Captain America: Civil War trailer

[ffutures]

Gacked from selenak:

Looks like they're making the whole thing be about Bucky Barnes and oversight of "vigilantes", but I'm hoping that there's more to it than that.

Comments

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

So do I - but in this iteration it looks as if Tony is more in the right than Steve... which would be nice.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Agreed. There has to be some accountability.

[jeymien.livejournal.com]

I'm sure there will be more added in - but it is a Captain America movie, not an Avengers movie so the emphasis will be on Cap's role and that definitely includes Bucky.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Of course - but from any sane pov Bucky is damn dangerous and needs professional help. Who knows when the brainwashing may resurface, Cap's guilt not withstanding?

[jeymien.livejournal.com]

Very true :) I'm also thinking that from the trailer, they make it clear they don't plan to let Bucky live.. Steve wouldn't be able to just let them kill someone who had been victimized that way either. Not when they're showing they could be rehabilitated. :)

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Do you really think Tony would be okay with that?

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Considering that, though the USA is one of the very few countries in the world not to have abolished the death penalty, but not one single person detained in Gitmo has been executed -- because there has been no due prccess -- this all sounds more than faintly ridiculous.

Just as the idea that the embodiment of US ideals should object to oversight of the Avengers when the whole of the US Constitution is about setting up a system of checks and balances to stop misuse of power is well...weird.

[jeymien.livejournal.com]

I kinda wonder if they aren't on US soil? It's like when the team was sent in after Osama Bin Ladin? The US isn't always about following their ideals.. plenty of situations where they haven't. Even Gitmo - waterboarding and whatever else.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I suspect that it would be a lot safer off US soil!

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Given that the previous oversight was provided by, in effect, HYDRA, a secretive global conspiracy not accountable to anyone, the legitimacy of the oversight has to be at issue.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I don't think we're talking Oversight with a capital here. But the whole of the US system of government relies on oversight systems - usually called checks and balances. And the World Security Council was not wholly Hydra - nor was SHIELD.

Are you in favour of gun control of some kind? Of licensing of car drivers, or airline pilots? Of the banning of private armies? Then you are in favour of some kinds of oversight.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

SHIELD was the executive arm of the WSC. And even setting HYDRA aside, SHIELD was adopting some deeply questionable policies; Rogers was challenging Fury about them before either of them had any idea of HYDRA's involvement, and his concerns seem to have been borne out.

The American constitution is ultimately based on oversight of the government by the governed; not on oversight by some elite body. SHIELD functioned as such an elite body, and it was used as a tool by people who wanted (as Brecht put it in Die Lösung "To dissolve the people and elect another." Rogers's ultimate solution, and Romanoff's, was to expose all of SHIELD's records to public view, enabling public oversight again.

We can talk about "in favor of some kind of oversight" if you like. But just because I like sea bathing doesn't mean I want to be pickled in brine. Establishing a general principle does not mean establishing everything that anyone might claim is an application of that principle.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Nor can you allow people with too much personal power to put other people in danger - which is precisely what Steve is doing. Or you can - and people die (which is what is happening in far too many places in the world right now.)

And what oversight does anyone have over the Avengers? Or over any superheroes? The people? I suspect they are the ones clamouring to get the Avengers under control.

Tony learned this the hard way, travelling from "privatising world peace' to agreeing to some form of oversight. Steve, on the other hand, appears (from the trailer, which probably does not give the whole story) to believe in his own image - that he is always right and above the law. (And, indeed, Chris Evans has articulated Cap's position as something not far from this.)

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Well, that gets us to some rather basic questions of political philosophy, which I think would be off topic for this thread. The fact that this trailer raises that kind of questions holds some promise for the substance of the film, though.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Something that short can't give the whole story. I think it's reasonable to hope that there will be more to it. But The Winter Soldier had one central plot thread and was served very well by it. This foretaste does give me an appetite for the complete feast.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

It looks interesting - just not sure it's two films worth of interesting.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

What two films are you thinking of? Civil War, obviously, but I'm not seeing the other one. The upcoming Avengers films seem to be moving over to conflict on a cosmic scale.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

But 'The Winter Soldier' had at least two plot lines, though they had bearing on each other and, oddly, perhaps, the Winter Soldier was, technically, the sub-plot.