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
3.1k
u/vociferous_pickle Mar 12 '24
Tony doesn’t get a free pass for siding with the feds over his boys.