Captain America has played the second fiddle to Tony Stark throughout the course the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Of course, Tony Stark had started it all. He was the genius playboy billionaire.
But when you make your children watch these movies, as you will someday, who would rather have them become? Because, unless you have a few billion dollars hidden away somewhere, the best you can hope for is Steve Rogers.
Mind you, I said Steve Rogers, not Captain America. That’s because Steve was a hero even before he even took steroids super-soldier serum. He was a malnourished kid from 40s’ Brooklyn with a plethora of health issues, who got beaten up more times than he had food in a day.
But every damn time, he fought back. He would get knocked right into the dirt and every time he would get up and fight back.
I can do this all day.
-Steve Rogers
And it was as simple as that.
He might have draped himself in a star-spangled banner for most of his life but god damn, the only thing he was ever loyal to was his own morals.
Now some might say that it’s moral certainty that makes him a boring character. But as if you’ve watched the Captain America trilogy, you know that’s untrue. The trilogy not only finds a way to compete with the Batman trilogy as best superhero trilogy of all time but does so will less material at hand.
Captain America worked despite him fighting characters that one might call complicated as all human beings are, motivated by their history, guilt, anger, vengeance but they were not twisted. They were just humans.
Marvel Studios had to work within the realistic (Hollywood standard) boundaries of these human possibilities and manage to develop a character that was supposedly so blonde that one could literally taste steak and beer with white America written all over it.
But that was not the case. The best thing, that Captain America: The First Avenger does is that it removes nationalism from Rogers’ motivations and firmly bases it on his experiences, his morals and his sense of brotherhood with Bucky Barnes and most importantly, with his fellow humans.
There is obviously a prickly nationalistic flavour to his name, but right before his conception as a superhero he promises his creator, Dr Erskine that he would always stay what he was – not a perfect soldier, but a good man.
Winter Soldier drives this point home when it makes Steve face an impossible choice about who to trust. Rogers character moves like a freight train in the face of moral chaos. Furthermore, the movie introduces us to characters like Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
The movie offers significant character development for Steve and still stands tall as the best movie in the MCU for the maturity and complexity of its content.
It also gives brilliant characters like Black Widow and Nick Fury to actually be a significant part of an exceptionally well-directed action thriller.
That being said, when Civil War was announced with the amount cast and characters it had, there was a high chance that all that development would fizzle out amidst the glamour of what seemed like a B-Team Avengers film.
It didn’t seem like that there would be enough screen time for Steve and Bucky to drive their character arcs forward.
But instead, it was a street fight with everything on the line. The writers and directors made sure that we got an emotionally satisfying film with Steve and Bucky at the heart of it, while not pushing away important characters like Tony Stark to the sidelines.
In fact, Tony Stark’s character shone brighter in this Captain America film that it had since Iron-Man in 2008.
The scale of the film meant that it could not possibly have the objectivity of Winter Soldier; it even looks flat in comparison to the action sequences in its predecessor.
But it brings the major characters to the MCU to a standoff, not driven to fight against an army of aliens, but against who they truly are as people who stand in different corners of the same ship, unsure of where to sail.
The Captain America films have the strongest narratives of any of the MCU films. They are driven by strong characters who can be recognised as individuals even amongst Gods and Titans.
Chris Evans does a beautiful, yet underrated job at recreating an ancient character on screen who just wants to do what’s right and has to manoeuvre through the tripwires of the world to achieve that.
