Captain America: Civil War (May 2016)
Primary Characters
Times viewed: Around 10
- Steve Rogers/Captain America
- Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier
- Tony Stark/Iron Man
- Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow
- T'Challa/Black Panther
- Sam Wilson/Falcon
- Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch
- James Rhodes/War Machine
- Vision
- Peter Parker/Spider-Man
- Scott Lang/Ant-Man
- Clint Barton/Hawkeye
- Colonel Helmut Zemo
Secondary Characters
- Secretary of State Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross
- Sharon Carter/Agent 13
- Deputy Everett Ross
- Brock Rumlow/Crossbones
- T'Chaka
Notable Story Elements
- Wakanda
- Sokovia Accords
- Hydra
- F.R.I.D.A.Y.
- B.A.R.F. (Bionically Augmented Retro-Framing)
- The Raft
- Original theatrical release
- Many viewings at home on BluRay - more to come in the weeks away from normal routines
- Friday Family Movie Night sometime in the past year
- 23 Days of Marvel - March 31st, 2020
Easter Eggs
- The leather-bound book in which the Winter Soldier's commands are kept has a deep crimson cover, which could simply be reflecting the "red state" of Communist Russia, or a reference to Bucky's brainwashed crimes superimposed with Black Widow's statement in The Avengers that, "I've got red on my ledger"
- Falcon is assisted by the Redwing drone; in the comics, he has telepathic and empathic connection to and control over birds, and Redwing an actual falcon
- At the Avengers compound, Vision is dressed similarly to how he appears in Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez Walta's critically acclaimed limited series
- Scott Lang enlarges himself in the battle between the heroes; in the comics, Hank Pym was Ant-Man for only a short time after the Avengers formed, instead using the guise Giant-Man and later Goliath
- Lang is seen drumming with his hands in his cell on The Raft, foreshadowing his house arrest pastime in Ant-Man and the Wasp
- The cell phone that Steve sends to Tony is the same one he will use to contact him in Infinity War
Yesterday, the governor of Michigan announced an executive order that will close school buildings for the remainder of the school year due to our state's escalating number of cases of and deaths from COVID-19. Like many teachers, I support this decision but am still hurting from the finality of it.
There were many irreplaceable experiences in our IMAGE program for academically talented kids scheduled for these past weeks and the next couple months, and it's knowing how much excellent learning and growing they are missing that stings so much.
Our daughter will miss 6th grade camp, the capstone of her elementary years.
With all this, my enthusiasm for reflecting on and writing about the MCU movies as our family rewatches them together has waned. I'm still numb. This will likely be my last post for awhile. We have only 6 of the 23 left to go as of this writing, and I'll take notes as we do so. At some point soon, I will get back to blogging.
For the moment, Captain America: Civil War is my favorite MCU movie. As I wrote at length in the post on Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Civil War was one of the last well-conceived and consequential modern-era Marvel comics events, and I loved its portrayal of Steve Rogers as the type of person Sharon Carter describes in Civil War through her aunt Peggy's words: principled, unflappable, a leader by example.
While the Avengers are a huge component, Cap is definitely the centerpiece here, at the fore of the new team seen at the end of Age of Ultron - minus highly conspicuous members War Machine and Vision - on a covert mission in Lagos. Hydra sleeper agent Brock Rumlow returns at Crossbones, a central figure from my favorite stretch of Captain America comics.
Instead of the character Miriam Sharpe publicly calling for the registration of superpowered individuals after the Stamford tragedy cost her son Damian his life, here it is the mother of Charles Spencer confronting Tony Stark individually about the high price paid for the escalating collateral damage done in the conflicts of him and his teammates, specifically in Sokovia. I like this decision by the screenwriters. Given all the media noise today, it could have come off as Tony being guilted into a course of action; instead, he sees the personal loss of a grieved mother and makes a conscious decision to pursue a safer course.
That's the crux challenge: whose safety must be assured, and who makes those decisions? Steve argues that the Avengers could devolve into a military strike force steered by governments, and that they'd be more heavies than peacekeepers. Tony and - in a return from The Incredible Hulk - now-Secretary of State Ross point out in chilling sequence the trail of destruction left in their wakes. Another of my long-time favorites, the Vision would rather see logic and control prevail than a superpowered arms race.
The fate of the Winter Soldier is an additional point of contention, given his apparent role in one of the tragedies that prompted the Sokovia Accords (standing in for the Superhuman Registration Act). There are dozens of top-notch chase sequences in the MCU, but the one in Bucharest introducing Black Panther is the best.
On Black Panther, and revisiting Michael Douglas as Hank Pym from the previous post - what's becoming clear to me now as we enjoy all these movies again is that the casting department for the MCU may be the real MVPs. Chadwick Boseman and Tom Holland sing here, but how about Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans? My wife is not nearly the fan of the latter as she is the former, but to me, I cannot imagine anyone else as Steve Rogers. He's perfect. The voice and mannerisms I extrapolated out of comics decades ago are his. It's uncanny.
They both play their roles with confidence and make their arguments with conviction. Whose Side Are You On?
"He's my friend."
"So was I."
Damn. Those words carry weight, and almost a decade of excellent, carefully interwoven movies bear the emotional load. The fall of the shield that "doesn't belong" to Captain America strikes with a haunting finality, but we're lifted again by the close. It's not shawarma shop fuzziness, but a hell yeah nod.
Civil War has the perfect pacing of The Avengers with a much more involved plot and challenges its viewers like few other Marvel films. It's going to be tough to sort out if I still like this one more than the Endgame finale.
There were many irreplaceable experiences in our IMAGE program for academically talented kids scheduled for these past weeks and the next couple months, and it's knowing how much excellent learning and growing they are missing that stings so much.
Our daughter will miss 6th grade camp, the capstone of her elementary years.
With all this, my enthusiasm for reflecting on and writing about the MCU movies as our family rewatches them together has waned. I'm still numb. This will likely be my last post for awhile. We have only 6 of the 23 left to go as of this writing, and I'll take notes as we do so. At some point soon, I will get back to blogging.
While the Avengers are a huge component, Cap is definitely the centerpiece here, at the fore of the new team seen at the end of Age of Ultron - minus highly conspicuous members War Machine and Vision - on a covert mission in Lagos. Hydra sleeper agent Brock Rumlow returns at Crossbones, a central figure from my favorite stretch of Captain America comics.
That's the crux challenge: whose safety must be assured, and who makes those decisions? Steve argues that the Avengers could devolve into a military strike force steered by governments, and that they'd be more heavies than peacekeepers. Tony and - in a return from The Incredible Hulk - now-Secretary of State Ross point out in chilling sequence the trail of destruction left in their wakes. Another of my long-time favorites, the Vision would rather see logic and control prevail than a superpowered arms race.
The fate of the Winter Soldier is an additional point of contention, given his apparent role in one of the tragedies that prompted the Sokovia Accords (standing in for the Superhuman Registration Act). There are dozens of top-notch chase sequences in the MCU, but the one in Bucharest introducing Black Panther is the best.
On Black Panther, and revisiting Michael Douglas as Hank Pym from the previous post - what's becoming clear to me now as we enjoy all these movies again is that the casting department for the MCU may be the real MVPs. Chadwick Boseman and Tom Holland sing here, but how about Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans? My wife is not nearly the fan of the latter as she is the former, but to me, I cannot imagine anyone else as Steve Rogers. He's perfect. The voice and mannerisms I extrapolated out of comics decades ago are his. It's uncanny.
They both play their roles with confidence and make their arguments with conviction. Whose Side Are You On?
"He's my friend."
"So was I."
Damn. Those words carry weight, and almost a decade of excellent, carefully interwoven movies bear the emotional load. The fall of the shield that "doesn't belong" to Captain America strikes with a haunting finality, but we're lifted again by the close. It's not shawarma shop fuzziness, but a hell yeah nod.
Civil War has the perfect pacing of The Avengers with a much more involved plot and challenges its viewers like few other Marvel films. It's going to be tough to sort out if I still like this one more than the Endgame finale.
Ranking
- Captain America: Civil War
- The Avengers
- Guardians of the Galaxy
- Captain America: The Winter Soldier
- Iron Man
- Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
- Ant-Man
- Avengers: Age of Ultron
- Iron Man 3
- Iron Man 2
- Captain Marvel
- Captain America: The First Avenger
- Thor
- Thor: The Dark World
- The Incredible Hulk
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