No, what has been set up from the start of the MCU is the complete opposite.

"You saved the world but some buildings got damaged so I'm angry."

"You saved the world but you failed to save everyone so I'm angry."

These are the kinds of criticisms the MCU levelled at the Avengers in the run up to Civil War. The narrative, therefore, was not "There is a growing body of reasonable people with legitimate criticisms of the Avengers". Rather, the narrative was "There is a vocal minority of irrational people who hold absurd positions criticising the Avengers". The portrayal of the anti-Avengers political forces was consistently negative and the viewer was always supposed to consider those forces wrong.

To then do a complete 180 in Civil War by having Tony suddenly agreeing with all the people the MCU had spent years portraying as irrational and absurd didn't lend legitimacy to their criticisms; it just meant Tony also looked irrational and absurd.

If the MCU had wanted the viewer to really consider Captain America to be problematic, they should have been laying proper groundwork of legitimate, reasonable criticisms of Captain America based on clear examples of him fucking up. It's hard for the viewer to back an anti-Cap position when up to that point, every single action Captain America has taken has always been consistently moral and objectively the best course of action.

 

If the movie was called "Avengers: Civil War" then there could be an argument made that Tony is in the right.

But "Captain America: Civil War" clearly has Steve as the protagonist hero who is in the right.

Is it done well? Maybe, maybe not. Doesn't matter, it's intended for us to see Cap as the hero.

 

I’ll write a full reply tomorrow on PC.

But I always took it as no side is “right”.

Both sides have points. Good ones and bad ones. That’s what makes it interesting.

 

Every TeamTony and TeamCap fanboy are dumb as rocks. Both 'sides' had valid causes for their actions. The only people who are unequivocally wrong are the people who write betrayed!Tony fics.

 

I'm not saying that you cannot imagine a version of the Marvel universe where the dispute surrounding regulation of superheroes was nuanced with both sides having good points. I am saying that the way it was done in the MCU was not that. There are some very good pro-Tony arguments, but they are all arguments that don't really work within the MCU as it was portrayed.

In the real world, if there were superheroes, would Tony have a point? Absolutely yes. In the MCU, which had spent a decade repeatedly showing the viewer that their heroes were always right and their critics always wrong and/or evil, do those same arguments work? No.

 

I disagree with this. The MCU has consistently showed that their heroes can be flawed and their actions have repercussions. It's in the actual plot stuff that happens in between the great action sequences and humor, but it's definitely there.

Tony swinging his BDE around in the congressional meeting isn't meant to be a shining example of Tony's character.

 

Yeah, Iron Man 2 spent a lot of time showing us that Tony is a very flawed human being. Him running around in his suit while utterly plastered and recklessly using the suit’s weapons is a pretty good argument that he needs some kind of oversight.

 

All these examples lack any real bite to sway the viewer. In Iron Man 2, Tony fucks around with his powers but there are never any real negative consequences. Ultimately, his brilliance saves the day and he's the hero and everyone lived happily ever after.

If the MCU actually seriously wanted the viewer to think "wow, someone needs to stop this guy", then it should have shown real, serious consequences that matter to the viewer. Like having Tony cause serious, irreparable harm to a character we care about as a result of his bad judgement, or Tony failing to save the day and the bad guy winning because of his lack of judgement.

As is, the message is "even flawed superheroes should be given a free rein because ultimately it works out for the best".

In short, MCU doesn't pretend it has a back catalogue of dark gritty morally grey movies when in fact they're all bright colourful quippy adventures where everything always turns out OK.

 

Except....you see those consequences at the start of Civil War. You see the consequences in other media. It builds to it. The fallout does exist. It doesn't come out of left field just because it's not what receives most of the focus.

And maybe it's just me, but I definitely was thinking during many of the Marvel movies "Dang, that's a lot of collateral damage."

 

So I've been contemplating a story about Steve's time travel odyssey to return the Stones to their rightful place in order to restore the timeline. While I have solutions for most of them aside from Loki's theft of the Tesseract, my real malfunction comes at the end.

I can't buy in to Steve's retirement. In what universe could Steve Rogers sit idly by when injustice surrounds him wherever he looks? In what universe would Peggy Carter marry such a version of Steve and not implore him to take action, even if he does so without use of extemporal knowledge? And would Stephen Strange expect him to live up to that? (I'm assuming Steve took guidance from Dr. Strange on the mission)

 

Steve deserves to rest. The man was through enough.

Plus it's been confirmed that you can't change history with time travel.

 

@wordhammer my take is Steve created a branching timeline and traveled back to the main timeline later.

so you have Steve doing things like creating a good version of SHIELD, rescuing Bucky. Raising a young Tony stark as uncle Steve.

 

Its worth noting on this that Marvel's official position until pretty recently was that you should be able to watch nothing but the films and follow the story completely - its only with the new Disney+ shows that they've abandoned that and decided to tie in the shows to the MCU. The Netflix shows were written to be distinctly separate and not necessary to follow the MCU at all.

 

Yeah, I remember them saying something about that. I guess technically it was right, but if you wanted a more nuanced take on the MCU then you'd have to follow AoS at bare minimum, and the webisodes if you wanted even more. All the rest wasn't needed for background.

I find that all the rest (Jessica Jones, et.al in total) is too much, but nice to fill in the space between movies.

 

I mean, it’s been a while since I’ve seen it, so I’ll take your word regarding the intent - But I certainly didn’t see Cap in the right when I was watching it. Not necessarily wrong, but not right either.

 

Looks like another few amazing years upcoming for marvel.

 

I can see them around the boardroom:

"Okay, Covid really fucked our pacing up. Someone make me a damn trailer that reminds people what we did. Remind all the naysayers out there that in the end we kicked ass all over the place. Put Stan in there somewhere, make it inspirational, and then give it a big "Marvel Theme Song" ending to show that we're still going to be kicking ass. I want'em ready to jump in their damn cars and race to the theater."

 

Honestly, this trailer just reminds me how done I am with marvel and want something new. I've never been big into superhero films, which has made me stop going to the theater (even before the pandemic). It sucks as Disney is now so big, and promoting this so heavily, that almost all the big named films are either marvel or trying to copy marvels success.

Or remakes. That too.

I just want some good sci-fi or fantasy films, is that too much to ask for?

 

I tried to think of a solid scifi film coming out soon that wasn't marvel...and all I came up with was Dune. Which is a remake lol

 

James Cameron has been threatening the next Avatar for a while, but it seems to have gone quiet