Captain America Civil War was an intense, emotional movie with tensions high on both sides of the superhero conflict. It raised questions such as “Should Superheroes be regulated?” and “If someone’s brainwashed do they still take responsibility for a crime”, and is overall a great movie. However, there are key things that are forgotten in the midst of the conflict, some of which could’ve probably stopped the conflict before it began.
Winter Soldier is a Hydra Trained Super Assassin
The initial conflict between heroes occurs when, at the signing of the Sokovia Accords (which are meant to regulate The Avengers and put them under UN control), the building is bombed and King T’Chaka of Wakanda is killed. On top of that, Newspapers and general TV News get a picture of Bucky Barnes AKA Winter Soldier leaving the scene of the crime. This of course has everyone clamoring for his capture and/or death for his transgressions.
Did everyone forget that Bucky is Hydra’s most accomplished super soldier assassin? He’s killed hundreds and hundreds of people over the years and has never been caught. He’s made them all look like accidents and cleaned up after himself, so why would he be so obvious now? It’s clear that the whole situation doesn’t add up, and they should obviously put more thought into it before going full force at the man.
How Terrible Government Supervision Has Been
The argument for The Avengers to be regulated is that they’re unaffiliated with any government (even though they live in the US) and cross any and all borders to fight evil, without any authority. There’s no one to hold accountable and no one to put them in check, if they make terrible decisions (*cough* Ultron). It almost makes sense, until you realize that The Avengers HAVE been under government supervision, and it was disastrous both times.
The first time, in the first Avengers movie, the World Security Council chose to nuke New York City in order to stop an alien invasion. This not only kills the Avengers (MAYBE Thor survives), but over [b]8 million people[/b] and likely STILL wouldn’t have worked. That’s terrible decision making and over a thousand times the casualties that the Avengers have caused in total.
The second time, or still related to the first time, is SHIELD in general, which was infiltrated and taken over by Hydra. That’s pretty much enough said as the government supervision literally turned evil and was controlled by super villains.
These are clear arguments AGAINST government supervision, but NO ONE brings them up.
It’s Iron Man’s Fault
During the heated debate between The Avengers, Vision comes up with a calculation of The Avengers causing more villains to arise due to ‘The Challenge’ they present. I’ll address this with both of the next posts, but it’s not only not true, but the villains that do arrive are all because of Iron Man. The rest of the Avengers have no real part in it.
First there’s Iron Monger, who literally took Iron Man’s first suit and used it against him, as well as Iron Man’s new and improved arc reactor. Then there’s Ivan Vanko who uses Iron Man tech to make kill drones, Aldrich Killian who becomes super evil because Tony turned him down, and of course the super evil AI who almost extincted humans: Ultron. Someone Tony Stark himself created.
Literally no villains came because of The Avengers as a whole, and almost all villains who can be tied to them came from Iron Man. So yes, it makes sense for Tony Stark to sign the accords, but not anyone else.
Most of the Villains Predate The Avengers
Going back to Vision’s statement, let’s look at all the villains that showed up in modern times outside of ones created by Tony Stark. There’s Loki, Hydra, and Malekith, and all of them came long before The Avengers came together.
In Loki’s case he’s partially there because of Thor, yes, but his MAIN mission is to recover the Tesseract, which was on Earth back in the 40s and even earlier. He literally CAUSES the Avengers to come together to stop him, so it’s literally impossible to put him into that equation.
Hydra too has been around since the 40s and not only predate The Avengers, but even predate Captain America, the hero that fights them. Again, Cap was made to fight THEM, not the other way around. They just showed up in recent times because they were good at surviving.
And finally Malekith, the Dark Elf who existed back when Odin’s father was king. Malekith arose simply because the Aether came back, which is due to Jane Foster, an Earth scientist. Malekith again predates The Avengers, and is even before Thor’s time, with Thor being bar far their oldest member. With or without Thor or the rest of the Avengers, Malekith was coming to Earth to retrieve the Aether and shroud the Universe in darkness. Literally nothing they did affected his plans at all.
So you see, Vision is completely wrong for even implying The Avengers bring trouble (outside of Tony).
Thor isn’t from Earth, Hulk’s a show of government abuse
At one point during the discussion with General Ross, he brings up a point about the Avengers not knowing where Thor and Hulk are, relating them to 30 Megaton Nukes. Not only is this flawed in the fact that they’re sentient beings, but for other reasons too.
For one, Thor’s an alien prince. He literally doesn’t follow any of Earth’s rules and it’s no one’s responsibility but Asgard’s to keep track of him. Hulk is a product of the government (so they should keep track of him) and is a show that government supervision isn’t exactly great, as they’ve been trying to kill Hulk for a while now. Even worse, if anyone wants to bring it up, Ross himself has started firefights on COLLEGE CAMPUSES to get Hulk, and has endangered countless lives by literally creating Abomination. If anything, someone on The Avengers should have went on a tangent and demolished Ross with those points.
117 Countries simply isn’t enough
There are 193 countries in the UN, and in Civil War, we heard that 117 signed the Accords. It sounds like a lot, and it is, but no one seemed to notice that it simply wasn’t enough.
See, in the UN normally even 51% of the vote is fine, but when it’s super important issues such as security of the world (sound familiar?), they need a 2/3 majority. 117 Countries only vies them 60%, not quite the 66.67% they need. So really, the Avengers could’ve sat back and done…literally nothing and everything would’ve been fine. No need to fight, argue, attend the signing, or any of that jazz. They were never in any trouble to begin with.
http://www.un.org/en/ga/about/background.shtml
“Votes taken on designated important issues – such as recommendations on [u]peace and security[/u], the election of Security Council and Economic and Social Council members, and budgetary questions – require a two-thirds majority of Member States, but other questions are decided by a simple majority.”
How to do an investigation and Trial
As mentioned before, as soon as anyone gets wind that Bucky’s been seen at the scene of the crime, everyone goes into kill mode. T’Challa AKA Black Panther wants to kill him to avenge his father, The US governments wants him dead, A German kill squad is sent after him, and more. At one point, Iron Man and those on his side are also sent at Bucky (and now Cap), without anyone even so much as thinking of actually looking for proof or evidence of any kind. Bucky doesn’t get a trial, he doesn’t get an opportunity to speak, and no one investigates further into…I don’t know, the one guy who survived Winter Soldier’s onslaught, the psychiatrist, also known as the one guy who saw Bucky before he snapped.
If anyone had bothered, as Iron Man found out at the end of the movie, they would’ve found enough evidence to exonerate Bucky and start searching for the real bomber in Helmut Zemo. instead, everyone’s focused on killing Bucky without any concrete proof.
They’re Heroes and Friends
Captain America is undoubtedly a good person. Iron Man and Captain America are undoubtedly friends at one point. So when Cap expresses that he’ll go with Iron Man, but only AFTER they save the world from some new threat, it makes no sense for Iron Man, and even the government not to listen. Cap has taken down at least two regimes of corrupt governments and has done nothing but save people for his entire life, so everyone knows he doesn’t have a malevolent bone in his body. On top of that, Iron Man literally has 12 hours to bring Cap in, which is plenty of time to go check out Siberia with him, without starting a fight.
Worst case scenario, Cap’s compromised because Bucky’s his friend, and the fight happens in Siberia, away from people (less risky than the airport fight), and he’s eventually captured as he has no plans of escape. Best case scenario? He’s right and the entire team helps save the world once again and then everyone’s happy. There are literally all pros and no cons to hearing Cap out, so it’s baffling that Iron Man instead decides to fight it out, logic be damned.
Even though the airport fight was awesome in every way, there was no real reason for it to happen.
Scarlet Witch Can Control Minds
Wanda Maximoff has shown the ability to manipulate the minds of a massive amount of people, when she feels like. In Age of Ultron, she mind whammies each of the Avengers, and later in Sokovia, she evacuates entire city blocks, if not a town of people. So why is anyone fighting? How is anyone fighting? Did Wanda forget about that power, or does she enjoy her friends fighting and being locked up in a high security prison? With a wave of her hand, Wanda could’ve stepped the whole thing, whether by mind whammying Iron Man’s team, by mind controlling everyone BEFORE the fight so it never happens, or even controlling the people in the UN building to NOT sign the accords.
She could’ve used the power for almost anything and stopped what happened, but instead she simply…didn’t. No explanation given.
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