Steve Rogers/Captain America - AN ACCORDS SPECIAL
So, I have a lot of personal feelings about the Accords. And, short of writing my own entire essay on them (I have now done this), I will just say this: the Accords are flawed, and so are Steve and Tony. They’re both right, and they’re both wrong, and it’s all one big Mess. Which, I concede, was the entire point. But anyway. Although I disagree overall with the layout of the Accords, and think that they are incredibly flawed, I would ultimately sign them - because I, like Tony, feel that they were both inevitable, and a long time coming.
But whilst I don’t agree with Steve’s stance in Civil War, I do understand why he made the decisions he did. First of all, you need to realise that the Accords are essentially a McGuffin. The plot isn’t really about them at all - it’s about Steve’s manic need to find Bucky, and it’s about Tony’s Atonement Issues. The Accords just serve to emphasise this.
For Steve, his attitude to Scary Legislation is justified when the political commentary in The Winter Soldier is considered. Remember, in context, Steve has only been in modern day for about a year, serving S.H.I.E.L.D. completely and utterly. When everything he knew was stripped away, he clung to the caricature of Captain America because it was all he knew. He threw himself into serving S.H.I.E.L.D. for the purpose of losing himself to the familiar rhythm of the military. But then, in TWS, he discovers the whole S.H.I.E.L.D-is-actually-HYDRA thing, and he discovers the fact that his best friend is not only alive - but the most feared assassin in the whole world! The fact that in CW he displays a lack of trust in government agencies is hardly surprising. The only agency he trusted since his thawing was S.H.I.E.L.D., and that turned out to be the utter travesty of him serving HYDRA itself, A.K.A. Steve’s Worst Nightmare. He also found out that his sacrifice and Bucky’s amounted to a zero sum. It meant nothing. And then and then and then, Bucky’s alive!? And he’s unsure what’s worse, Bucky being dead or Bucky being alive; because this Bucky doesn’t know who he is, and this Bucky is an assassin, and this Bucky has been tortured for 70 years.
And in Civil War, he’s finally found out where Bucky is, after all this time, and this massively skews his judgement. Not to mention the fact that Peggy died, and he interpreted Sharon’s eulogy completely wrong. He went from what Sharon actually said - “Y’know, once, I asked my Aunt Peggy, a Woman, how she was a successful Agent in a militarised hyper-misogynistic patriarchal sinkhole, and she said ‘well, learn to compromise, but don’t be pushed about, honey’.” - and he interpreted it as “Steven Grant Rogers. Yes you, Captain America. In the front row. Don’t compromise. On anything. Ever. Again.”
When Steve looks at the Accords, he sees another fight, and he sees another HYDRA-fiasco-in-the-making. He still sees this brave new world as one big threat. And, while he must acknowledge that his whole method of dealing with incidents (sulk and ignore it bc ur a superhero) is flawed, he doesn’t want to make himself vulnerable again. Especially not since he’s so close to getting Bucky back again; a man who isn’t in the same country as he. He also doesn’t have the same burning need for atonement as Tony does. Remember, he’s a soldier. He doesn’t like killing by any means, but he’s already made his peace with the justification of war regarding it. He’s not cruel, but he understands better than Tony that sometimes it’s necessary, and you can’t change it. No, the guilt and regret he feels comes mostly from letting Bucky fall off the train, and then; once he’d discovered the truth; not looking for him in the ravine. Steve definitely blames himself for the 70 years of torture Bucky went through. So, Steve’s trying to get Bucky’s forgiveness while Tony’s looking for worldly forgiveness and it all goes sideways.
Overall, Steve is a mess, and isn’t really in the position to be making clear, coherent decisions regarding the rest of the team and the future of the Avengers. Whilst this adds a certain level of sympathy to the situation, it doesn’t make all the stuff he did afterwards excusable. He was so driven by making Bucky safe, and clearing his name, and stopping the Winter-Soldiers-on-Steroids from taking over the world, that he never made time to sit down and properly talk to Tony about all that was happening. Honestly, if those two just sat and had a good chat, none of this drama would have happened. But hey, I guess that’s the whole point. It’s supposed to be representative of real-life conflict, and slides in a nice little social commentary about war and diplomacy along the way.
All of this deeper meaning serves to emphasise the growing maturity of the MCU - from the mostly-lighthearted-jape of The Avengers, to the much grittier political drama of Civil War. Going slightly off-topic here, but in my opinion, this ever-growing maturity of the MCU is one of the reasons why Age of Ultron under-performed - since Whedon tried to use the same tone/humour recipe that worked with The Avengers, and shoehorned it into a place it no longer fitted, with characters that no longer represented the same things.
