Five Favorite Things About Captain America: Civil War

About a month ago, I wrote about the five things that I was most looking forward to in Captain America: Civil War.

After seeing it twice this past weekend, I want to take a look back at what I originally listed, and assess how the movie delivered.

Reason #1: Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Everything I liked about The Winter Soldier film is deeply embedded in this film. The wonderful score, the scintillating action, and the political action thriller tone are all key ingredients to this sequel. The new ingredients this time around were more heroes and more fighting. And likely, way more money earned. I’m referring to this movie as The Avengers: The Dark Side of the Marvel Universe because of its more mature themes centered around loyalty, loss and vengeance.

Reason #2: The Russo Brothers

I lauded the Russo Brothers’ deft direction of the second Captain America film. And Civil War‘s excellence has only enhanced my view of them. I initially thought this film would be too “big” in terms of scale, characters and plot, but they handled it so well, that I am now worried that the Infinity War films will have a hard time living up to the last two “Cap” films. But I guess that’s a good “problem” to have if you’re Marvel Studios?!

Reason #3: Black Panther

“Momma, there goes that man!” That’s what I said to myself when I saw this happen. Chadwick Boseman absolutely killed in this flick. He’s three for four in his major film releases-42, Get On Up, Gods of Egypt and now Civil War! The director of the stand-alone Black Panther film, Ryan Coogler, is two for two in his major movies: the award-winning Fruitvale Station and Creed. The success rate that these guys are tallying have me more than excited to see the “Panther” movie in February 2018.

Reason #4: Spider-Man

“Underoos aka Spider-Man,” along with the “guy in the Vibranium catsuit aka Black Panther,” were absolute scene stealers as many had predicted they would be. Spider-Man’s entrance began once the letters Q-U-E-E-N-S flashed across the screen. The theater where I watched the movie erupted when this happened, knowing that we were soon to witness the new Peter Parker (played wonderfully by Tom Holland) on screen. Simply put, it was a moment that comic book movie fans had been waiting for, for quite some time.

Reason #5: And this! Need I say more?

As the early positive reviews started to trickle in, it felt like Marvel began revealing more and more footage in final teasers leading up to the film. I was beginning to wonder whether they were arrogantly showing too much before the movie dropped. But then I remembered that the movie is 2 1/2 hours. And then I saw the Crossbones vs. Captain America fight scene, the surprise Ant-Man “reveal,” and the machinations of the bad guy Helmut Zemo, and my fears were abated.

On a scale of 1-10, I give this movie a 9. I never thought an MCU movie would surpass the Avengers in terms of fun or match The Winter Soldier in terms of substance. But somehow this film manages to do just that.