Captain America: Civil War Review - 10 Reasons It’s A Near-Perfect Comic Book Movie

9. Its Place In A Massive Universe

Captain America: Civil War is the thirteenth movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and it shows in the most aware, experienced, progressive way possible. Most of the main characters and their unique interpersonal relationships are already established, while those who are introduced benefit from sly seeding in previous films, and the story is at once the continuation of a sprawling epic and a rather self-contained drama.

The throwbacks to the previous movies are as excellent as they are plentiful, worked into the dialogue with great care to their context; pretty much all the key characters that populate the world (bar two odd exclusions) and the events of every previous film get name-checked in one way or another (in some ways fixing up the canon). There's even references to things we haven't even seen - Steve and Bucky reminisce about an ill-fated date and Scott Lang's talk of experimentation with Hank Pym - building a world bigger than the movies, meaning it actually feels like the characters live on after the after-credits scenes are done.

The allusions to future films are just as deft. Learning from the overborne foreshadowing of the likes of Iron Man 2 and Avengers: Age Of Ultron, the Russos plant clues towards some (but not all) of the upcoming Phase 3 films as subtly as possible; instead of a background Easter egg on TV, they're nifty dialogue asides that can be read into extensively, but don't halt the story.

Best of all, these are all just sly enough to ensure those who haven't made trekking out for the new Marvel film a biannual pilgrimage won't be pulled out of the action by reams of lore, yet can still appreciate the unseen backstory to the conflict.