Outspoken comic book writer Mark Millar had a tough time at the movies in 2016, reserving much of his criticism for Marvel’s “Captain America: Civil War” in his year-end roundup of his favorite movies.
“‘Civil War’ had a good opening twenty mins, but then I honestly can’t remember what the movie was about,” Millar wrote on his Millarworld blog. His opinion holds particular weight given that he wrote the comic book event series on which Marvel based its big-screen adaptation.
“It’s interesting [co-directors Anthony and Joseph Russo] have a background in comedy because it’s really missing in these otherwise well-made pictures and very, very missed,” Millar continued. “I really hope this bleakness doesn’t extend into their two ‘Avengers’ pictures because what made that first ‘Avengers’ work was the light as well as shade and I’ll be sad if that’s all lost like it was in this picture.”
“Civil War” was a Marvel Comics crossover storyline in 2006 that was built around a seven-issue limited series written by Millar and penciled by Steve McNiven. The event extended to most of Marvel’s superhero titles at the time.
The series received a polarized reception, but was a commercial success, forming the basis for the Marvel Studios film “Captain America: Civil War,” which likewise features Captain America and Iron Man in opposition to each other.
But “Civil War” wasn’t the lone object of Millar’s scorn.
“This was really hard,” he wrote of film in 2016. “Most years because it’s hard because [sic] we go to the cinema once or twice a week and it’s hard to whittle down, but this year it was hard to find ten films I really loved. So I’ve settled for LIKED for the most part and the big surprise for me is that the movies I liked best were outside the genres I adore.”
Millar is the writer of the “Kick Ass” series of comics, which have been adapted by Universal into two major motion pictures. His most recent book-to-screen adaptation was 2014’s “Kingsman: The Secret Service,” starring Colin Firth.