Will "Captain America: Civil War" Live Up to Expectations?

Written by Scotty

I am not going to lie, but I am concerned about what is going to happen in the upcoming Captain America: Civil War movie.  Now, it may be too early to voice what my worries are, since Age of Ultron has yet to hit the big screen, but there are several things that might not make this story as special as I have been hoping for.  Here is what is bothering me with the upcoming movie.

First, this is movie is going to be under the Captain America banner.  Now, I will admit, I do enjoy the Captain America movies and I believe that The Winter Solider is the best Marvel movie to date, but there is so much more going on in the Civil War story than just Cap and what he is fighting against.  With all of the characters that are going to need to be introduced into this story, there will not be the proper time to give Cap his dues, much less everyone else that will be involved in the battle and no offense to Chris Evans, but whenever Robert Downey Jr. is on the screen as Tony Stark, all attention is pulled to him.

In fact one of my other concerns character wise is that if they do stay true to the comics and bring many of them into the the fold is that we may lose sight of what Steve Rodgers is fighting for. One of the other things that I worry about is that everyone that thinks differently than Cap is deemed a bad guy in the movies.  Is this right?  Do you want to have some of your favorite superheroes become hated because of the way they think about a new law that comes into effect?  I hope not, and this is something that will have to be looked at very closely by the studio before they make some of your favorite heroes into villains in the Marvel universe.  

There are going to have to be more than the six Avengers in this movie to make it work and I know we will get a couple new heroes added into the mix after Age of Ultron, but will that truly be enough to make the story work? In the books, the team that works with the government and S.H.I.E.L.D. has to hunt down superheroes all over the country, but in all of the stories leading up to this, there are very few that are on the radar.  And once you introduce a new character, don’t you want to have them get a little bit of a back story so the audience will decide if they want to like or hate them?  This cannot happen in a Captain America movie since it will be pulling all of the attention away from the primary character.  I fear that we will meet several new characters for one brief moment in time and have to forget about them in the end since there will not be time to form any bonds with them in the allotted time of the movie.

Next, secret identities.  There are none in the current Marvel universe.  Everyone knows who the Captain is, who Iron Man is, all of New York knows who the Hulk is and so on.  There has been an outcry to get Spiderman into this movie and I know there are still talks about adding him into the story, however, do you really need him now?  Since the world knows who their heroes are, this part of the story and Spiderman’s importance has pretty much been shot out the window.  In the books, Spiderman is the first masked hero to stand along with S.H.I.E.L.D. and has to be won back over by those who do not want to comply with the new government regulations.  Now, since there are next to no secret identities, this part of the story line is dead and we don’t need to web slinger to be one of the most important characters. 

I can see the story playing out a bit differently than what happened in the books, with more of a registration type of program and the heroes being trained how to do their jobs right, but I don’t know if this will be powerful enough with the few heroes we know to make it an epic story.  I have long hoped to see this movie come to the big screen, but I am genuinely concerned about what will happen with it being under the Captain America banner, when there is so much more story to tell than what he stands for.  Once again, I am a Captain fan and will not take anything away from the films to date, I just believe that it is the wrong way to introduce one of the largest battles in the Marvel universe that will have hero vs. hero.  I hope that I am wrong with my concerns about this, but I have the highest expectations for this movie and if something is not done right, it will be disastrous for me.

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