I have a headcanon that after Steve crashed into the arctic, all of the men who fought with him in the Howling Commandos showed up a week later to The Stork Club so Peggy wouldn’t be alone waiting for him
“Heil this, motherfucker,” says Captain America, shooting off a rocket.
Steve and Bucky find out Hollywood has been busy since they went away. A historical survey, including but not limited to: one set of exploded genitals, a brief interlude in France, Mel Gibson and other masterworks of casting, eight Academy awards, several dinosaurs, and something Tony Stark has ominously dubbed “the masterpiece.”
Frank Grillo, Elizabeth Olsen, Anothony Mackie, Scarlett Johansson and Chris Evans on the set of ‘Captain America: Civil War’ in Atlanta | May 15, 2015
No but this scene is extremely important and it’s why I’m angry at people who say that Steve’s characterization sucked.
Steve is the only one who understands where these two kids come from. Hill is trying to distant Steve from them because right after he says this line she says: ‘’We’re not at war anymore.’’. She’s trying to prove that Steve did the right thing because when the country is at war we all make some hard choices that we are not proud of. In war everything is permitted, and Steve did the right thing because he was doing it for the right cause. Hill is basically saying ‘You did it to protect your country and to save people and to make a difference, but these kids have no excuse for volunteering to these scientists.’
But how does Steve reply to that? To her ‘’We’re not at war anymore’’?
He says ‘’They are.’’
And it is SO important because Steve sees the big picture. For most Americans the war is something ugly that their grandparents had to deal with, something in the distant past that left mark but is also way behind them. But just because there wasn’t a war in America for over 70 years doesn’t mean that other countries have been so lucky. And Steve GETS IT. It doesn’t mean that he’s not mad. It doesn’t mean that he will not fight them if they’re on the opposing sides. But he knows where they come from. And he won’t let them be reduced to some monsters who let German scientists experiment on them.
Because if Steve was anything but American during WW2, if he wasn’t on the ‘winning team’, he wouldn’t be labeled as hero.
I had a lot of criticisms of the movie but I will say this: This bit was SPOT ON for Steve. He’s always big on compassion and putting himself in other people’s shoes and in many depictions has a very complex and nuanced view of the world (such as understanding that blind jingoism /= real patriotism and that a real American patriot would question their country when it goes against it’s better values). ult! Steve was kinda a blindly nationalistic jackass but this is very IC for a Steve based more on 616 Steve.
“We knew, that despite all the diplomacy and the handshaking and the rhetoric, to build a better world sometimes means having to tear the old one down.”
HYDRA doesn’t need you to be a Nazi. That’s a distraction; HYDRA merely asks that you mistrust and hate other people. That’s their way in, and it’s an easy one: just turn on the news. People are terrible, dead set on destroying the environment, history, ideals, and – most of all – each other… Not you, of course. You know better. So isn’t it then your duty to save people from themselves, even if they can’t see it’s for their own good?
Once HYDRA knows your cause, it’s just a matter of looking up the correct script in their asset-handling files and telling you what you want to hear. Everybody has a file.
“I know I’m asking a lot, but the price of freedom is high; it always has been.
It’s a price I’m willing to pay. And if I’m the only one, then so be it. But I’m willing to bet I’m not.”
This is why Steve is HYDRA’s antithesis. It’s more than fighting bullies – his worldview is entirely incompatible with their vision because each is based on opposite conclusions about humanity. Steve is willing to bet on us.
It’s telling that HYDRA’s answer to Captain America is an ‘ideal’ soldier who has been utterly stripped of identity and agency, while Steve represents both the desire to be better and the freedom to make that choice. For himself; for everyone. This is not naivete. Anyone who survives to adulthood will have long-since learned that justice may exist, but is far from guaranteed, and Steve’s decision to both love and trust others is a dangerous one. As others have said: choosing to be a moral person in an amoral world is one of the hardest things there is.
“Grandad loved people. But he didn’t trust them much.”
Fury is interesting.
He doesn’t share HYDRA’s contempt for humanity, but it’s no coincidence that he delivers his anecdote about lacking trust even while Project Insight, the poisonous fruit of this mindset, looms in the background. He represents the gulf between HYDRA’s misanthropy and Steve’s defiant faith in others, the complicated middle-ground between two complicated extremes.
Nick’s paranoia is hard-earned – it’s a survival mechanism – yet the behaviors that made him successful were instrumental in HYDRA’s infiltration of SHIELD. His rational reaction to evil also allowed that evil to perpetuate itself. But what do you do if that’s the only way you know how to live?
