Marvel Cinematic Universe, Phase Three and BEYOOOOONND

[zslane]

Toys and action figures are usually a pretty good guide as to what colors the creators envisioned for a costume.

[Greywind]

Yes, red, white, and blue (and black). Peter is a junior Captain America.

[archer]

2 hours ago, Greywind said:

Yes, red, white, and blue (and black). Peter is a junior Captain America.

 

As we've seen, if you don't give him a shield, he will take it.

[Old Man]

Even if it doesn’t obey the laws of physics at all. 

[Doc Shadow]

The Rule of Cool trumps beats the Laws of Physics in movies and comics.

[Lord Liaden]

I shudder to imagine what the Sokovia Accords would look like in Trumplandia.

 

OTOH that selective dusting could have an upside...

[Bazza]

Without getting political, the Sokovia Accords are the will of over 100 countries and enshrined in international law through the UN.

 

The Accords represent governance and are thus bigger and more important than the Avengers, or any other group of superheroes. 

 

As SHIELD was wound up, the Avengers were the only organisation capable of effective planetary security, in case of another alien attack. Internal tension over the Accords was the reason the Avengers broke up. Tony believed in keeping the Avengers together for its planetary security role, even if it meant submitting to the Accords (really the Avengers had an ultimatum in this regard). Steve was of the opinion that The Avengers worked best with self-governance. Unfortunately for Steve, this wasn't permitted by the Accords, and was considered a breach, and thus made a crime under international law; as it would make The Avengers a rogue organisation (Secret Avengers!). 

 

Personally I believe that if the Avengers had a favourable liaison (to fight their bureaucratic battles), they could keep some level of semi-self-governance and could have survived under the Accords. Ergo, 7+ billion people would still have a planetary security safety net. 

 

Oh well.

[Christopher R Taylor]

It doesn't do to put too much rational scrutiny to comic book movies, particularly Civil War.  There's basically no situation in which 70 or more nations put their sovereignty and that of their peoples under the control of the UN.  Its just a movie and the setup only has to pass a very, very think veneer of plausibility as long as its otherwise entertaining.

[Bazza]

 

[slikmar]

3 hours ago, Bazza said:

Without getting political, the Sokovia Accords are the will of over 100 countries and enshrined in international law through the UN.

 

The Accords represent governance and are thus bigger and more important than the Avengers, or any other group of superheroes. 

 

As SHIELD was wound up, the Avengers were the only organisation capable of effective planetary security, in case of another alien attack. Internal tension over the Accords was the reason the Avengers broke up. Tony believed in keeping the Avengers together for its planetary security role, even if it meant submitting to the Accords (really the Avengers had an ultimatum in this regard). Steve was of the opinion that The Avengers worked best with self-governance. Unfortunately for Steve, this wasn't permitted by the Accords, and was considered a breach, and thus made a crime under international law; as it would make The Avengers a rogue organisation (Secret Avengers!). 

 

Personally I believe that if the Avengers had a favourable liaison (to fight their bureaucratic battles), they could keep some level of semi-self-governance and could have survived under the Accords. Ergo, 7+ billion people would still have a planetary security safety net. 

 

Oh well.

So what your saying is they should have hired Matt Murdoch or Jennifer Walters (would have been a great way to introduce her pre-She-Hulk).

[Greywind]

Just as long as it wasn't Henry Peter Gyrich.

[zslane]

The questions raised by Captain America: Civil War do not have easy answers. For every reasonable person who believes the Sokovia Accords are a Good Idea, there is another who disagrees:

 

 

[Lord Liaden]

I offer my apologies for what was obviously a poorly thought-out attempt at a joke. It was never intended to be taken seriously.

[Bazza]

3 hours ago, slikmar said:

So what your saying is they should have hired Matt Murdoch or Jennifer Walters (would have been a great way to introduce her pre-She-Hulk).

 

Jennifer Walters: this would be a good way to introduce her. 

 

Howeverthe two people I have in mind are Nick Fury, or someone like a NATO general. The role needs international, military and diplomatic experience. 

 

So maybe bring in Jennifer Walters  as a specialist lawyer for the Avengers and someone who is an expert on the Accords. 

[Bazza]

1 hour ago, Lord Liaden said:

I offer my apologies for what was obviously a poorly thought-out attempt at a joke. It was never intended to be taken seriously.

 

No worries, I understood it was meant in humour. 

[archer]

12 hours ago, zslane said:

The questions raised by Captain America: Civil War do not have easy answers. For every reasonable person who believes the Sokovia Accords are a Good Idea, there is another who disagrees:

 

 

 

I think it's clear who is right.

 

Look at the problems the Avengers dealt with which were pointed to in the movie as justification for the Accords to control the Avengers' actions:

 

1) The alien invasion of New York

2) The attempt by HYDRA to take over the world using new SHIELD super-helicarriers

3) The attempt by Ultron to destroy the world

4) The successful attempt by Crossbones to steal a biological weapon and the casualties from his suicide

 

1) The alien invasion of New York:

The Avengers were formed and asked to intervene by SHIELD which is the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division in the MCU. The government asked them to form and intervene in the situation. The government also bungled and attempted to nuke New York City, which wouldn't have ended the invasion, but would have just killed civilians and the heroes who were trying to stop the invasion. So the Avenger's actions were sanctioned, saved millions of lives locally, plus saved the world.

 

There was no justification shown anywhere to display how the Avengers did anything at all which was inappropriate.

 

2) The attempt by HYDRA to take over the world using new SHIELD super-helicarriers

The government's intelligence services were deeply penetrated by a terrorist organization which was using government resources to build superweapons which would assassinate everyone worldwide who might be capable of someday of opposing the terrorists. The couple of heroes who tried to stop that from happening were hounded by the terrorists who were misappropriating government resources but managed to stop events from escalating by crashing some of the superweapons into the ocean and crashing one of them into the government building which the terrorists had been using as their headquarters.

 

During these events, the only thing I could see for the US government to be upset at the Avengers would be making all those SHIELD/HYDRA secrets available to everyone on the internet. But that was done by the director of SHIELD deliberately giving his access codes to make it happen while he was standing next to the SHIELD agent who was typing in the commands.

 

There was no justification shown anywhere to display how the Avengers did anything at all which was inappropriate. Additionally, all the people working in the non-US governments of the world should be thrilled at what happened because they weren't assassinated by the HYDRA superweapon. They should also be thrilled at getting all the free intelligence information.

 

3) The attempt by Ultron to destroy the world

Once Ultron existed, he had to be stopped because he wanted to kill the vast majority of the people on Earth. In Sokovia, the Avengers took great pains to evacuate the threatened city before the crisis started. And after the crisis started, they took great pains to continue protecting and evacuating civilians.

 

If the Avengers had been slowed down by as much as five minutes while asking for UN permission to save the world from destruction, the world would have been destroyed.

 

You could argue that this series of events was started by the Avengers. But when you get down to it, Tony Stark was doing questionable scientific research behind the backs of the other Avengers which prevented them from making sure he had proper safeguards in place and which prevented anyone from being there to monitor things when it visibly started going wrong.

 

The actions that the Avengers made were entirely appropriate. The actions of Tony Stark which were made behind the backs of the Avengers were probably inappropriate. You could justify UN restrictions and monitoring on dangerous scientific research, but not the response of the Avengers. (I could also argue that the invasion of New York started in Project Pegasus because the government was doing dangerous scientific research in secret without proper oversight.)

 

You could also argue that the Hulk being mind controlled into going on a rampage was somehow the Avengers fault. But honestly, the president of the USA could have been mind-warped by the same villain and could have been persuaded into starting a global thermonuclear war. The leader of any country, company, or organization could have been just as mind-twisted as the Hulk was and would have been just as powerless to stop it. That's not the fault of the Avengers, that's just the state of affairs when a wide array of superpowers become available to random individuals who might choose to abuse them.

 

4) The successful attempt by Crossbones to steal a biological weapon and the casualties from his suicide

First of all, the theft of the biological weapon happened even with the Avengers being right there. That suggests that the theft would have been fully successful without the Avengers being there and a WMD would have been in the hands of a terrorist.

 

The chase of people trying to escape with the biological weapon was conducted with what appeared to be a high degree of professionalism and skill. All the bad guys were caught and the WMD was recovered despite competent planning on the part of the bad guys.

 

It's unknown how much time the Avengers might have had to contact the proper authorities in the nation where the events happened. But we also don't know whether the local authorities were trustworthy or competent.

 

It is also unknown why the facility had a WMD on the premises without enough armed security and safeguards to withstand a terrorist attack. Or why the facility was located in a densely populated urban area without roads of adequate size to allow a police response to an emergency. In the US, a facility like that couldn't get a high enough clearance from the CDC to do WMD research. Maybe the facility had the WMD because of an ongoing local medical emergency like an Ebola outbreak. But if it wasn't something like that (and that wasn't indicated at all in the movie), the UN should look into imposing regulations on who has access to biological WMD's, the safety of research facilities, and sanctions on any nation or facility which breaks the rules.

 

Back to the movie...the problem most of the public and governments appeared to have with the series of events was when Crossbones set off his (inobvious inaccessible focus) suicide bomb in the middle of a dense crowd of people. The purpose of an IIF is that people don't notice it. Professional hand-to-hand combatants who were familiar with Crossbones himself and who were also familiar with explosives weren't able to spot the bomb despite being in his presence for several minutes. I don't think it could be argued that if the Avengers had let the local police handle the situation that they would have spotted the bomb and have had the time to evacuate the area.

 

After it became clear that the bomb was going to go off inside of a crowd of people, the Avengers had the choice of letting the bomb go off inside a crowd of people or trying to move the bomb up and away from the crowd of people.

 

There was no way to know how powerful the bomb might be. There was no way to know how soon the bomb would go off.

 

There was no way to know whether there was a significant number of people in the multi-story building nearby or whether that building would be in the bomb's blast radius.

 

The best available option to preserve lives was to move the bomb up above both the crowd and the building. Fortunately, the crowd was saved but the bomb exploded before getting high enough to spare the building.

 

I really don't at all understand world leaders, particularly Wakanda, getting into a hissy fit about this. If the Wakandan nationals had been in the crowd walking toward the building (rather than already inside) and had been saved, I would presume by his juvenile reaction to the event that the leader of Wakanda would have been perfectly fine with that and would be praising the Avengers' brilliant reaction to the crisis.

 

Sorry, most world leaders in a terrorist event don't blame the first responders because their citizens were 40 yards closer rather than 40 yards further away from the terrorist when he sets off his suicide bomb.

 

Anyway, I don't see anything at all there to blame the Avengers for. "Let the terrorist have the WMD because if he were to have a suicide bomb which no one can see, then he might set it off" isn't really a valid plan for dealing with emergencies.

 

=======

 

So from my perspective, there's no justification for the Accords to exist (and no justification for them to have been either proposed or ratified but let's set that aside for the sake of conversation).

 

Should the Avengers have signed on to it?

 

Tony Stark is mentally unstable. When he was confronted by the mother whose son was killed by Ultron, Tony lost his ability to reason just as he did during various comic book story arcs like his Armor Wars and Civil War. That was true to the comics but doesn't make him, at all, right in his position.

 

In the HYDRA incident and the Ultron incident, the delay of just a couple of minutes would have meant the world as we know it would have been destroyed along with millions of lives.

 

There's not going to be a UN committee already gathered together 24 hours a day waiting to render decisions on whether to send in the Avengers. Just getting the committee up to speed on the information they would need to have in order to make a decision would take longer than a couple of minutes. By the time the committee had time to discuss and debate whether to send in the Avengers, the world would have been destroyed for sure at least twice and probably a third time already that we know of. So I don't see any way at all for that committee plan to work.

 

(Now if they wanted to make the Avengers do a UN committee after-action report so that better pre-planning and responses for future missions could be done, I could see something like that being useful. But that isn't part of the Accords.)

 

If I were in the Avengers, I'd have made an intellectual case to the Secretary of State, an imbecile who can't think things through on his own, and to Stark, who is mentally unstable, and try to jolt either of them into seeing that the Avengers' actions were appropriate and necessary. I'd also do the media circuit and explain to the press and public exactly why they'd already be dead many times over if the Accords were in place.

 

If that didn't work to stop the Accords from being signed, I'd advocate the Avengers not sign, stay together, and respond to any future world-threatening crisis as if the Accords didn't exist (while continuing the media appearances). Eventually, the Avengers would either save the world again and wouldn't be jailed for it due to the political backlash. Or some country which signed the Accords would experience a big enough crisis to invite the Avengers in even though they aren't UN sanctioned and that country would also become an advocate to repeal the Accords.

 

[Bazza]

Black Panther 2 is a go, writer-director signs on for #2. 

[Greywind]

1 hour ago, archer said:

1) The alien invasion of New York:

The Avengers were formed and asked to intervene by SHIELD which is the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division in the MCU. The government asked them to form and intervene in the situation. The government also bungled and attempted to nuke New York City, which wouldn't have ended the invasion, but would have just killed civilians and the heroes who were trying to stop the invasion. So the Avenger's actions were sanctioned, saved millions of lives locally, plus saved the world.

 

There was no justification shown anywhere to display how the Avengers did anything at all which was inappropriate.

 

SHIELD didn't answer to the US government. SHIELD answered to the World Security Council.

[archer]

36 minutes ago, Greywind said:

 

SHIELD didn't answer to the US government. SHIELD answered to the World Security Council.

 

I'm aware of the World Security Council but it isn't defined in the MCU as to what that means.

 

In the comics at the moment, SHIELD stands for Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate.

 

However, in the MCU at the moment, SHIELD stands for Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division. So the name is deliberately reminiscent of the US's Department of Homeland Security.

 

The use of "Homeland" in the name makes no sense if there's no particular homeland to reference.

 

Also the "World Security Council" has access to nuclear weapons and the launch authorization for them and can apparently launch a nuclear attack on a US city without worrying about the political repercussions of launching a nuclear attack on the United States. In the real world, only nations have access to nuclear weapons and the authorization to use them. In any world, real or fiction, I have a hard time imagining the existence of a non-US organization which would have the right to launch a spur-of-the-moment nuclear attack on New York City.

 

In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, I choose to think of the World Security Council as a group of people drawn from US-allied countries to oversee a US government-funded intelligence organization, something which is consistent with the way the group has functioned in its appearances. If anyone wishes to think of SHIELD and the World Security Council as an unfunded independent organization or part of the unfunded UN, they're free to do so. They may very well be shown to be correct in future World Security Council appearances.

 

http://marvelcinematicuniverse.wikia.com/wiki/World_Security_Council

http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/World_Security_Council_(Earth-199999)

 

 

[Lord Liaden]

As Ross said to the Avengers, "People are afraid." The practical underlying reasons for the Sokovia Accords can be argued, but public concern over extraordinarily powerful individuals active in the world without accountability is clearly one factor. I daresay world governments insecure over their inability to control such people is another, political motivation. But the Avengers up until Civil War are, without question, global vigilantes, imposing their own definition of justice without authorization from any body. That their intentions and most of their actions have been benevolent doesn't change that fact. Very few people would think armed fighter jets or cruise missiles in the hands of private individuals acting on their own would be a good idea, and the Avengers are the living equivalent of such weapons. All of us submit ourselves to the authority of the governments we live under, even if we sometimes question or have concerns about the actions of said governments.

 

Tony Stark's argument in favor of signing the Accords turned out to be prophetic: "If we don't do this now, it'll be done to us later."

[Greywind]

Scarlett Johansson Lands $15 Million Payday for Black Widow Movie

[Lord Liaden]

All things considered, that's probably a justifiable figure. (I almost said "reasonable figure," but that kind of payday is never reasonable.)   ScarJo is a bona fide marquee star at this point; Black Widow is a well-established character with substantial fan demand for a featured film; and Marvel Studios' track record all but guarantees big box-office.

 

Now, RDJ getting $50 million for one film... I appreciate his talent as much as anyone, but that's just ludicrous.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

Black Panther 2 is a go, writer-director signs on for #2. 

 

Now that they have the setting and characters all established I hope the plot is a little more interesting

[pinecone]

20 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

It doesn't do to put too much rational scrutiny to comic book movies, particularly Civil War.  There's basically no situation in which 70 or more nations put their sovereignty and that of their peoples under the control of the UN.  Its just a movie and the setup only has to pass a very, very think veneer of plausibility as long as its otherwise entertaining.

I'll agree, but also disagree....then one thing that  Might unite the earth is threat of alien invasion. But outlawing the one thing that can protect you is rather daft.

 

I see the civil war story as the classic society vs the individual. Cap embodying the individual, and Tony society.

[Starlord]

59 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

Now that they have the setting and characters all established I hope the plot is a little more interesting

 

I thought the plot was decent.  My primary issue with BP is similar to the current Star Wars movies - the main hero has very little personality.  Mind you, BP was a FAR better movie than TLJ.