Captain America shouldn't really work as a character. Conventional wisdom holds that such a hokey, idealistic hero shouldn't play well in the 21st century—we're edgier than that, aren't we? Too savvy about the way the world works to have a character whose boiled-down description is basically Grandpa But Hot appeal to us?

So the notion that Captain America movies stand as the high-water mark of the Marvel Cinematic Universe seems, quite honestly, very weird. But with Captain America: Civil War now upon us, it's clear: Cap movies are the best thing Marvel does.

Captain America: Civil War Focuses on the Best Love Story in the Marvel Universe The Marvel Cinematic Universe is pretty bad at romance—except when it comes to these two bros.

The decision to make the very first Captain America film a period piece was Marvel Studios' first true masterstroke after Samuel L. Jackson's game-changing post-credits scene in the first Iron Man. Not only did it boast the most memorable supporting cast of Marvel's first wave of films (and have a pitch-perfect director in Joe Johnston, director of another period superhero film, The Rocketeer), but Captain America allowed audiences to see the 1940s backstory of Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes for themselves. Yes, Captain America's origin story as a one-of-a-kind World War II supersoldier preserved in ice is patently ridiculous, but the fact that it later makes him an old man in a young man's body, in a present-day world, works in his favor: When Cap is reanimated in the present day in The Winter Soldier, his character and ideology arrive fully formed as a stark contrast to the current global climate.

It's in The Winter Soldier that the Cap films really push past their peers in storytelling ambition, using the inherently political nature of their protagonist and the language of ’70s paranoid thrillers to offer a commentary on the post-9/11 surveillance state. Granted, it's not the most nuanced commentary, but it offers an ever-present, relevant substance to the spectacle onscreen, and it works because the spectacle it's paired with is so well-orchestrated. The Winter Soldier is the best action movie Marvel has made to date, primarily because it uses its action as a storytelling device: You see Cap and the eponymous Winter Soldier's relationship change and evolve through the film's wonderfully choreographed fights. The action means something. (Civil War's action is also among the best Marvel has done, but it also includes a plethora of superpeople, which puts it in a different category from Winter Soldier's more grounded fights.)

He's just as much of a lens as a character; he's the only figure in the Marvel Universe who raises these sorts of questions just by being present.

What's more, the Cap movies do all this while flaunting aspects of Cap that shouldn't work. Exhibit A: He wears the American flag as a uniform, which makes him both the most gaudily dressed Marvel hero and also the biggest liability in the increasingly important foreign box office.

His identity, meanwhile, is just as garish as his outfit. In the comics and movies, he's a stalwart embodiment of Greatest Generation ideals, which led Americans to believe themselves to be inherently and unquestionably good, an illusion maintained by the fact that it was a nation at war with people who were unquestionably bad. He also upholds what's now regarded as an old-fashioned and unrealistic morality, which holds that there's always a right thing to do and a wrong one. That Captain America embodies all of these things in the form of Steve Rogers—presenting a blonde-haired, blue-eyed white guy as the Ultimate Ideal American Man—is probably the most culturally fraught bit of all, given that's kind of the whole Aryan übermensch thing the Nazis pushed, not to mention a wholly inaccurate representation of what America looks like today. That's a thing cultural critics like to call "problematic."

But part of the reason these movies land so well is that Captain America himself is a man out of time. It allows storytellers to raise all manner of interesting questions about who we were and who we are, and the ways our perception of ourselves clash with the reality of how we're perceived. In that way, he's just as much of a lens as he is a character; he's the only figure in the Marvel Universe who raises these sorts of questions just by being present. Of course, if a character relies so much on context, said context needs to be good, and substantial enough to offset the more troublesome, chest-thumping oo-rah homeland cheerleading the character could easily be used for.

It's often said that the best comic-book heroes have the best villains. Captain America has become a blockbuster counterpoint to that notion, positing that the best heroes are the ones who ask the best questions. There are ways that we have changed, and there are ways that we have not—were they all for the better? Can we recognize our former ideals in our actions today? Do we care enough to fight for them? Are we willing to do it for those who can't?

There's a reason the guy fights with a shield.