Ranking Captain America: Civil War

Last night my son and I went to see Captain America: Civil War. Let's how this stacks up against other comic book movies I have reviewed.

I have previously ranked the Batman movies, the Superman movies, the other DC movies, the Avengers movies, the X-Men movies, the summer 2015 comic movies, the Spider-Man movies, the non-Marvel and non-DC comic movies, and the Man-Thing.

As ever, my ranking system is
Green=excellent  Blue=pretty good  Black=Okay  Red=avoid

This one was pretty good. Not as good as the first Captain America movie, maybe a little better than the second. I read a review that said it was a relief to have some smaller scale fights after the huge, city-spanning explosion fests of many recent super-hero movies. I'll go along with that. A lot of one-on-one or two-on-two hand-to-hand combat scenes. And in the movie's big set piece, a battle between two groups of superheroes on a runway at the airport in Berlin, there was no world-saving at stake. Just a well-choreographed, fairly clever fight between two groups with different goals.

Calling this a Captain America movie is a little bit of a misnomer. It does carry forward some of the themes of the second Cap movie, but it's really an Avengers flick. Iron Man has almost as much screen time as Cap, and most of the others show up as well, along with Avengers newcomers Spider-Man and Ant-Man, who bring much needed levity.

A fun movie, not great but quite watchable--at least for those who've been keeping up with all the Marvel films. I'm not sure how this would play for someone watching it cold. There are a lot of references to things that've happened in earlier films, a lot of baggage between characters that explain their motivations but aren't spelled out. So maybe not one I'd recommend for everyone, but only for viewers who like superheroes and have been keeping up with developments in the Marvel film universe.

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Here's the master list of all comics movies I've rated so far, in order from best to worst:

Crumb
American Splendor
Iron Man
Heavy Metal (1981)
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
Avengers
Superman (1978)
Captain America
Batman Begins (2005)
Captain America: Civil War
Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier
Spider-Man (2002)
X-Men 2: X-Men United
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Superman II
Batman (1989)
Ant-Man
The Dark Knight (2008)
Iron Man 3
The Wolverine
Sin City (2005)
X-Men: First Class
X-Men
Avengers 2: Age of Ultron
Swamp Thing (1982)
Spider-Man 3
Iron Man 2
Watchmen (2009)
Batman Forever (1995)
Superman Returns (2006)
Thor 2: The Dark World
Incredible Hulk (2008)
Mystery Men
Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Man-Thing (2005)
Superman III
Supergirl (1984)
Thor
X-Men 3: Last Stand
Hulk (2003)
Fritz the Cat (1972)
Batman and Robin (1997)
Batman Returns (1992)
Superman IV

Amazing Spider-Man (2012) (Haven't seen)
Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) (Haven't seen)
Batman (1966) (Haven't seen)
Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (Haven't seen)
Catwoman (Haven't seen)
Constantine (Haven't seen)
Deadpool (Haven't seen)
Green Lantern (Haven't seen)
Hellboy (Haven't seen)
Judge Dredd (Haven't seen)
Man of Steel (Haven't seen)
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014) (Haven't seen)
V for Vendetta (Haven't seen)
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Haven't seen)