MIT Lecture Series Committee

November 4 & 5, 2016

Rated PG-13
147 minutes

view trailer

format: digital

Captain America: Civil War (2016)

In this superhero epic, the denizens of the Marvel Universe are forced to pick sides when Captain America (Chris Evans) and Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) come to blows over ideological differences. After a mission involving a new Avengers squad led by Cap ends with several civilian casualties in Lagos, the team are asked to sign an agreement that would force them to take orders from a United Nations panel. Tony Stark (aka Iron Man) pressures Cap to accept this new arrangement, in part because he feels deeply guilty about his own past recklessness; Captain America, however, fears that the Avengers will only be corrupted by bureaucracy. Their disagreement eventually escalates into all-out war when Cap's old friend Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), now a brainwashed assassin known as the Winter Soldier, reenters the picture. Captain America: Civil War brings back former Avengers characters such as Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), War Machine (Don Cheadle), Falcon (Anthony Mackie), and Vision (Paul Bettany); it also drags into the fray low-rent superhero Ant-Man (Paul Rudd), and introduces both the powerful African prince Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) and a new, younger incarnation of Spider-Man (Tom Holland). Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo. [www.allmovie.com]

As they did in Winter Soldier, the Russos have achieved an uncommon balance of plot and action, humor and drama, all of it once again deeply grounded in character.
      -- Christopher Orr, The Atlantic. Read this review.