The First Few Scenes
The movie opens with a scene that pretends to be about Bucky but is really just about advancing the plot, similar to Steve’s first scene. While this scene does end up giving the audience a hint of all the nightmares Bucky was forced to endure, it really only exists to set things up that will come into play later. And this does not include Bucky’s suffering. The words, for example, are what appear first, and they are in a bright red book, to more effectively draw attention to them. They are then further showcased through an entire sequence of said book being retrieved that serves solely to underscore the importance of it and its contents. Only after this does the scene cut to Bucky being taken out of cryo, and led to his torture chair to be mind-wiped. Now, in The Winter Soldier, which was actually respectful of Bucky, the scene showing his torture did not shy away from it, or try to soften it. But that is not the case in Civil War. While we are given a brief glimpse of Bucky screaming in pain from the agony he is being put through, the camera is far away during this, in order to distance the audience from his suffering. The camera only gets closer after he stops, and only then to demonstrate the effect of the words, as well as emphasize the mission he is subsequently being sent on. Zemo later makes use of the words that were so graciously provided to him, and Tony uses the outcome of that mission as an excuse to go berserk, but Bucky’s torment is completely forgotten. It is never brought up again, and after this scene the torture chair is relegated to nothing but a piece of scenery.
Now, the whole Bucky torture scene makes Hydra’s sudden inexplicable absence all the more frustrating. Sunny explains why: “The fact that we have to see Bucky get tortured, what, three times now, and we never get to see Hydra get curb-stomped for that? Why am I even here? What is the point, if after everything we don’t even get to destroy Hydra?” That is what Captain America 3 should have been about: Bucky, Steve, and Natasha getting back at Hydra, with Sam and Wanda helping them. But instead, Hydra all but vanished: “That entire arc just gets thrown out the window, so the main plot, the main plot of Captain America 3, could be about what bulls—t problems Tony Stark caused in the last Avengers movie?” And not just about the problems he caused in that movie, but also about justifying his reactions to those problems.
The desperate need to make Tony look as good as possible is likely the biggest reason why Hydra ended up pulling their disappearing act. For they could easily have been included in the existing story; the Accords could just have been them taking advantage of the circumstances Tony brought about by creating Ultron. This would even have made Civil War feel a little bit more like a Captain America movie. But including Hydra in Civil War would have forced the admission that those who supported the Accords, including Tony, were squarely in the wrong. Including them would have prevented Civil War from being a choose-your-side movie (which, a Captain America movie should never have been a choose-your-side movie in the first place), and thus destroyed the coveted 50-50 audience split. It would have made Tony look even worse than he already managed to, despite the movie’s strenuous efforts to the contrary. So despite the fact that Hydra is the main villain of the Captain America movies, because of the harm they would cause Tony’s image, they were unable to appear. And because the movie only cared about Tony, despite all the atrocities Hydra forced Bucky to endure, and despite all the pain and trouble they caused Steve, Natasha, Sam, Wanda, and everyone else, none of them got a chance to make Hydra pay for it.
Following the first glimpse of Bucky being forced to kill the Starks, the intro logo appears. The music backing it is really good, and it remained good throughout the beginning of the movie, but for whatever reason as the movie continued the quality of the music deteriorated.
Then we cut to Lagos. For all that it was mainly plot advancement, Lagos is the one scene that actually truly belongs in a Captain America movie, and it gives a taste of what an actual Captain America 3 could have been like. We get the camaraderie between Steve, Natasha, and Sam, and we get to see them working together to complete a mission. Wanda’s presence is an added bonus, and turns out to be quite beneficial. It really is tragic that this is the only scene where we get any hint of all the excellence Captain America 3 should have contained.
The main thing I want to go over here is something Rumlow says. In the middle of his fight with Steve, right before he reveals his knife-gauntlet, he says, “This is for dropping a building on my face,” clearly referencing the end of The Winter Soldier. This is the first of many instances in which the heroes are blamed for the actions of the villains. Although it is coming straight out of a villain’s mouth here, the rest of the movie not only makes it seem like he has a point, but also repeats and attempts to validate these accusations. And Rumlow's comment dutifully works to set up the idea that Steve and the people in his corner are reckless, even though this is not remotely the case. First of all, just the way his remark is phrased is meant to incriminate Steve and his friends. It frames the situation like the Triskelion was purposely destroyed, when the reality is that once the Insight helicarriers were destroyed so they could not murder innocent people, one happened to strike the Triskelion as it was falling. Secondly, contrary to what the comment alleges, Rumlow is 100% responsible for the building falling on his face. After all, he was actually the one who initiated the launch of the Insight helicarriers in the first place: and if he hadn’t caused them to lift off, Steve, Sam and the others would never have needed to bring them down, and one would never have crashed into the Triskelion with Rumlow still inside. So while Steve gets blamed for Rumlow’s injuries, and never gets a chance to refute this accusation, they are actually entirely Rumlow’s own fault.
Then Steve and Rumlow have their fight, and it is rather amusing how effortlessly Steve is able to disarm him.
A short time later we get to the infamous explosion. A common misconception here is that Wanda threw Rumlow into the building, but that is not what she did at all. The first thing Wanda did was get the bomb completely contained, and then she attempted to throw it into the air so that it would explode where no one would get hurt, as it was too much for her to just keep holding. Unfortunately, she was surrounded on all sides by tall buildings, and she ended up losing her grip before getting Rumlow and his bomb completely clear: so the resulting explosion ended up hitting a building. In this case, even Wanda’s best attempt couldn’t entirely prevent civilian casualties from occurring; the effort her attempt was costing her was evident on her face the entire time, but what Rumlow set in motion was just too big to completely stop. However, it doesn’t change the fact that she still saved a lot of people. While the movie does its best to ignore this, far more people would have died if she had just done nothing.
This is the end of Steve’s first scene, and it is time for the beginning of Tony’s. Now, the transition here is exceedingly interesting. Steve’s scene ends in turmoil: the building being damaged, people running around and screaming, sad violin music playing. Then, a piano comes in, inserting a note of hope into the gloom: and suddenly we cut to Tony’s mom playing the piano and sweetly singing a song. We abruptly go from the tumult of Steve’s scene to a calm place of relief, and that place is with Tony. This helps the audience subconsciously associate Steve with chaos, and Tony with gentleness and comfort. Even though Tony was really the one who actually ended up causing a good majority of the chaos in this movie, while Steve was just trying to come up with the best possible solutions to the situations thrown at him. Aside from Rumlow’s brief comment, this is the first bit of the sustained anti-Steve propaganda campaign this movie embarks on.
So starts Tony’s first scene. Now, I already went over how the scene was mostly just there to evoke sympathy for Tony, and cast him in the best possible light. The hilarious thing about this, though, is that this specific event is actually a terrible choice for trying to show the audience how praiseworthy Tony supposedly is. Sunny explains why: “For a man who’s in the mess he’s in because his engineering project severely backfired and killed hundreds of people, you would think the scene to show his goodness and remorse for that tragedy would not be a scene where he’s funding more engineering projects.” And not only funding them, but approving them too. Approval processes exist not only to funnel money towards the more promising ideas, but also to help prevent genuinely bad ones from coming to fruition: and Tony’s grant only takes care of the first part of that. While the students would be rather unlikely to create something as bad as Ultron, just giving them the money to create whatever they want is not a good idea. There still should be some sort of approval process. So while Tony’s grant seems great if you don’t think about it that much, it is actually rather problematic.
Following the full character-establishing scene that Steve was robbed of, the plot advancing scene begins. Before that happens, though, the movie feels the need to make several things abundantly clear. First, the film ensures that the audience did not miss its attempts to ennoble Tony. After he walks backstage, an enthusiastic teacher comes up to him and exclaims, “Wow. Wow. That. . . that took my breath away. Oh, Tony! So generous. So much money! Wow!” The amount of Tony bootlicking here is seriously nauseating. Then, a spotlight is shone on the fact that Tony and Pepper are no longer together, and Tony is sad about it. This way, the audience is spurred to feel an abundance of sympathy for him, sympathy meant to be increased by the remainder of the scene.
The scene continues with Tony encountering Miriam Sharpe. Several things stand out here. First of all, the entire purpose of this section is ridiculous and just plain sad. Sunny posed an incredulous question: “Tony Stark was completely fine, going about his life as he normally would, willing to brush aside the fact that he was responsible for hundreds of deaths, and it was only until he found out that one of those deaths was an American kid that he was truly affected by what he did?” Sadly, that is exactly what happened. Now, in the scene immediately prior to this one, Wanda immediately looked horrified when she was unable to get Rumlow’s bomb clear of the buildings; she did not need an entire scene of having it spelled out in front of her to realize innocent people had died. And she did not care what nationality the people she was unable to save were; she was immediately aghast at the situation. Meanwhile, Tony needs to have it rubbed in his face that the people who died in Sokovia had families: and he only feels bad about it because the person who died in this particular instance was American. All the other deaths mean nothing to him. He had to have known that Pietro died, for example, but since Pietro was Sokovian, he was not important to Tony and thus his death did not affect him. The fact that Tony got someone killed was spelled out in this scene so that the audience could watch him realize this obvious fact and be guilty, and listen to sad music as this happened, in order to encourage the maximum amount of pity for him: but it actually helps show how disgustingly xenophobic he is.
This portion of the scene also shows that Tony is not being as benevolent as he first appears. When Miriam Sharpe compliments Tony on his apparent generosity, he replies, “Ah, they deserve it. Plus it helps ease my conscience.” So he didn’t even create the grant because he wanted to do something nice for others; he did it because he felt guilty about Ultron, and he wanted to banish this guilt. But this just adds to the ridiculousness of the situation because in addition to the fact that his grant is incredibly ironic, and not a very good idea, as Sunny rightly pointed out, “What do the people who actually suffered in Sokovia gain from this?” Funding engineering projects in America does nothing to help the people he actually harmed, and could in fact wind up hurting them, depending on what his grant eventually ends up creating. That detail was likely added to emphasize the amount of guilt Tony was purportedly feeling over Ultron, but it actually ends up undermining the purity of his intentions in making the grant in the first place.
The other part of this section that stands out is who exactly Miriam Sharpe works for; as she told Tony, “I work for the State Department. Human Resources.” Now, it is quite curious that she would mention this fact. It is also exceedingly interesting because Ross is the Secretary of State: so it brings up the intriguing possibility that Miriam Sharpe was a plant. Tony is painfully easy to manipulate, and Ross might have guessed how he would react to having his crimes flung in his face instead of being swept under the rug. And Tony mentioned in Iron Man 1 that he was horrified that his weapons were being used on Americans specifically, so Ross would even have that detail. Hence, it is entirely possible that Ross sent Miriam Sharpe there with the sole purpose of making Tony feel bad so he would be more likely to sign the Accords.
While this bit of the scene is meant to drive home how upset Tony is about Ultron, and how much he is supposedly suffering from this, it is also one of the few parts of this movie where Tony is actually called out. As Miriam Sharpe says, “You think you fight for us. You just fight for yourself. Who's going to avenge my son, Stark? He's dead . . . and I blame you.” It is nice to hear someone point out to Tony that he’s not as honorable as he pretends to be, especially because it rarely ever happens. However, even here it comes with an ulterior motive, and given that this is Iron Man 4, these facts are treated as guilt to be alleviated later.
But now that the audience has been reminded of all the damage Tony was responsible for by creating Ultron, because Steve can’t look too much better than Tony, the movie turns its attention to emphasizing all the damage Steve was supposedly responsible for. Rumlow is still the person actually responsible, but this fact would not fit with the movie’s agenda, so it is studiously ignored, and the heroes are blamed in his stead. This begins with the news reports that are shown. The first news anchor is fairly unbiased, mostly just stating the facts of what happened, but then the report cuts to King T’Chaka, and the blame game starts. T’Chaka says, “Our people's blood is spilled on foreign soil. Not only because of the actions of criminals, but by the indifference of those pledged to stop them. Victory at the expense of the innocent, is no victory at all.” While it is briefly acknowledged that the villains are the ones responsible for the damage, that fact is rushed past so blame can be piled on the heroes as well. They are accused of not caring about civilians at all, and this accusation is emphasized by T’Chaka’s subsequent declaration, which attempts to erase any good the heroes did by being in Lagos. And while the entire news report is about shaming Steve and his friends, a bit of specifically anti-Steve propaganda is squeezed in too: right as T’Chaka says, “Not only because of the actions of criminals, but by the indifference of those pledged to stop them,” the camera cuts to Steve. Instead of getting a brief reaction shot where we get a glimpse of Steve’s reaction before returning to the news report, the camera remains on him throughout the entire sentence. The movie thus silently accuses Steve in particular of being guilty of T’Chaka’s allegations, and helps the audience associate him with disregard towards civilians.
All of this is extremely frustrating to behold because it was quite clear the entire time that Steve and his team were concerned about preventing civilian casualties. The entire mission was about protecting civilians—stopping the terrorists from unleashing a biological weapon on innocent people—but even the way they went about this shows their concern. Steve specifically told Wanda to clear the gas from the Institute of Infectious Diseases, despite the fact that he was not at all affected by it, showing that he cared about the people inside; Sam and Natasha used guns very minimally to reduce the risk of crossfire hitting civilians; and even the incident that ended with the death of the Wakandans was about protecting civilians, as Wanda was trying desperately to get the bomb out of everyone’s way, she just wasn’t quite able to do it. And immediately after the bomb exploded, Steve alerted his teammates of the situation and went to help. So the victories of that mission—which are being completely ignored by the way—were in no way achieved at the expense of the innocent. But unlike Tony, who was allowed a moment to shake his head after Miriam Sharpe pointed out that he only fights for himself, Steve is just forced to quietly watch these lies with no chance to respond to them.
Then comes the second unchallenged news report: “They are operating outside and above the international law. Because that's the reality, if we don't respond to acts like these.” While the first news report did acknowledge that the villains were responsible for the damage, even if this fact was pushed aside in order to incriminate the heroes, the second news report doesn’t even bother. In fact, but for the subsequent mention of Wanda, the report might as well be talking about the terrorists. After all, acts like preventing a biological weapon from being released, keeping the terrorists from escaping, and saving the entire marketplace from being blown up—which is what Wanda and the others accomplished—are certainly not deeds that warrant retaliation. The acts that really need responding to are the acts done by actual terrorists who actually want to cause damage, and there could indeed have been some of this if Steve and his friends had been allowed to go after Hydra. But because the film needs them to be guilty, the crimes of the terrorists are pushed completely onto their shoulders.
Now, Steve and his friends certainly did not have to take this misinformation lying down. Honey Bee puzzled, “As a matter of fact why was PR so non-existent in this movie? Shouldn't the Avengers have a spokesperson? Or issue statements to the public after the incident in Nigeria?” The answer is yes, they should have, but if there were actual public relations, the outcry against the Accords when they appeared would be much more pronounced. More people would understand that Rumlow and his crew were the ones responsible for the destruction that occurred, and that Steve and his team actually prevented quite a bit more from coming to pass: so the Avengers would have plenty of people willing to defend them. And getting the chance to explain this to the public would also result in more of the audience understanding this fact. Unfortunately, Civil War was more focused on making Tony appear right than telling a good, thoughtful story, and the Avengers interacting with the public instead of merely listening to hate get spewed at them would interfere with this goal.
And while the only news reports we see are ones that scorn the Avengers, even assuming the Avengers were completely silent, such a bias is entirely unrealistic. It is natural that some such reports would exist, because the Avengers would not be universally loved. However, there would also be people who understood that Steve and his friends did nothing wrong, without needing to have it explained to them: and there would be news reports reflecting that as well. The original Avengers movie recognized this fact, and did a good job of showing it. However, in this supposed pick-your-side film, only the side of the story that supports Team Iron Man is shown. Because this isn’t really a pick-your-side film, it’s a pick-Tony’s-side-because-too-many-people-know-Steve-is-right film. And if news reports pointing out that the Avengers are blameless were presented, not even close to fifty percent of the audience would support Tony. Therefore, we are left with an extremely biased account of events that silences Steve’s perspective in what is supposed to be his own movie.
Following this is the next bit of anti-Steve propaganda. Steve tells Wanda, “Rumlow said "Bucky" and . . . all of a sudden I was a 16-year-old kid again, in Brooklyn.” The problem here is not the fact that the mention of Bucky threw Steve off, it’s the way he’s relating it. Steve, despite being a superhero, is still human, and he’s not perfect. At one point Steve thought he could count on Rumlow, and was probably even friendly with him given that they worked together so much, but ended up being betrayed: and now Steve is faced with the realization that not only did this person who he once helped and trusted actually work for Hydra, but this same person also directly took part in the torturing of Bucky. Such a bombshell would be enough to distract anybody. However, the way Steve is explaining the Lagos incident makes it seem like all any one of the terrorists had to do was say Bucky and he would be hopelessly distracted. The context of the situation is being totally ignored. As part of its effort to bash Steve, the movie pushes the idea that Steve is burning the world for Bucky, that he only cares about Bucky and nothing else, even though this is not at all the case: and this way of explaining what happened in Lagos helps lay the foundation for that idea.
That is not the only purpose of Steve’s account, though. The other reason Steve is telling Wanda this is so that they can be guilty together. Rumlow’s earlier comment about the building was hero-blaming coming from a villain’s mouth, but here we have hero-blaming coming from the heroes’ mouths, which lends the accusations a much greater credence. Steve finishes his story and says, “And people died. It's on me.” To which Wanda replies, “It's on both of us.” Now, there are a few other reasons why this conversation might have occurred, but establishing culpability is the main focus. Steve might have just said that to make Wanda feel better, for example, because she was obviously beating herself up over her failure. However, the better thing for Steve to do in that instance would be to point out who is actually at fault for the deaths of the people—which would be Rumlow, because Steve and Wanda tried everything they could to stop him—instead of just trying to shift the blame onto himself. And while this exchange could also just be them both feeling terrible about what happened—which in fact is further proof that they always cared about the civilians—the unrefuted news reports help extend this guilt into them actually being responsible for the situation.
Now, after this Steve does actually get to point something out. He explains to Wanda, “This job…we try to save as many people as we can. Sometimes that doesn't mean everybody. But if we can't find a way to live with that, next time . . . maybe nobody gets saved.” This is a really good piece of advice. It’s an unfortunate fact that rescuers are not always able to save everybody, but them quitting every time they lost someone would be quite harmful. And Wanda may not have been able to save the eleven Wakandans, but she saved all the people in the building Rumlow gassed, and all the people who would have been killed by the bomb if she had done nothing: so her absence from future missions would certainly not help anything. This is how the movie should have treated the subject of civilian casualties, instead of the ridiculous way they did. But since Steve and his friends had to be torn down so that Tony could be elevated, aside from Steve getting this one chance to counsel Wanda, this important perspective is completely forgotten. Indeed, seconds after Steve shares this bit of wisdom with Wanda, Vision comes through the wall to summon them for the meeting with Ross. At which meeting the hero-blaming continues at full throttle, and the heroes are forced to just to accept it. So while Steve did actually get a brief chance to defend himself and his friends by bringing up the reality of the situation, it is subsequently buried under the deluge of accusations that follow.