A Brief Opinion of Civil War

So, I finally got around to getting out to the theater to see Civil War yesterday (I waited a week so there'd be less humans and crying babies to trigger my Akira-like, rage powered telekinesis) and I'm going to go ahead and skip the obvious angle of comparing to the DC's latest dumpster fire, Batman v Superman because the comparison is almost insulting to Civil War which is, undoubtedly, the better movie on virtually every discernible level. I'm going to jump out there and say that this movie is the linchpin that makes the Captain America trilogy surpass the Dark Knight trilogy which, up to this point, was the Godfather of superhero sagas.

There are spoilers after the jump. Not a lot or even major spoilers, but there are spoilers there. So, yeah.






This was one of those instances where the best thing it could do as a comic "adaptation" was throw out a majority of the major plot points from the comic because the original, though it was epic in a way that generation of readers had not seen yet, was pretty shitty. It escalates in aggression simply for the sake of aggression because Mark Millar is one of the only comic writers that makes "unwarranted aggression" an actual genre of storytelling. The problem with that comic was always that its premise was based on the reader having to navigate moral ambiguity and deciding what side of the Superhero Registration argument you were on for yourself, but then Millar goes on to have Tony Stark commit morally reprehensible acts that nobody could possibly defend simply for the sake of advancing the plot (in case you're wondering where Zack Snyder got it from) to a point where both sides would have to end up fighting. In the movie, you get a Tony Stark who struggles internally and, much like in the comics on several occasions, is increasingly frustrated with Captain America's hard line stance on a). being an autonomous peacekeeping entity and b). not giving up on Bucky. Also, they did a pretty good job of shifting all the douchebag military red tape over to General Ross who we all know to be an asshole. The movie overall is better for being tied to the rest of the series via Bucky and the bonds of war. TDK didn't have this luxury because they really didn't plan on there being a third film (at least not with Nolan or Bale involved unless they drove Brinks trucks up to their homes which is basically what happened) and there wasn't really an organic feeling of one adventure directly proceeding the other. Also...the Black Panther. Civil War was one fight away from being a Black Panther movie. Chadwick Boseman was on point from start to finish. The Wakandans aren't introduced as culturally arrogant as they are historically in the comics. They're a people that wants to meet the world halfway which is a great jumping off point for Black Panther to be folded into the Infinity War. It was a very nuanced approach that didn't try too hard to establish T'Challa as superior to everyone else (I'm looking at you, Reginald Hudlin) but still doesn't succumb to the hyper aggression of his colleagues when he has the choice to kill Baron Zemo and doesn't. All in all, the movie does a great job of reassuring everyone that the Marvel movies aren't in this purported decline the critics keep talking about which has been Marvel's task lately. We'll see if they can keep this momentum up, but so far....job well done.