Living in a world of remakes, reboots, prequels, and sequels, we’ve grown accustomed to lowering our expectations when it comes to the second, third, or even fourth adventure of our beloved characters. Now that many of us have flocked to the theaters to see the third installment in Marvel’s Captain America franchise (and pretty much a third Avenger’s move as well), it’s safe to say that they’ve cracked the code to making sequels good again.
Now, Marvel sequels haven’t always been better counterparts to the original, or even good in general (I’m thinking Iron Man 2, Thor: the Dark World), but the so-called “Phase 3” of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) seems to be turning things around.
Captain America: Civil War was by far the best Marvel movie we’ve seen. Yes, even better than the cherished Iron Man that started it all. With the amount of characters this film was composed of, writers and the director were walking a fine line of balancing the heavy-hitters (Cap, Iron Man), the “New Avengers” (Scarlet Witch, Vision, Falcon), and even introducing new guys just in time for their solo films (Spiderman, Black Panther, and Antman – though he’s had his own movie ahead of time). Even typing all that out I’m thinking that’s way too many characters, and I didn’t even mention the lesser-powered Black Widow and Hawkeye. And yet, when watching Civil War, I really didn’t think characters were shoed-in just to make room for their upcoming movies and I really expected to, especially coming fresh off of Batman V. Superman (i.e. Wonder Woman, Cyborg, Aquaman, Flash).
What’s clear is that the team behind Civil War carefully considered the relationships between these characters that have been for the most part developed independently, which added to the believability of super-friends fighting super-friends. Their marketing efforts are pushing audiences to decide if they’re “Team Cap” or “Team Iron Man,” but when I was watching I didn’t know which side I was on, because both sides had legitimate arguments without an easy answer. Outside of Loki in the first Avengers flick, Marvel has had a lot of problems writing believable villains, though we’re given Zemo in Civil War, whose motives are at least somewhat believable, the real villain is the inner conflict of the team, which was an innovative way to circumvent their villain problem.
I can’t say for sure that if Civil War had been another lackluster blockbuster I wouldn’t continue to go see the coming onslaught of Marvel movies, but because it wasn’t, because it was in fact a fantastic movie, I am even more excited for what is to come. Spiderman: Homecoming is now my most anticipated movie of 2017 (let’s hope I don’t live to eat those words later), and I eagerly await Black Panther’s solo film in 2018. The light-hearted web-slinger and the brooding kitty-king both stole the show in Civil War.
Other “Universes” and franchises take note, just because audiences have granted you the love and support to make a sequel, prequel, reboot, or remake, doesn’t mean that you have carte blanche to phone it in and expect us to croon over thinly veiled duplicates of characters once worthy of our adoration. You can do better than that, and Civil War was a testament to that fact.
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