Iron Man Vs Captain America - Final Battle Scene - Captain America: Civil War (2016) Movie CLIP HD
Captain America Civil War Movie Length
Captain America Civil War Movie Poster

Black Panther, Vision, Iron Man, Black Widow and War Machine get ready to face off with the rest of the Avengers in the all-star superhero movie 'Captain America: Civil War.' May 25, 2020 Captain America: Civil War (2016) Largely considered as Avengers 2.5, Civil War deals with the repercussions of Age of Ultron by looking at the human cost of what a worldwide fight against evil. The bad news is, there are about ten movies going on in 'Captain America: Civil War,' which is at least seven too many. The good news is, most of them are fun, and there are enough rousing moments to elevate the movie to Marvel's top tier. Although Thor, the Hulk and other recurring characters have gone missing this time (with somewhat vague explanations for their absence), nobody's going to mistake 'Civil War' for a chamber piece.

There are more than a dozen major characters and another dozen minor ones, including Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) and Spider-Man (Tom Holland), all running, flying, stomping and blasting through a long, lumpy story inspired by the 2006 Civil War graphic novel arc. Thematically, it's potluck. Like 'Avengers: The Age of Ultron,' 'Captain America: The Winter Soldier' and 'Iron Man 3,' 'Civil War' is simultaneously about the ramifications of US intervention in a post-9/11 world; the responsibility of private military contractors (which is basically what the Avengers are here) to defer to their government and the United Nations; the question of whether civilian casualties negate the righteousness of a noble mission; the allure and price of vengeance; and individuals' ongoing, never-finished struggles to understand how their pasts drive their present-tense actions. (Several characters confess that they act from compulsion and then find ways to rationalize it.)

There's a fair bit of 'The Dark Knight' logic, or 'logic,' to the storytelling. Characters do things to other characters because they know it'll set off a chain reaction that'll eventually lead to a very specific moment at the end; luckily for them, each step goes according to plan, because if it didn't there would be no movie. And, as in the inferior yet thematically similar 'Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,' the hero-versus-hero slugfest only seems to spring from real and deep philosophical differences. It turns out that the real problem is that these characters don't talk to each other when they should.

Iron Man Vs Captain America - Final Battle Scene - Captain America: Civil War (2016) Movie CLIP HD

Captain America Civil War Movie Length

Captain America Civil War Movie Poster

All that said, this is a satisfying film that takes its characters but not itself seriously, and mixes sequences of wonder, visual wit and pathos in with the world-building and dramatic housekeeping. Reuniting the Cap creative team of directors Joe and Anthony Russo and screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, 'Civil War' gets better as it goes along, both as an action movie and a sprawling ensemble. I've seen reviews complaining that no character gets enough screen time, but to me the distribution felt just about right. We know a lot about the established characters by now. There's not much this film needs to say about Peter Parker except that he's a lovable wise-ass spider-teen who lives with his Aunt May (51-year old Marisa Tomei, looking more like Aunt February) and has only been slinging web for six months. Nor does this story require much more of Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) but that he act starstruck by Tony and Cap and the gang and try too hard. Black Panther, aka T'Challa—subject of an upcoming Ryan Coogler solo movie—is defined by his righteous anger over an injustice perpetrated against his family and his nation, and that's exactly where the character needs to be for this film.