"Captain America: Civil War" PG 13
Set in the Marvel universe of movies, the third Captain America movie could be called Avengers also, and features a 1991 event that leads to the present day, where Tony Stark or Iron Man, is cornered into signing a government accord to keep the Avengers from wrecking cities. Captain America refuses to signs the contract, which leads to the arrival of a new threat, Baron Zemo, and a frame up job involving brainwashed Bucky, or the Winter Soldier.
Distant from the comic book series of the same name, the story has an armada of heroes and really two villains, and remarks on those being mentally distorted in some way.
The death of Stark's parents, spoilers included, leads him to get revenge on those who did it, in some way like the recent other versus movie by DC, but here the villain's motivations aren't to enact cold vengeance, but to crush the heroes through misdirection so they fight each other.
CACW is actually a very tense and fun movie, and has more charm than either of the new DC Superman reboot movies, making them scramble to upgrade their line up in reprisal.
The one drawback is the three act formula of some bad guy wants revenge, which is becoming old, but they distract enough in the telling to keep you interested.
Nitpicking the film, someone falls from the sky like many others had, and there was at least five minutes there to rescue him and not use that plot.
Also when did Cap find out about 1991? If he found out after he got thawed out, which is evident, then he could have just told Tony about it and no boss fight would have happened. Still this part was handled way better than the twist in that BvS movie where the link there is someone's mother's name, when that is equally contrived.
They handled the reboot Spider Man very well though and had an accurate version of him, closer to the comics, even if his aunt was a little too young.
Also Black Panther is one of those odd stereotyped Marvel characters from the 1960s that gets a free pass because he's a good guy. It's still kind of weird that he happens to be literally from Africa andall.
When they did Iron Man 3 they were the opposite with the obviously tasteless Mandarin, who they made a white guy, but he was a villain, because they had a large Chinese market they did not want to offend.
Clearly they do not find a character associated with an American protest group, and both came out coincidentally about the same time, at all offensive and it was okay, not that there is anything wrong with that if they intended to do it.
It is a very good Avengers film, even though as Marvel fan material the blog is supposed to say this is the best ever. It's not the best, but it's a good sequel.
Review by Adam Browne
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