CAPTAIN AMERICA: Civil War and allowing Revenge and Guilt To Consume Us Within

By Christopher Barr │POSTED ON MAY 13, 2016

Compromise, reassurance, that’s how the world works.

Longing….

“Our very strength incites challenge.  Challenge incites conflict.  And Conflict… breeds catastrophe.”

- Vision

There are some spoilers ahead so be aware.

Captain America: Civil War is a superhero movie with loads of action and spectacle for a wide ranging audience, the addition of Black Panther and Spider-Man couldn’t have been any better.  The film is also an ethical, moral, social and civil study on what a responsible human being ought to do in a seemingly civilized society.  The film is an essay on what’s best for the greater good.  The film is also about fear and control, fear of these superheroes and their powers over average people and the control that the government want to pose on those powers.

Rusted….

After a battle to retrieve a biological weapon stolen by HYDRA, Scarlet Witch, saves Captain America from blowing up by forcing an explosion away that was detonated directly in front of him by Crossbones, inadvertently this causes the upper floors of a building in Lagos, Nigeria to blow up.  This explosion ends up killing a number of relief workers from Wakanda and as a consequence, escalates international distrust of the unchecked actions of the Avengers.  This causes the Secretary of State Thaddeus Ross, who was the military force attempting to capture Bruce Banner in The Incredible Hulk, to inform the Avengers that the United Nations in a couple days plan to pass the Sokovia Accords, which essentially pulls back the freedom the Avengers had to battle with their enemies.  This resulted in the destruction of a couple of cities and the loss of many lives, and puts it in the control of the military who plan to police the actions of the Avengers.

Seventeen….

“Captain, while a great many people see you as a hero, there are some who prefer the word vigilante.  You’ve operated with unlimited power and no supervision.  That’s something the world can no longer tolerate.”

– General Ross

Civil War has a very Jason Bourne feel in its attempt to ground the more fantastical to the real world.  The film oddly has a tone and palate of a real life based thriller.  Unlike the battle at the end of Batman V Superman, Civil War wants its audience to look at the consequences and actions of its superheroes, echoing Alan Moore’s The Watchmen.  Batman V Superman somewhat alienated its audience by promising realism and bombastically delivering this non-relatable cartoon.  Civil War has something clearly to say that has an actual grounding and topical meaning behind its spectacle.

Daybreak…. 

Civil War is about the system of freedom versus an individual’s freedom.  This problem has always been the conflict in most societies, historically and in the present.  Captain America believes that the safest hands are his own where Tony Stark, suffering from an avalanche of guilt since becoming Iron Man, has decided to allow the system to partake in the responsibility.  Tony no longer wants the consequences of the actions of Iron Man and the Avengers to fall directly on them anymore.  His ego is damaged and his vulnerability is palpable.  Tony Stark is breaking and he knows it.

Furnace….

Steve Rogers believes, and rightfully so, that the government is controlled by people, and powerful people have agendas, for him, they can’t be trusted.  Steve’s right to think the Sokovia Accords are a misstep, an excuse for the United Nations to gain control of a power that is well out of their control.  They mean to tame the Avengers and cage them if necessary, quite similar to that of animals.  This military industrial complex would not only use these superhuman people as a nuclear deterrent but also, if necessary, as its own form of nuclear weapon, with the likes of Thor, Hulk, Scarlet Witch and Vision have the power to achieve.

Nine….

Steve Rogers was a soldier for the government that woke up and became a rebel for the people.  Tony Stark was a playboy looking out for himself and now has become an Iron weapon for the very government he quite vocally opposed.  Both these men grew in opposite directions.  Steve still stayed pure and the problem with Tony is he sought medicine for what he believed he became.  Tony is right to be concerned with not only what the Avengers have done but what they could do that may harm or kill innocent people.  The problem here is Tony is being Tony and only really thinking out for himself.  Tony is concerned with what they do and how it makes him feel.  Steve is never concerned with his ego and how he feels about what he does, he’s more concerned, in a utilitarian sense, with what’s best for the greater good and the quality of life for the majority.  

Benign….

 

The civil obedient is fair worse a problem than the civil disobedient.  A problem that philosopher Henry David Thoreau had with the population was what they were all willing to go along with and what they weren’t.  The civil disobedient during the history of all civilizations were almost always met with disapproval, dislike, displacement, dismemberment and even death in many cases.  The real problem is never with those people that didn’t go along with the system, the real problem is the blind, the ignorant and the conformists that welcome their own enslavement, as they eat fried chicken and watch a reality show about survival in a location they’ll never see in real life.  

Homecoming….

There is this peevish discontent that develops during the divide of the Avengers.  The airport fight showdown between this divide is one of the most entertaining and delightful parts of this film.  This is when we see Spider-Man in action and boy does he deliver.  We know they can all take a little beating from each other, we know some of them were even pulling their punches because they really didn’t want to fight each other. 

One….

“An empire toppled by its enemies can rise again, but one which crumbles from within? That’s dead… forever.”

- Zemo

In the end Team Cap versus Team Iron Man were only playing checkers when their real opponent played the biggest Bobby Fischer game, with only a couple chess moves to get the Avengers in check mate.  The real fight, the real check mate moment was during the end when Iron Man found out how his parents really died.  This resulted in a near fight to the death between Cap and Bucky against Iron Man.  Colonel Helmut Zemo, the film’s more mysterious bad guy, beat them all in the end even though he was arrested and incarcerated afterwards.  Zemo set out to dismantle the Avengers, dividing them as they fought each other over autonomy versus accountability, for what they unknowingly did to his family in Sokovia by the calamitous end of Avengers: Age of Ultron.  He wasn’t your typical power hungry marvel villain, he actually had a pretty relatable reason for what he did.  What really made him wrong, in his manipulative act of vengeance, was he didn’t have all the facts, like the fact they would all have been dead if Ultron created the extinction event he wanted.

Freight Car….

The Avengers are responsible for killing many people.  The bad guys dying can be looked at as an occupational hazard, but the collateral damage is the real problem here.  There are numerous innocent people dying during all these big epic battles because they were in the wrong place, and in the wrong time.  Here’s were the fiction of the comics bleed into our real world.  The reported collateral damage around the world is becoming more ubiquitous than we’d all like to admit.  Drones are dropping bombs on ‘targets’ and are sadly killing innocent bystanders as the ‘evil’ of the world is being exterminated by the so-called ‘just’.  Back in the fiction world of the Avengers, if they left Ultron to execute his plan, most, if not all the people of this planet would be dead.  It could be argued, quite successfully, that the saving of the planet was the greater good. 

Soldier?