“Sometimes I want to punch you in your perfect teeth.”

-Tony Stark to Steve Rogers

The Captain America: Civil War presentation at D23 this weekend seemed constructed to assuage all your concerns about the upcoming film about the First Avenger. Systematically, piece by piece, the footage reaffirmed that yes, Bucky is a central figure in this story, that yes, the gritty fighting style of The Winter Soldier is back (if slightly modified) and that yes, this is in fact Captain America’s story, even if he’s surrounded by a whole bunch of friends. The footage shown was absolutely thrilling, and it really makes Civil War look like the superhero movie to beat in 2016.

The Falcon stands atop a building overlooking what appears to be an African market. Redwing dismounts from his back - in this film it’s a drone, not a telepathic hawk. The drone flies down and swoops underneath a white van, scanning it. The vehicle is reinforced, the driver is armed. Falcon relays the info on comms to Captain America and The Black Widow, and the Widow realizes it’s a battering ram. The team leaps into action.

Falcon dives off the building, free-falling for stories before deploying his wings and soaring up. The Widow runs through the marketplace, swiftly and elegantly taking down two thugs at once. Cap gets to the van and finds Crossbones, scarred face hidden by a mask. Crossbones deploys these gauntlets that are clearly intended to pack an extra punch and he begins battling Cap, driving him up against a wall.

“This is for dropping a building on my face,” Crossbones says as a blade pops out of his gauntlet. He punches at Cap’s head but the Star-Spangled Avenger dodges, and the blade slams into the side of the building, getting lodged in. Cap hits Crossbones across several pressure points, knocking his hand right out of the gauntlet. The villain staggers and then pops another blade from the other gauntlet, but Cap is too quick and he nails him, sending Crossbones flying back ten feet.

As Cap approaches Crossbones to deliver the final blow the merc, mask removed and face revealed, looks up at our hero and delivers a devastating line of dialogue:

“He remembered you, you know — your pal, your buddy, your Bucky.”

And that was just before the Marvel Studios credit came on screen!

The rest of the footage was awesome, sketching the outline of the conflict. General Ross speaks to Cap, basically giving him the film’s premise:

“The world owes you an unpayable debt — a great many people see you as a hero, but there are some who prefer the word vigilante. People are afraid.”

Steve’s reply to this is great, and I think sums up what has been interesting about the Marvel Cinematic Universe so far:

“This job, you try to save as many as you can. Sometimes that doesn’t mean everyone.”

That really defines the stakes of superhero movies, something that Marvel has understood perfectly. No, Cap will not die in these movies (well, unless Civil War follows the comic story more closely than we expect), so the stakes are about how he can save others, and what the toll is on him when he perhaps cannot save everyone.

There was a lot of other footage - quick shots of a funeral with a Union Jack draped coffin (one guess who dies in this one), The Vision in a suit, Black Panther popping claws, Cap and his team (Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, Bucky, Ant-Man, The Falcon) running at the camera, and a quickie shot of Martin Freeman that I couldn’t quite process. But there were a couple of moments that stand out.

One is the quote at the beginning of this piece, a delightfully Tony Stark-ian reply to Cap. At another point Stark says

“We have no boundaries. We’re no better than the bad guys,”

which points to a strong grounding for his position, especially coming after an off-screen voice says

“What would you call a group of enhanced individuals who inflict their will anywhere they choose?”

This alleviates the worry that Stark will just seem like a bad guy, and everything I know indicates that the script goes out of its way to present both sides as equally as possible when one guy’s name is in the title of the film.

A scene that made the audience explode was a continuation of the Ant-Man post-credits scene. Steve asks Bucky if he remembers anything, and Buck says:

“Your mother’s name was Sara. You wore newspapers on your feet.”

It’s like they’re writing dialogue just for the shippers here.

Another great moment had best pals Hawkeye and Black Widow battling. “Are we still gonna be friends after this?” Widow asks, and Hawkeye replies, “Depends on how hard you hit me.” I really liked this because it illustrates the parameters of the fight - the tussling titans are coming at each other as friends forced to fight, not as enemies out for blood.

Finally the footage ended with the piece de resistance. Cap’s team is in a car park and Falcon opens the door of a van revealing their new ally: a sleeping Scott Lang. Scott wakes up and is first confused and then excited to see Captain America. “Oh my god, you’re Captain America!” he says, furiously pumping Steve’s hand in a prolonged shake. It cuts to a wide shot, they’re still shaking. “I’m shaking your hand too long, aren’t I?” Scott says.

Then he sees Scarlet Witch behind him. “Hey, I know you. You’re great too.” But he can’t keep his eyes off Cap, and then he does a total Agent Carter move and… touches his pecs!

Finally, Scott lets go and says, “You know a lot of super people, so thinks for thanking of me.”

The footage was, in my humble professional estimation, perfect. The action had the raw energy of Winter Soldier while feeling slightly enhanced, with a little more wire work. The fact that Bucky was front and center confirms that his arc will be important to the movie, not shoved aside. And the fact that Cap was the focus of every scene and every interaction lets us know that while he has a major guest cast, this is still his film.



May 2016, get here now.