For those of you who haven’t seen it, ‘Civil War’ was a great movie. It was an incalculably vast improvement on the comics, with characterization that felt more grounded in the previous movies and less crammed with Millar-esque swerves for the sake of swerves (part of this is that much of the genuinely despicable stuff that Tony did in the comics is off-loaded onto Thunderbolt Ross, who’s already a well-established asshole). The action sequences were great, the story worked in a whole bunch of characters and events without seeming overstuffed, and in general it made everyone look over at DC and say, “On your left.” And it made me want a very specific Marvel movie, which for the sake of avoiding spoilers for ‘Civil War’ I will put behind a cut.
So at the end of the movie, Zemo is prevented from killing himself by the Black Panther, who wants him held accountable for his actions, and put into prison. The movie I want opens with Zemo in prison, being visited by Thunderbolt Ross. It’s an unofficial, deniable visit, of course, because Zemo is a mass murderer and a figure of hatred in dozens of countries due to his attack on the UN. Officially, he will never leave his cell ever again.
Unofficially, though, Ross has a problem. Not everyone has signed onto the Sokovia Accords. Worse, some of the people who have are ignoring key provisions and acting like a law unto themselves. These rogue enhanced aren’t like Captain America’s crew, keeping a low profile; they’re making public strikes against high-profile targets, and they don’t care about civilians in harm’s way. Ross is putting a team together to stop them. And while Zemo is incarcerated for murder, “Citizen V” can lead a team to bring these people to justice.
It’s a win/win situation. Ross gets a tactical and strategic genius who can take down enhanced humans. Zemo gets a shot at redemption, and a chance to do what he’s wanted to do for years now–stop reckless superhumans before they endanger the innocent. He can lead Ross’s Sokovian Accords Enforcement Squad…or, as it’s already being nicknamed, “The Thunderbolts”.
Yeah, I know, ‘Suicide Squad’, but tell me you wouldn’t watch the hell out of this.
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Yup. I’d watch the hell out of that. And it works SO much better in the Marvel Movieverse than in the DC Murderverse.
Too bad we don’t have more surviving movie villains to round out the cast…
I’m having way too much fridge-logic to feel the same way as you about Civil War. The changes they made to the nature of the law in question mean that logically, Cap and Iron Man should be on opposite sides of it.
The Registration Act in the comics was a human rights issue, however incompetently handled, being handed down by a single government. The Accords in the movie are a global consensus saying one specific group of people should ask first before they just go killing whoever they want. The former is the kind of thing that Steve Rogers’ idealism forces him to oppose. The latter is something that Tony “I just privatized world peace” Stark would actually hate.
I have so few nitpicks about CA:CW. Christopher did a bang-up job “repurposing” the original story, so it was great to not see one-dimensional character changes. Biggest peeve: If they’re setting up Everett Ross for the Black Panther movie, he shouldn’t be played by Martin Freeman. I would need somebody who looks good looking like a schmuck, especially in the presence of T’Challa. I dread that this Ross will be related to “Thunderbolt” in the MCU.
Agreed with wholeheartedly, that would be awesome. Now that Spidey’s back in the right hands, we can even bring in Norman Osborn and resurrect the Iron Patriot.
This movie succeeded in every way that Batman vs. Superman failed: the conflict between Iron Man and Captain America felt much more established and not contrived, the resolution of their big fight(s) felt deserved and was satisfying to watch, and it established future characters and films that I’m actually excited to see.
Oh, and Black Panther was perfect.
@Noah Brand
I think that the ideological split makes sense, given what we have seen these characters go through. Keep in mind that Tony Stark says he “privatized world peace” in the same movie where his hubris led to Whiplash and Hammer’s Drones, and where he got in a drunken Iron Man brawl with his best friend.
Iron Man’s movies all have the message that you need to be accountable for your actions and be responsible (Leaving the Weapons business, working with War Machine, getting rid of the suits and dealing with his PTSD, trying to undo that whole Ultron thing, etc.) Captain America’s films have mostly been about following your ideals, even when those ideals come into conflict with authority (he keeps trying to sign up for the Army when he’s already been rejected, he goes out to save soldiers from Hydra captivity when he’s supposed to be a propaganda piece, he helps take down a corrupted SHIELD, he protects Bucky even when it is believed he bombed the UN, etc.)
First of all, the movie that we need as a result of Civil War is a Bucky and Falcon road buddy movie, with them driving Peter Parker (or maybe Scott Lang) across the country in a VW Bug. It would be relatively cheap, and hilarious, and I’d watch the crap out of it. Heck, give it to me as some of those Marvel One Shots that had Phil Coulson, and I’d be delighted. Make it non-cannon even. I don’t care. Hey, VW, you need some good advertising right now. Call Disney, and make it happen.
—-Here be spoilers—-
Secondly, Cap came down against the accords because of his experience in Winter Soldier, specifically. He can’t imagine putting that kind of authority into the hands of a large, bureaucratic power like SHIELD again, even if it is the UN. He’s had nothing but bad experiences with others deciding when to deploy him, so there’s no way he’s going to go along with them. It’s entirely in character (as the character has grown in the movies).
Tony Stark has seen nothing but heartache come from him trying to do his best. He’s watched his best efforts to protect the world blow up in his face (Iron Monger) again (Whiplash) and again (Ultron). When he says, “We need to be put in check,” he’s really saying that he needs to be put in check. He needs supervision.
The position of both of them is entirely in keeping with their development from their first movies. As long as you don’t project what you already “know” about the characters from comics, and just go with what’s presented on screen, their motives are easily explained and they act within character. Steve even almost signs up, on the condition that there will be checks on the UN to ensure their motives. He decides not to when Tony lets slip that Wanda is being held under house arrest.
Even if it’s a nice house, the fact that she’s being treated more like a prisoner/weapon because of, really, a mistake (and had she let Crossbones blow up at ground level, it would have been worse), Steve recognizes that the entire team will be treated as weapons at best, prisoners at worse. I’ve heard people complain about how they acted out of character in this movie, but if you only go by the characters in the movies, and not with 60+ years of comics baggage with them, I don’t think that argument stands up.
That I would love to see.
@Jake: They don’t all have to be reformed villains. In fact, it would make more sense if many of them weren’t–Moonstone, for example, could be a totally legit psychologist employed to keep an eye on Zemo’s mental health. (Only of course she’s actually trying to manipulate him for her own reasons.)
The Thunderbolts as a concept has been mutable and mutated enough that I think as long as you keep it to the theme of “redemption” overall, it can hold up pretty well even if the members and their backstories are changed. Let’s face it, nobody really cared about Songbird until she became Songbird anyway. 🙂
One thing I feel the need to point out: it was Everett Ross, not Thunderbolt Ross, who visited Zemo in his cell. I blame the writers for including two authority figures with the same last name. In my opinion, they would have done better going with Henry Gyrich or Raymond Sikorski.
@John Seavey My only complaint about Moonstone is that I want to see her as the big bad on season two of Jessica Jones. She works perfectly with Jones’ themes of power and control.
I see it like this: a bizarre series of crimes hit NY and one of the victims comes to Jones because the police are out of their depth and looking to push the cases off on the Feds, but the Feds aren’t interested in dealing with the ‘Freaks’ any more then the NYPD are. Reluctantly, Jess starts the investigation eventually finding that they have someone in common: Karla Sofen. She’s a psychiatrist, so the cops ruled her out, after all, all these people where unstable to begin with and she was just doing her job even if she’s not good at it. Jess poses as a new patient, to find out Karla is using her authority and guile to get her patients to commit crimes and even keep some of the police on her side. Jess thinks she can shake Karla down to make her stop, only she wasn’t counting on Sofen having the Moonstone.
That’s a pretty great idea. It’s good also because most of the Thunderbolts are not popular enough for other films and easily fit the MCU setting.
Beetle/MACH V: A guy with powered armor.
Fixer: A really smart science guy
Atlas/Goliath: A pym-particle user
Those all work in the current setting.
Songbird could be an inhuman.
Thunderbolt Ross could turn himself into the Red Hulk at some point near the end.
As soon as they used that triggering phrase on Bucky, I realised there must be a phrase that wipes all the programming from his brain, permanently. It’s an obvious failsafe mechanism, right? So maybe Black Panther goes on a mission to find the phrase and save Bucky. Make the phrase in an extinct African language that HYDRA picked for extra security.
Uh, how so?
Having a phrase that will kill Bucky or reduce him to a complete vegetable is an obvious failsafe mechanism. Having a phrase that restores the free will of the fucked-up super-soldier who hates and fears you and is only controllable at all because of the intense brainwashing isn’t a fail-safe; it is a security risk.
Maybe “failsafe” is the wrong word. What I mean is that you’d want some way to remove the programming if there were serious problems with it and you wanted to start again from scratch. I’m not sure how dangerous Bucky would be without the programming, either. He’d just be a WW2 soldier with a metal arm.
@Gareth Wilson
Not very dangerous. Just a veteran WW2 commando who trained alongside Captain America with an advance bionic arm that is capable of blocking bullets and catching vibranium shields.
Even then I imagine his instincts and muscle memory would still remain even if his programing and memories disappeared.
In my own imaginings (before I knew that Captain America 3 would be Civil War), this would have been the second Avengers trilogy. Civil War would reduce the Avengers manpower, With Cap’s side escaping to work more covertly in their own movies, so the World Security Council would look for other staffing options. The Thunderbolts movie would have them working with the Avengers to face some other threat. Maybe Zodiac, so there would be enough actual super villain targets to go around. Play it straight, and the credits stinger is the Zemo reveal. The third movie would be Zemo’s inevitable attempt to betray and finish off the remaining Avengers in a fight with the “newly” formed Masters of Evil, including any prisoners taken in the Thunderbolts movie, and the two Avengers branches must reunite to face massive odds. I figured that one more government agency spawning a criminal conspiracy should put the last nail in the Registration Act, clearing the decks for the next phase.
MCU Villains who are still alive, I think:
Abomination
Zemo
the Leader
Angar the Screamer
Man-Killer
Blizzard (look if Cap can survive being dumped in the ocean incased in ice…)
Mr. Hyde
Absorbing Man
Loki
Loreli
Klaw
I think you could do a Thunderbolts film in spirit without having trying to make everything work exactly like the comics. Because of the comparisons to the Suicide Squad film I feel it should be more like a government sanctioned Dark Avengers team, but with a compromise of some anti-heroes and some reformed villains, even if we haven’t seen either in the MCU before. I personally don’t think Daniel Bruhl Zemo should return but I think you could have that character’s role transferred to another character, even if he’s just called The Baron (and that was still just an alias).
But whatever they do, I think they should make A Thunderbolts film. I think there’s a lot of potential for doing something completely different both in style and substance.
@Sidney O: It was Everett Ross at the end of the actual movie. It would be Thunderbolt Ross at the beginning of the made-up movie that exists only in my head. 🙂
It would be fairly easy to pad out a Thunderbolts movie with people that hadn’t appeared before, since many of them were minor-leaguers in the comics–your costumed bank robber types and people such as Songbird, who was originally a pro wrestler named Screaming Mimi. These would be people who planned one big score and ended up getting caught right away.
@Sisyphus : You are a God among men. You should rule over the world. A buddy movie with Bucky, Falcon and Lang would rock the earth to its foundations and begin a new era of Love & Freedom for all. Also spot on analysis of the schism. The way they treated Wanda was abominable–her mistake probably killed less people than any of Tony’s and, yes, it would have been worse had she NOT acted. I hadn’t thought of it in terms of treating people like weapons before.
@Lesson17 Thanks! As soon as I left the movie with my brother, we were talking about how awesome a buddy film with Falcon and Bucky would be. I’d pay good money for even DVD extras or YouTube videos like the old One Shots of them.
Civil War was an awful movie and a complete embarrassment to everyone involved. How did the Russo brothers make a tight well paced film like Winter Solider turn around and make a bloated pile of garbage like Civil War??? Zemo was an unnecessary villain and had little to do with the actual plot (the protocols)
Its the worst Captain America movie, at least First Avengers had nazis and red skull in it.