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.