“I don’t trust a guy without a dark side. Call me old-fashioned”
“Well, let’s just say you haven’t seen it yet”Seriously OP, ouch. 😦
Steve doesn’t have a ‘dark side’. He has an inability to compromise his beliefs. It’s what makes him Captain America, but it’s also what drives him in his fight against Tony. It’s not about whether or not he and Tony are friends, Bucky has been alone, used and abused for 70 years. He is ‘the little guy’. Tony’s attempts to get Steve to stand down for the sake of the Government are bully’s tactics in his opinion and asking him to hand over Bucky is asking him to compromise the belief that Bucky is a victim and that he is willing to concede to bullies, and he can’t and won’t do it. If Steve were to ever unleash a true dark side, god help us all.
I think one of the major points of “CA: Civil War” is that Steve DOES indeed have a “dark side,” and we saw it when he flipped out in Siberia. We saw it throughout the movie, actually – because his “inability to compromise his beliefs” is what led to most of the problems. Steve’s viewpoint was mostly wrong (and don’t get ME wrong; both Steve and Tony made mistakes. Steve just made more of them…).
The notion that “our hands are the safest” and “we know what’s right for the rest of the world, so the 117 nations that are asking for oversight and accountability are wrong” is dangerously out of touch and frighteningly imperialist. An “inability to compromise” one’s beliefs – especially if those unilateral beliefs have an impact on living beings in nations that are not your own (and who have suffered real damages and deaths) – is simply wrongheaded. Not to mention that it was unfair to Tony, who was desperately trying, throughout the movie, to get Steve to realize that negotiations could happen, and compromises could be made. Steve dismissed each and every attempt at negotiation and refused even to talk, even though Tony was putting himself on the line for him. That’s mostly what I can’t really forgive him for. If they’d JUST sat down and discussed it like friends, instead of Steve flouncing off at the slightest opportunity…but then we wouldn’t have had a Civil War, would we?
P.S. Bucky is hardly the “little guy” at this time – especially to Tony and the others who don’t know his full story. To them he’s a dangerous programmed killer who is out there killing and needs to be stopped, before he kills more. You, the audience, know more about him than Tony does (because that’s more information Steve hasn’t shared with him or anyone…) – so don’t make the mistake of larding the audience’s omniscient viewpoint onto a character who doesn’t yet have all the facts.
I will also point out that Tony offered multiple times to personally help Bucky, to compromise for Steve, to do anything and everything. Because he needed to keep a hand on the wheel, just like Natasha said, instead of flip the whole rig right off the road.
If Steve had been paying any attention at all, he would have seen Tony spending more than half a billion dollars on some gizmo that can literally walk someone through their own memories so they can come to terms with it. Does anyone rational think after everything, Tony wouldn’t serve that shit up on a silver platter to help the friend of his friend?
Steven Rogers is just as arrogant as Stephen Strange.
The Marvel movies are, above everything else, set in moral debate. Since the beginning, the writers have been pitting ideology against ideology. Is freedom more important than safety? Is idealism a good enough goal to forgo realism? Should laws be broken because you feel they are wrong? And the fundamental nature of this kind of debate is that there is no set-in-stone right answer.
Steve is arrogant because he assumes moral superiority. Always, with no room for debate. He has shown this in every Captain America movie so far, and in First Avenger and Winter Soldier, it suited him well; everything ended better than expected, and so he continued on. In Civil War, this led to a sort of extreme. He didn’t stand against individual examiners or a single general or even a crumbling secret organization; he stood against the world and against some of his best friends, and said, “I know better.” (This is why it’s a Captain America movie.)
Tony’s character arc is the reverse of Steve’s. He has made mistakes. He has learned from them. In Iron Man one, he stopped mass-producing weapons. In Iron Man 2, he ceded control of his company and a suit to people he trusted more (and didn’t take either back after.) In Avengers, he learned to work with a team, and in Age of Ultron, he learned to take responsibility for the collateral damage he causes. He’s still arrogant, yes, but it’s been tempered; this is also shown in Civil War. He doesn’t like the Accords, either, but he’s putting it on hold to keep the peace and open negotiations.
And because a lot of people seem to need the reminder- People change. You don’t become a good person by not having bad thoughts; you do it by acting against them.
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theclumsiestninja 