It was a battle between an old European icon and a much younger Asian upstart and fans are divided over which side won.

On April 18, American actor Robert Downey Jr lit up the Eiffel Tower in Paris in red and yellow, the colours of his Marvel Comics character Iron Man.

Last Friday night in Singapore, Captain America's shield lit up on a platform over the water between Marina Bay Sands and the ArtScience Museum. It was a response meant to one-up the Iron Man stunt at the Eiffel Tower.

The battle of the two light shows was to promote the new movie Captain America: Civil War, in which the Marvel universe of superheroes is split into two camps. Captain America (Chris Evans) leads one faction, while Iron Man (Downey) heads the other.

Co-director Joe Russo and Team Cap's Evans, Sebastian Stan (Winter Soldier) and Anthony Mackie (Falcon) were in Singapore to promote the film, which opens here on Thursday.

While in Paris for the movie's premiere there on April 18, Downey claimed the iconic Eiffel Tower for his camp.

In response, the six-minute-long lights and fireworks show staged at Marina Bay Sands last Friday evening firmly placed the Singapore landmark in Captain America's camp.

Apart from the shield of Captain America that lit up, fireworks exploded in the night sky and video clips of the movie were projected onto the museum as fans lined the Helix Bridge to gawk at the show and the stars.

Laboratory executive Liza Ho, 23, declared that this trumped Downey's stunt. "The fireworks were pretty and you could tell a lot of effort had gone into this," she said.

Others were less impressed.

Student Kelley Ieong, 19, gave her vote to Team Iron Man instead, even though she supports Team Cap. "The fireworks were too short and there were so many people on the bridge that you couldn't really see them."

Pilot Marcus Chan, 26, simply said: "The fireworks could have gone higher."