thebrownrecluse:
stevetonyfic:
I’ve been thinking for a while if the Civil War movie is something I actually want to revisit in my head, mostly because there are so few things on this earth that can make both my head and heart hurt so much simultaneously, but as this is a Steve/Tony blog (more to the point, it’s an MCU-focused Steve/Tony fic rec blog), I would feel somewhat like a cop-out for not addressing the elephant in the room.
So here are my main thoughts about the movie. Let’s address that elephant!
To summarize, at best, I am ambivalent about the movie. In review terms, I’m mixed (to an arguable negative) about it. I liked a lot of the things most other people liked: Spidey finally feeling a lot like Spidey, T'Challa’s general T'Challa-ness, Bucky being adorable and buying plums, the Sam/Bucky dynamic, the fight scenes, TONY’S EMOTIONS holy shit (sidenote: don’t believe all the hate Tumblr spews, most people who aren’t on this website and/or are casual fans are actually incredibly sympathetic to Tony; this is knowledge that has kept me sane in the past month or so), and of course the irrevocable purity that is James Rhodes.
My problem, rather than being with characters (though I have a lot of those too), is mainly with regard to the movie’s narrative and (mis)treatment of Tony Stark’s character - which has resulted in fans believing in false dichotomies, from the most obvious of either only being completely on “Team Iron Man” or “Team Cap,” to insane reaches like ”you’re on Tony’s side, so what, you want Bucky dead?!! HOW DARE YOU” (Fandom, what? You realize part of Tony’s original deal was that Bucky gets to be free, correct? And that the first thing he did when he realized he was wrong was to fly alone and illegally and with a broken arm to Siberia just to make amends? Anyway.)
(Same, Steve. Same.)
My main problem with the movie is that the narrative’s continual punishment of Tony’s decisions and continual rewarding of Steve’s robs both (but mostly Steve) of character development.
Keep reading
This shit is gold