Age of Ultron If there was a Civil War Movie....

[Quasimod0]

Out of the characters in the MCU so far, who do you think would be on which side? And why?

 

[MichaelChen]

They'd all be anti-reg. The only major guy who would have been Pro-Reg at any point was Captain America during the first third of the Avengers, when he was still being written as blindly trusting superiors. Once Stark sets him straight, there goes the only major Pro-Reg character, poof.

After the second Cap movie, you lose even the minor Pro-Reggers like Black Widow and Hawkeye.

 

[Dr. Evil]

It would be interesting to see who is on which side. It's not going to happen though due to the Guardians of the Galaxy.

 

[MadVillainy]

Yeah they'd all be against it.

But making a Civil War movie would be a mistake right now. Or least it wouldnt make any sense. MCU doesnt have any secret identities or at least not really so adapting the story would be weird.


I couldve seen them doing something like Tony Stark becomes the head of SHIELD and Cap is against recreating SHIELD in the first place. So they clash over that.

 

[TeeKay]

The seeds for a Civil War film are there but like Dr Evil said, it'd be interesting to see who's on which side.

 

[Quasimod0]

I don't think they will make a Civil War film, and honestly I don't ever wanna see one. Just thought it'd make for an interesting discussion.

 

[TJByrum]

I think we can all safely say the MCU is building up to the Infinity Gauntlet Saga, or at least the cinematic version of it. Avengers 3 will deal with that. Avengers 2 is going to be dealing with Ultron.

That being said, I don't see the Civil War storyline occurring in A2 or A3. Besides, I don't want to see anything like ivil War until we can get a bigger cast, but we all know will be unhealthy to the movie. How could you possibly focus on each individual character in a ~3 hour movie? Especially when there could be so many complexities involved.

 

[MadVillainy]

People on here are missing the point of the hypothetical question..

 

[TJByrum]

People on here are missing the point of the hypothetical question..

...yep, you're absolutely right. My apologies.

Alright, I think it would go something like this:

Pro-reg: Stark, Widow, Hawk, Banner, Vision
Anti-reg: Cap, Thor, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch

I think Stark would still be part of Pro-reg, even though he disagrees with it. I feel like the Stark-Banner connection would draw Banner into Pro-reg as well. Widow and Hawk would stay allies, and I think would help Stark pre-TWS, but would help Cap post-TWS. Vision seems likely to stay with Stark.

Cap would be against it, Thor holds Cap in high regards and would join him, QS and SW I can see joining Cap. Again, Widow and Hawk would join depending on whether or not SHIELD was still around.

 

[metaphysician]

People on here are missing the point of the hypothetical question..

No, they are just giving an answer you might not like. Said answer is 'the question is absurd because the premises just don't hold up.' Positing a vague hypothetical isn't going to suddenly cause a bunch of people to randomly decide to join up with a side they find abhorrent.

( also, nitpick, but "if there *were* a Civil War Movie" )

 

[cherokeesam]

Yeah, if registration was the issue like it was in the comics, every single one of the MCU heroes would come down squarely on the side of anti-Reg. Everything the MCU has been teaching them (and us) is that they can't trust governments anymore, so they have to trust each other. Hence, the Avengers.

If you're hypothesizing about a Civil War based on something *other* than government oversight of supers, then that's a different story. I could see AOU ending with the same iconic rift between Team Tony and Team Steve being based around ideological differences about which direction to take the Avengers, with Tony still insisting on technology and cash flow as their greatest assets, while Cap thinks that manpower and the human element are more important.

 

[jaqua99]

ithink we will have elements of civil war through out phase 3 on earth.

 

[Narosian]

Lack of secret identities isn't much of an problem. Civil war wa really about a law that forced people with powers into slavery essentially.

 

[Shikamaru]

They would all be anti-req. They established that at the end of Avengers when the team split from SHIELD, then Winter Soldier gave them an even bigger reason to not trust governments. So we can't really answer the hypothetical question since the universe was constructed in such way Civil War as we know it wouldn't be needed, or would at least be an in-name-only tale. Which is for the better IMO.

Honestly, even in the comics, I never bought the registration sides. The whole premise itself resorted around writing everyone out of character just to a) satisfy fanboy pissing contests by making everyone fight and b) shoving a political ideology down our throats at the expense of demonizing Tony and the other characters. It was out of character then and it would especially be out of character now, in a post-Avengers world that's given them a more definitive take. There's no way Marvel would demonize those characters in such way again, now that they're the company's #1 property.

 

[smallville fan]

But making a Civil War movie would be a mistake right now. Or least it wouldnt make any sense. MCU doesnt have any secret identities or at least not really so adapting the story would be weird.

This!

...yep, you're absolutely right. My apologies.

Alright, I think it would go something like this:

Pro-reg: Stark, Widow, Hawk, Banner, Vision
Anti-reg: Cap, Thor, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch

I think Stark would still be part of Pro-reg, even though he disagrees with it. I feel like the Stark-Banner connection would draw Banner into Pro-reg as well. Widow and Hawk would stay allies, and I think would help Stark pre-TWS, but would help Cap post-TWS. Vision seems likely to stay with Stark.

Cap would be against it, Thor holds Cap in high regards and would join him, QS and SW I can see joining Cap. Again, Widow and Hawk would join depending on whether or not SHIELD was still around.

What if they gave villains some amnesty?

 

[michael1975]

There not going to do Civil War. The chance we will get of a Civil War story line is if they gain all the film rights to all the characters from Marvel Universe. Then and only then would I see them doing it.

If they try to do it any other way it won't come out right. There to many characters involved in Civil War that are important to the story line. If you short change it because you lack a lot of the characters it will be a pale imitation of Civil War. As my Grandpa would say if you're not going to do something right then you shouldn't do it at all.

Though if by some chance they are able to gain the rights to all the characters and do Civil War they have to do Planet Hulk and World War Hulk.

 

[Shikamaru]

Aside from having to write everyone out of character, another problem with doing Civil War just like in the comics is the very premise of the story.

By nature, especially now in the 21st century moreso than before, a major part of superheroes are their anti-authority nature. They're not just embodiments of social commentary, they've become more-or-less a way of thematically saying "**** you" to our society and the way we run our systems. It's why Batman stories feature heavy themes about corruptions within the system, why Captain America's beliefs are contrasted so much with the government today (i.e. TWS), why Spider-Man is the embodiment of the everyman Samaritan taking police responsibility in his own hands and trolling higher-ups whenever they try to arrest him, why Iron Man refusing to make weapons for the government and privatizing world peace is a huge appealing part of his character, why the "Earth's Mightiest Heroes" decided they're better off without SHIELD, etc.

It's no coincidence these characters were not just created during darker times in our history, but that it's also when their popularity was at an all-time high. First in the Great Depression and WWII, then declined in sales in the 50's when post-war day-to-day life became more optimistic, then brought back (mainly through Marvel) in the 60's with the various Civil Rights movements, survived through the 70's/80's due to Cold War peak and political controversies rising (i.e. Watergate), then continues up till today where social commentary is "hot", things are becoming more grey-shaded, and everything is an apparent conspiracy. Superheroes, especially Marvel ones, are the ideal embodiments of everything we think justice should be. They have flaws, but we still trust them to try their best in places where even the best of law officials won't. We created a set of characters who we feel would never let us down, and Morrison even has a similar quote regarding Superman.

The point being, even if we were to give Tony a completely sound reason for siding with pro-registration, you'd still run the risk of the pro-registration side coming off as unlikable to the viewers. And that's because to a certain degree, we've been trained to think that directly siding with authorities is wrong and unheroic within the superhero realm.

Not necessarily saying this is a bad thing; just making an observation.

 

[Loki882]

Plus the fact that Marvel couldn't make up its mind as to what exactly the SRA was/entailed (it was portrayed differently depending on who was writing at the time) made it very difficult to decide who was right. Also, I never quite bought Cap's argument that keeping secret identities was some fundamental right. NO IT'S NOT. Technically you're breaking the law just by putting on a costume and fighting crime without official legal authority, and you're breaking the law EVERY time that you do that. Vigilantism is illegal in this country. So you DON'T have some fundamental right to be an illegal, masked vigilante who, because of their secret identities, is accountable to no one but themselves and who cannot be held accountable if the screw up, go crazy, or get people killed through recklessness/incompetence because no one knows who they are. Sorry Cap, but you're argument fails across the board, and I think that Marvel themselves realized this since they had to portray Tony and his side as borderline fascist just to make Saint Cap of Awesome seem like he was in the right.

As for the MCU, pretty much all of the current Avengers would be firmly anti-reg:

-Tony has been depicted as being very independently-minded and anti-authority throughout these films. In The Consultant, Coulson even describes him as "having a complete disdain for authority" and he openly brags about "privatizing world peace." Also, he NEVER fully trusted Fury, SHIELD, or the government.

-Cap is depicted as believing more in the IDEALS of America, what it's SUPPOSED to stand for than in the government itself. And learning about SHIELD's duplicity in TA, plus what happened in TWS, would doubtlessly shake his faith in the current regime.

-Hulk would obviously being against it given how he's been treated by the authorities over the years.

-Thor would have the least investment in the issue, being from another world. But he'd probably be against it simply because his comrades are.

-Black Widow's faith would probably also be shaken by the events of TWS and she knows all about government corruption, manipulation, etc.

-Since Hawkeye is the least-developed of the MCU Avengers thus far, he's the one that's most unclear. However, if he's anything like his comic book counterpart, then he'd probably be anti-reg as well.

 

[Xeno]

Plus the fact that Marvel couldn't make up its mind as to what exactly the SRA was/entailed (it was portrayed differently depending on who was writing at the time) made it very difficult to decide who was right. Also, I never quite bought Cap's argument that keeping secret identities was some fundamental right. NO IT'S NOT. Technically you're breaking the law just by putting on a costume and fighting crime without official legal authority, and you're breaking the law EVERY time that you do that. Vigilantism is illegal in this country. So you DON'T have some fundamental right to be an illegal, masked vigilante who, because of their secret identities, is accountable to no one but themselves and who cannot be held accountable if the screw up, go crazy, or get people killed through recklessness/incompetence because no one knows who they are. Sorry Cap, but you're argument fails across the board, and I think that Marvel themselves realized this since they had to portray Tony and his side as borderline fascist just to make Saint Cap of Awesome seem like he was in the right.

As I understand it, the whole point of that craptastic story was that the editors felt that Iron Man was on the right side. Or is that the wrong interpretation?

 

[Shikamaru]

Originally they said they wouldn't take sides. However, they clearly did. The more the story progressed, they more they demonized Tony's side and treated Cap's side like saints.

The premise of the story made no sense from the beginning. It was supposed to be an allegory for the Patriot Act, with Cap's side being against it and Tony's side being for it. The problem is it never really worked as an allegory for the Patriot Act. Regardless of what you think of the real-life act, the S.R.A. was nothing like it.

It wasn't like the Marvel government passed it as a means of increasing government power and was followed by controversies from the public. The people demanded it, pressured the government into doing it, and the authorities simply gave the people what they wanted. Of course, until later on in the event where the general public is all of a sudden against the act, even though earlier issues showed them petitioning for it in the first place.

Not to mention the event that triggered all of this made no sense in the context of the Marvel universe. This is a world where stuff like that happens all the time. There was nothing that made that particular incident stand out from the rest. If it was done by a hero, fine, but Nitro was a supervillain.

Civil War was essentially done for 2 reasons:
1) Marvel trying to be socially relevant without much substance.
2) Marvel trying to show that mutates can be just as hated as mutants, but executed it poorly.

 

[Bren]

Lack of secret identities isn't much of an problem. Civil war wa really about a law that forced people with powers into slavery essentially.

I never read it, and always assumed it was more "want to be a superhero? You must sign up!" rather than "you have superpowers? You must sign up!".

Did superpowered beings (regardless of occupation) have to register?

 

[Silver Surfer]

Can you do a Civil War movie without Spider-Man? He's pretty much the protagonist of the story, or at the very least the closest thing to it.

 

[Gr0oT]

Not to mention the event that triggered all of this made no sense in the context of the Marvel universe. This is a world where stuff like that happens all the time. There was nothing that made that particular incident stand out from the rest. If it was done by a hero, fine, but Nitro was a supervillain.

I'll disagree with that assertion.
The SRA was something that the powers that be had been lobbying for a while, some previous events had the superhero community in a bad light already.

Then comes in Superheroing at its most irresponsible. Basically a bunch of kids with powers not only taking the law into their own hands but doing it for a blasted reality show and going about it in a lackadaisical fashion.

Plus the resulting catastrophy is arguably worst or at least easier to exploit by the media being as the grand majority of the victims were little kids.

 

[MakeMinesMarvel]

There just isnt enough heroes for a Civil War movie. Plus none of the MCU heroes have secret identities anyways so there wouldn't be a point. Civil War had FF/X-Men/Spider-Man/Mighty Avengers/New Avengers/Punisher/Ghost Rider/New Warriors/Thunderbolts/ etc etc

The recent event I'd like to see on screen after A3 would secret invasion. That way you get hero vs hero but under the premise of who's a skrull.

 

[bored]

I could see this working IF it were mixed with "Dark Reign". Have someone establish HAMMER (or claim to reestablish SHIELD and royally piss of Coulson) and make registration part of their gimmick (with a team of Dark Avengers/Thunderbolts as their flagship team) and pitting them against the Avengers. For a twist, have some heroes from the main MCU Avengers join that side out of a sense of obligation.