Well-balanced between action and thought

Rating: 9/10 (5 April 2014)

It's well-paced, well-acted, well-written, intelligent, action-packed, emotionally moving, visually gripping, painful, funny, sad, true, real, heightened-beyond-reality, and then brought back down to earth again. The moral weight of Captain America's position has always been one of his strengths and they make excellent use of it here, juxtaposing it very effectively with his sense of being uncertain in his personal life. The villains' position is tempting...and yet still morally wrong. There were some really nice touches with "average" people doing heroic things, too. I didn't expect this movie to be a game-changer in the Avengers universe, but just one more installment in Steve Rogers's tale. Instead, it came away having fundamentally changed the basic assumptions about the world and its structure and it leaves the door open for who-knows-what in the future. Excellent writing and I look forward to where Marvel goes next with this massive (and largely well-executed!) story.