I only dimly perceived that one day Trump would threaten without provocation war against Denmark, so we could conquer Greenland, and who would willingly abet genocide in Gaza. I could not predict specifically, but only generally, that this was a man who would similarly without provocation declare war against Venezuela and Iran, and who seems poised to do so again in Cuba. It would have been impossible for me to know exactly how Trump’s election would transform America’s foreign policy, and with it the history of the entire world, but I was close enough in part because Captain America: Civil War provided me with a framework through which to articulate my anxieties.
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“If we can’t accept limitations, we’re boundaryless, we’re no better than the bad guys.”
When Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) utters these words to Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), they could be dueling protagonists in a standard political thriller, arguing over civil liberties while acting out an action movie plot. Yet Stark and Rogers are also Iron Man and Captain America, respectively, and Stark’s line is the centerpiece of a superhero movie released at the height of the worldwide superhero movie craze.
It also explains how this movie predicted President Donald Trump’s rise.
Captain America: Civil War was the highest-grossing film of 2016, earning $1.153 billion worldwide on a $250 million budget. Ten years later, that amounts to $1.563 billion on a $339 million budget – but the movie’s economic success is perhaps its least impressive achievement in retrospect. The third installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Captain America series, after 2011’s The First Avenger and 2014’s The Winter Soldier, Civil War is the only Captain America movie to win the global box office in its year of release. I suspect the reason is that, despite a parochially named titular character, Civil War tells a universally relatable story: What if friends and allies became heated enemies because they disagree on a matter of principle?
In Civil War, the non-superheroes of the world decide that superheroes should be held accountable to an international governing body. While they make this decision after a series of unexpected tragedies (both in this movie and its predecessors), their underlying logic is the same that has long motivated civil libertarians in the real world: No one should have unchecked power. To pull from a 1944 quote by Robert A. Taft, an Ohio senator well-known for his critiques of America’s imperialist foreign policies from 1939 to 1953, “I have always been in favor of joining a league of nations on the theory that by joint action taken early to prevent aggression, a world war may be prevented in which we might become involved.”
The inverse of this point of view is dangerous, even deadly. As I put it in my original 2016 The Good Men Project review for Civil War, penned when Trump was only the Republican presidential nominee instead of a two-term president:
The Republican candidate, Donald Trump, has defied more than seventy years of bipartisan consensus on the importance of internationalism, abhorring the “dangerous idea that we could make Western democracies out of countries that had no experience or interest in becoming a Western democracy” and arguing that, as a result, America should no longer feel responsible to “international unions that tie us up and bring America down.”
In the plot of Civil War, Captain America goes full Trump. Rogers opposes the Sokovia Accords, an international treaty requiring superheroes to report to the world’s governments before acting, while Stark supports them. Given how Rogers was betrayed by the US government in The Winter Soldier and Stark’s hubris caused mass destruction in the 2015 movie Avengers: Age of Ultron, it makes sense that each would take their respective position on this issue. Unfortunately for Captain America fans, though, Iron Man was as correct in 2016 as Taft was in 1944. Even if the events of subsequent movies like 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War and 2019’s Avengers: Endgame didn’t demonstrate the value of a coordinated defense organization (which they do), Stark is self-evidently correct on a conceptual level.
Even more unfortunately, Captain America: Civil War sides with Rogers over Stark. As I explained in my 2016 Salon review (I loved this movie so much, I covered it twice, with my Salon take being later quoted by Business Insider), “there are unsettling real-world implications to arguing that ‘super’ people should be allowed to change the world as they see fit without being accountable for the harm caused by their actions, even if said harm is unintentional.” For this reason, I took issue with Captain America’s line that “I know we’re not perfect, but the safest hands are still our own.”
At that time, I only dimly perceived that one day Trump would threaten without provocation war against Denmark, so we could conquer Greenland, and who would willingly abet genocide in Gaza. I could not predict specifically, but only generally, that this was a man who would similarly without provocation declare war against Venezuela and Iran, and who seems poised to do so again in Cuba. It would have been impossible for me to know exactly how Trump’s election would transform America’s foreign policy, and with it the history of the entire world, but I was close enough in part because Civil War provided me with a framework through which to articulate my anxieties.
Of course, these complicated geopolitical concepts would not have been so effectively communicated if Civil War wasn’t also incredibly entertaining. As far as Marvel movies go, the film contains the superhero cream of the crop: Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Clinton Barton/Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), T’Challa/Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), Scott Lang/Ant-Man (Paul Rudd), Wanda Maximoff/Scarlett Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), Vision (Paul Bettany), and Peter Parker/Spider-Man (Tom Holland). Despite juggling so many characters, Civil War allows every one adequate time to shine both as compelling individuals worthy of being followed and as action stars capable of delivering adrenaline-pumping spectacle.
Additionally, Civil War is unique among modern superhero films in that its “good guy versus bad guy” formula gets turned on its head. First, you have the heroes fighting each other, with Captain America getting the Winter Soldier, Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, and Ant-Man on his side while Iron Man recruits Black Widow, Black Panther, Vision, and Spider-Man. On a deeper level, though, the film is about the ease with which even people with the best intentions can be manipulated by their baser emotions. Without spoiling any plot twists, I can safely divulge that the “villain” who sets the story in motion in has surprisingly sympathetic motives, forcing us to question the consequences of superheroics in ways usually not contemplated by these special-effects-filled epic blockbusters.
These positive qualities, however, did not on their own make Civil War succeed. The movie transcended its genre, both in 2016 and in retrospect, because it managed to say something profound about international politics. My favorite moment in the film is when Rogers’ love interest’s niece Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp) recalls how his ex-flame and her “Aunt Peggy” (Hayley Atwell) had a photograph of President John F. Kennedy in her office.
“I asked her once how she managed to master diplomacy and espionage at a time when no one wanted to see a woman succeed at either,” Carter recalls. “And she said, ‘Compromise where you can. Where you can’t, don’t. Even if everyone is telling you that something wrong is something right. Even if the whole world is telling you to move, it is your duty to plant yourself like a tree, look them in the eye, and say, ‘No, you move.’”
Kennedy, who admired Taft so much that he listed him as one of the first senators to win a Profiles in Courage award, famously said in 1963 that “world peace” must be defined as “not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave,” but rather a “genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children – not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women – not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.”
This is the message that is preached by Stark and his team, ignored by Rogers and his team . . . and, at this point in America, is more crucially relevant than ever.
Unfortunately, like the filmmakers who made Civil War, Americans today seem to side with the Rogers point of view, even as the rest of the planet would have benefited immensely if we had instead heeded Stark. Thus for the last ten years, America has not accepted limitations, and we have acted as if we are boundaryless.
Now it is up to history to decide if we’re no better than the bad guys.
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All images are screenshots from the film.
