Captain America: Civil War - review: Elaboration

Rating: 8/10 (8 May 2016)

This movie is good, but it's not great. Civil War is engaging enough to keep you entertained, but The Winter Soldier is intense enough to keep you on the edge of your seat, and so I prefer the latter.
The Russo Brothers did a fine job with Civil War. The action and fight scenes in this movie are extremely well choreographed. When the action/fight scenes happen, some are spectacular, some go overboard, but they flow perfectly well within the story, and the mixture of the two have context. It's just that for me, I felt like the action really overbalanced the story in Civil War. When the two different teams have a discussion/disagreement about the "Sokovia Accords", I'm invested, I'm interested in their different ideologies, and so I understand why their at odds. All of the scenes were everyone's just sitting down and talking are engaging, compelling, and are by far the best scenes in the movie. When everything goes bang and boom, yes I'm having fun, some scenes are better than others, but I feel they just go on far to long. The airport sequence is the best action/fight sequence in the movie, it breaths catastrophe, Vision warned these idiots, but they didn't listen, and look what happened. I just believe that some of the action/fight scenes could've been toned down a notch, except the airport sequence. I wanted more intensity in these action/fights, and I just didn't feel it most of the time. For example, the opening action sequence is the weakest of the batch, it's a cool sequence with a lot of flash, as an audience member, I get to see the team and how they operate, but as it goes along, I feel like it goes overboard, the scriptwriters could've created something more elaborate, but I feel like they copped out, and they created something more exaggerating than compelling; However, the ending of the opening sequence is the best part; However, I believe that it could've been done better. The scriptwriters could've created something with more of a tragedy element, after a short elaborate action sequence (not the long one we got), show the Team trying to save potential victims from the building, it would've been cool to see someone die while Cap was trying to save them, and I believe that would've been more compelling than the sequence we got.
Black Panther is awesome in this movie, I believe that he has the best scenes. Every scene with Panther is intense and engaging, I don't think he smiles at all, I believe that's because he's always so serious, and I don't think you would smile either if your dad died right in front of you. I loved Panther during the airport fight, he was the most interesting person in it because he was fighting for vengeance, and every other combatant was fighting to cease or elude. I enjoyed what Panther said to Hawkeye during the airport fight, while the two teams where sort of playing around, Panther was being serious, so when Hawkeye tried to state his name to Panther, Panther's reply was "I don't care", and that response gave me an extreme experience of amusement.
The cameos from Ant-Man and Spider-Man are awesome dude! Ant-Man is only in the airport sequence, but he did get his GIANT moment to shine, and when he did I was all smiles. I've never really cared to much for Spider-Man before this movie, but after seeing him in Civil War, I can say that I'm looking forward to Homecoming.
The ending fight is pretty compelling because Tony wants vengeance on the person who killed his parents, but as I said earlier, some of these action scenes go on far to long, and this one is no exception. I felt for Tony and I understood his reasoning, but I didn't feel any intensity during the fight because all I saw was pizazz, however, the last few moments of the fight were good, but I didn't believe that there were any real consequences in the ending result.
Overall, this movie is good, but it's not great. I like the Winter Soldier better. The airport fight in Civil War is amazing. Black Panther, Ant-Man, and Spider-Man stand out the most to me in this movie. There's way to much flashy action, I wanted things to be more elaborate. I wanted this movie to be more intellectual, hazardous, and gritty.
Final Grade - B