Captain America: Civil War (2016) – Review

Or Iron Man 4…

Or Avengers 2 and a bit…

Or SHUT UP SCARLETT WITCH. NO ONE CARES.

Yes, here it is. The latest review of Civil War and most likely the worst.

From it’s inclusion on my Top Ten Most Anticipated Movies of 2016, I’ve been looking forward to this one since that ass-kicking fest Winter Soldier and glad to say that I wasn’t disappointed.

If you don’t already know the story, leave, you pleb, go read the book. If do know the story, but need reminding, that’s what I’m here for, to be your movie-plot-reminding monkey. When a damn big explosion occurred when Scarlett Witch was being stupid and unnecessary, causing innocent deaths, questions are raised by the public to regulate The Avengers. This splits the group into two side, those for, led by Iron Man, and those against, led Captain America. Don’t get fooled by the title, however, there ain’t nothing civil about it. Yeah?

Though Reuben has somewhat of a dislike for him as Iron Man (proof), I usually find Robert Downey Jr. extremely entertaining in anything he’s in, and, as I’ve stated before, he is great as Tony Stark. However, as Reuben would be happy to know, Stark definitely tones it downey a bit on the one-liners, which I have no quarrel with either, and we get a much more sympathetic character. Chris Evans doesn’t really bring anything to the role, acting-wise, but he does, admittedly, nail the look from the comics and obviously puts a lot of effort into the role, so he gets a participation ribbon. Chadwick Boseman, in his MCU debut, was very good as Black Panther, which gives me a good deal of hope for his future standalone. Tom Holland, also in his MCU debut, as Spider-Man, had pretty small shoes to fill after the disappointing two turns of Andrew Garfield, failed miserably. He managed to make a smarky (is that a word?), watered-down Deadpool type unbearably annoying and useless. It was like if Scarlett Witch was a teenage boy, sucked a few too many helium balloons at McDonald’s and talked well too much. And don’t even get me started on Scarlett Witch.

I know it’s bit dumb to talk about performances in a superhero movie, whoops.

The film did live up to the war in the title, as manure definitely did hit the proverbial fan. It featured one of the best car chases I’ve seen in recent memory, a great couple o’ big fat battle royales and some brilliant one-on-ones/two-on-ones to boot. The car chase in question wasn’t really a “car” chase and more of an on-foot chase on a road, with Cap in a car trying to keep up, for no real reason. Obviously, the big “check-this-shizzle-out” moment was the airport fight in the trailer and it very much did deliver, with a great deal of variety and plenty of different things happening at once, though slightly spoiled because Spider-Man wouldn’t shut his damned dirty mouth. The finale, though action-packed and sporting a great one-on-one between you know who, was a bit brief and could’ve very much benefited from an extra ten-twenty minutes.

Don’t know which way Bucky’s going…

If you’ve seen the runtime, however, you’ll be questioning that earlier statement because the film itself was 2 and a half hours, making it the longest Marvel film to date. Most of this runtime was taken up by meaningless talking by Scarlett Witch, aka Elizabeth Olsen the Most Popular Film Ruiner in da Biz (official title), that being said the action did come thick n’ fast, thank God.

Before seeing it, I’m pretty sure it was described to me by someone as more funny than action-packed, I can’t remember who it was, it might’ve been Cam, I think it was Cam. Whoever it was, they were wrong, because the dialogue wasn’t as light as the previous MCU films, in some cases lending to the serious nature that the Captain America films seem to be taking for some reason. As said before, Stark wasn’t particularly funny and I don’t think Captain America knows what laughing is and Scarlett Witch makes me want to kill people in different, perverse ways. Ant-Man brought a good few laughs, however, but he wasn’t in it enough to lighten the tone as a whole. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but maybe the dialogue wasn’t top-class.

Overall, Captain America: Civil War is a great film, there’s no question. It’s brilliantly entertaining and is as action packed as Winter Soldier before it. The set-pieces are great and none of the characters are lacking in screen time. However, Scarlett Witch and Spider-Man are bad things to humanity and the ending was a bit lackluster, as was the dialogue.

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