Infinity War spoiler thread

Captain America can find a life beyond fighting on the front lines by teaching the next generation as The Mentor.

Tonys deal with Peter is more Parental Substitute than solely just The Mentor so their relationship is a more personal one in comparison.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Jul 9th 2018 at 2:07:34 AM

I don't know how many of you frequent Reddit, but r/thanosdidnothingwrong (a subreddit for Marvel memes) is currently undergoing the Snappening, where a random half of all subscribers are being banned.

What makes this interesting is how huge this got: the sub had over 600k subscribers, the Russos started posting on the subreddit to build hype in the lead-up, the Reddit admins gave special position and even helped to code a banbot, said bot is being streamed on the official Reddit twitch channel, and Josh Brolin even recorded a short video for it.

(Oh, and it's still ongoing, and almost all of the mods have been banned, so the ones left when it's done are going to have a fun time.)

Edited by IniuriaTalis on Jul 9th 2018 at 8:31:13 AM

I can’t wait until the banbot outgrows it’s programming, goes out of control and accidentally bans half of Reddit’s users entirely.

Reditt is like the dark side of the force. True valence will come from its complete destruction.

I love how almost all the mods being banned by random chance so perfectly illustrates exactly what can go wrong with the Snap.

What, are you suggesting that Thanos didn't have the most well-thought-out plan in the world?

Did people seriously expect logic from a guy known as the Mad Titan?

I thought it just meant he was angry all the time.

Lol....who would have thought that snapping away half of something would become such a meme?

Anyway, naturally Cap can retire. He can pass the mantle to someone else and enjoy life for a while. Explore what the current century really is about. Doesn't mean that he won't be back if he is truly needed, but the very point is that he needs to let go of the believe that he is the one who needs to fight, no matter what. He can train the next generation of heroes.

He can, yes. Just like Tony can hang up the armor and go have a family with Pepper and leave the superheroing to others. But it doesn't fit either of their established characters to just one day up and declare, "Well, I'm done. I no longer have the issues that compel me to keep fighting!"

Both characters have utilities that would still be valuable even if they, personally, never set foot on a battlefield again. But they've also made clear over the course of the franchise that neither of them will ever accept retirement. The thing keeping Steve from putting down the shield is not a lack of other things he could do. It's Steve's own personal temperament, his unwillingness to ever stand aside for any reason.

That was literally his complaint with the Accords: the idea that some day, he would want to fight a battle and someone would tell him he can't. Being kept from a fight he thinks is worth fighting is something he could not abide, even just in the hypothetical. He drew a line in the sand and offered to fight the entire planet for the sake of his right to keep on fighting forever.

He will never stop. He will never be content with just being a mentor, with sending others out to fight on his behalf. He doesn't have it in him to be anywhere but the front line. He doesn't even care about winning; he just wants to fight the battle. He'll be finding enemies to fight until the day it literally kills him.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jul 10th 2018 at 7:20:34 AM

Take, well, Cap's very first movie. He was told, in no uncertain terms, that he was more valuable to the war effort promoting war bonds and performing USO tours. Steve disagreed. So he broke rank and joined the fighting.

Hell, even before then, when he was just a skinny kid, he couldn't stand by and not fight and he had no power. He repeatedly kept trying to enlist and that was before he had the abilities of a regular person, let alone a Super-Soldier.

Steve won't stop fighting until he physically can't fight any more. And even then, he'll try to.

Which is EXACTLY why him even trying to retire would be such an important character moment. Tony already went there. He didn't manage to really stay retired, but he tried. Clint did. Bruce did the whole "hiding away" thing. Even Natasha at least tried. And Thor let the throne be for a while, which is kind of his version of retiring. But Cap? He acknowledges in The Winter Soldier that he is unable to come home and up until now nothing has changed. Even after giving up the shield Cap kept fighting. And now, that he lost Bucky AGAIN, isn't that the perfect moment to go for retirement?

I still think Cap's shield being broken is the perfect symbolic moment for Cap to decide that he's done for good.

I would say losing your best friend to a purple alien conqueror who just killed half the universe would be a good reason not to stop fighting, at least not until said purple alien is defeated. Outside of him losing the effects of the super soldier serum or gaining a family, why would Steve want to retire?

Sure, but once you got the best friend back, wouldn't it be the right moment to decide "I have wasted enough time, let's go home and spend it together. And look for Sharon's number."

No, it wouldn't. Because someone needs to fight M.O.D.O.K. Or the Skrulls. Or Kang the Conqueror. Or or or or or.

There's always going to be a Johann Schmidt or an Alexander Pearce or a Helmut Zemo. There will never be a time where Cap simply runs out of villains to fight. We've already seen from the Lagos Incident that in the absence of global threats from space, Cap is entirely content to travel the globe punching mundane terrorists. Whatever it takes to stay in the fight.

It never ends. Peacekeeping is a perpetual job. The world keeps turning. The only way for Cap to retire is for him to look at lives in danger, to look at bad guys who are trying to hurt innocent people, and to say, "Nope. I'm done here. Those people's lives are not my problem anymore."

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jul 10th 2018 at 10:22:08 AM

I mean, it isn't like there aren't other superheroes in the MCU. Hell, Peggy Carter was fighting the good fight even before they dug Steve out of the ice.

So, this is about whether it's works or not for Captain America and Iron Man to die at the end?

The existence of other people fighting the good fight has historically never stopped Steve from going out of his way to fight it. Even if it's the same fight they're fighting, and they are practically begging him to just sit down and let other people handle this.

The instant he disagrees with how it's being handled, he's grabbing his shield and throwing himself headfirst into the action, and so help him, he'll take you down if you try to stop him. He's a lot like Tony in that regard, except that Steve doesn't even give the pretense of pretending to play ball.

Steve is highly reactionary, and the world will never run out of things to react to. He doesn't have any long-term goals or desires; his existence revolves solely around hunting down and thwarting whatever awfulness is happening today, and there is literally nothing else that he'd want his life to be about. He has no interests. No hobbies. The only friends he has are subordinates fighting with him.

The never-ending battle between Good and Evil is all he has, and he is satisfied with that. He has, to date, never expressed a desire to be anything else, and has always wound up feeling restless and out of place when he didn't have someone to fight.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jul 10th 2018 at 11:34:34 AM

Uh, no, there was a whole thing about Steve fearing that he won't be able to live life away from combat, and he has shown a desire to settle down at some undetermined point.

I like you Tobias, but as people have pointed out in the past you do have a bit of a skewed, borderline Ron the Death Eater interpretation of Steve as some kind of borderline-solipsist militant, when it's really only one movie (which sticks out like a sore thumb when it comes to characterizing itsheroes) that really comes close to pushing that take.

Edited by AlleyOop on Jul 10th 2018 at 2:00:05 PM

When? He good as said in Age of Ultron that his desire to settle down with a family died 70 years ago.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Jul 10th 2018 at 10:57:02 AM

• Steve Rogers: Caught the last few minutes. It's pretty intense.
• Sam Wilson: Yeah, brother, we all got the same problems. Guilt, regret.
• Steve Rogers: You lose someone?
• Sam Wilson: My wingman, Riley. Flying a night mission.Standard PJ rescue op, nothing we hadn't done a thousand times before, till RPG knock Riley's dumb ass out of the sky. Nothing I could do. It's like I was up there just to watch.
• Steve Rogers: I'm sorry.
• Sam Wilson: After that, I had really hard time finding a reason for being over there, you know?
• Steve Rogers: But you're happy now, back in the world?
• Sam Wilson: Hey, the number of people giving me orders is down to about zero. So, hell, yeah. You thinking about getting out?
• Steve Rogers: No. I don't know. To be honest, I don't know what I would do with myself if I did.

This conversation could have set up a character arc about Steve finding himself in civilian life and learning how to set down the shield. But instead, it served as a springboard for Steve's feelings towards Bucky, the one he lost. Not only does Steve's answer never change through the rest of the film, he actually winds up dragging Sam back into the warzone too.

In Age of Ultron, the prospect of finally ending the war and going home with Peggy Carter is his nightmare that's meant to f*ck him up mentally. He later has this conversation with Stark, in which he expresses disdain for the very principle of striving to prevent future conflict.

• Tony Stark: You know Ultron is trying to tear us apart, right?
• Steve Rogers: Well I guess you'd know. Whether you tell us is a bit of a question.
• Tony Stark: Banner and I were doing research.
• Steve Rogers: That would affect the team.
• Tony Stark: That would end the team. Isn't that the mission? Isn't that why we fight, so we can end the fight, so we get to go home?!
• Steve Rogers: Every time someone tries to win a war before it starts, innocent people die. Every time.

Then, in Civil War, he and Tony have this conversation about signing the Accords.

• Steve Rogers: I don't mean to make things difficult.
• Tony Stark: I know, because you're a very polite person.
• Steve Rogers: If I see a situation pointed south… I can't ignore it. Sometimes I wish I could.
• Tony Stark: No, you don't.
• Steve Rogers: (smile) No, I don't.

What part of this suggests that Steve is a man who'll totally be ready to retire tomorrow? His characterization has been pretty consistent: he's still the skinny kid who enlisted four times and would have continued to do so until they arrested him or let him in. This is who he is.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jul 10th 2018 at 12:04:04 PM

The conversation with Sam there is even more telling when compared to other dialogue with Natasha. Steve tells Sam he doesn’t know what makes himself happy. But he’s at his most relaxed and jocular when jumping out of an airplane to punch pirates. And when he discovers HYDRA is back, he’s initially angry... and then “chipper”, as Nat puts it, because he can now identify where the bad guys are.

In other words, "Which is EXACTLY why him even trying to retire would be such an important character moment" is like saying "which is EXACTLY why him going 'Hail Hydra' would be such an important character moment." It would be a big moment because it's so out of character.

It's derailment. Cap doesn't know how to not fight, and even if he did, he certainly doesn't want to learn so long as there are people who need his help.