In light of the podcast discussion, my jumbled up thoughts on the central conflict.
FULL SPOILERS AHEAD
I don’t think the movie was, or needed to be, as political as Tom wanted to make it. What Tom keeps saying on the podcast (as best I understood it) was the argument was about whether or not superheroes should have any governing oversight. And that that’s a silly debate, of course they do, see also: police. The way I saw things, the movie was more nuanced than that (although there are still a few weak points).
Tony’s arguments are basically sound in the abstract: we need oversight, and we should get onboard before they make the deal worse. Cap’s response is a little more personal and muddied; there’s some arrogance in that he thinks the Avengers are still the best ones to run the show themselves, but there’s also some legitimate concern for the specifics of the Sokovia Accords.
Cap almost changes his mind, he’s ready to sign by the time they’ve captured Bucky. He’s coming around to the idea that this might be inevitable, and that they should cooperate toward making this work instead of having something worse forced on them later. Then Tony let’s it slip that Wanda is basically under house arrest, and Cap starts seeing the worst case scenario again and doubles down on resisting this.
On the Bucky side, I don’t think this is as contrived or badly written as Tom argues either. As far as any governments are concerned, Bucky was a Hydra terrorist. He assassinated Nick Fury (unclear if the world really knows he survived based on his reappearance in Ultron, best case scenario, Bucky still attempted to assassinate him) and was instrumental in the whole Hydra/Project Insight disaster. Cap might’ve told anyone who would listen that this is his childhood friend and he (rightly) believes Bucky was brainwashed, but that’s still not going to get him off the most wanted lists by the end of Winter Soldier.
The next time the world sees Bucky is when he’s caught on tape bombing the UN. A Hydra terrorist/assassin/Russian Supersoldier has successfully blown up a chunk of the UN, and Tom thinks it’s contrived that the orders are to shoot on sight when they apprehend him? And then once he’s captured, before any real defense can be made or exploration into these brainwashing claims, Bucky breaks out and kills a bunch of people. The audience knows why all this is happening, that some of it is brainwashing, that some of it is being framed, but to the rest of the world, I really have no problem believing they’d be trying to shoot on sight for the entire movie.
To jump back to Wanda for a moment, here’s one of the weak points I’ll concede. Ross lays out the alternative to the Avengers when ScarJo asks in the initial meeting: you don’t play ball, you retire. That makes total sense. But with Wanda they jump straight to internment, as Cap points out, when she doesn’t make up her mind about the Sokovia Accords and that part does feel a little contrived. They do a clumsy job trying to make apparently reasonable legislation regarding super-heroics into a more personal threat to her identity (fun trivia: for all the differences in the specific conflict/legislation in the comic book version of Civil War, they shared this weakness). I stand by the handling of Bucky and Cap’s reaction to all that, but this part is a little bit of a cheap way to weaken the #TeamIronMan arguments.
“The Raft”, the underwater superhero prison where Wanda and three totally mortal, unpowered humans are kept, also made Ross’s agenda a little more sinister than it needed to be.
But even acknowledging those problems, I think the conflict holds up a lot better than Tom gives it credit for on the podcast.
Tony sees the big picture, where there is a real problem, and he jumps right into the solution offered. Cap focuses on the real problems with that specific solution, and even as he almost works through them and changes his mind, the personal stakes for his friends drive him to defy the rules and save his friends.
And I think the ending supports that. My read on that is Cap basically does retire. He’s rescued his friends, but he’s not going to fight the Sokovia Accords any longer. He comes back to that initial choice: sign up to be the UN’s Avengers or retire, and he retires. He leaves the shield behind, he leaves the Avengers behind. He sends Tony that letter basically telling him if the shit ever hits the fan, of course he’ll be there to help, but this isn’t the place for him.
I think this movie is more about the personal choices than a real political allegory (and it’s a bummer that Tom doesn’t see it this way, since that’s what it sounds like he wants it to be too). I don’t think the main point of the movie is trying to struggle with or fully explore the idea of oversight for superhumans (or some real world analog of law enforcement/military), I think the extent that that’s part of the plot is fine but it’s about what Captain America goes through when faced with these issues.
