The Marvel Cinematic Universe is one hell of an
impressive machine. It has churned out three Iron Man movies, two Thor movies,
a dedicated Hulk movie, two Avengers movies, Ant Man, Guardians of the
Galaxy, and now a third Captain America movie (or Avengers depending on how
you look at it). Through all of it, the stories have toyed with more important
themes and topicality. They have often remained a notch above just popcorn and
candy, explosions and mayhem. Now, after lots and lots of catastrophic
destruction in the name of heroism and the self-anointed good trying to stymie
evil, Captain America: Civil War aims
to dive deep on the divide between those who would allow for an unchecked team
of independent heroes (or vigilantes, call them what you will) and those who
would seek to control them, track them, and direct them in order to minimize
collateral damage and tamp down the public belief that these “enhanced
individuals” are running roughshod over the globe.
To some extent, X-Men
explored some of these ideas first with one set of mutants fighting against
registration and the other side seeing the benefits of it and at least trying
to stop them from giving the public and Congress more reason to distrust them.
The Avengers had destruction in New York trying to prevent extra-terrestrial
forces from taking over. They had mass destruction in the fictional Sokovia to
prevent Ultron from even greater destruction and dominance. And Civil War begins with the takedown of a
baddie (played by Frank Grillo) in Lagos that leads to the accidental bombing
of a civilian building and killing of eleven aid workers from the fictional
country of Wakanda in order to save Captain America.
If a military unit did the same thing, it would be
regarded as a war crime. Interestingly, one of this year’s nominees for the
Foreign Language Film Oscar was a Danish film called A War. It dealt with a military commander on trial for war crimes
after he made a decision that saved his men but sacrificed local civilians in
Afghanistan. The difference in opinion over an issue like this sort of boils
down to which life you believe is worth less. For others it’s about the role of
the military operating within civilian settlements and villages. Should their
own sacrifice as professional soldiers come before that of people who are
present merely by accident? This argument is at the very foundation of the
divide that fractures the Avengers Initiative and has Captain America leading
one faction against another led by Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.).
Tony is haunted by all the death and catastrophe that
goes unanswered in their wake. He is visited by a woman (Alfre Woodard), who
chastises him for all the chaos in Sokovia which killed her son. After the
superheroes stop the villain and leave town, they don’t see and we the audience
are not privy to, the collateral damage that lies in their wake. What Civil War did most for me was to think
back on Superman fighting General Zod in Times Square. Think about everything
that was destroyed, the concrete falling to the street. There must have been
civilians injured or killed, not to mention the property damage. And you can
play that little thought experiment with virtually any superhero movie. So Tony
is on board with the so called Sokovia Accords orchestrated by Secretary of
State Thaddeus Ross (William Hurt) to keep the Avengers in check, only sent on
missions when approved by a special panel. He is willing to have his power
limited. Some would say that’s the most effective use of your power. On his
side are War Machine (Don Cheadle), Black Widow, Vision (Paul Bettany), and new
character Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) – the alter ego of the newly-crowned
King of Wakanda. Later Tony recruits Spiderman (Tom Holland) who is now part of
this universe.
On the Captain America side are the ones who see
themselves as holding special privilege and capable of making decisions better
than any international coalition. They include Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen), Falcon
(Anthony Mackie), Ant Man (Paul Rudd) pulled in from another movie, and Hawkeye
(Jeremy Renner) pulled out of retirement. The question throughout Civil War is how much you can believe of
an independently operating enforcement squad such as the Avengers. As audience
members privy to nearly all the facts in the plot, we know that Captain America’s
concern over his old friend Bucky (Sebastian Stan) and the mind control that
causes him to commit heinous acts is founded on solid ground. We know he’s
right, but among some of the many hard-earned successes of the screenplay by
Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely is that we also never fail to see things
from the point of view of Stark’s side. To them it looks like the set up for another
PR disaster involving the deaths of innocents and the further loss of
empowerment of their team.
Part of what makes Civil
War so good and without question the best film in this series thus far is
that picking sides is a near impossibility. Perhaps we’ve always taken for
granted that superheroes should have a free pass to operate how they choose.
Sure, other movies have given the usual lip service about vigilante justice,
but ultimately the hard questions are never grappled with. Markus and McFeely
take that question head on and force us to consider where we stand on the
issue. Who isn’t on the side of a superhero? But then who isn’t also on the
side of democracy, limited power, and oversight in order to prevent abuse of
power or, at the very least, misguided and ill-informed decisions. We’re
talking about the foundations of a functioning democracy that has a strong
executive leader (as we have in the United States). And by extension, Civil War is also talking about America’s
and the world’s response to terrorism in a post-9/11 world. How much
unilateralism is acceptable? How much should be totally in the open and decided
by a community of nations? What about drone strikes? And how much do these
actions contribute to and invite challenges from more powerful enemies, as
Vision points out?
One of the smartest decisions in the story is having a
villain – Helmut Zemo, played by Daniel Brühl – who is revealed not to be
entirely a villain at all. To have had a standard evil villain would give the
Avengers team an obvious common enemy to battle. But the central conflict in Civil War has to be among the Avengers
themselves. Brother directors Joe and Anthony Russo, who made Winter Soldier one of the best
action-directed films in this series, again set up action sequences that are
clearly-defined and laid out. These guys are obviously students of action
filmmaking. Any time you have an enormous action set piece involving a dozen
characters battling, keeping track of everything in the shooting and editing
process is a mammoth undertaking. Making all the material into something that
is coherent to the audience is, to me, an incomprehensible task. But the Russos
and their editors, Jeffrey Ford and Matthew Schmidt, pull it off.
Incredibly, Civil
War manages to raise the emotional stakes of the series and truly is a
sprawling story that not only demands that you care about the fate of the
characters, but works hard to achieve an emotional connection between audience
and story.
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