Captain America: Civil War Review: I promise that at no point in this review will I make any reference to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice… Unless that counts. Ah Crap!

As I suspected, this movie has become my favorite of the year so far. Yeah, within the span of only a couple weeks, something has already topped The Jungle Book. I’ve seen this movie twice, with intentions of seeing it a third time, so you can imagine there are quite a few positives.

I’ll start with what really makes this movie work and that’s the characters. All the actors give fantastic performances. Chris Evans continues to shine as Captain America and once again brings his A-Game and Robert Downey Jr. gives possibly his best performance as Tony Stark yet. In fact, all the returning characters give their best performances yet and they all have great chemistry with each other.

But of course, the biggest topic around this movie is Tom Holland’s Spider-Man. And he might be the best on-screen Spidey we’ve ever had. A common complaint against the 2 previous incarnations was that Tobey Maguire made a good geeky Peter Parker but not as good of a wisecracking superhero and Andrew Garfield was the complete opposite and made a great wisecracker but was anything but a major geek. Despite his short amount of screen time, which couldn’t have been more than maybe 30 minutes, Holland delivers a perfect balance of geeky Peter Parker and wisecracking Spider-Man. It’s also just awesome that Sony finally stopped being so stingy about holding onto the Spider-Man film rights and allowed us to finally see the Wallcrawler on screen alongside the Avengers where he belongs. #WelcomeHomeSpidey.

But for me, the big takeaway was the introduction of Black Panther. Chadwick Boseman knocks it out of the park with his performance. He’s cool and collected in every scene he’s in. Plus, he’s quite the force to be reckoned with in a fight. He’s as agile and strong as, well, a panther. Not to mention, he nails his accent which I’ve heard he actually had to come up with himself seeing as, in case you didn’t know(haha.), Wakanda, Black Panthers home country, isn’t a real place.

But great characters are nothing without a great story and the Russo Brothers have really outdone themselves. What makes it especially good is that neither side is the bad guy. The movie does have a villain but I mean it in the sense of the Civil War aspect. The story is that the United Nations want the Avengers to sign a document that will dictate their actions to what a UN panel allows them to do. Tony agrees with it and thinks they should be kept in check while Steve thinks that they shouldn’t because it would be surrendering their right to choose. Both of them bring up valid points and everyone’s motivations make sense.

And while it’s a little sad to see these long time allies turn on each other, you can’t deny the epicness of seeing them go head to head. The action in this movie is amazing whether it’s awesome stunt work or outstanding visual effects or both. I can’t say too much without going into spoilers but all I’ll say is, the Airport scene. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0VP7xTQf_qI

But if there’s one thing that bugged me, it was Scarlet Witch. Don’t get me wrong. Like I said, Elizabeth Olsen’s performance was fantastic. But at the end of Avengers: Age Of Ultron, (Spoiler Alert) her brother, Pietro/Quicksilver, died. Throughout the movie, we see her going through all this emotional turmoil and her brother isn’t even mentioned. He was the only family she had left so you’d think that’d have a lasting impact on her.

One thing I’m not sure whether or not to consider a negative is the villain, Zemo played by Daniel Bruhl. Again, it’s not the performance I have a problem with or even the fact that he’s so different from how I’ve seen this character done before (Unlike a lot of MCU villains, he doesn’t die at the end so there’s always the possibility he could eventually become how he is in the comics in future movies anyway.). The thing is that he felt like a TV show villain. I’m not sure how to define what that means but it’s just what comes to mind. But even if that were a negative, it’d probably just be a nitpick.

I’m still not sure if Captain America: Civil War is THE greatest superhero movie ever, but it’s definitely one of the best and it’s definitely my favorite one to date. Captain America is one of the few trilogies/sagas where each installment gets better. It’s got action, comedy, drama, suspense, it’s got something for everybody. Captain America: Civil War gets 5/5 Sehnsucht, verrostet, Siebzehn, Daybreak, Ofen, Neun, gutartige, Heimkehr, One, Güterwagen… Soldat?