And the sides-taking showdown between Team Captain America and Team Iron Man, far from numbing the viewer with still more callous acts of destruction, is likely to leave you admiring its creativity. Whatever apocalyptic associations its title may generate, “Captain America: Civil War” turns out to be an infinitely smarter piece of multiplex mythmaking, blessed as it is with a new villain (played with unnerving subtlety by Daniel Bruhl) who has more on his mind than blowing human civilization to smithereens.
And while the idea of collateral damage was certainly central to the conflict in “Batman v Superman,” that film ultimately banished any sense of ethical responsibility - and any lingering audience goodwill - with its bombastic and incoherent end-of-the-world climax.
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Not every globe-trotting action movie is self-critical enough to acknowledge the many lives that are presumably lost when buildings blow up and cars flip over. As far as Iron Man is concerned, the Buck stops here, but Rogers, like the audience, knows there’s more to the story than meets the eye.
Captain America’s defiance only intensifies when yet another deadly attack occurs, this time in Vienna, and the Winter Soldier is clearly implicated. But while Natasha and Wanda both understand the logic of Tony’s decision, Rogers is having none of it: To submit to the U.N., he feels, would deal too great a blow to their autonomy and effectively destroy their ability to mobilize and act as needed. James Rhodes/War Machine (Don Cheadle), and the otherworldly humanoid philosopher-freak known as the Vision (Paul Bettany). Haunted by his own role in the civilian deaths that occurred during the big-bang climax of “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) wholeheartedly supports this solution, which is also backed by his faithful No.
secretary of state (William Hurt), fed up with the fiery trail of fatalities and mass destruction the Avengers have left behind them, encourages them to agree to the Sokovia Accords, which will place them under the jurisdiction of the United Nations. But the ensuing battle has tragically unforeseen consequences, and the U.S. Back in the present day, Bucky’s estranged old buddy Steve Rogers ( Chris Evans), aka Captain America, finds himself on a routine mission in Lagos with his team, which includes the fierce Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), the telekinetically gifted Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), and the high-flying Sam Wilson/Falcon (Anthony Mackie). The nature of his first assignment is a mystery to which the picture occasionally alludes but leaves chillingly unresolved until the end. You can sense the movie plumbing the depths of its own history with a 1991-set opening flashback, in which James “Bucky” Buchanan (the brooding Sebastian Stan) is sprung from cryogenic deep-freeze by Russian soldiers, who proceed to activate the cold-blooded, metal-armed killing machine lurking within known as the Winter Soldier.
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Buoyed by hearty critical support, 3D ticket premiums and enormous fan-ticipation, Disney’s May 6 release should have little trouble outperforming 2014’s “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” ($714 million worldwide) and could land in roughly the same commercial arena as the “Avengers” pics, both of which earned north of $1 billion globally.Īs directed with escalating confidence by sibling filmmakers Joe and Anthony Russo (who helmed “The Winter Soldier”), and intricately scripted by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (who have been with the series since 2011’s “Captain America: The First Avenger”), “Civil War” is nothing if not a testament to the benefits of continuity this is the rare Marvel sequel that feels like not just a continuation but a culmination. Very much an “Avengers” movie in scope and ambition if not title (the conspicuous absence of Thor and Hulk notwithstanding), this chronicle of an epic clash between two equally noble factions, led by Captain America and Iron Man, proves as remarkable for its dramatic coherence and thematic unity as for its dizzyingly inventive action sequences viewers who have grown weary of seeing cities blow up ad nauseam will scarcely believe their luck at the relative restraint and ingenuity on display. The shaming of “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” will continue apace - or better still, be forgotten entirely - in the wake of “ Captain America: Civil War,” a decisively superior hero-vs.-hero extravaganza that also ranks as the most mature and substantive picture to have yet emerged from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.