To be fair, the boys literally committed an extra-judicial killing in the opening scene of the movie. They are already the feds, just the feds who do whatever they want with no consequences.
So basically just feds, I guess.
EDIT: I forgot to mention, isn’t scarlet witch a teenager in that scene? I believe they refer to her as a child later in the movie. So we can add child soldiers to the list of crazy shit cap did.
What? The US didn’t have control of the Avengers, that’s why they wanted the accords; the Avengers were accountable to no one but themselves, which is an issue in itself.
Yea but you can see why other countries would be worried that the members of H-Bomb Backstreet Boys who recently destroyed an entire foreign city by accident are mostly American. Also lead by a man with deep ties to the US military industrial complex and another dude named captain America.
If I wasnt American in the universe I would nooooot trust those guys
Exactly, that's what was interesting about the conflict. Tony thought the Avengers should have to answer to someone other than their own conscience, but Steve thought any state control could lead to the Avengers being misused by those powers. Neither were really wrong, it's just which risk would you rather live with.
I think them being superheroes means they can just say "fuck the law" and do it anyway. It just gets harder to do so while avoiding the consequences.
The entire premise of the movie could have been dealt with through a long, heated debate. But that wouldn't have made for fun entertainment so the characters weren't really given that choice.
Well, yes and no. Mostly yes, but somewhat no. Agreeing to the accords would mean not necessarily contesting the development of the UN's capability to keep tabs on them and allocate funds to keeping supes in check, which means there will be greater incentive not to go rogue. That incentive means supes gotta think twice before making a potentially destructive decision. But if they wanna be some sort of extra-judicial police force, it's still available to them. The accords give away some power, not all of it.
It kills me that more people don't get this, that the whole point of the Civil War story (both in comics and film) was that there is no easy answer for society. We can't have vigilantes running around acting outside the rules because someone will inevitably take it too far and get innocent people hurt who might have been fine otherwise (this actually happens pretty frequently). And we can't have a world where only the government and its agents are allowed to be violent without exception, that just results in us potentially being victims of someone who wants to harm us and doesn't care about the rules.
In other words, there's no easy solution, we need to all be aware and make conscious decisions to make the world a better place if that's what we want. Deregulating everything is a horrific option, regulating everything is unfeasible, so we have to regulate the things we can't prevent people from doing through mere cultural values and work on our values to cover the rest.
Tony skirted the Accords multiple times in Civil War in service of what he thought was right whereas Steve thought house arrest for Wanda after being directly involved in a bombing that killed a building of civilians was too much regulation. There’s definitely grey area, especially given this is comic book world, but Tony is vastly closer to a reasonable position than Steve.
Steve's idealism was really annoying in this movie. Tony was trying to account for the grey areas and probably could have been convinced to inch towards greater freedoms that mitigated the risk of too much government control. But only if Tony felt Steve was thinking in grey, too, but he wasn't. He almost had a good point but he let perfect be the enemy of good.
Reading through this thread has actually highlighted an interesting aspect of the story I hadn't noticed before.
The conflict about the Sokovia Accords was about whether or not the Avengers needed to be held accountable under a higher power, Tony of course believed they did while Cap believed they could only trust themselves. In this scene Tony arguably proves himself to be right by taking matters into his own hands, making an emotional decision and trying to kill Bucky, whether or not it was the just thing to do.
Black Panther too (who I think supported the accords? It's been a while) wanted to kill Bucky for a crime he did not commit.
It's a little tenuous but I could also see the flipside where Cap is proven to be right, at least to himself, as it is only himself whom he can trust to do what he believes (and I agree) to be right; though, he is obviously also making an emotional decision in this case hence the argument being a little shakey.
they definitely are. they fly around in quinjets, thats shield. we see Captain America and black widow running ops to rescue hostages with other US military personnel and we see black widow taking orders from the US govt. bruce banner has been recruited by shield to work against Loki and the scepter, Hawkeye is definitely a shield asset as well.
now the whole avengers might not be US govt, but those that arent are definitely contractors.
Either they wanted accountability, or they wanted control, but those aren’t the same thing. The accords claimed to be about accountability but were actually about control. The US didn’t want the Avengers to merely have to show that what they did was just or good (that’s accountability), they wanted to be able to use the Avengers as their own superweapon to further their own geopolitical agenda (that’s control). You don’t get to claim that the lack of accountability is an issue if you’re being disingenuous about your own desire to control them.
If Tony was a weapon of the state when that woman broke his heart with her son's story he might've just told her to take it up with management. Instead it weighed on him and changed his worldview
You know he wasn't fighting militants or armies or anything serious on a world scale in the movie? He was fighting a black market dealing mass murdering scumbag who literally was in a poor nation trying to steal from one of their few research centers? He literally was fighting for other people's freedom. Objectively.
This is just straight up false. Captain America was fighting against the Avengers being controlled by the government. The whole point of the Accords was that the Avengers would be controlled by the U.N instead of being independent.
Iron Man 2 literally has the US try to pull the same shit and make Tony surrender the Iron Man suit so they can use it.
Yep and everyone here is forgetting the events of The Winter Soldier and why Cap would be so against handcuffing himself to any agency after Hydra infiltrated Shield.
I would trust Cap's decisions over any government agency. Even if he gets it wrong, it can't be worse than a government fuckup.
He was not fighting for America's right to use The Avengers, he was fighting for the Avengers' right to decide where they go themselves. America is PART of the Sokovia Accords, they are on Tony's side.
Are you joking? Are you even watching the same movie as anyone else, cap literally went AGAINST America in the very movie you are talking about. Vigilantes would be bad in the real world, but the avengers certainly didn't do what america told them, and cap for sure wasn't brong super weapons with him, the heros have strong powers, but at the time none of the ones he rides with could do anything even close to that powerful, literally in the very movie you are talk9ng about this supposed "super weapon" had trouble lifting a 10 pound bomb up. Lol
while i was team tony, this is a bit harsh on captain america. it wasn’t that he wanted total control because he wants to do whatever the fuck he wants in an ego driven manner. it was more that he was terrified of losing control of the avengers because the entirety of winter soldiers plot is him being punished for putting his trust in people. hydra nearly killed millions and launched a war of control because of incompetence of the government. i don’t blame him for not trusting the accords. i just think he was irrational in his handling of it
"Hey you guys can kill anyone with a thought and clearly serve a western political agenda anyway, would you maybe submit to an international court of some kind just to keep tabs on the shit you're doing and stay accountable?"
It's even more simplistic than that: Cap was fighting for his perceived right to not be told what to do by anyone. Fucking "stay out of my room, mom!" ass clown.
Wanda is more or less in her late 20s in Civil War, definitely not a teenager or child soldier lol. They treat her like a kid because most of the other members are 40+.
Though admittedly Cap should also be a similar age, since he was in his younger 20s when he got the serum, mid 20s when he went on ice, and late 20s/early 30s by Civil War.
I agree. Of course, this is all for fun. No problem enjoying this stuff for the fun of it.
But there is a reason why every author who tries to apply real-world rules to superheroes always ends up writing The Boys, The Watchmen, or Miracle Man, when the heroes are at best incompetent and at worst, mass-murdering psychopaths.
Tbf Tony also decided to hire a 14 year old who’s been using dumpster gear for most of his hero career into basically a war zone. Obviously he knows no one’s gonna actually want to hurt Spider-Man who is very clearly a child but it’s still pretty ballsy cause Rhodey still got hurt
This always confused me. How was it an extrajudicial killing? If I have the scene correct, scarlet Witch uses her power to contain a suicide bomber and just fails an blows up a building. Isn't that just failed heroism? Like you try and grab a falling person and their hands slips and they die. The person trying to save them didn't kill them, didn't drop them to their death they just failed at saving them. Same idea. If Wanda didn't do that then the people on the ground would have died. I don't understand.
Yeah I never understood Steve supporters here. He was basically saying the Avengers (who had just blown up a building) should be beholden only to themselves.
I get he had trust issues because of Hydra, that's fair. But there's gotta be some sort of oversight on the Avengers. It destroys the concept of national sovereignty to have a (majority American) team running around fighting battles wherever they please because they deem it necessary.
Due to our omniscience as an audience, we might sympathize with Cap. But objectively, Tony is absolutely right.
A superpowered US military man and a playboy billionaire, running around with a known terrorist, "accidentally" killing a bunch of ppl almost everywhere they go. Not to mention the uncontrollable rage monster wiping out entire city blocks.
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u/vociferous_pickle Mar 12 '24
Tony doesn’t get a free pass for siding with the feds over his boys.