Thursday, May 12, 2016

Movie Review: Captain America: Civil War

So I decided to wait a few days after viewing the movie, because I left simply thinking:

AWESOME!!!!! OHMYGOD! OHMYGOD! OHMYGOD!

Which, although a good representation of my mind at the time, doesn't necessarily make for a good review.

So here we are, about half a week later, and it's time for me to dig in, which I'll do in five points:

1) Spider-Man is pretty much point-on.
Tom Holland (In the Heart of the Sea), was, for me, the breakout surprise of the film. Yes, he was shown in the second trailer, but the film (and the actor) does such a good job of bringing Spider-Man to life, that even though he only in the film for ten minutes or so. Seriously, Spider-Man was worth the ticket price alone.

2) The movie is two and a half hours long, but uses it all wisely. As compared to say Age of Ultron or perhaps more specifically Batman & Robin (1997), the movie has an even dozen superheroes, all of which have extensive backstories and motivations, and gives each of them good service. Obviously most of the focus goes to Captain America and Iron Man, but even the smaller players, like Vision and Ant-Man, have scenes which develop their characters while moving the story forward.

3) The de-aging effect introduced in Ant-Man is still blowing me away. Yes the film has some spectacular effects, things explode and the action is quite intense, but an early scene showing a teen aged Tony Stark interacting with his parents shocked me with how seamless it looked.

4) Yes, some of the sides chosen seemed to feel like a way to make sure the teams were even. A sort of "team A already has a flyer - let's move him to team b", did feel a little artificial, but the result had me overlooking the issue at the time.

5) The Black Panther gets a great introduction. Without going into spoilers, Chadwick Boseman's Black Panther is served quite well by the film, making a character, new to most of the audience, one in which they'd like to follow into a standalone film. A great addition to the film, and definitely helped to show more of an Avengers World.

The movie is well worth watching, and although I'll admit, in many ways I'm a cheap date when it comes to Marvel movies, I'm continually impressed by how much I, a Canadian, am enjoying the Captain America franchise.

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