Captain America: Civil War

   How was your Mother's Day? Did you do something fun, sit around playing video games, stuck at work? Anyway, if you haven't seen Marvel's latest Captain America film, promise to not to spoil anything if you haven't. The track names are vague, so no spoilers there either.

   Marvel took the world by storm. Captain America: Civil War was a good film that released just three days ago, yet managed to gross $678,391,000 total as of this writing. Henry Jackman returns, giving this film an intense score similar to his from Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

   In this score, you will find that bizarre, electronic sound which is the theme for The Winter Soldier. This is carried from the previous Captain America. Brian Tyler's Marvel Fanfare theme composed for Thor: The Dark World and used in all previous films when the Marvel logo appears in the beginning has been dismissed and replaced. Henry Jackman has given us a good "alternate" version. This makes sense because over time the Avengers are changing throughout the films, so themes will also change.

   I enjoyed this score more than the one written for The Winter Soldier because of its greater orchestral qualities rather than a more electronic and ambient take. Civil War feature some interesting spiccato patterns like in the ten minute suite for Captain America in the previous film. It seems simple, but is somehow complex enough that we all love it.

   Boot Up has a strange, electronic drum beat type sound in the beginning that I found distracting in the film, but the build up of this lengthy track made up for it. We hear The Winter Soldier's theme further on and it becomes mysterious with "simple complexity" is how I will refer to it now. Henry Jackman's specialty.

   A version of the Avenger's theme from Age of Ultron appears to come up, which hopefully will not replace the classic theme from Alan Slivestri's The Avengers when Infinity War is scored. If you go back to when the Hellicarrier rose out of the ocean in The Avengers, focus on that string pattern. That is another one of the themes that is briefly and alternatively heard in Certain Parts. Despite these themes, Civil War has its own unique theme. Standoff, Civil War, and Larger Than Life utilize it noticeably.

   Revealed is a well written example of the more orchestral nature of this music when compared to the second film. You hear a nice array of instruments and a choir while the track goes from a sense of sorrow to building intensity, to a victory.

   Clash is very interesting with appearances of solo technique (vibrato) heard from the violin and cello giving this a modern sound. This blends right into Closure, which presents a mysterious setting and nears us to the conclusion. There definitely are some regrets about what they had to do, but the somewhat victorious feel in Closure gives us the conclusion that also leaves us hanging. Cap's Promise enlarges this victory theme and makes it more satisfying. We are also treated with a brief theme from the Captain America suite and a version of the Avengers theme from the original film.

The soundtrack runs for 1 hour and 9 minutes, leaving us with one important question: where is the rest, given the film is about 2 1/2 hours? This always happens, and people always get all worked up about missing cues and important parts missed. Please, do not tire yourself out from this lack of music. This is just the way the music industry works, unfortunately.