Captain America: 5 Things Civil War Got Right (& 5 It Got Wrong)

The third movie in Steve Rogers’ solo trilogy, Captain America: Civil War, is one of the MCU’s most acclaimed entries. The movie is often jokingly called Avengers 2.5, because it focuses on all of Earth’s mightiest heroes as opposed to just its titular hero. Cap is still at the center of the story, though, continuing the arc of his quest to find Bucky and save him from his Hydra brainwashing established in The Winter Soldier.

While it did a lot of things right and it’s generally regarded to be one of the MCU’s best entries, Civil War isn’t without a handful of flaws.

10 Right: Keeping The Story Focused On Cap And Bucky

While Civil War is often called an Avengers movie as opposed to a Captain America movie, writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely kept the story focused on Cap and Bucky.

It would’ve been easy for them to disregard plot points from The Winter Soldier and focus on the exciting new elements like Tony Stark’s father-son relationship with Peter Parker and the introduction of Wakanda. But they made that core story their focus. Civil War can be called many things – Avengers 2.5, Iron Man 4, Marvel Blockbuster 13 etc. – but it can definitely also be called Captain America 3.

9 Wrong: Irrelevant Opening Set Piece

In Civil War’s opening set piece, the new Avengers squad takes on Crossbones in Lagos. This scene is almost entirely disconnected from the rest of the movie. The destruction in Sokovia depicted in Age of Ultron gave the U.N. enough of a reason to create the Sokovia Accords.

The Wakandan diplomats who died in Lagos could’ve easily been killed in Sokovia instead. The opening set piece takes up a huge chunk of this overlong movie and it’s almost wholly unnecessary.

8 Right: Introducing Black Panther And Spider-Man

Although Cap and Bucky’s story takes center stage, Civil War is more of an Avengers movie than a Captain America movie. It introduced two new heroes – Black Panther and Spider-Man, two of Marvel’s most beloved icons – into the MCU fold.

Neither of these characters could’ve gotten a better introduction, from T’Challa’s father’s death driving him on a rampage of revenge to Peter Parker’s burgeoning mentor-mentee dynamic with Tony Stark.

7 Wrong: Long Dull Stretches

There are plenty of quips in the action scenes and a number of sight gags that land, but for the most part, Captain America: Civil War is a decidedly humorless movie.

For long stretches, particularly scenes involving political discussions or Zemo’s convoluted plan, Civil War becomes really dull and drab.

6 Right: Action Driven By Character

In all the best action movies, the action is driven by character. Good screenwriters don’t just cram action sequences into a generic storyline; they use their characters’ development to prompt each set piece.

The final fight between Tony, Steve, and Bucky is motivated by Zemo showing Tony footage of Bucky killing his parents and Steve being torn between his two closest friends.

5 Wrong: Bland-Looking Action

The actual content of Civil War’s airport battle is a lot of fun, from the one-liner exchanges between characters who don’t usually share the screen to the creative uses of each character’s powers.

But from a cinematography standpoint, it looks pretty bland. It’s brightly lit with a lot of conventional framing. Compare the static shot of the two sides of the Avengers running at each other in Civil War to the cinematic equivalent of a splash page during the Battle of New York in the first Avengers movie.

4 Right: Helmut Zemo

As exemplified by Rush and Inglourious Basterds, Daniel Brühl is a fine actor, and unlike most of the MCU’s villain actors, he wasn’t squandered by Captain America: Civil War. Helmut Zemo is the antidote to grandiose antagonists like Ultron and Malekith.

After a bunch of movies about omnipotent evildoers trying to singlehandedly crush the Avengers, it was refreshing to see a regular guy use cunning and deceit to turn them against each other.

3 Wrong: Wanda And Vision’s Romance

With any luck, Jac Schaeffer’s involvement in WandaVision will make the titular duo’s romance work a lot better on Disney+ than it has in the movies. Starting with their flirtations in Civil War, Wanda and Vision quickly became one of the MCU’s worst couples.

It’s not that Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany are bad actors, or that they don’t have chemistry – they’re both great actors and they do share chemistry. The problem is simply that their romance is boring. They connect over being made from Infinity Stones, which isn’t relatable because Infinity Stones don’t exist.

2 Right: High Stakes

The key to any great blockbuster is high-stakes thrills. In most of the Avengers’ stories, the world is at stake. But in Captain America: Civil War, the team itself is at stake, which in turn puts the world at stake.

Tony Stark sums up the stakes of Civil War pretty well ahead of the airport battle when he tells Steve, “I’m trying to keep you from tearing the Avengers apart.”

1 Wrong: No Real Consequences

Although the stakes were incredibly high in Civil War, those stakes didn’t result in any real consequences. The comic book it’s loosely based on killed off characters left and right, but the movie didn’t kill off anyone. After plummeting to the earth from the altitude of a plane, encased in metal, Rhodey would’ve been turned to mush. But in the movie, he’s just left with minor leg injuries in need of off-screen physiotherapy.

The only consequence of Civil War was that Tony and Steve were no longer on speaking terms. This had huge ramifications for Infinity War, but the lack of character deaths did seem like Marvel was playing it safe.

About The Author

Ben Sherlock
(3465 Articles Published)

Ben Sherlock is a writer, comedian, independent filmmaker, and Burt Reynolds enthusiast. He writes lists for Screen Rant and features and reviews for Game Rant. He’s currently in pre-production on his first feature (and has been for a while, because filmmaking is expensive). You can catch him performing standup at odd pubs around the UK that will give him stage time. Previously, he wrote for Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop.

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