sam’s face when natasha agrees with tony about the accords is sending me

My feelings… in words…

how they could have kept cap 3 civil war w/o turning it into avengers 2.5

-do not open the film with action. the captain american movies have always been incredibly human. keep the pattern tfa & tws set; open with a moment//moments that add to steve rogers’ character

- scratch the tony narrative Completely. i’m sorry to any tony fans but seriously, get that out of there. follow steve’s perspective and steve’s perspective only, the exception being for plot-driven scenes only 

-given us more steve. he felt like a secondary character to his own film. how could that have been remedied? replace any time alotted by tony flashbacks and character insight with Steve flashbacks and character insight. give me steve watching the mother who had cared for him his whole life, breathing her last breaths in his arms, consumed by sickness. give me a quiet moment with sam, heartbroken and apologetic after two years of unsuccessfully searching for what, a ghost? give me steve helping a old woman carry her groceries into her apartment, and have her recognize him. have him spending the rest of the day with her, unguarded. 

-exploit thaddeus ross’ moral depravity; he is not just some hardass trying to push politics. the project he led illegally experimented on prisoners, he lied to bruce banner (and the misinformation is what led to bruce being turned into the hulk), he personally swore he’d kill bruce and hunted him to endlessly bruce saw no other option than to try to kill himself

-highlight the worst part of the accords. remind the audience that nefarious interests have infiltrated the government before. show us a flashback where steve’s actions were manipulated by a hydra controlled shield & the negative consequences. show us that the government does not always follow the moral highground. 

-let us have more time where steve interacts with bucky. let them have an actual conversation. 

-give us more sam wilson, someone who connected with steve and saw him as more than captain america when no one else would

-make us feel as desperate as steve feels. let us know just will happen if steve doesn’t come out on top this time. give us the hopelessness, make us be sided 100% with steve with no reservations because this is His story, without a single doubt, this is his struggle. we are rooting for steve no matter what as he fights an unjust world that would have killed his best friend without sure evidence, that would have imprisoned him, that would have dictated his every move and treated him and those like him as weapons and pawns

there should have never been sides. it should not have been open for interpretation. it should have just been the story of a man who keeps fighting for what he believes in and stands up against any bully, even if it means pitting him against the whole world, and yet, and yet,…. he still triumphs and refuses to be put down

also i just want to say marketing for this movie fucking sucked. if it was avengers: civil war, the “pick a team” tagline would have made sense. if it was an avengers movie, having iron man and his “side” just as prominent on the poster would have made sense. but it wasn’t an avengers movie. it was a captain america movie. marketing should never have given the x vs x narrative. it was supposed to b just an x story; steve rogers

honestly i’m angry enough they chose the civil war plot in the first place, they could have at least given steve the respect he deserved as a character and made the story his….

And maybe don’t give Peggy carter an off screen death that we learn about by a text message

Sam Wilson in Captain America: Civil War

It really bugs me when I see fans talk about Civil War like Bucky is the be-all and end-all of Steve’s motivation. It’s like they saw the first trailer (which does put Bucky at the centre of the conflict) and constructed their interpretation of the entire movie on that alone.

Bucky is a huge part of Steve’s motivations, but he’s not everything. In fact, treating him as such is kind of a disservice to Steve and his team, in my opinion. Because Steve’s fighting for autonomy – yes, Bucky’s, but also Wanda’s and his team’s. He’s fighting against government regulations that are not guaranteed to always put vulnerable people’s needs first. And then, when the winter soldiers are revealed, he’s fighting to stop a threat bigger than anything the world has faced before. Because he knows how dangerous Bucky is, and how evil the people who did this to him are.

When Zemo’s plot is revealed, that’s when he fights for Bucky – to save Bucky from the consequences of his decision to lie to Tony about the fate of his parents. But it took most of the movie for Steve to get to this point. He didn’t refuse to sign the Accords because of Bucky. He didn’t lead the fight on the tarmac because of Bucky. He broke international laws to protect Bucky and extract him alive from Romania because those laws were unjust. If it had been Wanda or Sam or even Tony, I really believe Steve would do the same. Because it’s wrong to apprehend someone and execute them without a trial, no matter what the governing body that sent the Avengers in says. Which is why Steve didn’t sign the Accords in the first place.

Was he being selfish? Yeah. Arrogant? You bet your ass. It’s incredibly arrogant of him to think that his judgment is the only one worth trusting. (Sidenote: it’s also incredibly believable given what he’s seen. Hello, trauma response!)

TL;DR: while it’s true that by the end of the movie, Bucky comes to eclipse his other motivations, Bucky was not the number one motivating factor for Steve’s actions from the get-go.

Things I think about while waiting on my cough meds to knock me out:

If Ross and crew wanted to find where Steve & Bucky went they probably would go directly to Sam for the information.

They probably wouldn’t ask nicely.

Sam is ready to be waterboarded by the time Tony shows up

Tony’s reactor shot didn’t even hit Sam in the face so why was he banged up there? The bruising doesn’t look hand shaped either (from Bucky’s throw)

anD FURTHERMORE.

{Gif/Image Heavy!}

Sam was not only the first answer, he was the ONLY answer. 

Place yourself in the $1500 Ferragamo brogues of one Mr. Thaddeus Ross. Wealthy powerful politician who thinks he has the world spinning on his finger until Mr. Tall Blonde+Handsome and Mr. Tall Brown+Beefy manage to destroy an airport and drop off the map!

So now you look like a goddamn doof because the team that remained on radar KNEW they were going to get arrested. It was a sacrifice tactic and goddamn it it worked! So the best thing to do would be to make the sacrifice pointless and get Steve + Bucky thrown into the RAFT too so everything can go back to your original plan (which I have a theory about AS WELL! *evil cackle*)

So here’s what you know:

So you’ve solved the problem of whether you’re going to torture your captives without trial. Whew. That took maybe 30 seconds. Now, where to start?

Here’s what you know:

In fact, Sam Wilson might be the only choice.  This decision was probably made and passed on to the guards before the team was arrested. 

To be perfectly honest, Sam probably knew that this was a risk when he made that plan.

After all he faced a similar risk for 2 years as a black dude tracking secret super-mega-nazi cells and a potentially non-responsive supersoldier on his own so…

Anyway you can blame @steveandsam  for me posting this addendum because I was just gonna keep it inside.

We’re always talking about Tony and Peter’s relationship but I would just like to also get Steve and Peter’s relationship out there too.

Steve dealing with casualties vs. Tony dealing with casualties

That’s because Steve is an actual trained soldier who has a couple of years of active combat during wartime under his belt, and Tony is a well intentioned rich dude in a fancy suit. It’s almost literally night and day, war v. peace. Steve has a much healthier perspective, to be honest, for their line of work.

That’s…such a bad analysis.

Steve has an incredibly bad perspective for a peacetime officer. His whole perspective is that they try to save as many people as they can, but ultimately people die in the course of their ultimate goal: ending the “war”. Meanwhile Tony’s ultimate goal is to save people, that’s it. There is no ideology behind him truly, only the desire to save people’s lives.

There’s a scene in some generic foreign cop show, I can’t remember which, where an ex-soldier joins a precinct and on duty he and his partner chase down a perp. The perp is a violent offender and he runs down and alley and out into a street. There’s a few cars, a few pedestrians, but overall it’s not crowded. The ex-soldier has a shot on the perp, even though there’s a good few metres between them. He stops running, lines up his shot, and prepares to fire.

His partner stops him, shoves his gun down and screams at him for, well, they cut away but it’s implied a pretty freaking long time.

Because it’s not okay. There are different rules when you deal with civilians instead of soldiers. You do not have the freedom to make potentially lethal judgment calls. It doesn’t matter how confident this man was in his judgement, it’s not his judgement to make.

Police officers making judgment calls outside of what they should be allowed is literally every criticism against the police force you will find.

Soldiers do not make good law enforcement.

The real conversation in civil war is about needs. Is it peacetime? Then no, Steve can’t do whatever he wants. But is this wartime? Has the threat reaches critical that soldiers are needed, and are allowed to violate civilian rights in the name of restoring peace? Because then that’s different.

Literally a summation of civil war is that tony has the right perspective for a peacetime officer, while Steve has the right perspective for a wartime officer. It’s deciding what condition the world is in where the lines blur.

But please dear god don’t reduce iron man’s character to “a rich dude with good intentions”. Iron man’s character is so complicated people literally write papers on it.

“Tony has the right perspective for a peacetime officer, while Steve has the right perspective for a wartime officer.” This is the best analysis of their characters I have ever read!!!

Reblogging for the last two comments. ON POINT.

Okay, but the other thing that’s missing from this is the context of the two statements.

Steve’s line is addressed to Wanda, and they’re talking about Rumlow’s suicide bomb in Nigeria. Wanda tried to divert the explosion away from the marketplace, but it still took out the office building; Steve is encouraging her not to give up, because helping somebody is better than helping nobody. That is not the same as “It’s okay if we kill some people for the greater good.” It’s more like the attitude of a doctor, who has to accept that not all patients survive if they want to keep practicing medicine.

Tony is talking about Charlie Spencer, an aid worker who was killed in Sokovia, to explain why he supports the Accords. Tony created Project Ultron, and therefore takes responsibility for Ultron’s actions. (Even though he couldn’t possibly have foreseen “robots get possessed by James Spader and try to launch a small Eastern European city into orbit,” he did futz around with the Mind Gem over Bruce’s objections.) This is him, chastized, acknowledging that he screwed up.

The observation about peacetime/wartime is absolutely valid and important, but I don’t think that’s what these gifsets encapsulate. Rather, it’s that Steve is taking a deontological position – “If you can help, you should help” – and the potential consequences don’t matter much into whether intervening is the right thing to do.* Tony’s taking a utilitarian position, where consequences are the only thing that matter, and therefore he and Steve are talking right past each other. (And, arguably, so is fandom.)

The last poster wins here IMO.

Normally what draws me to characters is their flaws- the ways they don’t work, the ways they fall short of their goals, the gaps they have that need to be filled in order to be fulfilled as people. The idea of a pure cinnamon roll generally doesn’t work for me, because I feel like I can’t get into a character like that at all.

And then there’s Sam goddamn Wilson, who upends my entire idea of why I like things.

For me, there is something really fascinating about the way that I think Sam is inclined toward lawful good but is hyperaware of the fact that the systems he wants to believe in are pretty irreparably flawed and that the question of how to do the most effective good within the constraints of existing systems is the one he struggles with. So when Steve cannonballs into his life, there’s a chance for him to use an existing system – the Avengers, and specifically the mythologized Captain America as idea of America at its best – and his own risk taking inclinations and to do good within that framework. 

(I would also be super into Sam actually dealing with Steve-the-person as opposed to Steve-the-myth and the ways they do not agree. That moment when he’s all “the people shooting at you are usually shooting at me too” is maybe my favorite sam and steve moment for all the things it says about Sam’s awareness of how big a risk he’s taking. And like, I would also genuinely love Sam’s reconciliation between knowing how much of a propaganda piece Steve is and how susceptible Sam is to it and how much Steve buys into his own hype.)

Anyway. I love Sam a lot because the questions that he’s grappling with (for me)  are specifically about his navigation of the world. And that he’s doing it all because he wants to help and this seems like the best way. (is it though? does the question of if he could be doing something more…worthwhile keep him up at night sometimes? is he justifying what he’s doing because he wants his wings and this is how he gets to keep them? does it matter if he’s being selfish if he’s also helping people? Does Steve’s intractability drive him up a fucking wall sometimes? Is he bothered by Steve’s bull in a china shop approach to things that maybe Steve lacks context/nuance for? or is that simplicity the appeal?)

tldr, I would absolutely be treasurer of the I Heart Sam Wilson Fan Club.

*gnaws gently on your brain*

You are my FAVORITE.

I think part of the problem in discussing Sam is that we’ve never really been granted his POV. The closest we get is Civil War, and that conversation between him and Rhodey is so important, because both of them are acknowledging the difference between the rose-colored world Steve and Tony inhabit (which is both very white, and very outside of jurisdiction), and the actual world they inhabit, as Black men who’ve served in the military. I know we’ve discussed this earlier, but Sam HAS to grapple with systems in ways that Steve doesn’t, because Steve, while ostensibly in the army, was never really subjected to oversight; the Howlies got military intel but operated on their own, and the Avengers do similarly. Sam’s objections to the Accords, for example, carry far more weight for me, because Sam is AWARE of how restrictions work, rather than Steve, who’s pretty much like “I thought I was going to be court-martialed for marching in single-handedly to rescue Bucky but it turns out they gave me my own unit?”

So maybe part of what’s interesting about Sam- and I’m sorry, because I feel like I’m recounting all these things we’ve already discussed- is that so many of the MCU characters are not just superheroes, but existing outside of normal human expectations; they’ve had abnormal upbringings that made them uniquely suited to be superheroes.

Sam is every inch a superhero, but he’s a real contemporary PERSON in a way that isn’t true of someone raised in the 40s, or as a billionaire prodigy, or as a space prince, or in the Red Room. He had a normal childhood, he went into the military where his job was very cool but still within the boundaries of the military; when he retired he got a normal job. Sam is a person who’s probably had to, in his life, work retail and reconcile a checkbook, and in general exist in the world as it is rather than just this four-color superworld, and yet is successful as a superhero anyway.

So in addition to negotiating the space between Steve-as-person and Steve-as-myth, which I agree with you is goddamn catnip, he’s also navigating the space between Avengers-as-real-organization and Avengers-as-myth. We know he’s been exposed to the propaganda as a civilian (when he first meets Steve he’s basically like “yeah, I kind of figured you were the guy with superpowers”), and now he’s part of it, in ways that are very different from just mastering the space between the military as organization and the mythology it’s created for itself, because the US military is still theoretically working with humans.

So while I get that much of the audience wants to see themselves as a Cap or an Iron Man or whatever, the questions Sam’s grappling with are a lot more of what we would actually be dealing with. He is, frankly, the only Avengers-adjacent character to have enough of a grasp on normality to even fully understand that an individual with extraordinary means (be that powers or money) may not always be the best way to handle a problem. Which allow Sam to explore, not a flaw in the way an individual reacts to these circumstances, but a flaw in the system they’ve created to deal with it.

Also those last questions you asked. Whether Sam feels like he’s just justifying doing something for keeping his wings. THANKS SATAN MY HEART WASN’T BROKEN ENOUGH ALREADY.

God, the Sam vs Rhodey argument in Civl War is SO GOOD. like, okay, even as normal black men who navigated the military, there’s the essential class difference between Rhodey the officer and Sam the NCO. There’s Rhodey’s official role as liaison to Stark Industries, there’s Rhodey as literal propaganda machine subject to PR conventions on his superhero identity, Sam as an employee of the VA, Sam as retiree, etc. Just. IDEK. The different levels of proximity to power – even as Sam occupies that space as Steve’s partner and an Avenger, we see it just as Steve is losing his institutional power and backing and it keeps taking Sam into a place that is inherently more dangerous to him than it is to Steve. And Sam keeps right on walking into it with his eyes open – very specifically that the movies call out that his eyes are open. It’s so fascinating, especially in contrast to Rhodey who has that proxmity and never really loses it or the institutional backing.

One thing that I think would have made Civil War so much stronger, as a narrative, would have been prioritizing Rhodey’s and Sam’s POVs over Steve and Tony’s. Because Tony and Steve have the theoretical understandings, but their lives are so ridiculously out-of-the-ordinary they don’t have perspective. Tony’s place in Rhodey’s life means that Rhodey has been able to navigate very different spaces than Sam, but he hasn’t been shielded by the privilege that keeps Tony from fully understanding the impact.

Rhodey wouldn’t have needed that photograph at the beginning of Civil War to prompt introspection. I think we’re lying to ourselves if we don’t think Rhodey’s been introspective about his role all along, albeit in a VASTLY different way than Sam has.

Rhodey’s proximity to power is all the more fascinating because we really know even less about him than about Sam, given how little the IM movies have given him his due. And how much does Rhodey doubt his own place, wondering if some of his accolades stem from being the only person who can rein in an asset the military would very much like to control? I believe Rhodey knows he’s exceptional (and I believe Tony sees Rhodey as exceptional; I don’t doubt their best friendship for a moment), but I think anyone in Rhodey’s position would have to do a lot of soul-searching about whether people would notice how exceptional he is if he weren’t Tony Stark’s friend.

Rhodey’s proximity to power via his relationship with Tony is a key thing that separates him from Sam‘s POV, because Rhodey’s functioned with that since they were at MIT, and I think that gave Rhodey both a lot of power and potentially, a lot of self-doubt.

All of this is SO GOOD. Man, I really want that version of Civil War now…

And all those questions about Sam? Those are the questions I LOVE and have already done more to give me the itch to write fic than anything else in the past few months.

I need all of these fics and these Sam plots and this Sam POV 😭😭 plz world

I binged S2 of Jessica Jones, and something caught my attention (no spoilers)

when the characters mention the Raft, they make a point of saying that it’s a supermax prison for people with dangerous abilities. BUT, in CACW, 3 out of 4 of the people sent there don’t actually have abilities. Sam, Clint, and Scott are all regular human beings with amazing training and sophisticated tech. they don’t have innate abilities like Jessica. only Wanda does. 

“Team Cap” being imprisoned at the Raft, in my mind, just proves how illegal, unethical, and corrupt “Team Iron Man”’s position was in the film, AND YET, given the canon we’ve seen since, we’re expected to believe that Stark, Ross, and UN, etc. are all in the right, because Captain America is “a war criminal now” and (from the trailers for IF pt. 1) “Team Cap” have had to remain in hiding ever since.  

I understand the logic of the Sokovia Accords in-universe, but I think the thing that I find the most soul-crushing about listening to people who are self-professed comics or superhero-fans argue in favor of them is that the Sokovia Accords are fundamentally designed to create a world without superheroes. 

Under the Sokovia Accords, “enhanced” people have two options: retire, and never use their powers, or sign, and basically give over all their free will, agency, and individual moral compass to a UN panel. Enhanced individuals are not allowed to undertake any action – domestic or international – without authorization. So, basically, they can’t do anything without gov’t approval. Even cross international borders (so, effectively an enhanced person travel ban). Enhanced individuals who violate the Accords can be held indefinitely without trial. 

Leaving aside the obvious conversations about issues with human rights (and inhuman rights), the Sokovia Accords guarantee that, whether they sign or not, enhanced people can’t do anything to use their powers to help anyone of their own free will. They are either living as functionally non-enhanced entities, or they are effectively reduced to weapons in government arsenals to be deployed at the will of a UN panel, whether they want to be or not. 

This goes against the very concept of the superhero, as an individual who uses their powers, of their own moral volition, to help people and do good; to do what is needed and what is right, and to step up and do the right thing even when others won’t, because with great power comes great responsibility. 

If you don’t believe in heroes, and only believe that enhanced people are dangers/weapons, then the Sokovia Accords make sense as a weapon control program (albeit one of questionable ethics and humanity). But if you’re someone who supposedly loves this genre, who believes in heroes and innate good… consider that the Sokovia Accords are a measure in this wonderful, magical, heroic universe we love, that would render it as cynical and banal as the world we live in.

Because I’m sick to death of anyone making Team Cap’s intention during the airport battle about anything other than Cap and company trying to get to Siberia to stop five other Winter Soldiers, here’s some dialogue from the movie for ya…

STEVE: Hear me out, Tony. That doctor, the psychiatrist, he’s behind all this.

TONY: Anyway. Ross gave me 36 hours to bring you in. That was 24 hours ago. Can you help a brother out?

STEVE: You’re after the wrong guy!

TONY: Your judgment is askew. Your old war buddy killed innocent people yesterday.

STEVE: And there are five more super soldiers just like him. I can’t let the doctor find them first, Tony. I can’t.

Then, later…

BUCKY: We gotta go. That guy is probably in Siberia by now.

STEVE: We gotta draw out the flyers. I’ll take Vision, you get to the jet.

SAM: No, *you* get to the jet! Both of you! The rest of us aren’t getting out of here.

CLINT: As much as I hate to admit it… if we’re going to win this one some of us might have to lose it.

SAM: This isn’t the real fight, Steve.

So anyone saying that Team Cap had any drive other than stopping five enhanced Hydra agents from being awakened by Zemo and wreaking havoc, or so they were led to believe, should probably get their ears checked.

Say it with me, folks. The airport battle was not about the Accords. At least not from Team Cap’s perspective.

This

^^^^ All of this. 

Theres this common tumblr joke that Steve was allll about irrationally believing Bucky to be an angel, or inappropriately shielding him from the consequences of his actions.

When… that doesn’t happen. At all.

Steve was ready to believe Bucky could have set off that bomb, and went after him before the SWAT team got there in order to take Bucky alive and try to save SWAT lives doing it. Not because he was certain he was innocent. (He said to Nat, “If he’s this far gone, Nat, I should be the one to bring him in…”)

Steve, as you say, is motivated through the entire airport sequence to *stop the other soldiers,* the unleashing of which he fully believes is Zemo’s plan.

Steve does literally everything he can to simply stop Tony’s murderous rage, and only begins to lose his temper toward the end of the fight… a temper he relocates himself, before he goes too far.

Steve is consistently one of THE most level headed people anywhere in the film. Its the rest of the situation around him thats pitting his and Bucky’s needs against that of some of his friends. Steve’s morals around consent and authority and his position on the Accords may not line up with yours. But that doesnt mean he isnt sensibly following his own compass (and besides that, the Accords actually aren’t playing into his motivations for a surprisingly large chunk of the film. He’s got other fish to fry.) He may also have a reputation for sass and splashy actions. But that doesn’t make his motivations in CW that of a hothead.

THIS RIGHT HERE!! 

Listen up tonky stans (or at least the ones who haven’t blocked me yet) This is NOT acceptable. They were not in battle. Sam was not attacking tny. Sam Wilson did nothing to provoke him. All he did was dodge a blast that could potentially KILL HIM. He tried to help him from falling and he APOLOGIZED. He had no reason whatsoever to apologize because again he did NOTHING wrong.

Stop defending this bullshit. Stop acting like Sam deserved it or tampa was justified in shooting him. There is no justification in shooting a person unprovoked after he apologized for not being to save someone. Tenno string is a piece of shit for doing this, just fucking accept your fave has done shitty things instead of blaming everyone else.