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A review by trike
Marvel's Captain America: Civil War: The Art of the Movie by Jacob Johnston
4.0
This is a pretty good, but just short of great, entry into the Marvel "Art of the Movie" series.
The main thing which holds it back from 5 star excellence for me is the use of double-page spreads. I really hate those in art books, because you lose so much in the valley. (I didn't buy the Doctor Strange one for that very reason.) Sometimes it doesn't matter when art gets bisected, but in this case there were often characters lost in the fold, and it disrupts the action splash scenes, notably in the big airport battle.
I did find it interesting that with all of the character design in this book, there's literally nothing about Spider-man. After I finished, I went back through it thinking I had missed some pages, but he's just not there. He's only in 5 pictures total and in a couple it looks like he was added after the fact. Only one shows him in a costume that somewhat resembles the final film version.
I suspect that's because Spider-man was such a late addition to the movie that they didn't have time to include him in the book. The deal between Disney and Sony did have a very 11th hour feel to it, and he is barely integrated into the story at all.
I've not been a fan of the storyboards included in other tomes because they seemed more like filler than a real value-added proposition, but here they are more significant. That's primarily because the overhead plan of the tunnel fight with Cap, Panther, Falcon and Bucky is different from what we usually see, and the fact that the storyboard artists were key in figuring out not just the flow of the action scenes but actually helped craft the story. You can see the iterations of the airport fight as they decided which characters were on which team, and especially the particulars of the scene where Hawkeye recruits Wanda.
More than any of the other art books, this really underscored the collaborative nature of this project.
I also really enjoyed the (apparently) early explorations of both fight scenes and weapons. The stuff with Hawkeye's trick bows was neat, and one where he shoots two guys coming from opposite directions was pretty funny. Maybe they'll use that in a future film.
All in all this is decent addition to the art book series.
The main thing which holds it back from 5 star excellence for me is the use of double-page spreads. I really hate those in art books, because you lose so much in the valley. (I didn't buy the Doctor Strange one for that very reason.) Sometimes it doesn't matter when art gets bisected, but in this case there were often characters lost in the fold, and it disrupts the action splash scenes, notably in the big airport battle.
I did find it interesting that with all of the character design in this book, there's literally nothing about Spider-man. After I finished, I went back through it thinking I had missed some pages, but he's just not there. He's only in 5 pictures total and in a couple it looks like he was added after the fact. Only one shows him in a costume that somewhat resembles the final film version.
I suspect that's because Spider-man was such a late addition to the movie that they didn't have time to include him in the book. The deal between Disney and Sony did have a very 11th hour feel to it, and he is barely integrated into the story at all.
Spoiler
The entire section where Tony flies back to NYC to recruit Peter feels like a separate mini-movie contained inside the larger story.I've not been a fan of the storyboards included in other tomes because they seemed more like filler than a real value-added proposition, but here they are more significant. That's primarily because the overhead plan of the tunnel fight with Cap, Panther, Falcon and Bucky is different from what we usually see, and the fact that the storyboard artists were key in figuring out not just the flow of the action scenes but actually helped craft the story. You can see the iterations of the airport fight as they decided which characters were on which team, and especially the particulars of the scene where Hawkeye recruits Wanda.
More than any of the other art books, this really underscored the collaborative nature of this project.
I also really enjoyed the (apparently) early explorations of both fight scenes and weapons. The stuff with Hawkeye's trick bows was neat, and one where he shoots two guys coming from opposite directions was pretty funny. Maybe they'll use that in a future film.
All in all this is decent addition to the art book series.