Once more we return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where an
ever expanding roster of superhero Avengers quip and spar and save the world
across interlocking franchises and overlapping continuity. Captain America: Civil War is only the latest in this series to
expend energy maneuvering the multicolored combatants around while teasing more
stories to come. It’s nothing but sequels to a variety of its predecessors – in
addition to the third Captain America it operates as Avengers 3 and Iron Man 4
– and setups for its own future entries, plus previews of coming attractions as
a variety of new characters and conflicts crowd the screen. All MCU properties
do this to some extent, but this one does it the most joylessly, playing out as
a grinding plot conveyance system full of sound, motion, and incident, but
little in the way of story. Much of grave import is muttered with flashes of
dull wit and routine twists between blandly assembled and weirdly small-scale
action sequences. And in the end, we’re basically right back where we started.
We pick up shortly after the events of last year’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, a film
criticized in some corners for its overstuffed qualities. I found it
entertaining, carried over with a light tough by Joss Whedon. He, like Jon Favreau,
who had the bright idea to play Iron Man and
Iron Man 2 with the pace and charm of
fizzy comedy, knew how to juggle the demands of these massive spectacles with
something approaching relaxed ease. That’s largely gone here, as Civil War powers forward weighed down with
something serious in mind. Captain America (Chris Evans) leads the new Avengers
(Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow, Anthony Mackie’s Falcon, Elizabeth Olsen’s
Scarlet Witch, and Paul Bettany’s Vision), who, in an opening action beat, stop
a villain, but accidentally blow up some civilians in the process. This is the
last straw for many people around the world, so 117 nations sign accords
demanding these super-beings be given governmental oversight. I mean, if you
saw lawless beings smashing apart buildings to get at supervillains, you might
be concerned, too.
When various characters from previous films gather to sit
around a table and talk this out, the magic computer man Vision makes a good
point. Since the Avengers have been public, calamitous world-threatening events
have increased exponentially. Maybe they’re drawing this negative attention.
Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) agrees, and demands the others sign up to work
under government supervision. Cap’s not so sure, and demands he be allowed to
stay a free agent. This is the conflict, such as it is, amplified by Cap’s old
pal Bucky (Sebastian Stan), the brainwashed supersoldier, who is framed for an
explosion that kills several foreign leaders. Cap wants to go outside the law
and save Buck to prevent him from taking responsibility for a crime he didn’t
commit. Sure, he’s been assassinating and bombing plenty of people for decades,
but he didn’t do this one. I get his
loyalty to his scrambled friend, but this is some hard logic to follow. It
creates one big misunderstanding the Captain and the Iron Man can’t seem to
deescalate.
The first forty minutes or so are brisk enough, filled with
colorful and loud conflict, as well as some mildly intriguing questions.
What’s a superhero’s obligation to society? What happens when doing good means
different things to different people? When is intervention more dangerous than
helpful? There’s a certain amount of superhero melodrama as various players
line up on different sides of the issue, straining relationships and casting
doubt on tenuous friendships. But the whole operation grows monotonous as
characters exchange increasingly hollow barbs, taking the whole thing Very
Seriously even as we know the eventual fighting won’t be too consequential.
There are too many sequels and spin-offs that need them. By the time we’ve been
introduced to Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) and Spider-Man (Tom Holland) –
pausing for extended sample scenes for their forthcoming features – it’s easy
to know the Civil War will be more like a scrimmage, everyone simply stretching
their powers before their next solo outings.
Directors Anthony and Joe Russo, sitcom vets who helmed the
last Cap, keep things brightly lit
and blandly staged, pulling up tight on good actors, some more invested than
others, trying to put real feeling in phony dialogue and then bouncing into
action that’s a jumble of frenzied editing and blurry effects. Curiously small
– only a few brawls and a chase or two – for running well over two hours, it’s
a movie with elaborate hand-to-hand choreography (John Wick’s directors worked second unit) photographed with
shaking, swooping cameras cut together to often deemphasize the impact. Sure we
have War Machine (Don Cheadle) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and Ant Man (Paul
Rudd) and the rest lining up to show off their moves, throwing balls of light
and color at each other in ways that fleetingly resemble cool comic panels –
Spidey crawling over a giant’s mask; Vision shooting light from the jewel in his
forehead; Ant Man shrinking and enlarging. But there’s nothing here to get
invested in. It’s just not the sort of movie that’ll allow its major figures to
hurt one another, not when their hurt feelings animate only this slapstick-adjacent
goof-around scuffle on the way to tearful revelations. It’s tediously busy.
With nods – more like thin posturing – to serious disagreement
tossed aside in favor of colorful action and bad quips, the screenplay by
series regulars Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely cops out by making it
all about personal grudges. Instead of actually engaging with intriguing
inciting ideas about power and authority, it becomes digital shadowboxing drawn
out between endless empty rounds of the kind of double-talking political
Rorschach test corporate spectacles are best at. The Marvel machinery can’t
afford dislike of these characters, and unconvincingly lets the ones in the
wrong off the hook. After a poorly developed plotter (Daniel Bruhl), I’d call
Captain America the closest thing this movie has to an antagonist, pushing along
the conflict by refusing to accept responsibility for his actions, but this
sure isn’t the movie willing to take a stance like that. He embodies the
movie’s fight against consequences and for the status quo, demanding we care
about morality of hero work and then distracting us with so much movement marking time we’re
to forget they ever brought it up, let alone fail to resolve it in any way.
It’s all left dangling, just a big prelude for the next one, and the next, and
the next.
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