#I feel like they manufactured an authoritarian stance for tony to have that doesn't make sense with his backstory...

[amarriageoftrueminds]

*Not sure this discussion belongs under this post but...*

Tony doesn't sacrifice anything in CACW... He's a billionaire with zero consequences at the start of the movie, and he is still that at the end of the movie.

gif 1: 'justice for the voiceless'

🤣 Mr Hyperverbal! Tony's whole MO is talking over and more than everyone else; he literally interrupts others advocating for themselves (because they're not capitulating to him) just to tell them to shut up. The only time he doesn't do that is because he can't out emotionally-blackmail a dead son's mother.

And why are all these 'people' voiceless, I wonder? Could it be because they are... mysteriously dead, somehow? I wonder how that happened. Does 'justice' look like somebody being jailed and put out of business, losing his precious money? No...? Funny that!

(I'm sure them being a billionaire has nothing to do with it though!)

Tony would sit in a room with a woman whose entire family and country have been destroyed by his weapons, and mansplain collateral damage to them (which suddenly matters because an American was hurt, right? Fuck them illegal immigrant kids, right?)

(Defining characteristic of the Stark family: take only credit, never blame. If you are personally to blame for something, describe that something as a collective fault; if someone else did something great, steal it and/or take all the credit for yourself!)

And the fact that it was always Steve, Nat, Clint, Wanda, etc. down on the ground at street level helping civilians... well, Tony never noticed that of course. As his own bodyguard said, Tony wouldn't remember someone unless they were a blonde with a big rack... Steve may be a blonde with a big rack, but he's not the right sex! 😂

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gif 2: Tony claims he stopped making weapons.

'Once I discovered my leopards-eating-peoples-faces company was causing peoples faces to be eaten by leopards, I stopped that!' -- Says Man who still runs a leopards-eating-peoples-faces company and never stopped. 🤦‍♀️

You have to wonder just what Tony thought weapons were for, exactly, if he thought his weapons weren't doing any harm before?

(Which he only suddenly deigned to notice because the person getting their chest blown open was- gasp! -an American!)

He decides his weapons were only bad because they were in the 'wrong hands.' 🙄 Implying that the 'right hands' exist, ie. his own. An American billionaire's hands. But then he criticises Steve for saying the Avengers' hands are the safest hands for world-saving?

(Which is true, in this universe, because the WSC's solution for world-saving was to drop a nuke on Manhattan. The Avengers already tried government oversight and it was Hydra, Ross's Hulk project, AIM, dropping nukes, etc etc. Bad writing alert!

Why the fuck would Tony of all people be in favour of that? He told Congress to go fuck themselves when it came to them controlling the Iron Man suits! Then the Vice POTUS turned out to be AIM, who had Pepper abducted and experimented on -- made into an enhanced person against her will! -- but suddenly Tony trusts governments to handle enhanced people? And he's fine with people talking shit about Bruce?? Since when?! Make it make sense!)

The Iron Man movies, Avengers, Cap and Spiderman movies, all feature brand new weapons Tony designed, built, and gave away... after claiming he wasn't in the weapons making industry any more.

Even IM3, when he temporarily lost his armour, had Tony personally making weapons, and handing a weapon off to a kid -- to use on other kids, at his urging!

This idea that Tony ever gave up being an arms dealer is just part of his own Iron Man mythology he's made up in his head.

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gif 4: Tony has never sacrificed any personal freedoms, nor accepted any limitations on himself.

(Despite sneering at ordinary people who refuse to sacrifice their personal freedoms in favour of authoritarianism. That 'for the greater good' line up there could have come straight out of Project 2025! 🤢)

Tony makes a mockery of Ross and the Accords, despite pushing for them. He never had any intention of doing as he was told, and that's one of his trademarks as a character.

Steve in CACW is anti- corrupt governments (which his films have given him good reason for; Tony's films ought to have given him the same ideology, too... but this is a Disney movie.)

Tony is pro / arguing in favour of handing over control to a potentially corrupt government. Specifically, handing over policing of a minority -- enhanced people -- who aren't like Tony... but he pretends he's in the same boat as them, when he isn't.

He even said government having an agenda is a good thing!

Yeah, how's that working out for you, America?

Subheading of the Accords document: 'The Registration of enhanced people.'

Tony is advocating for the exact same things that ICE and the Trump Administration are doing to immigrants in America right now, because it doesn't and won't ever affect Tony personally. The leopards were never going to be eating his face!

(It reminds me of what Magneto said about mutants working for the US in X-Men: First Class:

"Identification, that's how it starts. And ends with being rounded up, experimented on, eliminated."

Could have come straight out of Steve's mouth!)

The Raft (as Sam correctly clocks) is Guantanamo Bay for Enhanced People, and Tony idiotically argues in favour of that, and is then all shocked pikachu face when that is in fact precisely what they get. (Channelling Trump voters now crying about the conses quencing.)

He's an ignorant sheltered idiot who calls himself a genius but has no idea what life is like for non-billionaires, because he doesn't care to know. (Not surprising given that Musk was the inspo for Tony, as set out by RDJ himself, Jon Favreau, and the guy who wrote IM1).

Steve -- the one who actually goes to the Raft to break the innocents out, unlike Tony! --- is anti-authoritarianism... anti-ICE-for-enhanced-people. And he's been breaking out prisoners of authoritarians since CATFA!

So Tony does not embody what Steve stands for, and never could, because what Steve stands for is Antifa -- Tony embodies what Steve has always stood against.

(And, since never learning a lesson or taking blame for anything is Tony's trademark, he is back to nonsense Hydra monologuing and blaming the Snap on everyone else, in EG. 🤦‍♀️)

Steve isn't throwing away his persona in CACW, he's living up to it.

Being anti-authoritarian and protecting innocents from authoritarian bullies, deploying the 'I can do this all day' battlecry -- suffering personally in order to achieve the right thing -- is exactly what Steve would do even if he never knew Bucky at all.

(That he gets to do one good thing, and save Bucky (another good thing), is just a perk; it's the narrative's way of condoning Steve's moral stance.)

Tony Stark in CA:CW + the values of Captain America