The Baked Frog

So it’s been a while since I’ve written a movie review. I comeback to it now not because of a specific movie but because I want something else to do. 

I read the first 10 or so Marvel Civil War comic books, so I was cautiously optimistic about the movie. The scope of the comic book story line is so huge there was no way that they would’ve been able to recreate the story line exactly. There were way to many characters in the comic book version for Marvel and Disney to include in the movie. Despite how different the details of the two story lines are, I think that the Russo Brothers did a great job. 

In the comic book the Civil War starts when a new group of superheroes tries to take down a group of extremely volatile villains. The resulting, short, battle creates a huge incident that polarises not only the civilian population but the enhanced human population as well. The screenwriters obviously went in a different direction and considering the previous Avengers movies the cannon works really well. 

This story line, regardless of medium, makes you choose between Captain America’s or Iron Man’s opinions. The great thing about this story line is you would expect Cap’ to follow the government and Iron Man to rebel, but the writers were able to reverse those roles. Captain America has very little trust in the government and Iron Man eschews his rebel persona for a damaged, almost broken one. Despite his personal battle with mortality and self confidence, he still manages to annoy the Secretary of State a few times. 

I won’t go much further into the plot, I’d like to look at the choice of heroes they have joining these teams. On Captain America’s team you have Falcon, Winter Soldier, Hawk-eye, Ant-Man & Scarlet Witch. Facing up against them you have Iron Man, Black Widow, War Machine, Vision and introducing Black Panther and the new Spiderman. So the two new super heroes are, in my opinion, are fantastic. Chadwick Boseman plays T’Challa / Black Panther and is fantastic. I was especially impressed with his Wakandan accent, using the clicks from Swahili. Don’t get me started on the suit, I don’t know how it works but I love it. It was so hardcore watching him look at helicopter shooting him and him not giving a single funk. Now Spiderman, this latest version of the webbed warrior is played by Tom Holland. Who has been almost completely unknown until now. I just learnt he is actually English which just makes me more impressed. A lot of British actor end up playing other nationalities and Holland did a fantastic job as Spidey, and Peter Parker. So the best part of Spidey’s appearance is the big group fight. I really enjoyed the flow of the fight, Spiderman enters and catches Cap’s team by surprise with some new moves, he even gets Cap on the back foot. As the fight continues Cap learns and uses Spiderman’s tech against him. You really get a sense that he has only been Spiderman for 6 months. 

I’m going to mention 1 more character who stood out for me, that was Zemo. I didn’t know much about the character because I prefer DC lore to Marvel lore but they went in an interesting direction with this Zemo. This is one of the characters that is completely different to the comics. In the comic book version of Civil War, Baron Zemo, is already established as a villain of the Avengers but is moved to help the side of the government in the book story line. I think I like how they changed the character for the movie, to fit in with Sokovia and the previous films. I think they decided against some of the more bizarre costume choices from the comic book, a purple sock on your head isn’t exactly fear inducing.