# Captain America: Civil War - Seen it! \[spoilers ahoy\] **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 28, 2016, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-civil-war-seen-it-spoilers-ahoy/753317 "2016-04-28T08:07:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 16
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2016, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-civil-war-seen-it-spoilers-ahoy/753317/301 "2016-05-18T02:22:09Z")
Arguably worse than holding down the helicopter is Cap kicking the front fender of an SUV and having it skid sideways with enough force to knock a bad guy down. That’s just taking Newton’s Third Law and using it for toilet paper. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2016, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-civil-war-seen-it-spoilers-ahoy/753317/302 "2016-05-18T02:24:29Z")
I’m with you on this one, **Waldo**. Zemo’s plan is much less “Chess grandmaster” and more “keep throwing stuff at the wall until something sticks.” It’s also important to keep in mind that Zemo doesn’t care specifically about Tony or Cap. He wants to harm the Avengers as a whole, not those specific individuals. So, if Tony got killed at the big airport fight, or hadn’t gotten his gauntlet up fast enough to deflect Bucky’s pistol shot? Fantastic! Fuck the tape, he doesn’t need it any more. His work is done. Hell, if any Avenger had been killed during that fight, that’s probably an irreparable rift among the heroes right there. Bad luck to Zemo that the closest he got to that outcome was crippling Rhodey, and even that was done by someone on his side of the conflict. But, since the Avengers were able to successfully pull their punches, he had to push harder. If only Cap and Bucky had shown up at the Winter Soldier facility? Zemo escapes with the tape, and springs it on Tony later. Also, earlier you asked this: > [@](#): > > Leaving that disguise behind instead of destroying it means the general public, and T’Challa, just learned Bucky was framed and they were wrong to want that super dead? How does that help Zemo’s cause? Getting T’Challa to drop his vendetta against Bucky probably is to Zemo’s benefit. Zemo certainly couldn’t have planned for the Black Panther getting involved, and if he’d been a little bit faster in that first fight, he might have killed Bucky before the Avengers could really start to splinter over it. He’s an outsider with no history with anyone else on the team, so there’s no emotional leverage he can use there to pry people apart. Of course, it does also mean that T’Challa is hunting him now, instead of Bucky, but as we saw, long term survival wasn’t a priority for this guy. As for the public, I don’t think they really would make a distinction between the conference being bombed by Bucky, or the conference being bombed by Zemo. They’re going to see it as, “More innocent people being killed by superhero bullshit,” either way. Anyway, there’s already more than enough real blood on Bucky’s hands to see him swing if the authorities catch up to him. Clearing him of the conference bombing isn’t going to make a difference. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2016, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-civil-war-seen-it-spoilers-ahoy/753317/303 "2016-05-18T02:27:52Z")
Of all the people the Soviets could have chosen to be their Winter Soldier, why a one-armed American? Surely there were plenty of veterans of the war with Germany would could make better candidates. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2016, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-civil-war-seen-it-spoilers-ahoy/753317/304 "2016-05-18T02:32:17Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Perhaps that was a commentary on the real world fact that a lot of people refuse to change their beliefs once they’ve made up their minds. The existence of the disguise might be enough to convince Tony or T’Challa that Bucky had been framed and was innocent. But when Tony tried to convince Ross, he just brushed off the new evidence as unimportant. And we can assume the general public would have followed Ross’s example: everyone “knows” Bucky Barnes is a terrorist and they don’t want to hear any wacky conspiracy theories about him being framed. > \* So that’s the one person Barnes didn’t kill. How many freakin people did he kill in Cap2? Or in the years before? I’m sure there has to be some sort of trope where finding the “real killer” for a crime you were falsely accused of grants you immunity to all crimes you committed before that one, or all the ones you committed in the process of proving your innocence. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2016, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-civil-war-seen-it-spoilers-ahoy/753317/305 "2016-05-18T02:37:03Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Of all the people the Soviets could have chosen to be their Winter Soldier, why a one-armed American? Surely there were plenty of veterans of the war with Germany would could make better candidates. The first time Bucky got captured by Hydra, Emile Zola used him as a guinea pig for his own version of the Super Soldier serum. Obviously, he didn’t get very far, but it’s implied that those experiments set the groundwork for the later enhancements he got as Winter Soldier. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2016, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-civil-war-seen-it-spoilers-ahoy/753317/306 "2016-05-18T02:40:25Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > I get guild over Ultron. But Lagos? If SW hadnt sent the bomb up there it would have killed many, many more. > > Guilt over NYC? If the Avengers hadn’t intervened the aliens would have killed \*everyone. \* > > And what I hated was that none of the Avengers even challenged what’s his name, the civilian leader-asshole about this. The aliens that were only there because of the family squabble between Thor and Loki? > [@SlackerInc](#): > > Thunderbolt Ross (whom I always knew from the Hulk comics as an Army general; but in this, I suppose he is a civilian). He was a general in The Incredible Hulk film. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2016, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-civil-war-seen-it-spoilers-ahoy/753317/307 "2016-05-18T02:58:01Z")
Right, but he is Secretary of State now. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2016, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-civil-war-seen-it-spoilers-ahoy/753317/308 "2016-05-18T21:15:52Z")
> [@levdrakon](#): > > I thought that at first too, but after watching him fight a lot, the rest of his body seems augmented to superhuman strength levels too Heck - Bucky, Cap and Black Panther were running through that traffic tunnel at Princess Diana speed. What, too soon? > [@](#): > > plus the other Winter Soldiers didn’t seem to have any metal parts but were clearly super strong. They must have developed some sort of super soldier serum or something. I gathered Bucky was sent to kill the Starks in order to steal.the five blue IV bags Howard had in his trunk. ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2016, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-civil-war-seen-it-spoilers-ahoy/753317/309 "2016-05-18T21:28:12Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Heck - Bucky, Cap and Black Panther were running through that traffic tunnel at Princess Diana speed. > > What, too soon? > > I gathered Bucky was sent to kill the Starks in order to steal.the five blue IV bags Howard had in his trunk. Took me a sec. I thought you were talking about Wonder Woman. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-civil-war-seen-it-spoilers-ahoy/753317/310 "2016-05-19T15:52:57Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Of all the people the Soviets could have chosen to be their Winter Soldier, why a one-armed American? Surely there were plenty of veterans of the war with Germany would could make better candidates. In the comics, IIRC one reason they picked Bucky was his all-American persona; a Russian Army veteran might never quite nail the accent of someone who grew up chewing bubblegum and rooting for the Brooklyn Dodgers, might not walk down the street like he’d played stickball as a kid, might grin a bit less than wholeheartedly after knocking back a Coke – but Bucky already had that down, and didn’t need to put on an act to play sleeper agent in 1950s New York; he just relaxed around folks who’d have had a vague _there’s-something-off-about-that-guy_ response to a guarded foreigner who kept stifling a reflexive “nyet”. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-civil-war-seen-it-spoilers-ahoy/753317/311 "2016-05-20T19:43:29Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > In the comics, IIRC one reason they picked Bucky was his all-American persona; a Russian Army veteran might never quite nail the accent of someone who grew up chewing bubblegum and rooting for the Brooklyn Dodgers, might not walk down the street like he’d played stickball as a kid, might grin a bit less than wholeheartedly after knocking back a Coke – but Bucky already had that down, and didn’t need to put on an act to play sleeper agent in 1950s New York; he just relaxed around folks who’d have had a vague _there’s-something-off-about-that-guy_ response to a guarded foreigner who kept stifling a reflexive “nyet”. Truth be told, I’m not sure a man with long hair, a metal arm and a perpetual thousand-yard stare would fail to attract notice in Levittown. ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-civil-war-seen-it-spoilers-ahoy/753317/312 "2016-05-20T19:59:38Z")
They were dicks. Capture a beloved American (New York scum) and make him more scum. Evil scientists are evil. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-civil-war-seen-it-spoilers-ahoy/753317/313 "2016-05-20T20:34:42Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > In the comics, IIRC one reason they picked Bucky was his all-American persona; a Russian Army veteran might never quite nail the accent of someone who grew up chewing bubblegum and rooting for the Brooklyn Dodgers, might not walk down the street like he’d played stickball as a kid, might grin a bit less than wholeheartedly after knocking back a Coke – but Bucky already had that down, and didn’t need to put on an act to play sleeper agent in 1950s New York; he just relaxed around folks who’d have had a vague _there’s-something-off-about-that-guy_ response to a guarded foreigner who kept stifling a reflexive “nyet”. They might also have wanted to test their mind control program. They wanted to make sure it worked even on somebody who was resisting as strongly as he could. ---
**Author:** ![Count\_Blucher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Count\_Blucher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Count_Blucher)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2016, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-civil-war-seen-it-spoilers-ahoy/753317/314 "2016-05-25T13:27:49Z")
Not really related to the thread, but a nice [interlude](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01RErBtNet4). ---
**Author:** ![D\_Odds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/d_odds/32/2882_2.png) [@D\_Odds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Odds)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2016, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-civil-war-seen-it-spoilers-ahoy/753317/315 "2016-05-25T15:07:26Z")
> [@levdrakon](#): > > Took me a sec. I thought you were talking about Wonder Woman. You weren’t the only one ---
**Author:** ![JSexton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/96bed5/32.png) [@JSexton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JSexton)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2016, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-civil-war-seen-it-spoilers-ahoy/753317/316 "2016-05-25T15:42:05Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Truth be told, I’m not sure a man with long hair, a metal arm and a perpetual thousand-yard stare would fail to attract notice in Levittown. They can hide the first two, and the third may not have been understood untril after it happened. He certainly didn’t end up a sleeper agent like Dottie. ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2016, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-civil-war-seen-it-spoilers-ahoy/753317/317 "2016-05-25T22:22:01Z")
Just saw the film last night. Lots’a fun! But yeah, blaming the Avengers for the deaths of innocents (in Lagos) when (IMO) the fault lies with goons wearing suicide vests who show up looking to steal a biological WMD doesn’t make sense to me. This whole Accords thing fails in it’s own logic for me, as presented to the Avengers group. However, I can have no problem believing that the rich and politically powerful world leaders (who have huge egos) would try something to gain control of more power, especially if they also fear that power. I am surprised Tony does not realize that the Accords are not really intended to “protect” innocents, or “advise and regulate super powerful beings”. It’s an attempt at a power grab by politically powerful people who want to become even more important and powerful. (I guess that makes me “Team Cap”.) ---
**Author:** ![D\_Odds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/d_odds/32/2882_2.png) [@D\_Odds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Odds)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2016, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-civil-war-seen-it-spoilers-ahoy/753317/318 "2016-05-26T14:20:32Z")
While logically blaming the Avengers for the deaths is wrong, people generally don’t think logically. After a tragedy, we will want someone to blame and punish, and if that someone is dead and can’t be punished, we will find someone else to punish. Even when the Avengers limit the amount of destruction, there would be a loud enough call out claiming that they should have prevented any destruction. Politicians will be able to use that to try to reassert their power by controlling the Avengers. When SoD Ross is trying to rein in the Avengers, I see it not as trying to prevent tragedy, but trying to reassert power, because as long as the Avengers are not under control, Ross’ and the government’s power is diminished. Harder for the CIA to overthrow banana republics if Captain America is a wild card. ETA: Guess I should have read all of **mlees** post before responding. DOH! ---
**Author:** ![Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/prof.pepperwinkle/32/13627_2.png) [@Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Prof.Pepperwinkle)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2016, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-civil-war-seen-it-spoilers-ahoy/753317/319 "2016-05-26T17:26:11Z")
And so what does Marvel Comics Group do to capitalize on Captain America’s very very successful movie? They just announced he’s secretly been a sleeper agent for Hydra all along. Whoopie. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2016, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-civil-war-seen-it-spoilers-ahoy/753317/320 "2016-05-26T17:46:20Z")
That’s ok. In a bit it will be revealed that he’s really a double-secret sleeper agent for the PTA, who just thinks he’s a sleeper agent for Hydra. It’s not like 95% of the people who see the movies even _know_ there’s a comic book about him. Despite referring to them as “comic book movies.” 😉 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-civil-war-seen-it-spoilers-ahoy/753317.md?page=15) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/captain-america-civil-war-seen-it-spoilers-ahoy/753317.md?page=17)