Movie - Captain America: Civil War

Note:  There may be minor spoilers, but I will try to limit them to only what is necessary.

     Captain America: Civil War is the third Captain America movie, and obviously another huge Marvel tentpole movie to start off the summer season, which has become a yearly event.  There has been so much build to the movie, and a relentless marketing campaign, and as usual, Marvel doesn't disappoint.  The movie is everything that it bills itself to be, and is what we have come to expect from a Marvel movie, but that would end up being my biggest complaint about the movie as well.  Marvel has gotten into a rhythm, and while that rhythm certainly pays the bills plus some, it also makes things predictable and doesn't allow the movie to be different enough to differentiate itself from all the other Marvel movies released in the last few years.
     The premise of the film is that the Avengers have been going around causing a lot of damage and causing a lot of innocent people to die as they attempt to stop the bad guys.  Never mind the fact that they have saved the world on more occasions to count, the focus has now turned to all the recklessness and collateral damage that is being caused.  And so, the government wants to put something in place, called the Sokovia Accords, that will put oversight in place to make sure that the Avengers are not overstepping their boundaries, and putting a system in place to dictate when and where they are allowed to operate.  Tony and several of the others think this is a good idea, while Steve and the rest of the group think it's a bad idea.  This sets up the inevitable fight between the two sides for later in the movie, which has been the major focus of the marketing campaign.
     Meanwhile, as a meeting is set up to have all the different countries sign the accords, there is an attack which kills several world leaders, including the new character Black Panther's father, and the attack is blamed on Bucky, aka the Winter Soldier.  Captain America decides that he should be the one to bring Bucky in, and so he goes rogue now that the accords have been signed so that he can bring Bucky in alive and can get the answers he has been seeking since the last Captain America movie.
     And so the rest of the movie plays out pretty much how you think it will play out from there, as we get a "bad guy" that is running the show from behind the scenes and we spend most of the movie trying to figure out why he is doing it.  I won't ruin the answer to that scenario, as it is a very pivotal moment not only in this movie, but in the whole Marvel Cinematic Universe, and it should be experienced as it is laid out instead of being ruined by me in a review.  I say "bad guy" above because Marvel has become known for having some of the most terrible enemies in their movies, and this one really takes the cake.  Once again, not to ruin anything, when we finally get the answers, it just feels kind of cheap and is only just a reason to justify the rest of the movie instead of being something that lives up to the "super" in superhero movie.
     But other than that, the new characters that are brought in are well done, of which the obvious highlight is Spider-Man.  However, I felt just as strongly about Black Panther as I did about Spider-Man, so I thought that both of them really brought something new and different to the movie, and that was a good thing.  I definitely worried about how they were going to handle Spider-Man, but I can honestly say that they did the character right, and it even makes me look forward to the reboot that is in the works.
     The big showdown between the two sides is well done, the acting by the ever growing cast is strong as always, and the storyline is solid, if even a bit uninspired.  That is a win in my book.  I wouldn't go so far as to say this is in the top three Marvel movies that have been made, but it definitely fits in around the middle of the pack, and probably on the higher end of the middle ground as opposed to the lower end.  When the movie went off, I felt like there should have maybe been a little more, but I may have just been setting my expectations too high.  Or maybe I just thought that Marvel would try to amp it up a little bit and give something truly exciting and maybe even a little bit controversial, but in the end they stuck to the same formula that has been working for the last eight years or so.  I guess if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

My rating for the movie is 8/10