For
better and worse (and they’ve had their share of both,) Tony and Steve have one
of the most significant relationships among the Avengers. Both are strong-minded and have very
different ideas about how to do right, and those ideas can clash in tremendous
ways. However, the Avengers is always at
its best when the two of them are using their talents in concert in one
another, not in opposition (some Tony-Cap-related spoilers.)
On the
face of it, nearly everything about where these guys come from is completely
different. Even if you ignore the fact
that Cap is out of his own time by about 70 years, there’s little in the way of
common ground. Tony is the son of a
technological genius who inherited his father’s brilliance and
wildly-successful company, and before becoming Iron Man, he made himself even
richer by designing/selling bigger and better weapons of war. He spent many years thinking mainly about
himself: his own whims, his own
inventiveness, his own gratification.
Becoming Iron Man has been a transformative experience for him, and his
worldview has shifted dramatically from focusing on self-interest to focusing
on the good of others, although his ego is still a force to be reckoned with
and he’s very much of the opinion that his way to protect the world is the
right way. Meanwhile, Steve grew up in a
working-class family and found himself constantly fighting losing battles
against those bigger (but never scrappier) than him. When the world went to war, he was desperate
to do his part and help, lying on enlistment forms in his efforts to get
in. It was his heart that earned him the
chance to try an experimental super-soldier serum, which gave him superhuman
abilities and made him Captain America.
Beginning with the war and continuing to the present day, Cap has
continually strived to do what’s right, always wanting to look out for the
little guys and stop bullies who push them around. He’s a natural leader, a self-sacrificing
hero, and a man with a strong moral compass.
In The Avengers, it doesn’t take long for
Steve and Tony to clash. The corrupting
influence of Loki’s scepter plays a big role in the harshest words they
exchange (Tony doesn’t give a rat’s ass about his fellow comrades, Steve’s only
assets are what the serum gave him, etc.), but the seeds of conflict are there
even earlier. They disagree about
tactics, which is emblematic of a lot of the issues between them throughout the
franchise. Tony tends to be
act-first-think-later, without too many qualms about what he’s doing when he
does it, and although Steve can be just as impulsive, the combination of their
personalities can lead to combustion.
When Steve gets on Tony to think about how his decisions effect his
teammates, Tony sometimes sees it as a pissing contest and feels the need to
throw his weight around, going his own way to prove that he can. (From my view, Tony is usually the one who
comes out looking worse here, but it’s hard when Cap is the other guy – it’s
not too often that someone solidly gets the moral high ground on him. And considering how much growth Tony has gone
through over the years, he has a lot of baggage to push through when it comes
to his actions, whereas that sort of behavior comes much more naturally to
Cap.)
We see
the biggest throw-down between them, of course, in Civil War, where they unofficially lead the two different sides
where the Accords are concerned. It’s
undeniably brutal, and it’s clearly going to take some serious
world-threatening calamity to get them back together, but what I like about
their conflict here is how evidently neither man wants it to go as far as it
does. Although they’re no strangers to
getting under one another’s skin, both men have learned to respect the other
greatly, and it’s almost painful for them to see the other going against them
so thoroughly. Tony pleads with Cap to
just see reason, to play ball, to back off while they figure out what’s what,
and Cap begs Tony to understand the dangerous path he’s starting down. At every turn, each tries to pull the other
back down, but determination is one quality they definitely have in common, and
try as they might, neither can get the other to budge until they see everything
they’ve spent the last several years fighting towards come crashing down. I know there’s gonna be all kinds of
characters and craziness going on in Infinity
War, but they’re going to have to devote some time to these two and how
they end up on the same side again.
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