Great expectations can be difficult to fulfill, especially if you’re making a comic book movie – just ask Zack Snyder. And yet, Anthony and Joe Russo, the brothers who directed “Captain America: Civil War” and its predecessor, “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” make it look easy.

How do they do it? How do they take a film whose central conceit boils down to “Captain America punches Iron Man” and make it anything more than a mindless slug-fest? According to an interview with www.slashfilm.com, they do it through the novel approach of understanding who their characters are and building upon their essential natures.

“You actually can’t turn either of them into a villain,” Anthony Russo told Slashfilm. “You can treat them as protagonists but can’t treat them as villains; it’s just not really in their DNA. You can’t do that to the character without destroying all the work that’s been done.”

“They both have codes, they both try to serve the greater good in very different ways,” Joe Russo told Slashfilm. “You can’t undo what’s been done for 10 years. So we knew that all we had to do was put them on a trajectory towards each other, and then we’d create very complicated storytelling.”

As the interview goes on, you get the sense that the author is considering asking questions like, “Why are you guys so awesome? How did you manage to get this and ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ so right? Is it possible for you to work on every comic book movie?” And, given what they’ve done, he would be justified in doing so.

Without getting into too many specifics, the Russos explode everything that has happened in the ever-expanding Marvel Cinematic Universe thus far while leaving enough interesting pieces leftover for them to continue to tell compelling stories for years to come.

There is a lot to like here. (It’s officially SPOILER time, for those of you who haven’t seen it yet) We see flashbacks to 1991. We see the new team gel together just before everything falls apart. We see a guilt-ridden Tony Stark trying to make amends for his actions, the very thing that was the key to the success of 2008’s “Iron Man,” the movie that spawned this grand experiment in film-making in the first place. We see Captain America argue for personal liberty while Iron Man argues for collective safety. We see the Black Panther’s vibranium claws scratch Captain America’s vibranium shield. We see Captain America and Bucky fighting side-by-side while Cap tries to keep his friend’s murderous tendencies in check. We see the playful rivalry between Bucky and the Falcon, the two greatest partners Captain America has ever had. We see Hawkeye handled correctly for the first time since his initial cameo in “Thor.” We see Tony Stark hit on (a much, much younger than traditionally portrayed) Aunt May, for God’s sake, and we see him recruit Spider-Man, who makes his long-awaited debut in the MCU. We see a clearly powerful but inexperienced Spider-Man battle with a GiAnt-Man, who moves like a Paul Bunyon cartoon come to life. (Unfortunately, we see the movie’s only flaw, which is the young Peter Parker asking his adult teammates if they’ve “ever seen that old movie, ‘The Empire Strikes Back?’ Everyone is familiar with “The Empire Strikes Back,” especially a nerd like Peter Parker) Finally, we see the Winter Soldier’s crimes during his time under Hydra’s control, and we understand the full extent of the blood on his hands.

Best of all, the Russos remember to have fun, which is supposed to be the point. This movie is everything “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” was not. Although it may be unfair to compare the two, their proximity to each other and their similar premises nearly requires it. As good as the Christopher Nolan Batman films were, their dark and gritty tone seem to have ruined our prospects of ever getting a proper DC character film again. What DC/Warner Bros. has clearly failed to realize (and what Marvel/Disney and the Russos seems to understand completely) is there is a difference between Batman and Superman, between dark and light, between superheroes with one foot in our world and superheroes with one foot in the stars. “Captain America: Civil War” gets it, and critical and commercial consensus seems to agree. Warner Bros. and Mr. Snyder should take note.