Earlier this week I posted the initial reactions from those who saw a screening of Captain America: Civil War. They were overwhelmingly positive, but brief since Disney/Marvel still had a review embargo preventing anyone from talking about the film. Now the embargo has been lifted and you can check out comments from some top sites below. Captain America: Civil War arrives in US theaters May 6, 2016.
“The shaming of “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” will continue apace — or better still, be forgotten entirely — in the wake of “Captain America: Civil War,” a decisively superior hero-vs.-hero extravaganza that also ranks as the most mature and substantive picture to have yet emerged from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Very much an “Avengers” movie in scope and ambition if not title (the conspicuous absence of Thor and Hulk notwithstanding), this chronicle of an epic clash between two equally noble factions, led by Captain America and Iron Man, proves as remarkable for its dramatic coherence and thematic unity as for its dizzyingly inventive action sequences; viewers who have grown weary of seeing cities blow up ad nauseam will scarcely believe their luck at the relative restraint and ingenuity on display.”
“Corporate filmmaking with an enormous economic investment at stake has the power to force creative people to operate within the art-destroying prison walls of a marketing strategy. But the Marvel Cinematic Universe, an empire building itself on a foundation that roughly amounts to a house style, tends to stay relatively on balance. Screenwriting team Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (responsible for the previous two “Captain America” films) efficiently move plot blocks into place and check off interlocking points of order, but they do so while never forgetting that their characters are more than brands to build.”
“Who needs a villain when you have Steve and Tony? Both protagonists. Both antagonists. And drawing other power-people to their cause in surprising ways. The clashes go far beyond the set-up squabbles of Avengers Assemble. Or even that other big 2016 superhero showdown. Forget Batman v Superman. Here you get Ant-Man v Spider-Man, Hawkeye v Black Widow, Scarlet Witch v Vision, The Winter Soldier v Black Panther and (well, duh)Captain America v Iron Man, all rolled into one. And that is what you call the ultimate Marvel superhero event.”
“Captain America: Civil War marks a watershed moment in the vaunted annals of comic book cinema: finally, a big budget superhero sequel that manages to be both effortlessly entertaining and utterly sobering, instead of just one of those things—or, as we’ve endured too frequently in the past, neither of them. (Looking at you, Batman v Superman.) You might argue that other films that have come before Marvel’s Captain America threequel have achieved such equilibrium, but let’s be real, you’d be lying to yourself. Not even Disney’s Marvel machine has yet been able to shake off formula or self-seriousness in service of spandexed superhero franchising.”
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