Cap­tain Amer­i­ca: Civ­il War

Let’s just assume for one short sec­ond that Cap­tain Amer­i­ca is sup­posed to rep­re­sent his name­sake – the good ol’ USA. What he does and the deci­sions he makes are hard­wired back to some ineluctable found­ing father ideals, ideals so rock­steady that even Hon­est Abe would be tip­ping his stovepipe in accordance.

In Antho­ny and Joe Russo’s Cap­tain Amer­i­ca: Civ­il War, our epony­mous hero for­goes sanc­tions that would see his ​“enhanced”, snap-talkin’, pain-bringin’ crew answer to some high­er pow­er. Com­ply­ing with leg­is­lat­ed pro­to­col would mean they wouldn’t be allowed to foil evil as and when they choose or bring peace to the world on their own timetable.

A major bun­gle dur­ing a rou­tine mis­sion in Lagos leaves gurn­ing, hock­ey-masked bad dudes stiff in a box, but there’s a fair amount of human col­lat­er­al dam­age too, which looks bad in the papers. This is a film about the mouse that roared. It’s about one of those ticked-off bystanders who wit­ness­es these rip­pling emis­saries of jus­tice doing their thing and thinks, ​‘This ain’t right.’

But maybe the death of inno­cents is mere polit­i­cal mar­tyr­dom – a nec­es­sary sac­ri­fice for the greater good. Can we do any­thing valu­able in this world with­out it hav­ing some kind of neg­a­tive fall­out? So yes, we’re right back to Super­hero 101 with this one – is vig­i­lan­tism a valid method of polic­ing? Should a wider sys­tem of ethics be in place? Should the ener­gies of these vig­i­lantes be guid­ed by the will of a demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed glob­al coali­tion? The big prob­lem at the end of it all is that every­one has a dif­fer­ent def­i­n­i­tion of ​“good”. Which is bad.

Instead of mither­ing and dither­ing, Cap­tain Amer­i­ca says a long and loud, ​“No!” For him, it’s all about doing what’s right for the peo­ple, so long as it’s what he decides is right for the peo­ple. Evil will be gauged by his own per­son­al met­ric, and he won’t be swayed by the deci­sions of oth­ers. This pre­vents him from becom­ing a weapon; the unfor­tu­nate fate of his war bud­dy and brain­washed Ruskie assas­sin, Bucky Barnes (Sebas­t­ian Stan). It’s not his fault he is able to do what he does. And it’s not his fault that he is phys­i­cal­ly unable to let tyran­ny go unpunished.

So here we have a super­hero who uses brute force to apply his iron will… hmm, sounds a lit­tle fishy to us. But isn’t this the endgame for every super­hero movie? Is it even pos­si­ble to have a super­hero film which isn’t implic­it­ly fascis­tic? The spoil­er-title tells you exact­ly which par­ty you should be backing.

Eth­i­cal­ly and polit­i­cal­ly, the film has a lot to answer for (unless you hap­pen to love total­i­tar­i­an­ism). But at least it stri­dent­ly endors­es some­thing and doesn’t just throw out a load of half-heart­ed hypo­thet­i­cals to give the illu­sion of depth. Cap­tain Amer­i­ca isn’t a fas­cist in the his­tor­i­cal sense, but he does dis­play cer­tain… ten­den­cies. It’s weird that no-one in the room is able to step up and tell him, ​‘Dude, I think what you’re espous­ing is, like, total­ly undemocratic.’

It’s also handy that Robert Downey Jr’s ​“hyper­ver­bal” Tony Stark doesn’t go there, as we might oth­er­wise nev­er have wit­nessed one of the most cogent and beau­ti­ful­ly chore­o­graphed fight sequences in the super­hero genre. That it occurs in the light, airy envi­rons of an East­ern Euro­pean land­ing strip on a crisp morn makes it all the more entic­ing and bal­let­ic. It’s like watch­ing a per­fect­ly matched game of foot­ball, with both teams on the offensive.

There are a lot of char­ac­ters, and many get their moment to shine. But not every­one is so lucky. Don Cheadle’s War Machine is the lame duck of the pack, beat­en to a sor­ry pulp at every moment where it real­ly mat­ters. Bucky has a big met­al arm in place of charis­ma, which is a shame. Cap is a hunk of seething self-right­eous­ness with an envi­able jaw­bone. Unlike Bat­man, he’s entire­ly com­fort­able with his creed of sav­age diplo­ma­cy, which actu­al­ly makes him come across as a psy­chopath. The female char­ac­ters (Scar­let Johansson’s Black Wid­ow and Eliz­a­beth Olsen’s Scar­let Witch) get a lit­tle time in the lime­light before being hasti­ly side­lined for the grand finale. Chad­wick Bose­man is intro­duced as Black Pan­ther, whose spe­cial pow­er is that he has lit­tle tiny nails to scratch you with. Extend­ed cameos from Spi­der-Man and Ant-Man are bun­dled in as inter-episode liveners.

In terms of char­ac­ter, dia­logue and sto­ry, this is same ol’, same ol’. Call­ing this ​“the best Mar­vel movie” is equiv­a­lent to pro­claim­ing ​“this is the best Dori­to I’ve ever tast­ed.” But the Rus­sos do make some wise deci­sions. Time is giv­en over to lengthy sequences in which char­ac­ters just talk. And they don’t talk direct­ly about the themes of the film, or what’s going to hap­pen in the next scene, but they sub­tly couch these ideas with­in semi-inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tions which have the per­fume of real­ism to them. Which is big.

The film is also con­tent with the fact that the exter­nal threat doesn’t have to be as big or as mean or as threat­en­ing as the inter­nal one. The ​“Civ­il War” nomen­cla­ture isn’t a sell out (pag­ing Bat­man V Super­man!) as the film explores a rift that can’t be instant­ly healed with the diver­sion of a com­mon foe. But what the film ends up being about isn’t a choice between democ­ra­cy and fas­cism, but between hav­ing Mar­vel movies and not hav­ing Mar­vel movies. If these char­ac­ters sud­den­ly accept that they should be ful­ly account­able for their actions, they are accept­ing that they no longer want to be super­heroes, but bureau­crats. Cap­tain Amer­i­ca isn’t fight­ing for free­dom – he’s fight­ing for the fran­chise. So #Vote­Cap.