Captain America: Civil War

What is the best way to deploy vastly superior abilities against less capable but nevertheless still very dangerous bad guys? How best to minimize collateral damage when those vastly superior abilities are put to their use? What happens when people of good conscience disagree over the answers to these questions?

There’s a recent movie that Captain America: Civil War feels a helluva lot like, and it’s not Batman v Superman. It’s Eye in the Sky, the drama thriller about drone warfare. The philosophies of both films go way beyond the mantra of “With great power comes great responsibility;” they take that as a given then explore what, precisely, that responsibility means and how it gets expressed.

The world has had enough of the destruction the Avengers left in their wake in the series to this point, no matter how well intentioned, and the U.N. proposes that they come under the umbrella of an international oversight panel that will decide where they go and what they do. But the gang cannot all agree to these limitations, with the two factions aligning behind either Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), aka Iron Man, who believes they need some reining in – I like to think this is because he’s still feeling guilty over how he became an accidental mad-scientist villain in Ultron – or Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), aka Captain America, who doesn’t want to hand over his autonomy, probably because he hasn’t had the best experiences as a tool of politicians. (His early life as a supersoldier in World War II, after all, was all about political propaganda: looking good, not doing good.)

This is almost an Avengers movie in its own right, with so many familiar faces: kickass spy Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), flyboy Falcon (Anthony Mackie), telekinetic Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), Iron Man-esque War Machine (Don Cheadle). When the two factions meet in a spectacular battle over the U.N. issue, it’s thrilling and often amusing not only because they’re all pulling their punches – none of them actually wants to hurt their friends – but also because we witness them combining their powers in weird, intriguing and effective ways across a grand canvas.

This is primarily a very personal story about Rogers and his friendship with Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), aka the Winter Soldier, who looks to have committed another crime as a result of his Soviet conditioning as a supersoldier and is now being hunted by police worldwide. Rogers believes in Barnes’s innocence, but is Rogers deluded about his friend? Aren’t safeguards a good thing?

These are the unspoken questions that hang over everything going on in Civil War, between the world and the Avengers, and among the Avengers and their hangers-on themselves. (I cannot decide if I am #TeamCap or #TeamTony, and that’s a marvelous thing.) There’s barely a villain here, just unanswerable questions: What legal framework are superhumans best placed in, or can they be placed in one at all? What is the morality of using superpowers even by undoubtedly good people?

One of the things that has made the Avengers movies work so well is that all these characters feel like real people: They are never cartoonish and, ironically, they feel like they are at their most human when they are behaving in superhuman ways. That’s never been more true than in Civil War. And that’s what makes the questions it asks impossible to dismiss as simple, “mere” fantasy. This is one superhero series that only keeps getting more relevant and more necessary.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR (4) Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo • Starring Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Anthony Mackie, Don Cheadle • Rated PG-13 • 147 min. • At Maya Cinemas, Century Cinemas Del Monte, Northridge Cinemas, Century Marina, Lighthouse Cinemas, Cannery Row XD.