel because they know what they're doing and everything are building up to is unlikely to disappoint given the rate they are going now, but I guess we shall see you until then I would definitely recommend this film 9/10