Well, at the end of the last Avengers movie, the "new " Avengers squad consisted of:
Cap
Black Widow
War Machine
Scarlet Witch
Falcon
Vision
Now, it seems that this group is fractured, with Cap, Falcon & SW clearly on one side (along w/Hawkeye) and War Machine clearly on the other (w/pal Iron Man) w/BW appearing to lean in their direction (though nothing concrete from the trailer) and Vision completely MIA from the trailer though he, Ant Man, Black Panther and Spidey are listed among the cast in IMDB.
And William Hurt is reprising his role from The Incredible Hulk (the Edward Norton version), the first person from that cast to be integrated into this new Marvel paradigm, though I preferred Sam Elliott from the Ang Lee version that preceded it.
It’s called fanservice, my friend, and it isn’t going anywhere. Also I am not up on my Civil War comics version but I believe that a death of a principle character or two occurred, so the implication of adapting this storyline is that something big and deathy could happen.
I am not familiar with the story line from the comic, but I am familiar with the MCU. Is there a way that isn’t too spoilery to explain how Tony is on the side of more oversight and Cap is more laissez-faire? Because that seems to be the exact opposite from how they were portrayed in Avengers 2.
Actually, it’s pretty consistent with how they were in Avengers 2. In that movie, Tony wanted to create a system that protected the Earth even when the superheroes weren’t available or wanted to step down – a “Big Brother” that would alleviate the need for the Avengers to exist. Of course, it got perverted and became Ultron.
Cap was against that, for reasons that were explained in The Winter Soldier – he doesn’t trust anyone to have that kind of power. That type of thinking allowed SHIELD to be corrupted and eventually destroyed. He feels a small team like the Avengers is the best defense against threats.
The disagreement actually goes to the core of both men: Tony is a brilliant playboy, and while he accepts the responsibility that comes with being Iron Man, he doesn’t really want it – he’d rather go back to being the billionaire who can say “screw it” whenever he feels like it and go jetting off to wherever. Steve is a staunch defender of freedom and feels it’s his sworn duty to protect the weak and innocent. He doesn’t trust a large organization to do it correctly, because of the need for secrecy and compartmentalization and the corrupting attraction of power.
My take within the MCU framework is that Tony is learning just how dangerous he is. He’s been doing his own thing and trying to keep regulation out opf it, and yet he just keeps creating armies of murder robots, and bad guys keep getting their hands on his tech and doing horrible things. So maybe he’s starting to see just how much mayhem he’s caused by being allowed to do whatever he wants.
Meanwhile, Cap has gotten more and more fed up with SHIELD, and by extension the federal government, and how they are inevitably corrupted and infiltrated, and he doesn’t trust them to not be evil.
And it’s now an interesting conflict, because they’ve both gone basically 180 from where they were when we first met them.
Sure. And that’s great for comic book readers. I’m just giving my impressions as someone who has watched all the movies but never read a single one of the comic books.
“Captain America or Iron Man may die at the end of this” may be a real risk if you know the comics but if you don’t then all the apparent suspense withers because of the assumption that the General Lee will always land fine on the side of the commercial.
As for why Tony Stark and and Captain America might be on different sides that seems straightforward to me. Captain America is protecting the guy who came very close to killing Fury and did lots of other very bad things.
So there may be all kinds of implications in the trailer that are exciting fan service for the comic books readers being serviced. But to this non-comic book reader it was just more random chaos noise. I hope I’ll like it in the theaters (I’ve really like about half of the movies, though not a fan of the first Captain America movie).
Not familiar with the comics, but one thing I was worried about with this storyline:
I thought they wouldn’t be able to manage balance and ambiguity. “Registration of Superheros”, while there may be some real world sense to it, seems easily like a bad thing within a narrative set in a superhero universe.
That, along with the fact that Captain America gets his name over the title of the movie, made me think it would feel way too obvious that Captain America is on the right side of this thing and Tony is obviously wrong (the fact that Tony’s always been more than a bit of a dick fits well with this interpretation).
But that trailer really makes it look like they’ve got a decent balance.
Tony: “If we can’t accept limitations, we’re no better than the bad guys.”
That one line alleviated much of my worry that they wouldn’t be able to manage balanced storytelling. Additionally complicating matters is Cap’s focus on Bucky allowing the possibility that it’s too personal for him and he’s not looking at the big picture in a responsible way.
Still, I kinda think the movie will end with a “compromise” that, in fact, functions as a giant reset button but I now feel like I’ll at least enjoy the ride.
Remember that advance press mentioned that Quicksilver and Scarlett Witch would both be in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and it ended up being that they were simply in the post credits scene.
Because of that, I’m not putting much stock in the news that Spider-man will be in Civil War.
I expect it to be a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo or that they’ll even keep him relegated to the mid or post credits scene like Pietro and Wanda (or even like Howard the Duck- even less of a story connection there).
Black Panther, however. Well, it seems like Black Panther really is in this movie in some kind of substantive way. I’m curious how they make that work because this seems like a horrible story in which to introduce a new character- especially a character like Black Panther. Wakanda is still pretty much a secret country in the MCU. Tony and Steve know about it, but Banner (a very well educated guy) stumbles trying to read the name. When Banner does read the name, Steve and Tony give each other that whole “You and I know the secret relevance of this info” kind of look.
What possible interest could the leader of an essentially unknown African country have in efforts taken by Western governments to institute a registry of first world superheros?
As others wrote I didn’t see it that way at all. And if you add Winter Solider to the mix it is clear that Cap is on the side of personal Freedom.
FWIW I think you can probably safely ignore the comic story line for the most part. It was about Secret identities which is a non issue in MCU. The only things probably carrying over are the over all theme and the idea of Cap and Iron Man at odds with each other.
How is the side with Vision in it automatically not the winning side 5 minutes later? Especially since the MCU Scarlet Witch isn’t, apparently, at “No More Mutants” levels of power.
Also, I can easily see Cap and Tony on different sides (I think “So Was I” is a very rosy view of their relationship on the part of Tony, going by all their interactions in previous movies) but I have a hard time seeing Hawkeye and Widow on opposite sides, or Widow and Cap, after Winter Soldier. Didn’t she basically give Congress the finger at the end of that one?
Although I didn’t see him in the trailer, he is indeed on the cast list so we’ll definitely see the character. But I can not imagine Vision, or the MCU version of him at least, being anything but neutral in this kind of conflict. I could see him trying to bring both sides to an understanding but I can’t see him fighting against humans who are not evil- just of a different opinion.
It’s being directed by the same guys who did Winter Soldier, the Russo Brothers, who will also be doing the next (and last in this phase - though it’s a two parter) Avengers: Infinity War movie. So there will be a consistency, especially since this Cap movie is effectively Avengers 2.5 anyway. They really know what they’re doing, if Winter Soldier is anything to go by.
And yet ironically, Steve spent his entire career in those large organizations - the U.S. Army, SHIELD.
For Tony, I think it’s more than just being a billionaire playboy. Let’s not forget that Stark was a somewhat amoral arms manufacturer and dealer. He’s also a tinkerer and engineer in the sense of if there aren’t problems to solve, he’ll create one (ergo…Ultron). Really Age of Ultron was 2+ hours of cleaning up Tony’s mess. Both Ultron himself and inadvertent death of the Maximov’s parents from one of his weapons. So Stark recognizes the need for some sort of checks and balances on their powers (his “dark side”).
My take on CA:CW?
We know they are all going to be in Avengers 3 what makes us think the film wont end like it began, except with the addition of more Avengers?
The “Superhero Registration Act” (or whatever) doesn’t make sense in the MCU. It makes sense in the X-Men film universe where there are millions of people born as mutants and living in secret with varying degrees of powers. How many “supers” are there in the MCU that need to be “registered”?
Thor - Alien. Not really subject to Earth laws anyway.
Vision - A unique AI.
Black Panther - Foreign head of state (Wakanda)
Scarlet Witch, Hulk, Captain America, Winter Soldier, Quicksilver (dead), Extremis subjects (dead) - Product of some scientific experiment not commercially available to the public. And they are all agents of the U.S. government anyway.
Iron Man, War Machine, Falcon, Ant Man - Guys in power armor. Put Piper in an Iron Man suit now she’s a “superhero”.
Hawkeye, Black Widow - Barely even superheroes.
Maybe add Spider Man to the experimental group. In any event, every one of these superheroes are very public figures, most of who are working for the US government anyway.
There. I just registered them.
3) Does the plot of this film really revolve around whether Captain thinks Bucky Barnes should be tried for several decades of war crimes because they used to play stickball growing up in Brooklyn 80 years ago?
Steve says in the trailer “The people who think you did (those crimes) are coming right now. And they’re not planning on taking you alive.”
I suspect that Steve would be OK with Bucky being put on trial, with a full legal defense, in a US court of law. He’s not OK with some secret government agencies locking him up or just killing him out of hand.