Captain America: Civil War (2016)


Let's wrap up the Captain America trilogy with Captain America: Civil War

The Movie:

 This film kicked off MCU's Phase 3 and is the 13th MCU film overall.  From a narrative standpoint, it is more a follow-up to The Avengers: Age of Ultron, though the character of the Winter Soldier plays a crucial part in the story and is the biggest element to come out of the last Captain America movie.  And while you won't be completely lost if you haven't seen either of those films, it definitely helps make the story more interesting.

Where the last two Captain America films are prominently featured around Steve Rogers, this one at times can feel almost like an Avengers movie.  The character roster includes heroes from the Captain America films (Captain America, Winter Soldier, Falcon, Black Widow), the Iron Man films (Iron Man, War Machine, and once again Black Widow), the Avengers films (besides those already listed, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, Vision), and Ant-Man, who only had his origin story in the film between this one and Age of Ultron.  Plus, the film also introduces Black Panther and the MCU version of Spider-man, who would each have a solo film afterwards.

With the mass of characters, the highlight of the film is the airport fight scene, and in some ways, the rest of the movie is almost dressing for that scene.  And even though thematically the movie ties into the character of Captain America very well, at times it almost seems like he gets lost in his own movie, especially with the amount of screen time for Iron Man.  Plus, while the villain's plot does have a nice motivation, upon further reflection it seems somewhat convoluted.

The movie works best when focusing on character interactions, and given the talent in this movie, that's a big strength.  It's still a pretty good movie, and a good start for an increasingly strong MCU Phase 3.

Presence in the Parks:

 Once again, not much to add here.

And that was today's Captain America triple-header.  Combine that with yesterday's double-header, I'm going to try to go with just one movie a day for the next few days.  Stay tuned.

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