Captain America : Civil War

America – fuck yeah! Captain America, to be precise. Before Marvel studios ‘kerpowed’ the movie world, comic book dwelling Captain America was, to me, the most “meh” character. He was just too goody-two-shoes to be cool, and his powers seemed too standard to be truly impressive. However, his emergence into the Marvel cinematic universe was a surprising amount of fun, and by the bitter sweet end, as he was freezing to (un)certain death, I was warming to the character of Nazi-bothering wimp-to-pimp Captain Steve Rogers.

Then came Avengers: Assemble, where the good captain held his own in a movie full of Norse gods, metal millionaires and post-cold war super-spies by channelling the mixed bag of muscle, ego and special powers into an effective fighting unit. This was followed by the very good Captain America: Winter Soldier, which was an original blend of superhero movie and conspiracy thriller that didn’t rely on the Deus Ex Machina of other, more heavily powered, caped crusaders, and then the slightly tepid Age of Ultron, in which Cap and the gang beat the titular robo-baddie, but accidentally ripped the country of Sokovia a new arsehole at the same time.

 Well, Civil War follows on from this, with ‘the government’ proper pissed off over the collateral damage caused, and determined to control hero activity from now on – boo, right? Well Captain America thinks so, but Iron Man is all for it, and as the stakes rise, their convictions strengthen. Of course, they don’t sit down and talk it out – hell no. They fight. On cars, bridges, rooftops… basically, if there’s enough room to throw a shield, someone’s there having a punch-up. And when I say ‘someone’, you can add Black Panther and a now Sony free Spiderman to the roster. Nice.