Not Good

Rating: 4/10 (29 September 2016)

Alas, this film marks the point at which the Marvel film franchise slipped from the realm of powerful drama with larger-than-life characters, into pure Biff! Pow! fan service, with colorful super-manikins pitted needlessly and inappropriately against each other.
This slide is doubly sad, because the film starts so well. The question of vigilante justice has never been properly addressed in the superhero genre. Civil War starts by asking: what if the UN got involved? Should the Avengers yield their autonomy - their might-makes-right power, based purely on the accident of their own super-abilities? And furthermore, can even the UN or any other body be trusted to administer that kind of power?
(Mild spoilers ahead.) That last question never gets properly asked, let alone answered. Instead, Civil War lapses into a succession of impressive but meaningless action sequences. Culminating in a completely unnecessary battle between every superhero in the Avengers side of the Marvel cinema franchise - and the total devastation of a major airport. Ironically, this is exactly the sort of billion-dollar collateral damage that the film starts out questioning. Now it goes by without any comment.
Spider-Man is the most glaring insertion. He's completely superfluous to any plot line within the film. His presence is basically just an ad for the upcoming second reboot of his own franchise.
Finally, there's the question of the 'civil war' itself. It's basically ludicrous. In the end, Iron Man learns something irrelevant, that causes him to totally lose his mind and nearly murder one of his closest friends. This goes far beyond even 'comic book logic,' into the realm of purely arbitrary plot twists. Director to script writer: "It sez here that Cap and Shellhead pound on each other for 10 minutes - gimme a thin excuse, will ya?"
Too bad. Civil War looks great, has stupendous CG action sequences (especially the earlier, more human-scale ones), and fine performances by a number of good actors. But it marks a sad turn toward measuring worth not by solid dramatic or cinematic standards, but by the number of punches landed and the number of superheroes that can be crammed onto the screen at any one time.
We can hope this is an aberration, but it's a thin hope at best. This is how comics franchises traditionally die: strong ideas and deep characterization give way to mindless action and limp soap opera.