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| Image Courtesy www.comicbook.com |
Here we are, 4 weeks away from the wide
release of Captain America: Civil War.
This movie has been hotly anticipated ever since Disney announced last
year that the third Captain America movie would not have the
subtitle “Serpent Society,” but instead would be titled Captain America:
Civil War. However, to think that
the MCU Civil War has only been building for a couple of years would be to
ignore the facts. It’s not like Tony
Stark and Steve Rogers just decided one day that they wanted to disagree about
something, picked the Sokovia Accords, and duked it out. No, this conflict over accountability vs.
freedom has actually been built into the very DNA of the Marvel Cinematic
Universe virtually since its inception.
You might say that these heroes were always destined to come into
conflict, either with each other or with the government; the time and place was
the only question left to be answered.
Frankly, this Civil War has been
a long time coming.
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| Image Courtesy www.empireonline.com |
Background
Before we start looking at how
the conflict is built into the MCU from the beginning, we need to figure out
exactly what the heroes are going to be fighting about come May 6. In the comics, the Civil War centered around
the heroes’ split reactions to the Superhuman Registration Act, a piece of
legislation proposed by the U.S. Government in response to the “Stamford
Incident,” in which a team of young heroes filming a reality show tried to take
out a group of heavy-hitting supervillains, one of whom detonated, killing over
600 people, including 60 schoolchildren.
The Superhuman Registration Act required superhumans to register their
secret identities with the U.S. Government and accept government
accountability. Most of the heroes
weren’t thrilled with the idea of anyone knowing their secret
identities, and resisted.
In the MCU, there really aren’t a
lot of heroes with secret identities—Daredevil, Spider-Man, the Secret
Warriors, and possibly Hawkeye and Black Widow—so a conflict over registering identities
really would not work. This time around,
the conflict will instead revolve around the idea of governmental
accountability: should heroes be held
responsible for the consequences of their fights with villains? Should heroes act as agents of the state
instead of doing their own thing? To
whom should heroes be accountable:
themselves or a government agency?
These are not easy questions to answer, and that is where the conflict
will come in.
However, people have been asking
these questions within the MCU for quite a while, so before the movie comes
out, let’s look back at just how they’ve been building this conflict.
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Phase 1
We can start right near the
beginning with The Incredible Hulk.
The entire premise of this movie is that the U.S. Military, embodied by
General Thunderbolt Ross, wants to recapture the Hulk and replicate him to
create an army of super-soldiers. For
his part, however, Bruce Banner (the man behind the Hulk) wants nothing to do
with the military, desiring nothing more than to live a normal life. Should Banner be allowed to live a normal
life when he represents such a game-changing source of power?
Iron Man 2 also poses similar questions in
its infamous Congressional Hearing scene.
The U.S. Government, represented by Senator Stern (Hail Hydra), summons
Tony Stark (the creator and user of the Iron Man suits) to appear before the
Senate and defend his decision to hold back the Iron Man suit from the
military. Stern wants to be able to
replicate the Iron Man suit for general use by the U.S. military, but Tony
refuses, believing that the safest hands for that technology to be in are his
own. Should such powerful technologies
be held by private citizens, or should the government have some control over a
device capable of “privatizing national security”?
The final Phase 1 movie relevant
to this discussion is The Avengers, the movie that brought the whole
group together. The Avengers assemble to
fight off an alien invasion brought on by S.H.I.E.L.D.’s experimentation with
the Tesseract. This battle causes untold
devastation to an area of New York City.
Following the battle, the Avengers disappear into the woodwork, leaving
the people of the city to rebuild after the destruction. Before the dust has settled, however, there are
already public calls from a New York Congressman demanding that the Avengers be
held accountable for the destruction of New York City. From the perspective of the audience there
doesn’t seem to be any reason for this—Loki chose the battleground, not
the Avengers, and Loki summoned an alien army to invade Earth—but from
the perspective of the people within the universe, it does make a degree of
sense to hold the heroes accountable for the results of their actions. And since emotion is very heavily involved
with this, those calls become all the louder.
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| Image Courtesy marvel.wikia.com |
Phase 2
Phase 2 kicked off with Iron
Man 3, in which a corrupt, power-hungry businessman attempted to
essentially get a corner market on the war against terror by controlling both
the world’s greatest terrorist threat and the President of the United
States. That Killian came so close to
success calls into question just how safe it would be for superhumans to work
directly for the government: When his
choice for President was in office, Killian could have used him to deploy War
Machine (I mean “Iron Patriot”) anywhere he wanted to further his own agenda. So much for government accountability being a
good thing…
In Captain America: The Winter
Soldier, it is revealed that S.H.I.E.L.D. has been compromised from within
by Hydra, which somehow managed to worm its way into the agency and take over
key areas. Hydra in fact plans to use
S.H.I.E.L.D.’s own Insight Program to ensure security by killing off about 10%
of the world’s population (including, among others, Tony Stark, James Rhodes,
and President Ellis). In order to defeat
such a threat, Captain America and his friends have to go completely off the
grid: they do not know who to trust, so
they cannot wait for authorization to fight back. This is truly a situation in which Captain
America must do what is right, despite the fact that no one in authority
supports him, and because those in authority are actually in the wrong. Yet again, where does government
accountability come into play when those in authority are corrupt?
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Avengers: Age of Ultron is where all of this comes to a
head for the Avengers. The team came
together to defeat the final Hydra Head they knew about (Baron Strucker) and
recapture Loki’s scepter. However, Tony
attempts to use the scepter to jumpstart the Ultron peacekeeping project, and
Ultron becomes sentient and attempts to destroy the human race. Even though Tony was trying to protect the
world with Ultron, should the results of his actions be blamed on him? How much of the consequences of these actions
should he be considered responsible for?
Who is to blame for the Hulk’s rampage that tore apart a South African
city? The Hulk wasn’t exactly in
control; the Avengers never actually called the Hulk in. At the same time, the Scarlet Witch simply
manipulated Banner/Hulk’s brain; she didn’t control his actions. Nevertheless, given everything that happened,
it is natural that there would be people demanding a level of accountability
from Tony Stark and from the Avengers.
Television
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| Image Courtesy www.twitter.com/AgentsofShield |
The TV shows have also helped to
build the concept of heroes being held accountable by the government into the
MCU. In some ways, the TV shows have
done far more to push this than the movies!
A major part of Agents of
S.H.I.E.L.D. season 2 was the lack of transparency and accountability by
Coulson as the new Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.
He was no longer accountable to the U.S. Government or World Security
Council, so he could do virtually anything.
This comes to a head when Commander Gonzales and his rival S.H.I.E.L.D.
group take over Coulson’s base, leading to an eventual merging in which Coulson
remains Director under the oversight of Gonzales’ Board.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has placed a huge emphasis in
season 3 on the proliferation of the Inhumans, a race of superhumans descended
from the products of Kree experiments performed on early humans. These Inhumans are normal people who
unexpectedly undergo the process of Terrigenesis, unlocking superhuman
abilities. Consequently, the world is
faced with an unexplained sudden increase in the number of “enhanced” or
“powered” people running around, not all of whom know how to use their powers
or will use them for good. The world’s
governments are still wrestling with the proper response to this crisis,
something which could be addressed by the United Nations as part of the Sokovia
Accords. Who should be responsible for
overseeing these new Inhumans? Should they
be allowed to make their own choices, or should they be required to register
with the government, even if they want nothing more than to return to their old
life?
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| Image Courtesy www.comicbook.com |
Unique within the MCU, Daredevil
is the only hero (beyond the new Spider-Man) with a truly secret identity. In his series, he works with the police for
the common good, but on his own terms.
The police are willing to assist him, but that does not stop his police
buddy from attempting to shoot/arrest him on several occasions. However, Daredevil season 2
incorporates the interesting concept that there are some things which the
vigilantes are able to handle which regular police cannot do: there is a purpose to having these heroes
running around and fighting undead ninjas and well-armed gangs. Should vigilantes like Daredevil and the
Punisher be permitted to operate in situations where the bad guys outclass the
police?
In Jessica Jones season 1,
Jessica experiences the everyman’s reaction to all the superheroes running
around when one of her clients turns the tables and tries to kill her in
revenge for the client’s mother’s death during the Battle of Manhattan. In my mind, this emphasizes the call for
accountability which we have heard from several other places within the MCU. This series also demonstrates one of the
major problems with allowing powered individuals to run around without holding
them accountable: Killgrave can use his
powers to do anything he wants, and no one (aside from Jessica) can stop him. At the same time, however, Jessica does stop
Kilgrave, and she does so in spite the authorities’ unwillingness to accept his
powers.
Conclusion
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| Image Courtesy www.comicbook.com |
In looking back at the MCU pre-Captain
America: Civil War, it should be clear that the ideological divide which
will split the characters in that movie has been a long time coming. Should the government have some control over
superheroes and other enhanced individuals?
Should those with powers be watched to protect the world from them? Should they be able to do what they want with
their powers? Who is responsible for the
damage caused by battles between heroes and villains? All of these questions have been asked
already, and none of them have yet been given an adequate and definitive
answer.
In Captain America: Civil War,
these questions will be at the forefront of everyone’s minds, and their
different answers to these questions will cause the falling out between Captain
America and Iron Man. However, because
this ideological conflict has been such a long time coming, I do not think it
will be solved in a single movie—or at least not entirely. Even if Captain America and Iron Man join
forces in the end, there will be too much bad blood and too great of an
ideological divide for everyone involved to set it aside.
How do you see this ideological
divide throughout the MCU? Do you think
it will or should be resolved in a single movie? Let me know in the comments!
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