When the
Avengers first assembled four years ago, it felt like a grand culmination, the
ultimate Marvel superhero event: its Big Four characters united (well,
eventually) against a colossal planetary threat. Since then, the studio’s
ever-expanding Cinematic Universe has delivered sequels of varying quality and
introduced new heroes in stand-alone movies (well, as close to stand-alone as
Marvel can ever get), but it’s never quite matched the ensemble-balancing
finesse and Earth-quaking action scale of Joss Whedon’s initial assembling.
Certainly not in his clunkier, team-gathering follow up, Age Of Ultron. Not
until now.
Captain
America: Civil War is the best Marvel Studios movie yet. There, I said it.
First, and most importantly, it does what the best Marvel films do: juggling
multiple characters so each is allowed its moment in a story that pushes
forward the series’ overall continuity, while also forming and concluding its
own cogent plot. So here Scarlet Witch (Elisabeth Olsen) wrestles with the
consequences of her immense power; Vision (Paul Bettany) starts getting to
grips with being ‘human’; Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) finds herself torn
when the battle line is drawn; and supposed retiree Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner)
just can’t stay out of the fight.
Then there are
the new recruits: Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman, playing it gravelly and
furrow-browed), nimble protector of a secretive African nation who has his own
beef with Bucky; and a quippy kid from Queens (Tom Holland) who crawls up walls
in a red-and-blue outfit and can shoot webs at people. His introduction to the
action is resoundingly joyous, the reboot the character truly deserves. (“I
don’t know if you’ve been in a fight before,” he’s told by one opponent, “but
there’s not usually this much talk.”) Even Paul Rudd’s Ant-Man receives more
than a tokenistic ‘hey it’s him!’ cameo, and in spectacle terms at least, is
given the film’s biggest scene.
At its
not-so-soft-and-gooey centre, though, is the friendship between Steve Rogers
(Chris Evans) and Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), two war buddies out of time,
one of them out of his mind. Stan remains, for the most part, as blank and
frosty as he was in The Winter Soldier, allowing only the occasional warm glint
of ’40s sidekick Bucky. Evans, meanwhile, further hones a role he’s
effortlessly owned for five movies now, pushing Steve to impressive new depths
and reminding us that his straight arrow still has a dangerous edge. The
Steve/Bucky thread stretches back to the first Captain America, and is what
makes this Cap Three rather than Avengers Two-and-a-half. But built around that
is the bigger conflict that, despite the title, does place it as a direct
sequel to Age Of Ultron.
In a similar
way that Zack Snyder’s DC-world reacted to Superman’s ascension and the
emergence of its “metahumans” — though here it is more lightly and elegantly
handled — the world of the Avengers has had enough of these “enhanced” agents
wreaking collateral havoc and decided, not unreasonably, to bring them to
account. So US Secretary Of State William Ross (reappearing for the first time
since he was just a monster-chasing General in The Incredible Hulk) presents
the Sokovia Accord, signed by 117 countries, which states the Avengers should
be answerable to the United Nations. Wracked with guilt over his Ultron
faux-pas, Tony Stark’s all for it, and Robert Downey Jr burdens the still
occasionally glib hero with a weight-of-the-world weariness that is well
matched by his own MCU mileage. But stubborn Steve, distrustful of the post-war
world’s version of ‘authority’, refuses to sign on the dotted line.
It’s bold of
writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely to place their title hero in the
most obviously dubious position. If the Avengers don’t answer to the UN, who
should they answer to? And Steve’s defence of Bucky is questionable: he may be
his childhood friend, but now he’s a lethal, robot-armed killing machine
forever in danger of being reactivated. It’s fair enough that he should be
brought to heel, right? Then again, there are flaws in Tony’s arguments, too,
especially the problematic evidence on which he rests them. Who the audience
should agree with is hardly a clear-cut matter.
It’s even
bolder that the conflict at the film’s heart doesn’t pander to genre convention
and become sidetracked by a grandstanding supervillain plot. And this is the second
way Civil War earns our ‘Greatest Marvel Yet’ accolade: by rising above the
series’ greatest weakness. Too often, the snappy writing and slick action in
these films is undermined by flimsy big bads and formulaic final acts. Yet
there is no Loki or Ultron (or, for that matter, Lex Luthor) equivalent this
time. Not a whiff of Thanos, or any more of those forgettable Marvel
sub-baddies with ‘The’ for a middle name. There is a meddling manipulator — of
course there is — but, interestingly, their agenda is as blurred as Steve’s and
Tony’s. Arguably just as sympathetic, too. Directors Joe and Anthony Russo
don’t just want to rocket your heart into your mouth with their action
sequences, which have the tight choreography of a Greengrass Bourne, and the
brutal flair of a Gareth Evans rumble; they want to keep your brain firmly
engaged, too.
Who needs a
villain when you have Steve and Tony? Both protagonists. Both antagonists. And
drawing other power-people to their cause in surprising ways. The clashes go
far beyond the set-up squabbles of Avengers Assemble. Or even that other big
2016 superhero showdown. Forget Batman v Superman. Here you get Ant-Man v
Spider-Man, Hawkeye v Black Widow, Scarlet Witch v Vision, The Winter Soldier v
Black Panther and (well, duh) Captain America v Iron Man, all rolled into one.
And that is what you call the ultimate Marvel superhero event.
Grade - A+
