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12 Reasons Why the Captain America: Civil War Movie Worked Where the Comic Didn’t


The original Civil War crossover event was extremely flawed and that’s understating it. I’d go on record saying while there were a few gems, it was overall a pretty bad comic. The movie Captain America: Civil War, however, is a pretty good movie and has been received very well. This is definitely due to the fact it really isn’t very similar at all to the comic it is based off of. So what did the movie do that worked where the comic didn’t? Let’s talk about it. And let’s talk about whether you agree or disagree in the comments!

  1. The movie has a more resonant opening conflict

    From Civil War

    The Civil War comic’s conflict was triggered by a young, inexperienced group of heroes, The New Warriors, trying to get famous by doing a reality show. They instigated a fight with some villains in front of a camera crew, which resulted in a villain decimating an entire town and a whole school full of children being killed. This is why the government decides superheroes must be regulated and registered.

    In the movie, the Scarlet Witch accidentally kills some civilians while trying to get rid of a bomb. This is on foreign soil, and it’s less this single incident that triggers it, but more that it’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back after civilian casualties in many other Avengers fights.

    The inciting incident in the movie has more resonance because it’s the main characters that are involved in it and responsible continue to feel the impact throughout the movie, whereas in the comic the New Warriors are not the real main players of the event (most of them died, after all)- Captain America and Iron Man are and they had nothing to do with that incident.  

    The inciting incident was also more complex morally in the movie. The Civil War comic seems to imply its only untrained teenagers who could accidentally cause civilian casualties in superpowered battles, which is unlikely at best. Even trained professionals make mistakes.

    The movie also relies less on shock value to sell the incident. The comic felt the need for 60 children to be slaughtered and upped the melodrama even more by having one of the surviving heroes go from a fun, happy dude to someone whose powers are activated by pain and thus he will constantly mutilate himself as penance for his deeds. The movie’s more subdued approach of “people died, and that’s just important” works better. 

  2. Tony's motivation is stronger

    In the Civil War comic, Iron Man was for superhero registration because well, someone needed to be. He didn’t really have a personal stake in the issue, which made the bizarre lengths he went to in order to champion it very odd.

    In the movie, it’s easy to see why he’s so passionate about it. He is confronted by a woman who lost her son because of the battle in Age of Ultron- this battle was entirely Tony’s fault, since he created Ultron. This guilt drives him thoughout to movie and it’s easy to see why, after messing up so badly, he believes he needs to be regulated. Tony has also struggled with PTSD since Iron Man 3 and the incident in AoU seems to have compounded his issues. Tony’s stance makes perfect sense and falls in line with his character arc, whereas in the comics, it didn’t really stem naturally from his character. 

  3. Tony does not team up with literal supervillians

    Tony is far more unsympathetic in the Civil War comics than he is in the movie. In the movie he does some questionable things for sure, but it’s nothing compared to the crap he pulls in the comics for no real reason. It’s stuff that damaged his character very badly. One horrifying action was when he recruited a team of murderous supervillains to hunt down his fellow heroes. Once you have a guy sending murderers after Spider-Man, nobody’s going to want to root for him.

  4. There's no Negative Zone prison

    You may have thought it was pretty bad that Tony got so many of his friends thrown in prison in the movie, but that’s nothing compared to what was done to anti-registration folks in the comics. In the comics, Tony had them imprisoned indefinitely in the Negative Zone, another dimension with a deadly vortex at the center, guarded by horrible monsters.  Also, in one comic he stated that they were all basically just going to be there forever with no chance of trial until they agreed to registration. It’s a really nice way to treat your friends!

  5. There's no clone Thor

    One of his biggest moments of sheer dickery was when Tony cloned his dead friend to use as weapon. Yep. Thor was thought to be dead at the time and Tony decided there was no better way to honor his memory than creating a violent, morality free Clone-Thor that exists to do his bidding. Tony is the best bro you could have, clearly. 

  6. There's no cheap shock deaths

    The aforementioned Clone Thor actually ended up killing a hero known as Goliath, since Tony forgot to give his clone a conscience, presumably because his was also AWOL at the time. The death had no real narrative weight or meaning- Goliath wasn’t a monumentally important character before he was killed and his death was just entirely a plot device. It just happened to emphasize how in the wrong the pro-registration side was and to cause a bunch of heroes to abandon Tony’s side.

    Not to mention, the tragedy of all of it was undercut by the extreme silliness of seeing Goliath’s giant dead body wrapped up in a tarp and transported with a crane.  

    click to enlarge

    The movie made a good decision in not choosing to kill any character off just to further the conflict.

  7. The movie allowed both sides to have a point

    From Captain America: Civil War

    As you may have gathered from the previous bullet points detailing Tony’s crimes in the comics, the comic conflict very much had a "right" and "wrong" side. The pro-registration side hired supervillains, got heroes killed, cloned fallen friends and indefinitely imprisoned people in hell dimensions, while the anti-reg heroes were the scrappy underdogs.

    The movie is a little more balanced. Tony and the others who are for government regulation are shown as coming from a sympathetic place. When Tony tries to take in his fellow Avengers, it’s partly so the government won’t go after them with deadly force.

     At the same time, you see where Cap and his allies are coming from too. The government oversight might interfere with saving people and Bucky is a brainwashed victim who could face death at the hands of this same government. By the end of the movie, both Tony and Cap make pretty reckless decisions and mistakes, but also have their good points too. 

  8. The government is portrayed more realistically

    From Empire Magazine and Captain America: Civil War

    In the Civil War comic, the government is pretty extreme in its evil, recruiting supervillians and hunting down all heroes who don’t agree with them. The government in the movie still seems pretty shady- they pretty much only give the Avengers a few days to look over the new legislation regulating them, which screams that something may be amiss. It’s a more realistic kind of corruption and shadiness though, not super overwrought like the comic’s portrayal.

  9. Nobody berates Captain America for not using MySpace

    From Civil War: Frontlines

    One of the most infamous moments in the original Civil War comic was the part where a reporter informs Cap that he doesn’t really understand or represent America because he doesn’t look at Youtube videos or have a Myspace account. This is treated as some sort of truth-bomb, despite being a ludicrous argument. It’s especially hilarious now that nobody has a MySpace account anymore, showing how fleeting the things she was discussing are.

    What Cap is supposed to represent is ideals of what America should be: freedom, integrity and so on. Those things don’t go out of fashion, unlike MySpace accounts. So we should all be thankful the movie chose not include this ludicrous moment. 

  10. The more personal conflict in the movie works better

    From Captain America: Civil War

    The conflict in the movie is on a much smaller scale than the comic, which works a lot better for getting the audience invested. While political arguments are great and all, having the heroes clash on a personal level is important too. Cap has a real stake in the issue with protecting his friend Bucky, and that draws the audience in more, as does Black Panther trying to avenge the loss of his father and Tony dealing with the loss of his parents. All these smaller, more human battles resonate more than the comic’s huge superhero war over whether secret identities should stay secret.

  11. The movie has a stronger climax

    From Civil War

    The climax of the Civil War movie is a shocking reveal and a following tense, emotional fight between Iron Man, Cap and Bucky with their lives at stake. Cap manages to win, but the cost is he is now a wanted criminal along with his allies and he and Tony may never be able to reconcile.

     In the comic…there was no real reason for the heroes to continue the final battle in New York in the first place, since Cap would accomplish nothing by winning. It’s not like Steve beating up Tony would change the government’s mind. Nevertheless, they fight.

    Steve is about to win the fight when a bunch of firefighters and EMTs tackle him and tell him to stop. As reviewer Chris Sims put it, they might as well have had “the REAL heroes of 9/11” plastered on their foreheads. Cap looks around at the destruction, realizes he has lost the moral victory somehow (Please remember that his opponent employed actual supervillains) and gives up and allows himself to be arrested.

    It’s a very hokey, unsubtle ending that’s trying to be deep and the allusions to 9/11 just come off as incredibly tacky. On top of that, the idea of Captain America giving up when it comes to freedom ruffled a lot of people’s feathers.

  12. Captain America doesn't die

    From Captain America

    In the aftermath of the Civil War comics event, Captain America was assassinated. It was another unsubtle, anvil-icious statement about how America’s ideals have died and all that. The Russos made a wise decision not recreating this- it didn’t take long for Cap to come back in the comics and the audience would expect the same for the movies, leaving his death with no impact. A movie doesn’t need to have someone die to make an impact and Captain America: Civil War proved that.

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