Amanda Meuwissen's Blog - Posts Tagged "marvel"

How Spider-Man Could Fix Marvel’s Civil War (Instead of Ruining It)

I’ve always been so excited for the Marvel Studio controlled films. They’ve been amazing, right? A new age in cinema, connecting so many films across so many years. Well…this is the first time I’ve ever been wary, because I was always so certain Civil War would never, could never happen in the movie-verse since they can’t have any mutants or other important characters that would be needed.

Well, they’re doing it anyway, and now they’ve finally managed to work things out with Sony to use Spider-Man.

A little background from me – Spider-Man is my guy, my favorite superhero since I was a little girl. I’ve enjoyed his films but none of them have quite captured Spidey right, not the way the 90s cartoon did, or other mediums. So I want to be excited at this second (third, fourth, a millionth?) chance to maybe get him right. At the same time…I don’t want his presence to screw this up.

See, I was already worried about Civil War because for those who might not be familiar with the comics, it was about whether or not people with abilities/powers should have to register with the government and give up their secret identities, sort of like the plot for the first X-Men movie. Obviously, mutants were against this. Cap was against it. Tony was for it. That’s what divided them.

We can’t have that be the plot here because…everyone knows everyone in this universe, there ARE no secret identities. So instead we can guess, since Bucky is planned to be such an important character in the next Cap movie, that the division will revolve around him. Everything will be strained after Ultron, with a lot of the blame on Tony and tensions high. After getting over PTSD, and everything else, this will leave Tony pretty broken.

Then boom, back from the dead is Cap’s friend Bucky who also happened to be the murderer of Tony’s parents. The division will come from whether or not Bucky should have to pay for his crimes.

Now, this is just a guess for now, but I’m pretty confident about it. The problem is, you could sort of understand both Cap and Tony’s points of view in the comic version of this story, at least at the start, but this? Bucky literally had no control over himself and shouldn’t be to blame for any of the things he did as Winter Soldier, so I feel the movie will really end up vilifying Tony even more than he was in the comics, and who wants to hate on RDJ? No one.

It also bugs me that we barely had one movie where they were really a team, the Avengers together, and already we’re going to divide them.

But of course, we can also guess, that this will mostly be resolved by the end of Civil War so that when the final Avengers movies come around, the team is unified again to face larger threats. So how will that happen?

In the comics, Cap turned himself in to end the bloodshed that had arisen in the face of this fight, and was assassinated, leaving Tony in one of the most iconic moments in comic book history, saying… “It wasn’t worth it.”

Now they could still do that, kill off Cap, leading in for Bucky to take up the shield, and still allowing for Steve to return some day, as is comic law. But given Spider-Man’s new involvement in this tweaked version of the story, I have a better idea.

The last thing I want is for Spider-Man to steal the spotlight here, and in doing so wreck what has been such a great run of amazing movies. After all, it was never assumed he would be able to join the team. But I think there is a way he can be important and impactful without ruining anything.

So many people are clamoring for Miles Morales to be Spider-Man. Miles is a young man of color who takes up the Spider-Man mantel in the Ultimate Universe (which the movies are more often based on than the normal universe) after Peter Parker dies. Now, I don’t want them to go straight to this, how can they when Peter hasn’t even existed in this version of the Marvel universe yet, but I’m not opposed to adding him eventually. So how about this:

What if Peter Parker as Spider-Man, a young hero who worships Cap and Tony, gets caught up in their Civil War, as is factual of the comic version, but instead of Cap…Peter is the one who ends up dead in the crosshairs. He’s what pushes it too far, what makes it ‘not worth it’ and ultimately brings Tony and Cap back together. This then leaves things open for the next Spider-Man movie, planned for after Civil War, to be about Miles. Everybody wins! We get a heartfelt more interesting way to tell Civil War, since it’s already a bit messed up from not fitting the comic book version anyway, and get the new Spider-Man that so many people want.

What do you guys think? Did my editor and writer side take this far off base, or should Marvel be paying me for setting up a better plot? Personally, I hope this is already where they’re planning to take things and that my (and my husband's) psychic powers are spot on.
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Published on February 26, 2015 09:39 Tags: captain-america, civil-war, comic, editor, marvel, movie, spider-man, winter-soldier, writer