Captain America: Civil War (2016)

I saw this for the first time in the theater. I just finished watching it for the second time, this time on Netflix. In between I re-watched Captain America: The Winter Soldier which makes considerably more sense now that I understand that it is the middle act of a longer story.

I know that a lot of people prefer the previous Captain America movie but this one is my favorite so far. I'm probably missing something because I have yet to see Avengers: Age of Ultron which (I believe) introduced Vision and Scarlet Witch and probably the villain in this installment, Helmut Zemo. That said I didn't feel like I was missing much but hopefully one day, when it is available on one of the streaming services for a reasonable price I will probably watch it.

This movie builds off the ones that came before it, especially the two aforementioned  movies. It also pulls Ant Man into the larger story, introduces Black Panther, and hints at the Vision's growing attachment to Wanda Maximoff (aka the Scarlet Witch). The plot revolves around Bucky aka the Winter Soldier. He disappeared at the end of the previous Captain America movie. In this one he gets framed for an act of terrorism which kills among other T'Chaka, the ruler of Wakanda and father of the Black Panther.

The Avengers are ordered to stay on the sidelines but Captain America cannot resist stepping in to help his childhood friend. Cap quickly discovers that the Black Panther is pursuing Bucky. He gets some help from Falcon and Agent 13. Iron Man is ordered to bring in the renegade superheroes which leads to him recruiting Spider-Man to help his side and a big superhero on superhero brawl at an airport in Germany.

The way it is all arranged is quite delicious. Mixed in with everything else is the fact that Bucky's brainwashing at the hands of Hydra is still in place. Helmut Zemo, the man who framed him, uses the Hydra instructions codes to force him to fight his friends. Zemo's next trick is to get the heroes to turn on one another once again after he reveals that Bucky murdered Tony Stark's parents when he was brainwashed years ago.

All in all a very satisfying movie. It felt a bit more like an Avengers movie than a Captain America movie but that didn't bother me. All in all I thought it was a great chapter in the series of Marvel movies and my favorite chapter so far.

Captain America: Civil War (2016)

- my favorite of the Cap films; right up there with the first Avengers movie

- great mix of action, humor, and character development

- enjoyed all the fight scenes although I wish they didn't speed them up quite so much

- I thought the opening was in Wakanda and so I was a bit disappointed when Black Panther didn't show up until a little after that was over

- there's a moment in the part when they are chasing Bucky that he grabs a guy's motorcycle as he is going past that was very cool

- Spider-Man was great; I forgot he was in the movie and when Tony Stark went to recruit him I ws confused at first

- Ant-Man was also a lot of fun; and funny

- I have a few nitpicks

- Black Panther seemed a bit like the mystical black person, a lot of the character seemed to be in the tone of voice and the accent the character was using

- the escape at the end was all off camera, WTF?!

- there was a bit of bait and switch with the super-soldiers at the end; it looked like Cap and Bucky were headed for a big fight but Zemo had killed them before they arrived; although I was a bit relieved because I worried that it would be a fight with basically no-name, no-stake baddies

- I didn't think the movie was too long; it needed the character moments in the third act between Tony, Steve, Bucky, and T'Challa

- Don Cheadle wasn't in this movie very much; quite often you just heard his voice because he was in the armor; there was more than one time when both he and Tony were in armor and Tony took his helmet off but Jim did not