Captain America: Civil War

[janne_d]

Saw the latest Marvel offering last night, and I feel a mighty need to ramble about many things. This is not a review so much as me working out various ideas as I think through them but

Comments

[emeraldsword]

I kind of agreed with this when I saw it, I think - but thinking back on it (probably with fandom-glasses on!) I was thinking about how nobody was able to make an impartial decision without their own personal feelings driving it. Yes, Tony is the main example of that, both in wanting to sign the Accords to lift the burden of responsibility off his own back and onto the communal back (and as a sop to Pepper) and also in making the decision to fight Bucky at the end despite the villain telling him that that's what he wants to happen. But although Steve said all the right things in the meeting, about the risks of not being sent where they need to go and being subject to powerplay and so on, in the end his decisions seemed largely based on what is happening to Bucky. Which, obviously, incredibly important, but to say that his is the right perspective when he kind of backed himself into a corner because of the way he reacted when Bucky was threatened is...interesting

[janne_d]

I... don't think Steve had the right perspective, and I absolutely didn't mean to imply that he is impartial. He has a different perspective on the Accords than Tony does, and I think their motivations are both very in character given their recent experiences. The film did do a very good job of making it difficult to be fully on either side of the argument! Annoyingly, since Steve is the Avenger of my heart... Most of my musings about Steve's reaction are me trying to think into his perspective, largely because the Team Tony response is easier for me to understand and agree with.

Though I'd like to make a distinction with this:
in the end his decisions seemed largely based on what is happening to Bucky
I would say his decisions about how he personally was going to act once the frame up occurs are clearly about Bucky and then trying to stop Zemo. But all of that occurs after he has already decided not to sign the Accords, and in my view has nothing to do with the issue of the Accords other than it limiting Steve's options and

[janne_d]

So I was thinking about this some more (because this film has eaten my brain) and thinking that the film doesn't really show how Steve would have dealt with the Accords, if he would have tried to challenge/protest them before breaking them if he hadn't been overtaken by the Bucky-Zemo plot, and it occurred to me that may have been what you meant about him being backed into a corner, so sorry if I misread that

[emeraldsword]

Yes, I think that's what I meant. I didn't mean to accuse you of being too much of a Steve fan! I basically feel the same - that the Accords are necessary because everyone needs to be accountable in some way, but in the battle I was really rooting for Steve because OMG they can't take Bucky! Whereas logically I should be hoping that Tony's legal eagles would take down Steve's vigilante posse

[janne_d]

Oh, I meant if Zemo went with the same plan of framing Bucky the manhunt would have gone down the same way even without the Accords. (I really should start putting all the words I'm thinking into sentences.)

It threw me a bit in the film that the Winter Soldier being Bucky Barnes and Steve's old friend was apparently public knowledge, just being mentioned in passing in the news. I guess I've read so many fics where the reveal of that is a big deal, it was weird to have it not be! It is an interesting question, how much effort the authorities were putting in to finding Bucky before the UN attack - maybe the hunt was more intense just after Hydra was revealed and then as time went on and Bucky didn't cut that swathe it got mostly put on a backburner or left to the Avengers.