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?
