Captain America: Civil War

- what's wrong with this picture? ;)

This week's movie rental was Captain America: Civil War ,,,

a 2016 American superhero film featuring the Marvel Comics character Captain America .... and features an ensemble cast, including Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackie, Don Cheadle, Jeremy Renner, Chadwick Boseman, Paul Bettany, Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Rudd, Emily VanCamp, Tom Holland, Frank Grillo, William Hurt, and Daniel Brühl. In Captain America: Civil War, disagreement over international oversight of the Avengers fractures them into opposing factions—one led by Steve Rogers and the other by Tony Stark.

The basic plot has some similarities with the recent Batman v Superman movie in that they both touch on accountability for super-beings ... what about all the collateral damage to innocent bystanders and to property inevitably caused when the Avengers are saving the world from bad guys? The solution proposed by the US Secretary of State (William Hurt) is the Sokovia Accords, which will have the UN decide if and when the Avengers are deployed to meet threats. Tony Stark/Iron Man wants the Avengers to sign the Accords, but Steve Rogers/Captain America is against it, and the other Avengers take sides. Things get much worse when a conference in Vienna where the Accords are to be signed is attacked, apparently by Captain America's missing and brain-washed friend, the Winter Soldier (see Captain America: The Winter Soldier).

What ensues is complicated, but basically, the Avengers split up and fight against each other. Several new characters get added to the team on both sides. One of them is the Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) ...



And Steve Rogers/Captain America recruits Ant-Man/Scott Lang. Now I guess I finally have to watch the Ant-Man movies after all :). But anyway, here's a clip of him in Civil War ...



And then there's Spider-Man. Tony Stark/Iron Man recruits him in a pretty funny scene which they won't let me embed, and it was hard to find a good clip showing him in the film - I guess they wanted to keep the Spidey suspense alive until after the movie debuted, but you can catch glimpses of him (and Ant-Man too) in this featurette ...



The movie got good reviews. Here are a few of them ... Captain America: Civil War is Marvel's best film so far ... ‘Captain America: Civil War’ review: Choose your own avenger ... Review: In ‘Captain America: Civil War,’ Super-Bro Against Super-Bro

I really liked the film myself - I'm completely addicted now and have been since I was a little kid to all things Marvel - so I do recommend it. And while there's humor and lots of action in the movie, it also raises some serious questions too, questions I wonder how I would answer ... will you let grief at the loss of loved ones change you for better or worse ... will you honor friendship even at a cost to yourself ... will you give your moral agency over to an organization or will you be personally responsible for your ethical choices.