What Do I Think Is Going On In Captain America: Civil War?
So, big news in the world of superhero movies last week when Spiderman showed up in the latest Captain America: Civil War trailer. With some sort of a deal between Disney and Sony finally hammered up they now have Spiderman in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and both companies can roll around in money. I’m assuming that Sony has all but abandoned the Fantastic 4 once and for all following the disaster of their latest attempt. At the end of the day, with Spiderman in the MCU, we now only have two cinematic universes to track. The X-Men one and the MCU. Or Earth-10005 and Earth-199999 if you’re a real nerd.
Anyhow, Spiderman is now part of the same world where the Avengers run around. He’s played by a younger actor and his costume looks a lot more like it does in the comics. Which is cool.
But it got me to thinking, what the hell is going on in the Marvel Cinematic Universe these days? There was a point when the new Marvel movies were “must see” entertainment for me. I was super excited by the
first Iron Man and I saw probably a string of them on opening weekend. I saw Avengers twice in theaters. But now, it’s 12 movies later, with Captain America: Civil War coming out more or less on the 8th
anniversary of Iron Man’s release. I haven’t seen Iron Man 3 or Ant Man and the only reason I watched Age of Ultron was because I flew across the Pacific Ocean and it was on the plane.
That being said, 10 out of 12 ain’t bad. So we’re going to play a game. I’m going to ask myself some questions about what I think is going in Civil War. I am not going to fact check any of this.
What’s Up With Iron Man?
Amazingly, if you’ve read the Civil War comic series you’ll know that basically, Iron Man is the bad guy for the whole thing. The comic book Civil War revolves around the idea that the government (aka S.H.I.E.L.D.) wants all heroes to register their identities and powers in some kind of superhero database. Obviously, lots of heroes are opposed to this since they guard their secret identities very well. After all, if that information falls into the hands of the villains, suddenly the hero’s personal life and relationships are all easy targets for the bad guys.
Iron Man sees no problem with this since he basically is a) already a public hero b) is running SHIELD at this point and c) lives in a giant fortress anyways so is basically in a constant state of “come at me bro” to all his opponents.
However, he goes way too far in the comics and ends up sentencing non-registered heroes to the Negative Zone, getting into fist fights with Captain Amerca, convincing Peter Parker to go plublic with his identity only to havethat result in Aunt MAy getting killed and finally cloning Thor and accidentally letting clone-Thor kill Black Goliath.
In the MCU, Iron Man aka Tony Stark was a weapons developer who built himself a suit to fight first The Dude and then Mickey Rourke and eventually Gandhi. His best friend is War Machine who was played by two different guys.
He dicked around and accidentally created Ultron and at the end of the second Avengers movie he was like “that’s it I’m done.”
In true Iron Man fashion though he is back in the next film. Apparently supporting whatever General Ross (hey, remember that Hulk has a back story in the MCU?) has to say about more laws to govern superheroes. I kind of get the guilt angle here. Tony did more or less play a key role in creating an Artificial Intelligence that nearly killed a city/small country.
So he’s going to be all like “Hey New Avengers, we should hold ourselves to some kind of laws or something and the government should have more of a say in what we do and not just crazy Sam Jackson or something.”
And Captain America is going to be like “No.”
What’s Up With Captain America?
In the MCU Cap fought Red Skull in World War 2, joined the Avengers, did some Avenging and then had to face his brainwashed best buddy Bucky when (Bucky) became the Winter Soldier. I guess Bucky was frozen also or something. End of the day Bucky is like “sorry, I was brainwashed” and Captain America was like “I get it, we’re still best buddies.”
Bucky was not around to fight Ultron and I can remember if he was in that scene at the end where basically the Avengers that we know and love all bail on being Avengers and leave Captain America to form a “new” Avengers made up Cap, Falcon, Scarlet Witch, Vision and Hawkeye.
Anyhow, in the comics Captain America was against laws governing superheroes because he believed that heroes were basically all heroes. Good people doing good things, fighting for freedom. From the trailers it kind of seems like he just wants to save his buddy Bucky from facing a trial for his war crimes. I get the feeling that the heroes-being-heroes thing will also play a factor.
This will no doubt lead to him and Iron Man duking it out a bunch to our delight. There’s strong precedence here and the movies need to capitalize on Robert Downey Jr. while they’ve still got him (he’s more or less said he’s retiring). Cap fighting Iron Man has happened like a million times in the comics, its got to happen at least once in the films.
What’s Up With AntMan/Hawkeye/Vision/War Machine/etc.
No idea, it seems just about everyone except Iron Man is on Cap’s side in this movie (almost). There’s also that split second in the trailer where it really looks like War Machine is dead.
I guess since they haven’t gotten around to introducing Black Goliath into the MCU they’ll settle for killing off some other black hero. I guess Falcon and War Machine were their options. My guess is this is kind of go to do a better job of establishing that rag-tag little team of Avengers they teased at the end of Age of Ultron.
What’s Up With Spiderman?
Well, he exists now, so there’s that.
In the comics, Tony and Peter get real tight leading up to the Civil War. They’re both jokester geniuses and Tony sort of fits easily into that “cool uncle” role (you know, to fill in the gap left by Peter’s “dead uncle”). Iron Man even makes Peter a badass Iron Man style Spiderman suit that’s pretty nifty.
I think they’re going to kind of go that route in the film, since Spidey is clearly on Iron Man’s side in that 5 seconds he’s featured in the trailer.
My bet is that something akin to the Aunt May situation will go down in the film as well. Between War Machine maybe dying and him being responsible for his new protege’s only family member dying, this will be the tipping point that finally sets Iron Man (and Downey Jr.) into a full blown retirement.
Just a theory.
What About the Infinity Gems?
Aren’t all these movies building up to Thanos and the Infinity Gems?
Well sure, but I doubt this one will have much to do with any of that, maybe in a post-credit sequence.
Should I Go See It?
I am mildly interested in this one, I really liked Civil War when they did it originally in the comics and I really like Iron Man in bad guy mode.
If anything, seeing Tony Stark so full of himself that he is basically the villain might be worth it.
Keith does all sorts of things here on 9to5.cc, he works with the other founders on 9to5 (illustrated), co-hosts our two podcasts: The 9to5 Entertainment System and Go Plug Yourself and blogs here as The Perspicacious Geek.
All images copyright Marvel Studios.
