So Tony Stark got a naive 15 year old Peter Parker to join the big fight at the airport. (And lucked out that Peter wasn’t killed or seriously hurt.) What if Tony had realized how unethical that was, especially since Peter was a minor whose guardian had no idea what he’d been up to? Would Tony have told Aunt May what Peter was doing? Or told Peter to stop fighting crime, because it was too dangerous (and besides, Peter was too young to sign the Segovian Accords?) Realized Peter probably wouldn’t stop, and given him training? Something else?
The same Tony Stark who intentionally created an AI that was too powerful for him to control? Twice?
Seems the Avengers could use a Junior Avengers squad.
Get training, protection, education, pay and all that, but not actually put into either the way of harm or that of responsibility until they come of age.
Sure, world ending events could justify breaking some of the minor labor laws, but yeah, for the most part, they shouldn’t be involving children.
Yeah, Tony Stark doesn’t seem to be too hindered by considerations about ethics despite his protestations about how Stark Industries weapons were being used against American troops. He apparently had no problem previously that the migrating shrapnel which caused him to become “Iron Man” might be indiscriminately used against civilian populations. Tony Stark seems to like conflict just fine as long as he is on the winning side of it. One wonders how much his supposed-moral objections which led to the Sokovian Accords had to do with publicity and damage to his ego (or a desire to woo back Pepper Potts for some reason) rather than any kind of moral quandry, and his wholly unnecessary recruitment of Peter Parker (which I realize was just shoehorned into the film to create a hook to bring in Spider-Man into the MCU, but narratively makes no sense to pit an untested child up against an experienced soldier, a trained assassin, or an “enhanced individual” who can manipulate matter and energy with her mind) does not speak to any degree of concern for the safety of Parker, or others that he might unintentionally injure through inexperience and exuberance.
Then again, perhaps Stark is…not actually human. Which might explain a number of incongruities. Just sayin’.
Stranger
To be fair, he did change his mind on that, and shut down his weapons program after he saw how it was begin used first hand.
He stopped selling weapons to other people, but by all accounts he has continued producing weapons for his personal use and that of the other Avengers, as well as a virtual fleet of flying killbots and satellite-based weapons that are almost certainly a violation of international treaties. It seems that Tony Stark was less concerned about weapons in general than he was about them finding their way into “the wrong hands”, e.g. any hands other than his own and his friends.
Stranger
How did Tony Stark even find out about Peter Parker? And did he know how formidable Peter is? If memory serves, Peter fared very well in battle.
At least Peter is extremely powerful by MCU standards. The real asshole is Bruce Wayne, all Robin had going for him was a few years of gymnastics training.
Note that Tony recruits Peter mere weeks after he is confronted by a mother whose son was killed during the battle against Ultron. In Tony’s defense, he apparently expected the confrontation with Cap not to get too violent; his ideal solution is that enough super-powered folks commit to his side that Cap will back down (that’s why he’s instructed Peter to tweak Cap by swiping the shield, I guess). Unfortunately the sides are too evenly matched for either to back down, and the battle ensues.
TheYoutube videos, incident pattern tracking, direct survellience. He’s clearly been on Stark’s radar for a while, hence the suit already prepared to complement his natural enhancements. If a “boss in the world of guerrilla journalism” knows about the Spider Guy, odds are good that Tony Stark, who has even less compunctions about violating civil rights for “the greater good” does as well.
Stranger
If memory serves, enlisting a 15 year old to fight in your war would make Tony Stark guilty of a war crime. I mean…another war crime.
FWIW, Captain America: Civil War was very good for a movie that was essentially about a SHIELD contract dispute.
And yet, it is Steve Rogers who is on the run.
“I’m pretty sure this guy is a war criminal now, but whatever. I have to show these videos; it’s required by the state.”
Stranger
On the other hand, it’s partly because of ethical concerns that he recruited Parker in the first place. Ordinarily, when supers fight, there’s going to be a lot of damage, including to the other supers, and super-toughness only goes so far. Stark wanted to stop Rogers et al., but he didn’t actually want to kill them, because they’re his friends, and there’s an awfully thin window of stopping Captain Freaking America without killing him. Spidey is rare, not only in that he’s highly powerful, but also in that his powers are well-suited to neutralizing opponents without killing them.
Interesting. Sounds reasonable.
Now I’m trying to remember how Black Panther got involved, since he was likely to be putting the hurt on people (claws, anger about his dad).
Black Panther got himself involved. None of the others even knew of his existence until he did. He started off on the same side as Stark, because he wanted revenge for his father, but had a change of heart by the end.
Vision, on the other hand, dropped a control tower on Cap and Bucky, and also knocked Rhodes out of the sky while attempting to blast Sam Wilson out of existence, while Maximoff dropped a parking garage on Stark and Cap and Scott Lang throw a fuel truck as Rhodes. It’s not very clear that anyone was really trying to hold back all that much other than Cap and Hawkeye (“You were pulling your punches!”) and I don’t know why anyone was surpised when Rhodes was seriously injured. Someone was certainly going to take a serious hit as they destroyed an entire airport in a dispute over a UN regulation with questionable enforcibility.
Stranger
Yeah it was clear to me that TeamStark at least, were fighting to kill after the initial exchanges.
When the only way to enforce the Sekovian Accords involves other meta-humans, “questionable” doesn’t even begin to describe the situation. It’s entirely impossible for anyone to enforce the Accords, it’s only voluntary.
Agreed. But they started with a lot of talking, not with a preemptive attack, so Tony was at least hoping for a surrender.