![]() Directors Joe and Anthony Russo don’t just want to rocket your heart into your mouth with their action sequences, which have the tight choreography of a Greengrass Bourne, and the brutal flair of a Gareth Evans rumble they want to keep your brain firmly engaged, too. There is a meddling manipulator - of course there is - but, interestingly, their agenda is as blurred as Steve’s and Tony’s. Not a whiff of Thanos, or any more of those forgettable Marvel sub-baddies with ‘The’ for a middle name. Yet there is no Loki or Ultron (or, for that matter, Lex Luthor) equivalent this time. Too often, the snappy writing and slick action in these films is undermined by flimsy big bads and formulaic final acts. Captain America: Civil War picks up where Avengers: Age of Ultron left off, as Steve Rogers leads the new team of Avengers in their continued efforts to. And this is the second way Civil War earns our ‘Greatest Marvel Yet’ accolade: by rising above the series’ greatest weakness. But after another incident involving the Avengers results in collateral damage, political pressure mounts to install a system of accountability, headed by a governing body to oversee and direct the team. It’s even bolder that the conflict at the film’s heart doesn’t pander to genre convention and become sidetracked by a grandstanding supervillain plot. Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War finds Steve Rogers leading the newly formed team of Avengers in their continued efforts to safeguard humanity. Who the audience should agree with is hardly a clear-cut matter. It’s fair enough that he should be brought to heel, right? Then again, there are flaws in Tony’s arguments, too, especially the problematic evidence on which he rests them. If the Avengers don’t answer to the UN, who should they answer to? And Steve’s defence of Bucky is questionable: he may be his childhood friend, but now he’s a lethal, robot-armed killing machine forever in danger of being reactivated. It’s bold of writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely to place their title hero in the most obviously dubious position. But stubborn Steve, distrustful of the post-war world’s version of ‘authority’, refuses to sign on the dotted line. Wracked with guilt over his Ultron faux-pas, Tony Stark’s all for it, and Robert Downey Jr burdens the still occasionally glib hero with a weight-of-the-world weariness that is well matched by his own MCU mileage. ![]() ![]() So US Secretary Of State William Ross (reappearing for the first time since he was just a monster-chasing General in The Incredible Hulk) presents the Sokovia Accord, signed by 117 countries, which states the Avengers should be answerable to the United Nations. In a similar way that Zack Snyder’s DC-world reacted to Superman’s ascension and the emergence of its “metahumans” - though here it is more lightly and elegantly handled - the world of the Avengers has had enough of these “enhanced” agents wreaking collateral havoc and decided, not unreasonably, to bring them to account. ![]()
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