Robert Downey Jr. has agreed to add a new movie to his Marvel Cinematic Universe contract and the news seems to indicate what The Avengers 3 will actually be about. For those excited to finally see the Thanos Infinity Gauntlet story play out in The Avengers 3, prepare to be disappointed. According to Variety, the extra movie that Downey Jr. has signed up for is the third Captain America movie.
This will lead to the Marvel Civil War storyline.
For those who don’t read comics, the Marvel Civil War story saw a group of super powered kids try to fight crime and end up destroying an entire neighborhood, which included a school. The huge death toll caused Tony Stark to rethink the idea of costumed vigilantes and set out to help SHIELD make changes. The government passed a law that declared that every costumed superhero had to come in and reveal their secret identity to the government and then become government employees, fighting whatever battles that the government deemed appropriate.
This was the Superhero Registration Act and pretty much made anyone with superpowers an employee who had to do what the government ordered them to do. If they chose not to, they would be considered a fugitive and faced arrest. The creator of the story, Mark Millar, said that he always considered Tony Stark to be the hero of the story. However, the fact remained that the Superhero Registration Act meant that heroes had to fight the government’s battles at the expense of protecting regular people.
Captain America refused to sign the deal and that put him on the opposite side of the battle from Tony Stark. By the end of the story, Captain America finally surrendered, believing that he could fight a better battle if he stopped fighting a war in the streets. By the end of the entire tale, Captain America was dead.
Right here, let me stop and say that I hated the Marvel Civil War storyline. The fact that all super powered heroes were forced to become government soldiers, and if they said no then they would go to jail, seemed very wrong to me. There were also moments where the heroes who agreed to do so were almost punished. Because Spider-Man in the comics revealed his secret identity to help Tony Stark’s cause, Aunt May almost died because – you know – Spider-Man’s enemies now knew his secret identity.
Plus, I want to see super heroes fighting super villains and protecting people. I don’t want to see them fighting each other. That made me actually stop reading comics for a while. I hated everything about the Marvel Civil War story and it made me hate comics at the time. Now, I wonder if bringing the Marvel Civil War to the big screen, especially if they plan a two-part movie series about it, would make me hate watching the Marvel movies as well?
This of course ties in with the idea that The Avengers 3 will be the first part of a two-part movie. There was already rumors that none of the main Avengers would be in The Avengers 3 except for Iron Man. This would make sense because, in the Marvel Civil War comics, Captain America and Thor both refused to fight with Iron Man, while Nick Fury was also anti-registration, which could put Black Widow and Hawkeye on the outside looking in as well. This could be Iron Man’s new pro-registration team.
If Iron Man causes the death of Captain America, even if it was not on purpose, that would turn a lot of his friends against him. Then, after the events of The Avengers 3, things may need to rebuild with the next movie. It could be called Marvel’s Civil War or it could be the Thanos storyline where Iron Man has to swallow his pride and call on his former friends for help. That might make it worth it, but if they just go full-on Marvel Civil War for all of Phase 3, they might lose a supporter here.
I will give it a chance, because I do love Marvel, but the comics had the entire basis be on good guys fighting good guys. I stopped reading comics because of that, and I don’t want the movies to turn into nothing but a battle of heroes for three years. That isn’t fun at all.