#additionally: there's...not a lot of relevant foreshadowing happening with the steve and tony dynamic

[words-writ-in-starlight]

I think the scene in Age of Ultron where everyone was just hanging around trying to lift Thor's hammer was thought to be enough to show they were buddies. I honestly feel bad for writers sometimes these days. Sure sometimes they do stupid stuff but other times the fans focus on one tiny thing and go nuts if it isn't explained or used to their liking and t the same time ignore stuff they try to foreshadow strongly

(the rest of the Civil War Complaining)

First off, I do want to be clear: I have a lot of sympathy for the situation the writers for the MCU (and a lot of comic runs) are in, because they’re basically being handed a loose plotline and a universe that a bunch of other people have been kicking around and told “make something good.”  And like, sometimes you’ve been put in a shitty place, narratively, by the previous jackass who thought they were breaking the mold by, say, making Captain America a HYDRA operative.  Sometimes you’re being expected to miraculously produce a friendship out of raw cloth in the first twelve minutes of a movie that has no support in the previous half dozen films.  It’s a place that sucks across the board for basically everyone involved--the fans are disappointed, the writer feels like a failure, the actors are getting sniped at, and the company isn’t making bank the way they want to be.  I get that.  I try to have sympathy for that.  I never attack writers directly, I never attack actors, I even try not to take cheap shots at the people who really do have a huge amount of power over how movies shake out, like Joss Whedon with Age of Ultron.  If I’m gonna drag Joss for that movie, you can bet it’s going to be about the narrative flaws and the way those same flaws appear consistently in his work, not about, like, his personal life--criticizing people for their actions is a completely different issue from criticizing the work of an individual, and frankly a lot of teachers in the public school system could stand to learn the distinction.

However.

It is my prerogative as a viewer and a writer to dissect a fundamentally flawed narrative, like Civil War, and talk about the reasons why it does not work.  I’m not sending anything to anyone directly involved with the movie, I’m literally just doing this for my own personal edification and the enjoyment of the very small audience I have on this blog.  Furthermore, they are critical issues that should have been picked up by copy-editors of the movies.  That is what editors and beta readers are for.  This isn’t me getting caught up on a specific scene and disregarding all other details and context, these are sweeping issues I’ve noticed in my time watching the movies that do not get resolved at any point in time.  It ain’t on me if the MCU doesn’t have their shop in order.

Now, on the matter of that one scene in Age of Ultron, I mentioned it offhand in the Steve and Tony post in this bit:

Off the top of my head, I can think of a couple times where they’re on the same side of a joke, but more commonly Tony makes jokes at Steve’s expense.  Sometimes, with all the rest of the Avengers around as an emotional buffer, they get along, but even then they’re always at opposite ends of the table, on opposing sides of the room, generally not speaking directly to one another.

Now, yeah, I wasn’t specific, and yeah, that’s a good moment of the Avengers all being friendly with each other, but it’s not an emotional beat between Steve and Tony, and that’s a critical difference.  There are plenty of people I’ve gotten along with okay in a large group, but I can’t be trusted to converse alone with because we spend all our time tearing strips off each other.  There was a kid I knew in high school named Chris, and I got along fine with him as long as our other friends alone, we could even joke around with each other, especially since we usually played straight-man for our respective friend groups and there was a degree of natural consonance there.  But when we were left alone in a room we almost inevitably devolved into bitter comments and nasty arguments.  It’s not an uncommon kind of relationship to have--but it’s not a friendship.  

If they wanted to define Tony and Steve as close personal friends, which is what the emotional core of Civil War is clearly meant to indicate, they needed moments between just the two of them, even if there were other people around.  Setting up personal friendships is about having characters interact directly with each other in a positive, constructive manner, and quite frankly just about every conversation between exclusively Steve and Tony focuses on the antagonistic aspects of their relationship.  That means that when Civil War rolls around and we’re supposed to be emotionally invested in the split between Steve and Tony over the Accords, we as the viewers feel confused and manipulated by what’s presented without comment as a split between close friends, despite all past evidence that they don’t fucking get along.