Given recent news about changes being made all over place at Warner Bros in light of Batman Vs Superman’s not entirely stellar outing, this film coming out now must feel like a bullet to the head for the DC holding movie studio.

This is not even just being creative with writing. Because as you know, when I’m being creative with the writing, it’s either with a rhyming dictionary or just looking up what swear words to use. In many ways this film feels like Marvel and Disney as an entity were just walking over to the battered body of DC’s attempt at creating a comic book universe, all the while the body still trying to catch breath and stay alive.

Then Marvel and Disney just unzip their trousers….and then just completely p*ss all over the body. Possibly some of it ends up in the eyes and mouth. Not only that, after they finish, they then proceed to wipe off the excess urine with $100 bills, set the bills on fire and then just throw them at the now drenched body of work that was Batman Vs Superman. Then they walk away to a big slo-mo explosion, Batman Vs Superman being engulfed with the flames and screaming in agony.

Two men enter. One man leaves… No wait, that’s Mad Max.

This, Warner Bros and DC, is how to do a superhero film which questions the validity of super heroes fighting for everyone, and whether or not they should. It’s probably obvious to say at this point that I really liked Captain America: Civil War and there is really no reason not to go watch this right now. 

So for the two people who stayed reading this instead of going to watch Captain America, what’s going on? In many ways, this does continue the story very well from the first and second Captain America films, as well as what happened in the greater Marvel Universe. It’s therefore best if you do watch at this point, what is just a huge back catalogue in order to catch up to the previous events which provide the backdrop to what goes on. I can think of worse ways to spend a weekend, truth be told.

Initially we see a few disconnected scenes together, where we first glimpse the Winter Soldier taking orders and retrieving some blue gunk from the back of a car he causes to crash, to then a rather poignant few minutes with Tony Stark at MIT, setting some very personal stakes in play which come up later on. There’s also another scene with our actual main bad guy Zemo within the film too, tracking down a former Hydra chap who has a certain book he requires. The bad guy himself, played by Daniel Brühl was a surprise overall and I’ll talk about him later.

Back to the story and we come to the real events doomed to set off a lot of the crap to come. The Avengers with all the new people we saw at the end of Avengers: Age of Ultron, get into big trouble as a result of an attack in Africa where several civilians are killed. The governments of the world and the UN decide finally that after letting everyone else sort their issues out that they may actually care enough to do something. So at this point, already you know this is fantasy.

Cue entry from a rather unexpected William Hurt once again portraying Ross from the Incredible Hulk film (Remember that with Edward Norton?) as now a secretary of state and now there are accords on the table to ensure that in future, the Avengers only spring into action once the UN agrees.

So never? Damn it’s hard to not be cynical isn’t it?

It was at this point that Tony was thinking twice about annoying a man with a metal arm.

But where the central conflict starts coming into play is about who agrees with the accords. Tony Stark (Good ol’ Robert Downey Jr.) is very much in favour, with a few others backing him. Meanwhile Captain America, once again played by Chris Evans, brings up valid points to not be in favour of the accords. A personal death and small revelation later, we find ourselves at the UN in Vienna, where the accords are to be signed, only for s*it to happen and for Capt’s buddy Bucky (again played by Sebastian Stan) aka the Winter Soldier to be implicated.

You can already see where this is going, can’t you?

This is where everything to come really kicks off, and along the way, we not only encounter the new cast members of the Marvel Universe, but also have several excellent fight sequences, most notable of which is the airport battle, purely for what happens (Keep an eye on Ant-Man, though he does get rather hard to miss….dammit, really want to talk about it!). Then later on with several revelations (one of which I actually got about 40 minutes before it was revealed, good god, I must have actually paid attention), we see Tony Stark lose it and go hell for leather just straight up, try to murder the Winter Soldier leading up to an actual ending. Things surely will never be the same after all this?

It was incredibly hard to not want to talk about everything that happens during the events of Civil War, whereas with Batman Vs Superman, it was hard to even begin to quantify what was wrong without bringing up the events. First of all, the bad chap Zemo, as mentioned earlier who in the background, sowed the seeds of destruction for the Avengers as we know it.

CATMAN…duhna duhna duh dunnh CATMAN!

Zemo was far less in your face than you think and in essence, his motivations are very much personal and he in essence does more harm than Ultron ever could when you think about as the end credits roll. You understood why he walked down this dark path and there was some genuine sadness felt when he played back certain voicemails, even if he was a killer.

Granted you could argue he didn’t do that much, but then again he didn’t have to. He perhaps just lit the fuse which was always there, and it was only a matter of time before things came to a head. He was also nowhere near as f**king annoying as Jesse Eisenberg as the god awful Lex Luthor in Batman Vs Superman. So while we may forget Zemo in the long run, he was a much better bad guy character which made sense in terms of motivation and also played far better by Daniel Brühl.

Surely we have to discuss the way that the new characters were introduced to the Marvel set-up here, before they even get chance to have any form of origin story in their own right. Fresh from a deal hashed out with Sony, Spider-Man will now take his place in the ongoing story arc, leaving only the X-Men, Deadpool (now he’s branched out on his own more or less) and the Fantastic Four out in the cold away from all the fun thanks to the ongoing deals still being honoured with Fox.

But adding to the mix Marvel are continuing to do regardless, as then we come across another new addition; Black Panther, who is also King of Wakanda now and wears a suit of the stuff Captain America’s shield is made of. But we will call him CATMAN.

Sorry but when I heard him being referred to as Catman, it not only sticks but is too funny to pass on ever coming back to. That joke will live on, even to when the Black Panther film comes to our screens.

Oh hi there, remember me?

But given how many were in the film how did the new characters fare overall?

First of all, Tom Holland did a really good job as Peter Parker and as the web crawler we came to know and love. He really playing up the the comedy angle as well as being able to hold his own quite well against the more established characters Marvel had. He also didn’t outstay his welcome to, being there basically to help Tony stop Ol’ Capt’ from doing naughty.

The way that he was introduced to us all as well by Tony Stark, wasn’t as hamfisted as it could have been, but it is rather odd that Tony held out on information that there was someone who was swinging round New York from everyone else surely? And yes, Aunt May is now played by Marisa Tomai. Just let that sink in. Yep, Aunt May is very attractive now. Even Tony Stark is having a look at her now…..Err…..

With Catman, Chadwick Boseman portrays a truly powerful presence on screen as T’Challa, seeking revenge against the Winter Soldier and trust me, when Catman turns up and start kicking ass, it’s just brilliant. Incredibly it doesn’t even feel out of place. Yet, in other scenes, he is thoughtful and acting in a way he believes is honourable, and again there is clear motivations for everything he does. Hell at the end, you can argue the character actually developed and grew by the end, even with the fact the film doesn’t feature a lot of Black Panther.

Think about this as well; For Black Panther / Catman in essence to have his origin story somewhere in a Captain America film and for it to not feel forced, is just wonderful and it lays the groundwork for us all to really look forward to that standalone film due during the next couple of years. Same even with Spiderman surprisingly.

In fact, the whole cast and crew should be commended during this, because it was hard to say anyone didn’t deliver at all. But we’ve not got all the time to note down everyone here so now we move onto some of the flaws with Captain America: Civil War, for there are indeed flaws.

The scene you typically see when Ryanair announce they have started boarding.

Some of the CGI in use was a little silly, especially at certain points where we see both Catman and Captain America chase Bucky and it’s fairly obvious that they are moving a completely different speed than what they were attempting to run at. It’s also creepy to see a young Robert Downey Jr. talking with his parents, with a completely different body. Was thinking that this was going to be the sequel to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

The big words on screen to tell us where they were a bit much and it was slightly too easy to get lost during the lagos fight sequences with the camera movement shaking too much. It’s also arguable that this wasn’t a Captain America film, given the ridiculous amount of other cast members around and in essence, if it was called Avengers: Civil War, it may have been more accurate.

It’s also a little bit creepy surely that ol’ Captain is starting to become romantically involved with someone whose Aunt, he used to have a thing for (trying to skirt around the spoiler area here but it’s difficult to do) as surely that would be weird? Maybe? Possibly?

But that’s it. The rest was absolutely entertaining.

Snake? SNAKE? SNNNNNAAAAAKKKKEEEE!

In short this film was an illustration of what can happen when you’ve actually taken the time to flush out characters over the course of a series of films and how they would all interact with one another, to then bring them to the point of destruction. We care about them, we’ve seen them develop into deeper, more believable characters. When it came to “picking a side” as the marketing would want us to, you actually can’t.

Both points of view about the limitations on superheros are perfectly valid and therefore you couldn’t dismiss either side as acting out for no reason. Whereas with Batman Vs Superman, what was the point of them fighting? Batman fearing what Superman could do, and Superman was because Lex Luthor had his mum for some reason.

Basically it’s not even worth doing a full on comparison as Captain America: Civil War just runs away with providing a wonderfully entertaining and fleshed out film which I suspect will be on people’s shelves and rewatched a lot more than the Warner Bros effort ever will.

Next up on for the never ending comic book films agenda is Fox and Marvel’s X-Men: Apocalypse and after that in August, DC’s Suicide Squad (under new management it seems). They’ve got a lot to live up to after this.