Before Anthony and Joe Russo were directing superhero movies, they worked on a little show called *Community*. The series, oddly enough, had some common ground with The Avengers. Both were about seven people from different backgrounds who came in with their own damage, bounced off one another in interesting ways, but would, now and then, come together to do amazing things.
But one of the most remarkable things about the was its mastery of tone. The series was pitched as a comedy, and true to that billing, it was a damn funny show. And yet it could just as easily shift into something quiet and personal, something unremittingly dark, or something complex and difficult without the easy answers that are seemingly required on a network sitcom.
So when watching *Captain America: Civil War*, I couldn’t help but see how the Russos had brought that amazing ability to balance different characters and tones and translated it onto a much bigger stage without missing a beat.
Because Civil War is hilarious. It is action-packed and all kinds of fun. It’s full of impressive moments and inventive sequences and fights big and small that are filled with feeling and imagination. And at the same time it is, in its own way, a very dark film. It touches on big ideas like moral responsibility and guilt and the dangers of unchained power, but grounds them in characters, and individual moment, and personal relationships. It is a smorgasbord of moods and stories that makes you laugh, makes you gasp, and make you feel the tragedy of a given moment, without letting it clash. And that is one hell of an achievement.
That achievement is all the more impressive given how many moving parts there were to this clockwork behemoth of a film. *Civil War* features no fewer than twelve heroes, three major villains, and a bevy of supporting characters, and nearly all them get a moment in the sun. Nevermind the fact that on top of all of this, the film had to introduce two new characters slated to get their own films -- one of whom was under the radar for most non-comic book fans, and another who was laden with the expectations that come from being a household name with two prior uneven franchises under his belt.
But Black Panther was far from a third wheel amid the super-powered clash at the top of the card, and his motivations and outsider status with The Avengers gave him a unique role to play in the narrative, an important arc in the film. Spider-Man, for his part, had the kind of chummy-if-overwhelmed vibe with Tony Stark that you’d hope for, and proved himself an enjoyably free spirit in the big battle. And everyone else in the film, from Ant-Man’s show-stealing humor, to Vision and Scarlet Witch’s endearing connection, to Rhodey’s loss, had an important part to play, without anyone getting lost in the shuffle.
That balance is made all the more difficult by how much oxygen Captain America and Iron Man take up at the top of the card. There is a history between the two characters. They have never seen eye-to-eye, and the films in the MCU have never shied away from that, even as they’ve brought the two of them together for their shared struggles. And again, *Civil War* does well by using the disagreements and difference between these two men as symbols for a larger debate, for bigger issues between them, while never detracting from the personal side of their beef.
To be frank, it took some work to convince me that Tony Stark would be in favor of the Sokovia Accords, which put The Avengers under the supervision of a U.N. Committee. And yet, the film shows Tony’s interaction with a woman whose son perished in the rubble of Sokovia. He’s seen the collateral damage of their actions and he’s feeling the guilt of it. The film does well to couch Stark’s position in terms of his weapons dealing -- he made his living in an industry where his seemingly harmless actions were leading to innocent people being hurt and killed, and he realized he had to do something. For Tony, this is no different. He’s worried about the collateral damage from their actions.
Steve Rogers, for his part, is understandably much less trusting of government supervision. He’s the one who blanched at the discovery that Shield was using Hydra technology to create weapons; he’s the one who saw Hydra take over the organization he worked for from the inside, and use good people to ill-ends, and he’s the one who’s seen his best friend brainwashed and used as a weapon for geopolitical conflict when the higher ups felt it necessary.
At the same time, he’s also concerned about there being a need that he can’t respond to because of red tape. He’s worried that innocent people will suffer, that people who need saving won’t be saved, because the people who try to do right will be too hamstrung by procedure and approval while the good people suffer. He’s worried about the collateral damage from their inaction.
But these are not simply grand philosophical difference between the two of them. *Civil War* ties it into their unique psychological baggage, which comes to a head in a confrontation between the two of them in the second act of the film. Tony has lost the people in his life that matter to him -- Pepper and his parents, and their absence casts a major shadow over his part of the film. This fight, this struggle, has kept him from the parts of his life that made it all worth it for him, that gave him his Batman-like need to protect them, to create a world where no one would have to suffer that kind of loss.
But Steve, despite his status as a man out of town, found his family. The Avengers, new and old, gave him a place where he felt like he belonged, people who had fought alongside him like the Howling Commandos once had, and became his brothers and sisters in arms. Steve is *this* close to signing the accords until he finds out that because of them, Tony has Wanda Maximoff under what amounts to house arrest. That’s a bridge too far for Captain America. He isn’t worried about getting people back; he’s worried about outside forces taking them away.
So there is a schism, caused by Secretary (nee General) Ross from above, and Zemo from below. The former is the liaison of the Sokovia accords, who attempts to maneuver his way into corralling more superheroes after his run-ins Hulk, and the latter is a man who lost his family thanks to The Avengers, and is determined to use any means necessary to tear them apart, to have their empire crumble from within. And in the middle of that schism is Black Widow, who’s pragmatic enough to know that Tony’s right in the logistics of it all--that they’ll get a better deal agreeing to conditions than having them forced on the group, but sympathetic enough to understand why Steve can’t get on board, what his connection to her and this group means, and the threat posed by anything with the ability to forcibly sever it.
And then there’s Bucky. While Black Widow is a tie that brings Captain America and Iron Man together, The Winter Soldier is a wedge that drives them apart. When Steve sees Bucky, he sees his childhood friend, the one who knows his mother’s name and, with the death of Peggy Carter, is his last real tie to the life he used to live and the man he used to be. He sees family, and connection.
But when Stark sees him, he sees, by dint of Zemo’s machinations, the man who killed his parents, who took away his last chance to tell his father that he loved him, who, brainwashing or no brainwashing, snuffed out a light that Tony needed desperately in times like these. He sees the end of family, and the severing of a connection he will never be able to get back.
That’s what makes *Civil War* so powerful. In a genre of escalating bombast, it brings the conflict back to the small and personal. The film’s opening action scene gives a moment in the spotlight to each of the new Avengers; the subsequent chases and rumbles featuring The Winter Soldier are a visual treat, and it all culminates in an internecine conflict among the heroes that stands as one of the most creative, entertaining, and thrilling action set pieces since the Battle of New York in the first Avengers film.
But instead of that continued escalation, the film narrows its focus after that. The climax of the film comes from a personal reveal -- not only that Bucky was the Starks’ assassin, but that Steve knew and had the gist of it, if not the specifics, but never said a word. A film with so many characters and themes and stories comes down to a conflict between three people. That is the heart of the film -- a dispute, a wedge, that is as personal as it is philosophical, that is as meaningful because of the characters as we’ve watched them grow and develop as because of the fact that it’s two icons locked in combat with one another.
And that too, was one of *Community*’s strengths. For as outrageous and absurd and cartoony as the show could get, at its best, it drew all that weirdness and humor and conflict back down to the simple, emotional, and human. Tony Stark is still quick with a witty, sarcastic remark. Steve Rogers can still take a beating and deliver one in return. And their conflict is the culmination of more than that, of difference of opinion, of lifestyle, of their place in life and their place in relation to one another, with their team and their family.
As grandiose and ambitious and multi-faceted a film and narrative as *Civil War* presents, at its core, it’s a story about two people who care about each other breaking away, about the elements of their relationships and their histories and psyches that drives them to do it, and the extraordinarily human reasons that both pull them back together and tear them apart. These are the kinds of themes the Russos brought with them from their old gig, and they make *Civil War* more than just the flash and excitement of the good guys coming to blows; it’s a film that crystallizes from the connections between its characters, between the emotions and experiences that drive them, between the humanity, humor, and heart that drives the Marvel Cinematic Universe and produced what may be its greatest film to date.
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