Not long ago I ranked the Comic Book Movies of 2016 (so far). Captain America: Civil War was 3rd on the list behind Deadpool and X-Men: Apocalypse and followed by Suicide Squad and finally Batman v. Superman.
After watching the Blu-Ray, the ranking remains the same.
This latest viewing was to not only see if my feelings remained the same, but also to check out the special features. As a movie/comic book fan, Blu-Ray and DVD special features always intrigue me. Most of the time they're not that great, but occasionally we'll get some really cool Behind the Scenes Docs or awesome deleted scenes, or a super hilarious gag reel.
My favorite special features are off of the Bonus Disc in my Indiana Jones Box Set, there's a "Making Of..." Documentary for all 3 movies (I refuse to own Kingdom of the Crystal Skull). As a huge Indy fan, I found these to be a lot of fun and very interesting. Another great movie with incredible special features is the JAWS 30th Anniversary DVD (now on Blu-Ray too, I think) which also has a great "Making Of..." Doc, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (from the Criterion Collection) because of the Commentary with Hunter S. Thompson.
Captain America: Civil War has some good special features, not great, but good. First of all you have the featurettes: The Making Of... doc is in 2 parts, which is great because the movie makers talk about Captain America and his solo story in one part, and then talk about the supporting heroes and villain in the other part. Then there's a "Road To Civil War: Captain America" and "Road to Civil War: Iron Man" which details both sides of the issue in seperate segments. This offers a nice comparison for each character's point of view. To finish out the featurettes, there's an exclusive sneak peek at Doctor Strange!
The other features include a number of deleted and extended scenes. They're not that great, just scenes that make you understand why they were cut. The gag reel is fun, but I think the movie itself was funnier. What I was most disapointed with was the commentary tracks. As interested as I am in the Russo Brothers and the screenwriters, I would have liked to have heard from Marvel Studios' President Kevin Feige or some of the actors as well. But whatever, no big deal.
As for the movie itself, I no longer feel like it was the best Marvel movie yet. Guardians of the Galaxy remains my favorite (and arguably the best) and Captain America: The Winter Solider is still probably the most well made Marvel movie. This movie was really good though! However, there are several similarities to Batman v. Superman.
For one thing, the story structure is almost identical. The villain has a very complex plan that relies heavily on the public's perception of super heroes. He uses that perception to manipulate two major heroes that have really no reason to fight each other into fighting each other. The differences between the two movies is what makes Civil War the better flick. Civil War is brighter, has a sense of humor, but also has some things that scares us in the real world. Whereas Batman v. Superman was dark and gloomy with little to no humor and went to the extreme in finding things from the real world to scare us. I don't know about anyone else, but I like to see a movie to not think about real world problems. I also felt like the Marvel heroes were much closer to the source material than either Batman or Superman. Now, I really did LOVE Ben Affleck's Batman, it was the best part of the movie, but they made some creative changes to his character that really took me out of the movie. Like how Batman just fucking KILLED EVERYBODY! Also worth noting when comparing the two movies is that Civil War's action scenes are ALL awesome, especially the BIG scene at the airport. While Batman v. Superman, a movie that started promoting a FIGHT between the 2 most well known super heroes of all time 3 years before it's release, builds to a mediocre fight that lasts less than 8 minutes on the screen and ends with the worst bit of character development/stupid plot twist that I have ever seen on screen.
But I digress. Another thing about Civil War, nobody dies in a movie called CIVIL WAR! But that's also a problem the MCU is having. The stakes don't feel like they're high enough, especially in Civil War. Black Widow and Hawkeye sum it up perfectly when they say to each other, while fighting,
Widow: Are we still friends?
Hawkeye: Depends on how hard you hit me.
Now, I understand that good guys don't fight to kill other good guys. If they did, then they wouldn't be good guys anymore, but this movie would have been SO MUCH better if War Machine died just before the 3rd act. It would have made everything about the rest of the movie much more dramatic. It would have kept people guessing about how it would end, maybe even thinking someone else might die. And does anyone really care about War Machine? I wonder if anyone will die in a Marvel movie? Batman v. Superman wasn't any better for it's death scene. I mean, aside from totally seeing it coming, and also that I'm pretty certain everyone knows that Superman wasn't going to stay dead. Right? I mean, I was a bit surprised that they did "kill" him, but did anyone really think that was it for him? It's the 2nd movie in the brand new DC Extended Universe, why in the hell would you kill off your biggest hero?! Of course he's coming back! If you were actually surprised to see that teaser shot at the end of the movie well than shame on you! Haha just kidding...but not really.
Final thoughts: I really did enjoy Captain America: Civil War. It was fun and exciting and introduced us to 3 great Marvel heroes that I really can't wait to see in their own movies: Black Panther, Spider-Man, and Giant Man (I know, he's actually Ant-Man and he already had his own movie, but he's getting a sequel). Black Panther is a really awesome character and his movie will kick ass! Spider-Man is who I'm most excited to see in a solo movie. The last (oof) FIVE movies were made by Sony and even though I think Spider-Man 2 is the best CBM of all time, I can't wait for Marvel Studios to show us their Spidey! He's my 2nd favorite super hero of all time, and I can't wait to see him in the MCU!
Thanks for reading, come back tomorrow for peek at what Jimmy and I are going to be doing at NY Comic Con! Thursday will be another WHAT WOULD BATMAN DO? and Friday will be, of course, FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS! Stick around, interweb-slingers, got some good shit coming out soon!
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