Captain America: Civil War - pre-release discussion, news, rumors, etc

Re: Captain America: Civil War - pre-release discussion, news, rumors,

Yeah I'm not surprised that Spidey isn't in this trailer. The first look of him is going to be a big deal.

 

Re: Captain America: Civil War - pre-release discussion, news, rumors,

Indeed. This one is presents the basic story and the general buildup, where the presence of Spider-Man would feel like a toss-away added to the pile. Better to save his appearance presented as a big deal on its own in the next trailer.

 

Re: Captain America: Civil War - pre-release discussion, news, rumors,

• 
  
  I don't buy that one either. I'm expecting Vision to perhaps be secretly working with Cap. to try to minimize damage/conflict as much as possible.
  
  
  Why should that change anything if the world thinks he's still brainwashed to act as a Hydra super assassin? He's probably a 'tragic case' for whom 'nothing can be done', and so the world just has to be protected from him. According to the authorities, of course, who are almost certainly getting their talking points (or at least some of their talking points) from the villains.
  
  
  

Steve volunteered for the war, though. He wasn't forced to do that, even after he had powers. And his time leap into the future has seriously damaged his faith in his government. Hydra infiltrated SHIELD from the very beginning. The world council ordered Fury to nuke Manhattan. The Vice president conspired to assassinate the president for a military arms-dealing secret society. The military actively hunted Bruce Banner in order to experiment on him and try to reproduce him (an incredibly dangerous and irresponsible idea). Everywhere you look there's another reminder of why the govt. in the mcu is completely unworthy of trust. That doesn't mean superheroes themselves are automatically more trustworthy, of course, but registration clearly wouldn't solve that problem and it would actively hinder those heroes who are trustworthy.

 

Re: Captain America: Civil War - pre-release discussion, news, rumors,

Awesome trailer! I was surprised at how Cap centric it was rather than selling an Avengers movie. While I'm sure the movie is that way, I expected the ads to be more misleading.

Comic book Captain America has a long history of rebelling against corrupt US government regimes and Presidents.

 

Re: Captain America: Civil War - pre-release discussion, news, rumors,

This might be nothing, but I noticed during a rewatch that the first shot of Gen. Ross, he's in uniform, but the subsequent shots show him in a suit (while operating in an official capacity).

 

Re: Captain America: Civil War - pre-release discussion, news, rumors,

The trailer made it look like Ross is replacing the Maria Hill role in the comic books.

 

Re: Captain America: Civil War - pre-release discussion, news, rumors,

What was her role in the comics?

 

Re: Captain America: Civil War - pre-release discussion, news, rumors,

I don't really see the Vision as working on either side. His line in Age of Ultron says it all for me: "Humans are odd. They think order and chaos are somehow opposites and try to control what won't be." I don't think he's one for dichotomies.

Ah, okay, good point! I hadn't thought of that. (It also presents an interesting parallel to the real-world controversy over "shoot to kill" orders for police with terrorist suspects.)

Well, is it clear that the Sokovia Accords will authorize governments to impress superpowered people into their service? I can see Steve rebelling against that more plausibly than just rebelling against the idea that somebody who chooses to act as a superhero must answer to the government.

I can certainly see Steve being very skeptical of his government. But by the same token, I have a hard time seeing him as someone who thinks he should by right be able to lead a private army without answering to anyone but his own judgment. There's something very fascistic about the idea that a superior man should be above the law and does not need to answer to the people; the exercise of executive authority by people who are laws unto themselves is inevitably going to lead to abuses and be injurious to the rights of the people. I can see Steve rebelling to an abusive registration system, but I have trouble seeing him as rebelling against any registration system.

Very true -- but such rebellion is always justified by violations of people's rights being perpetuated by the corrupted government.

She was the Director of SHIELD (Nick Fury being on the run at the time). There's a ridiculous scene in the original comics in which she has Cap come aboard a Hellicarrier before the Superhero Registration Act has even passed Congress. She asks Steve to become SHIELD's director of Registration Act operations. He refuses -- and so she orders her SHIELD agents to shoot him. Again, when he has committed no crime, as the Registration Act is not even law yet. (Millar and company were definitely trying too hard with their "Registration = PATRIOT Act" allegory.)

Anyway, Wikipedia's entry on the film says that Ross is actually serving as the United States Secretary of State in this film. Which works, since they're doing this Sokovia Accords thing instead of a domestic U.S. law.

Minor but fun side note: This also means this is the second Captain America film in a row where Cap comes into conflict with a member of the United States Cabinet!

 

Re: Captain America: Civil War - pre-release discussion, news, rumors,

And yet he had no problem with that in Age of Ultron when thats what the Avengers basically were. Hell the Civil War trailer actually reminds people that this is still the case after Age of Ultron until registration is passed.

Plus he's probably understandably paranoid that HYDRA is running the whole thing.

 

Re: Captain America: Civil War - pre-release discussion, news, rumors,

There is

Spoiler: spoiler

a bombing which Bucky is blamed for

The trailer also (as usual) appears to be out of order - it looks like the Govt seizes all of their gear (see it being carried away) - then we get I think the scenes where they are in their own clothes.

 

Re: Captain America: Civil War - pre-release discussion, news, rumors,

This looks great. However, the perfect trailer would end with Spider-Man leaping over something. Anything. His laundry basket.

 

Re: Captain America: Civil War - pre-release discussion, news, rumors,

And Age of Ultron depicted a lot of ways in which this fact was deeply problematic. After all, God knows how many people died as a result of a threat the Avengers themselves created. A sovereign nation lost its capital city. Johannesburg was trashed and God knows how many South African citizens were killed; parts of Seoul were destroyed along with its subway system, again killing who knows how many innocent South Koreans; the Avengers evaded the authorities when Bruce Banner had just killed who knows how many people in Johannesburg; numerous other people were killed throughout the world by Ultron robots attacking facilities; and, oh yeah, the world itself was almost destroyed. But no one has the right to regulate the Avengers after the consequences of their actions were so ruinous?

I can see Steve leading the Avengers without governmental accountability in the immediate post-SHIELD world for a time as a temporary situation. I have trouble thinking of him as someone who would want to lead a private army without answering to anyone else as a permanent situation.

 

Re: Captain America: Civil War - pre-release discussion, news, rumors,

Thank you for the details.

Ahhh, that makes more sense.

 

Re: Captain America: Civil War - pre-release discussion, news, rumors,

That was my impression of him as well. I'm just trying to come up with a reasonable explanation for why he would seem to be working with Tony - and the best I've come up with so far as that he wanted to be neutral, but Cap convinced him to 'side' with Tony so he can be on hand to stop things from escalating too far.

Nothing's really clear at this point. I'm just making wild guesses.

On the one hand, I can understand that, but on the other hand I don't think 'not being above the law' necessarily requires a 'registration act' type situation. The avengers could easily exist independently, call their own targets, etc, and still be willing to answer for any unintentional damage done. And the govt. could easily let them do so, if that was what everyone wanted. Of course, then we wouldn't have a movie.

I think he would rather lead a private army that is doing the right thing than hand over that army to a govt. that's obviously going to abuse and misuse it. Though I agree neither is likely to be his preferred scenario.

I think at the end of the day it's going to come down to this: when Captain America sees innocent people in trouble, he's going to save them. Whether the govt. approves or not, even if there's a possibility that something could go wrong, he can't NOT be a hero. It's just who he is. And that's automatically going to bring him into at least some kind of conflict with just about any regulation you can imagine, unless he was the one making the decisions about what's allowed.

 

Re: Captain America: Civil War - pre-release discussion, news, rumors,

 

Re: Captain America: Civil War - pre-release discussion, news, rumors,

Awesome trailer

It seems like they hit one of the central themes of what Civil War was about.. Friend against Friend, sometimes Family against Family.

This ought to be good and will make the Top3 Marvel movie choice even harder (my list is currently Avengers 1, Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy).

 

Re: Captain America: Civil War - pre-release discussion, news, rumors,

Very cool trailer, but it still seems like a huge stretch to think that Tony and Steve -- after all they've already been through together-- could ever actually be driven to go to war with each other.

Get in arguments and minor fistfights and throw each other around? Sure. But not an actual war where they're mobilizing forces and strategizing against each other.

 

Re: Captain America: Civil War - pre-release discussion, news, rumors,

Great trailer. We even got a brief glimpse of Black Panther, which I was not expecting. Not surprised by the lack of Spider-Man though, I wouldn't be surprised if they pulled a Luke Skywalker and didn't actually show him before the movie is released.
I like that they seem to be tying Bucky's story into the main conflict.
As for Steve being against registration, I could see it if the government is planning using registration as a way to force the superheroes who register to work for them.

 

Re: Captain America: Civil War - pre-release discussion, news, rumors,

Ah, gotcha.

I mean, I'm not convinced you can have the Avengers not be putting themselves above the law without making them an agency of the democratic state. Vigilanteism is a crime for a reason. I mean, right there -- the Avengers pick their own targets? On what basis do they operate? By what set of standards will they operate to protect the rights of suspects? How can there be an effective chain of custody for evidence? How can they make sure that charges against suspects hold up in court? Who gets to tell the Avengers when they've gone too far, or when they can't do something?

To put it another way:

Would you trust the police not to be part of the democratic state?

And who gets to decide what constitutes "the right thing?" Steve?

"You know, the last time I was in Germany and saw a man standing above everybody else, we ended up disagreeing."

Here's the thing: Steve does sometimes rebel when he thinks he knows what's right and the institutions he is serving are in the wrong. He violated Colonel Phillips's orders to rescue Bucky and the other 400 POWs from Hydra in CA:TFA. He went on the run from SHIELD and then tore it down to prevent Hydra from launching Project Insight in CA:TWS.

But Steve also always made sure he was answerable for his actions afterwards. In CA:TFA, as soon as he returned to the Allied base, he reported to Phillips and said that he would like to submit himself for discipline. In TWS, he made sure to release all the information he had on Hydra and SHIELD to the public; Natasha testified before Congress about why they made the decisions they did, and I presume Steve did as well, since he wasn't exactly in hiding as of A:AoU.

So, yeah, sometimes Steve rebels against the morally illegitimate exercise of power by authority figures. But he also has a history of then making sure that he is held accountable for his own rebellions, of submitting to legitimate authority so they can determine if his rebellions were morally justified.

That's my basic problem with the idea that Steve would even want the Avengers not to be answerable to anyone: He may be suspicious of powerful institutions, but I also think he doesn't see himself as being above the law or having an inherent right to break the law just because he thinks what governments are doing is wrong. Steve requires a fairly extraordinary set of circumstances to drive him to rebel -- and I am not convinced that what to me sounds like a sensible idea in a democracy ("nobody should be able to exercise executive power without answering to the people through the legitimate democratic state; those who are powerful should have checks and balances on them") is inherently something that would drive Steve to rebel.

So I suspect that we're going to find out that there's something about he Sokovia Accords that is particularly onerous, that in some way violates the rights of superpowered individuals, rather than just him objecting in principle to the idea that he and the Avengers should not get to be self-appointed police and soldiers.

Well, that's a pretty damn ominous line of thought. "Unless he's the one making the decisions." Doesn't sound very in keeping with the values of liberal democracy Steve believes in.

I take it for granted that both Steve and Tony are deliberately trying to make sure they don't use lethal force and only disable rather than permanently damage or kill the other.

 

Re: Captain America: Civil War - pre-release discussion, news, rumors,

Wanda sided with Cap? pretty disappointed with that.

And really, it's the first time since the first Avengers I've wanted to see Tony punch Caps face in so much, hope this does end with him being taken down a few pegs, and not before time.

But then again if they get their hands on the Time Stone they can drop him right back in the 40's after it's all done, let him whine in his own time if he misses it so much.