Through The Lens: A Look At ‘Captain America: Civil War’

BY Matt Gandolfo

For many years Memorial Day weekend was the official start of the summer movie season. However, over the past decade or more Hollywood has continued to "unofficially" start the summer movie season with a blockbuster release earlier in the month. In recent years that has been the first weekend in May, and 2016 was no exception with the release of Marvel's Captain America: Civil War opening to the tune of approximately $181 million domestically (almost $680 million worldwide in just under 2 weeks), giving it the fifth highest domestic opening weekend of all time. In case you were curious, it knocked Iron Man 3 out of the top 5 so Marvel properties still owns 3 of the top 5. Clearly, the folks at Marvel know what they are doing.

This is the thirteenth movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (McU) and the first of the many scheduled movies as part of phase 3 of the McU. It sees the Avengers team torn about a new proposed UN accord limiting them to act only when authorized by the UN. Tony Stark/Iron Man is in favor of the accord and Steve Rogers/Captain America is against it. Each of the existing team members (except Hulk, Thor and Hawkeye who have all left) are forced to choose sides. In addition to the split of the Avengers team as a whole, there is also a great deal of turmoil within each individual group which cause even more problems down the road. They also begin recruiting other "enhanced" people to their respective teams until, naturally, something happens that forces a conflict between the two sides and the battle is on.

The event in question is a bombing at the very UN meeting where the accord is becoming official. When Captain America learns that the suspect in the bombing is his old friend Bucky Barnes (a.k.a. The Winter Soldier), he and his group set out to locate Bucky before the others can track him down. That doesn’t work out so well as Iron Man and his group catch up to the others at an airport during their getaway.

There are a lot of things to really like about this movie, and the airport battle I just mentioned is right at the top of the list. Not only is it a spectacular fight scene, but you also have the dynamic of most of the participants still being friends and that they had been teammates just 24 hours earlier. It’s also nice to see how the newcomers (Spider-Man, Ant-Man and Black Panther) get worked into the mix, although Black Panther is really not on either “side” as his agenda is completely his own. Then, just when you think everything has been settled, here comes another monkey wrench that opens old wounds and causes a rift that may never be fixed…or can it? We’ll just have to wait until 2018 for Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 to find out.

Speaking of, although the main theme of the plot is Cap’s desire to help his friend Bucky no matter the cost, the sheer size and scope of the overall movie made it feel more like a full blown Avengers feature film than just another installment in the Captain America storyline. The only complaint I had was the speed of the action in opening action sequence felt a bit overwhelming in 3Dwith the speed of the action but that may have just been the need to get acclimated. Bottom line, this is a great movie and definitely worth your while, even if you are not entirely up to date on the MCU.