small robots

He never (afawk) expresses more than a general, background level of US patriotism and doesn't hesitate to turn his back on it when he finds it falls short of his ideals.

Not sure if that's been a deliberate choice by the various writers and directors over the years, but Steve's actual MO is that he stands up for people. When he joined the army, American foreign policy seemed to be based on the same ideals. But that's a coincidence.

Some people pointing out his comic iteration also turned his back on America for a bit. We know! But the premise there was always that he *was* a patriot who then got disillusioned. MCU Cap never chose to be draped in a flag and never enjoyed it.

This is a good point too. Stark is specifically called out as "a patriot" from the start and doesn't hide his allegiance even after he goes through his awakening as Iron Man.https://twitter.com/PrototypeCube/status/1115933954534723584?s=19 …

We find Stark's moral centre more challenging to grapple with. His flip-flop on whether superheroes should be controlled by the government is an example. Stark is America reckoning with its own geopolitical contradictions.

Cap is an unalloyed force for good, the one true incorruptible being at the heart of the MCU. For us, the most important moment in Infinity War was his fist fight with a literal god almost at the height of his power. He stopped Thanos, just for an instant.

And the movie plays it deliberately as this moment of doubt. Like, is Cap, through simple *decency*, strong enough to physically fight the guy who can control time and space with a thought?

Yes, and this bit!https://twitter.com/scsmith4/status/1115936508073140224?s=19 …

Oh god...https://twitter.com/PrototypeCube/status/1115936866501627910?s=19 …

That's not how we read Cap's position. It's precisely the unaccountability of Western governments that he distrusts. He sees the Avengers being used as tools to further political interests rather than defenders of humanity as a whole.https://twitter.com/matt_heath/status/1115937025654493185?s=19 …

Yeah, and circling back to this morning's ramblings, there's definite ambiguity there. Both sides in Civil War have a point, and that's the whole idea.https://twitter.com/recantha/status/1115938073286782976?s=19 …

That's the ambiguity we mentioned though. That concern is legitimate - Cap is well aware they fucked up - but he's not convinced the answer is 'cede all control to a potentially corrupt pan-governmental body'. Bear in mind what happened to SHIELD...https://twitter.com/matt_heath/status/1115939099955822593?s=19 …

In Civil War, Cap isn't contending thet just be allowed to carry on doing whatever (in our reading), he's just learned to be wary of powerful groups of people. There's a contradiction there, and Civil War doesn't offer any real resolution to it.

That's the point of the film tbh. No one really wins. It's just a lot of well-intentioned people navigating a shitty situation and falling out over it.

But, *real-world progressive hat on* this is obviously all filtered through a Western-centric lens of political interventionism anyway, so don't expect real discussions of this stuff in a Hollywood blockbuster, you know?

The Avengers would suck in reality. We're talking about the MCU's ethical underpinning on its own terms.

You know, they're great period pieces because they date from those halcyon days when we didn't have to clarify Nazis were bad. https://twitter.com/ScottMadin/status/1115943593993220102?s=19 …

A tweet we saw back in maybe 2016 said something like, "In retrospect, the most unrealistic thing in Winter Soldier was the notion that discovering a US government agency was run by Nazis would instantly bring it crashing down".