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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
Assisted suicide, whatever, they'd still feel really awful if they killed Vision and it turned out it had been for naught because Thanos had already been stopped somewhere out in space. It'd be depressing as fuck.
Trolley problem: you can murder someone to keep a trolley from hitting a group of people, so you do, but then it turns out that the trolley driver got it under control and fixed the brakes in time, so no-one was in any danger and you killed that person for nothing.
I thought Steve was the leader.
Plus, everyone following one person's lead is not what the Avengers have been so far and, in fact, they all make their own decisions repeatedly with their own motivations and often outright ignore direct orders or suggestions from others.
Its probably what makes the characters compelling, even when the writing doesn't give them much to do. Wanda chooses to go with Hawkeye rather than Vision or how she handles the Suicide Bomber at the beginning of Civil War. Natasha decides to join Cap during the airport fight in Civil War, despite the danger it puts herself in. Hell, her coice to release the Red File (even if the consequences never got followed up on) is still a massive character choice to be made. And, as much as I genuinely didn't like Homecoming, Spider-man does repeatedly make choices to disregard Tony's advice and orders.
So, no, Cap cannot force or order Wanda to kill Vision and it makes it more powerful that she does it on her own.
Regarding the poster: Is it just me, or are her eyes kind of sad? I actually like this, she looks kind of tragic, but it's an unusual choice.
Regarding Steve: He is the kind of guy who would sacrifice himself in a heartbeat, but he would never order anyone to do the same. But he is also very aware that he can't always save everyone. If you put him into a corner he WILL make the hard decision.
Example 1: In Avengers he tells Natasha to close the portal, knowing full well that Tony might die because of this decision. But he knows they can't risk waiting any longer because they have no idea what might come through the wormhole next. The only reason he doesn't sacrifices Tony that day "for the greater good" is because he falls back through the hole in the last second.
Example 2: In The Winter Soldier he is fighting against Bucky who is his best friend. While he isn't keen on killing Bucky in the process, it is quite obvious that he would have done it if it had truly been necessary. And once the chip is at it's place, he orders Maria to activate the weapons even though both he AND Bucky are still on board. But he also stops fighting Bucky at this point because he rather wants to get killed by Bucky than being forced to kill him directly.
Example 3: Sokovia. There Steve WAS ready to destroy the city, but he still wanted to get as many people as possible off beforehand. If the helicarrier hadn't shown up, he would have ordered Tony and Thor to fly as many civilians as possible off while he and Natasha would have stayed and died with whoever was left.
So, no, it is not true that Steve would never sacrifice one for the many, but he would NEVER do it as first resort either. It is always the LAST solution for him and, rightfully, he feels that there is a difference between a soldier who dies in battle and putting someone up as a sacrificial lamb. And he is absolutely right, btw.
I'm not sure if this is the right thread to talk about this, but what's the point of having EpilepticTrees.AvengersInfinityWar when WMG.AvengersInfinityWar and WMG.Avengers4 exist? I feel like the Epileptic Trees page should be deleted.
Wanda feeling bad? meh, she send hulk to-*get shot*
Ok ok about Steve in sokovia I will said it made not diferent: sure they have people from the droid but they didnt have any way to move on ground meaning Cap just stop the inevitable, it was that stupid helicarrier ex machina what saved people and it show how Cap dosent have an answer aside of punshing things.
In fact I think that is the issue here: While Tony pursuit goodness as project with a endgame(therefore Ultron exist) Cap seen to follow goodness as short of Gut feeling, something he just MUST do NOW, let everything else be dammed, this can be example when he said to tony he cant sit when people need help, which is fine but it speak of a chronicle need of heroism.
In short, when all do you have is a shield, all problem look like nails...or something like that.
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"Whut? Nobody expects caps to solve the problem of the universe on his own. The point here is that Cap's moral compass is pretty sound. That is kind of the point of the character? If he wouldn't have strong and admirable values he wouldn't be Cap.
And I for my part would not be okay with just killing someone because it looks like the fastest and easiest solution. It's what you do when it is the ONLY solution. Not beforehand.
I would certainly think it should be looked into quickly if I’m told the odds are “this guy can teleport anywhere, control space, crush Thor, Loki, and the Hulk, explode planets, defeated a space fleet, and probably will be capable of a bunch of other unimaginable stuff once he gets back from wherever at any time.”
Edited by Tuckerscreator on Dec 3rd 2018 at 6:57:36 AM
You're misremembering that. It's Nat that proposes staying on the island and dying with the people. Cap obstinately refuses to even hear about the plan to destroy it.
- Widow: Cap, these people are going nowhere. If Stark finds a way to blow this rock...
- Cap: Not 'til everyone's safe.
- Widow: Everyone up here versus everyone down there? There's no math there.
- Cap: I'm not leaving this rock with one civilian on it.
- Widow: I didn't say we should leave.
He was too busy getting beat to hell by Thanos to express an opinion one way or the other on the matter.
A plan that only would have worked if you had more time is a plan that never would have worked. Time is always a factor that needs to be taken into consideration.
Upon being told that a guy who beat the shit out of the Hulk and killed Thor could show up at any moment, Cap decided that they had time to dedicate several hours to traveling to Wakanda, explaining the situation, and then attempting to perform a complex theoretical operation that no one fully understood.
He was ultimately proven wrong in that assumption.
That, right there, is the problem I have with the character. Once you accept the logic chain that "Captain America is right because he's Captain America, and if he wasn't right then he wouldn't be Captain America," then discussion surrounding the character's actions becomes impossible. Captain America should not be considered a Sacred Cow whose choices are considered immutably just and beyond critique.
A choice should be considered a good choice because the choice was good. Not because any choice made by a character we like is automatically good by default. No character in any media I've ever seen silences criticism the way Captain America does. Whether in the films or in the comics, there's a general agreement among fans that you DO NOT argue with Cap.
Except when he's a Nazi, of course, because that doesn't count.
EDIT: What I'm trying to say is that Cap is a legitimately interesting and fascinating character, but he loses a lot of his interesting qualities with the insistence that he must always be an unquestionably just and morally flawless character who emanates absolute truth from his every word and deed.
I think I finally understand why Superman's fans get so upset at claims that the character is an invulnerable moral paragon composed of pure rightness.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Dec 3rd 2018 at 8:29:25 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.When most people are agreeing with Cap, that's not "Cap is right because he's Cap." That's "Cap is right because he's making a morally good decision."
Edited by alliterator on Dec 3rd 2018 at 7:33:18 AM
When you don't know the time table, the correct assumption is not to go, "That must mean we have infinite time."
Imagine that a tsunami could slam into San Francisco at any moment. It could happen in five seconds. It could happen in five weeks. You have no idea when the tsunami will actually hit.
Do you evacuate the city as soon as humanly possible? Or do you leave everyone there and start working on building better detection methods, maybe start researching methods to mitigate the floodwaters, etc.?
Edited by TobiasDrake on Dec 3rd 2018 at 8:35:38 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.No one here is saying that though...
"In 900 years of time and space I've never met anyone who wasn't important."As an aside: On the far opposite side of the moral spectrum from Cap's moral absolutism, we have Thanos as a profound demonstration of the utilitarian dilemma. Setting aside for a moment the absurdity of Thanos's refusal to even consider alternatives to a problem that may or may not even exist (with a sidenote that his narrow-minded pursuit of only one idea does interestingly contrast against Cap's demand for a Third Option to the exclusion of considering the clear solution), Thanos sets out to do something unthinkably monstrous for the nebulous sake of a greater good.
Thanos stands firmly beside the consequentialist ideal that the outcome of his terrible, terrible crimes outweighs the evil he must commit to bring them about. He believes fully that the ends always justify the means, in stark contrast to Cap's belief that the means always justify the ends.
Which is not in any way to say that Cap is morally equal to Thanos or is equally responsible for the genocide Thanos commits, as I know some of his defenders are already queueing up to jump down my throat about. Only that both have an extreme moral philosophy that they will never compromise on, and the way those philosophies conflict with one another is interesting.
Interestingly, there is another consequentialist actor in the film apart from Thanos: Dr. Strange, who has the benefit of supernatural foresight and thus deems the terrible act of knowingly permitting the genocide to occur as acceptable to bring about the desired outcome he sees in the future.
What separates Strange's consequentialism from Thanos's is that Strange does consider alternatives; we see him perusing the different timelines, seeking a right answer, and only making his decision upon either concluding his review or being awakened by the others (it's ambiguous).
But what separates him from Cap is that once he has an option in front of him that will work, even though it's horrible, he commits to it.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.I'm not even saying that Steve is always right — he isn't. His decision to not tell Tony about his parents was, I believe, the wrong one. He was also wrong about the Avengers needing oversight, although Ross was not the person to give that oversight. But in this case, Captain America is making a good, morally sound decision. What you would rather have him do is toss away his morals in an attempt to preemptively save people, but if you could just toss away morals, then they wouldn't be morals, would they?
Edited by alliterator on Dec 3rd 2018 at 8:18:46 AM
Yeah, this is one of those adages that only sounds heroic when it’s applied to Captain America, but becomes considerably grimmer when applied to people with other forms of zeal like Tony Stark or M’baku, then going darker with Killmonger, the Punisher, Ultron, etc.
It’s the “never compromise” speech reworded. As many of us I’m sure have learned the hard way, life can’t function with everyone as a zealot.
Edited by Tuckerscreator on Dec 3rd 2018 at 8:51:19 AM
Steve is a soldier, other Steve is a surgeon. One trained to sacrifice himself on the front lines for an ideal — the other trained to face up to the inevitability that sooner or later a patient would die on his table. There may come a point where the rest of us can't follow Steve (Rogers) where his ideals may take him, for the sake of our own survival, but I think there's a certain comfort even for someone like Stephen (Strange) in knowing that someone like Captain America or Superman can exist, so that cold, hard logic is not our only recourse. I think all people are really saying is that there's a value in not discarding the very things we're fighting to defend for the sake of an easy victory. Not lightly, at the very least. And that which we leave behind isn't truly lost if it's shared.
Heh, thanks.
Edited by Unsung on Dec 3rd 2018 at 10:21:02 AM
Well said!
Edited by alliterator on Dec 3rd 2018 at 9:01:26 AM
Ultron: My uncompromisable moral is peace on Earth by any means necessary. Peace is objectively good.
Cap: Don’t apply it to that!
Ultron: No.
I did not; it wasn’t in the comic version. The movie version is somewhat healthier but Steve sure didn’t listen to the first part.
Edited by Tuckerscreator on Dec 3rd 2018 at 9:22:00 AM

You're misusing the word "murder".