MCU: Every Captain America Appearance Ranked Worst To Best

Compared to his first two films, 2016's Civil War often felt less like a straight Captain America sequel than it was a hodgepodge of follow-ups, from a loose Iron Man 4 to an Avengers 2.5, all wrapped up in a package where Captain America still managed to remain the focus in a film loaded with familiar faces and scene-stealing newcomers like Black Panther and Spider-Man.

At its core, though, Civil War was a film about Cap's rigid, unwavering faith in his ideals, whether it be his stance that the Avengers shouldn't be governed by the Sokovia Accords - influenced, of course, by his experience with HYDRA having infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. - or his belief that Bucky could find redemption, with Tony Stark serving as his counterpoint. Both men's positions made sense, but it didn't stop them from coming to blows in the end over the fact that Cap had kept Bucky's murder of Tony's parents a secret from him.

Civil War did a great job of balancing their perspectives without letting either hero off the hook; in Cap's case, his stubbornness surrounding what he thinks is "right" was exposed to the point it burnt a bridge with one of the most important people in his life. It's this willingness to show Cap's "weaknesses," like how his unbreakable loyalty to a man everyone else only knows as a murderer makes his allies question him, that makes Civil War such a powerful step in his overall journey through the MCU, showing us a side of him we'd only been teased with up to that point that culminated in the character shedding the very identity that had defined him for so long by film's end.