Captain America: Civil War

As another Marvel movie roles off the production line, I don’t know about you, but they’re all starting to meld into one. I guess, in some way, that’s sort of the point. At least it was before the first Avengers film, now I’m not sure why it still is.

Captain America returns for what should be, on paper at least, his third stand-alone film. His old friend Bucky, played by Sebastian Stan, returns as the Winter Soldier but we also get: Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Falcon (Anthony Mackie), War Machine (Don Cheadle), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), Vision (Paul Bettany), Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) and finally, introducing Spider-man, played by Tom Holland.

You’ll see now perhaps why this movie feels like another Avengers movie and not like a Captain America film. This is even more apparent when the screen time is, as per the Avengers, shared out quite heavily with even missing parties Thor and Hulk getting mentioned on more than a few occasions.

The movie is also long at just shy of 2.5 hours. Perhaps what’s more annoying, and worrying, and this was something everyone I was with commented on, was just how annoying the direction was. Anthony and Joe Russo are the men behind the cameras, the people behind Captain America: The Winter Soldier and the action is filmed so close up that you miss most of it and it is hard to watch. Regular readers will know how much this irks me. It’s done to ‘inject some speed and feel’ into the scene…I say if you think it needs that then you should re-choreograph the scene.

The reason this is worrying is that Anthony and Joe are lined up to be the Avengers: Infinity War – Parts I and II directors. This doesn’t sit well with me after watching this movie.

The film pitches some of the Avengers against some of the Avengers with Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman – 42, Get On Up) turning up to add to the melee, because adding Spiderman wasn’t enough apparently. The story line references the troubles in Sokovia from the previous Avengers movie, so if you’ve not seen that, well, how dare you frankly! Bucky is framed for a crime he didn’t commit and the man behind it, a Sokovian, wants to destroy the Avengers from the inside.

It’s a story that probably could have been handled in an episode of a series, but here we get it stretched out over 2.5 hours. It sets up the next film in the Marvel Universe franchise, but I’m a bit sick of just watching setup movies. I want to see actual films, with actual story lines that are relevant to the film I’m watching. Not constantly watching something being setup, again and again.