Welcome back again. Suddenly these reviews have become quite frequent; I had to do Batman vs Superman because I’ve talked about it so much, and I HAD to do this review as well! Such an epic film that has come to save the day and raise our spirits since BvS. Bare in mind we are going into spoiler territory where there will definitely be talk of a certain web designer!
The next unofficial Avengers film: CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR. After another incident involving the Avengers, the government have decided they can’t tolerate it anymore and that the heroes need to be controlled in order to keep order. Iron Man’s half are up for it, but Captain America’s side are hesitant as heroes usually act in the moment; plus his buddy, Bucky is being tracked down for false allegations. So Iron Man’s team, under oath to the government, swear to get the ‘rogue’ superheroes, and Captain America’s side fight anyone who gets in their way. And the moral is don’t mess around with Iron Man, Captain America or the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)!
My friends Anthony, Stephen, Kyle and I decided that we’d take on another triple-bill with the MCU. This time it was Captain America: The First Avenger, The Winter Soldier and at midnight, Civil War; all at the Super-screen of Silverburn Cineworld! I’ve said in the past that I’m not that bothered about 3D films, but I gave a bit of leeway when it was used for these films. We seemed to get the best seats in the house; centre of our row and the right distance from the screen, so we weren’t squinting to see what was going on or straining our necks looking up at the screen. The only disadvantage was that there wasn’t enough air conditioning to compensate for the amount of nerds coming to see these films, so got quite warm.
First up was The First Avenger (appropriate). This was the first time that I saw it on the big screen and loved it! Love the majorly loud sounds like whenever the Tesseract was used! Being set during World War II makes this one of the more unique films of the MCU as we probably won’t be returning to the 40s in the near future (see what I did there). And who can beat Peggy Carter; she’s my favourite heroine in the whole MCU; and they killed her off!! Waa! (Sorry getting ahead of myself) It didn’t act as just the origin of Steve Rogers, but unexpectedly the origin of Bucky Barnes as we find out in The Winter Soldier. Unlike The First Avenger I have now seen The Winter Soldier three times at the cinema and written about it four times (it’s review, Age of Ultron triple-bill and MCU ranking) so I’m going to link you to them. In summary though it must have been good if I’ve seen it 3 times at the cinema and written about it 4 times!!!
Captain America: Civil War. It was brilliant! Batman v Superman didn’t stand a chance against it as predicted! It surprised, it amused, it scared, it came with action that put you on the edge of your seat. It was just unbelievably good! The biggest appeal of this film was the superheroes fighting each other with full intent. Many of us have been invested in the MCU ever since it began back in 2008, so we’ve grown an attachment to the heroes, picked our favourites and seen them evolve through the years. But with this film we start to doubt ourselves on whom we should be rooting for and who should be least favourites. I’m still undecided on which side I would have chosen; for popularity I would have chosen Iron Man’s team, but morally I would have chosen Captain America’s team. They may have been short of a Hulk and a Thor, but they weren’t short for numbers! We saw eight familiar ‘heroes’ joining the fight including Hawkeye who we all thought had retired. And an additional two new heroes joining Iron Man’s team; one, which was Black Panther who was ok, but was overshadowed immediately by the 2nd addition. Yep, the 2nd biggest appeal of this film without a doubt was the amazing Spider-man’s first appearance…in the MCU.
I think DC Comics and Marvel have the same idea and think Spider-man and Batman are their best heroes, so are constantly trying to top their last films; Tom Holland’s take on Spider-man though was just as brilliant as Ben Affleck’s take on Batman. Absolutely love that Spiderman is a kid in this; he gets nervous and jumpy when he is visited by Tony Stark (as you would), but shows complete confidence and wit when he puts on the mask and goes up against the heroes. This was more of an opportunity for Spidey to prove himself to the other heroes, even the heroes he’s up against; it was more of a playful fight for him. One thing I liked was that there was no origin story: “it’s a long story” that we all should know by now and I’m sure it’ll still be covered in his upcoming solo film. MCU has taken on board ‘With great power comes great responsibility’ to make sure that Spidey was perfect…and he was perfect!
Even although these were the first appearances from Spidey and Black Panther in the MCU there was also another addition to the Avengers (if you can call them that now): Ant-man! I almost forgot that he was featuring as well, but he was just as humorous as Spidey especially when being introduced and fighting the Avengers. And yep I called it in my Ant-Man review; Ant-man turned into GIANT-man! Awesome dude! There were just so many wow moments in this film, but some were a bit darker than others: “She’s gone. In her sleep” – it only took me a sec but I was devastated when I realised it was Peggy! No! Or in retrospect how much damage and chaos the Avengers have been involved in which affected so many innocent civilians. Not good! And that Bucky killed Tony Stark’s parents! Didn’t expect that at all! I don’t see why Tony is only miffed that his mother was killed. Sure he looked as if he was a mamma’s boy through that weird slideshow of his childhood, but in Iron Man 2 (if we dare think about it), Howard Stark should have redeemed himself saying his work was for Tony consequently giving Tony the ‘element’ that would save his life. It’s a tricky one with Bucky; even although we knew Bucky was hypnotised, I would still be raging with him too. That final battle though; I was genuinely thinking Steve was going to continue hitting Tony in face after he broke off his mask, but I loved this because it is a very similar ending to the graphic novel; Steve realises that he’s gone too far and gives up his shield out of shame. It does end on an unhappy note unlike the other films but I thought it was a great end to their long battle. The MCU didn’t just quickly sweep it under the rug so that all the superheroes are ‘reset’ for the next film. There are consequences for their actions (some of them in prison, some scattered, some still in hiding) which will be acknowledged and will affect the Avengers in future films.
Even after a long night; we stayed for the post-credit scenes of course. The first one showed Bucky deciding to freeze himself again until they can figure out how to cure him (almost like a Mr Freeze/Nora situation); while being guarded in Wakanda by Black Panther. The scene at the very end features our friendly neighbourhood teen explaining his bruises to ‘young’ Aunt May and tinkering with some sort of spidey watch assumably Iron Man gave him. Then ending with the text: “Spider-man will return”; yes he will! Our next film in the MCU is going to be Doctor Strange played by Benedict Cumberbatch; from the look of the trailer it seems like Inception and Doctor Strange is just Benedict doing an American voiced Sherlock, so that can only be good! And for 2017, we’re in for a real treat; we’re going to be getting, not one, not two, but three MCU films! The first apparently being Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 set to release 28th April 2017; I’m having a feeling it won’t be as soon but can’t wait to see Star Lord and the gang back on screens and a new soundtrack for my car! Then our famous web designer will be getting his solo film, Spider-man: Homecoming releasing on the 28th July 2017; nothing’s really been said about the storyline so far except Tony Stark will be making an appearance; probably like a Nick Fury role mentoring Peter Parker. Then we’ll finally find out what Hulk and Thor have been doing this whole time in Thor: Ragnorak set to release 27th October 2017. It is sounding like a superb year already for films, but the bad news however is that Inhumans which was originally set to release in 2018 has been pulled from the schedule. It may be placed back again some day, but the reason it was removed was probably because of the deal with Sony to bring in Spidey. I don’t know anything about Inhumans to be disappointed, but my worries are that it could have been another surprisingly brilliant film like Guardians of the Galaxy.
Iron Man was amazing! Captain America was amazing! War Machine was amazing! Falcon was amazing! Black Widow was amazing! Hawkeye was amazing! Vision was amazing! Scarlet Witch was amazing! Black Panther was amazing! Winter Soldier was amazing! Ant-man was amazing! And Spider-man was (quote-on-quote) amazing! It both met and bet expectations and was an unbelievably great film which equals to the Avenger films. I’ll probably see again at the cinemas! The Silverburn Cineworld was great as well; perfect for this experience. Overall we had a brilliant time! If you missed it, that sucks for you! Anyway. I’m off. Talk to you later.
SILVERBURN CINEWORLD – 9/10
CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER – 7/10
CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER – 8/10
CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR – 10/10
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