In the wake of Comic-Con this last week, little nerds like me were star-struck by the Golden Age of superheroes of which we are a part. I know that I'm the helpless consumer of a massive corporation, but gosh darn it if I can't usually bring myself to care.
That was before I saw "Captain America: Civil War" back in May.
Why am I waiting until now to talk about it? Well, Comic-Con always reminds me that as much as the nerd experience is something that fans cultivate for themselves - reimagining characters in cosplay or interacting with their favorite creators - at the end of the day, comic properties are a business. I don't begrudge them for that.
However, I do begrudge them for being lazy in the showmanship that should make me believe that they care about a story above a bottom line.
Unfortunately, I can only rag on Marvel here, just because they've been in the comic-movie-business longer than anyone else - or at least this leg of it. For this reason, my biggest disappointments in Marvel can be summed up in the sequence of scenes between Tom Holland's Peter Parker (a.k.a. Spiderman) and Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark (a.k.a. Iron Man).
*HERE BE SPOILERS*
The motivation for Stark's storyline is a familiar one: a victim of his action's collateral damage is thrust in his face, and he takes arguably extreme actions to keep that collateral damage accountable if not minimal. It's an identical motivation that spurred Stark into becoming Iron Man, when he makes his first suit with the help of Yinsen, who's family fell victim to Stark's weapons.
What is inconceivable to me that this would lead Stark to recruiting a 15-year-old kid to join in a conflict he has no stake in or knowledge about. In fact, everything about that initial encounter reeks of psychological manipulation. If you take out the details of the characters, the bare bones of the conversation is a much older, powerful man cornering a young kid, showing he knows a secret about that kid that the kid doesn't want known and then recruiting him into a situation that could get him maimed or killed by giving him an elaborate and expensive gift while warning him to only trust the older man instead of letting him hear the other side of the conflict. Remember, all this without any other adult supervision or having the kid's guardian give input into what the kid should do. What chance does that kid have?
I've heard supporters for this plot line say that Stark didn't honestly believe that the encounter with Team Cap would escalate into violence, that he just needed a show of other superheroes who supported the Sokovia Accords. To which I say: so he beefs up his ranks with a minor? How is that not so much worse?!
But that doesn't matter, not to Marvel anyways. What is frustrating to me is that so much about 'Civil War' was formulaic. Not in the sense of plot so much, but the interactions between each characters had the sense of being put together by an business executive. We have to have x amount of dialogue between people with comparable ranks on the call sheet, regardless of how that makes sense within the world of the story.
The reason Stark brings Parker into the conflict isn't because Parker would support Stark's position (in fact in the original comic Spiderman sides with Captain America,) but because they needed Downey and Holland in a room together. It's because of Downey's powerhouse performance that Marvel even got enough steam to get the rights to Spiderman back from Sony. Since Spiderman has been one of Marvel's most popular (and therefore most lucrative) properties, executives must have demanded a scene where the MCU's most popular, long-lasting character hands the reins off to the character who will continue the MCU's box office reign after the original Avenger's contracts begin to expire.
Granted, I don't know if audiences care about this. I certainly didn't while I was in the theatre, being too star-struck by finally having a Spiderman that felt connected to a larger universe of superheroes. But Marvel already played that card in 2012 with 'Avengers' and again in 2016: I don't know how many of those they can pull and I can't imagine that it's a reliable business model.
So Marvel, as a disappointed fan, don't rely on a sucker punch. Be in it for the long haul.
