CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR is Reportedly Not About a Super Hero Registration Act



This post may contain spoilers for CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR. You've been warned.

"Who will guard the guards themselves?" -- Juvenal, Roman poet

It's a phrase that's more recently known as "Who watches the watchmen?" and is associated with the Alan Moore graphic novel and adapted movie The Watchmen. It is actually a Latin phrase which goes back to the 1st/2nd Century.

According to the website Birth.Movies.Death this phrase is the underlying concept in CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR more than revealing secret identities as it was in the comic book mini series that serves as the basis for the adapted film. It's not about heroes revealing who they really are because in the Marvel Cinematic Universe everyone knows that Tony Stark is Iron Man and Steve Rogers is Cap and James Rhodes is War Machine, etc., etc.

B.M.D writes:

"There is no Registration Act. There are Accords, a global move to govern the supeheroes. 
"It's a larger question of responsibility, and to whom these heroes answer. It cuts both ways - who is responsible when the Avengers get into a battle that causes civilian casualties... but also can the Avengers be told by a world governing body not to get involved in a terrible situation where lives are at risk simply because the local government says to stay out? ... Should superheroes be bound by the whims and changing winds of politics, unable to help people simply because a dictator who has a place on the UN Security Council doesn't want anyone interfering in his human rights abuses? It's a rich conflict where both sides are potentially right. It's a conflict that grows out of the two characters: Tony Stark who has become increasingly aware of his responsibility to the world and Steve Rogers who has seen everything he believed in undermined when SHIELD was revealed to be a Hydra front."

While none of this should really surprise any Marvel fan, nor is this really a spoiler, it does shed light on the internal conflict of Civil War if you haven't really sat down and thought about how it's still about the fallout of SHIELD from CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER. SHIELD is still a not the organization it was and who can oversee The Avengers, so the government is now taking action with Stark spearheading this effort.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR releases on May 6, 2016.



To read more about Civil War, click here.