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Sorry it’s taken a while for me to get back to you on this one.

The power element is a tricky one, because without Steve having any of these powers, none of these problems would have occurred. Causality and all that. If Steve didn’t have powers, he and Bucky would both be long dead.It’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario. 

I don’t think the choices he makes could only be made because he has powers/skills. It’s because he has the powers and skills that the conflict happens. Before Bucky even shows up, there is conflict because of the Accords and even if it wasn’t really handled that well as the running thread of conflict (supplemented by “robot-armed assassin who kills peoples’ parents”), that’s what I want to look at because it’s the heart of everything in this film.

I’ve made an argument before that the difference between Tony’s powers and Steve or Wanda’s is that Tony has the ability to take them off. He can remove his suit and step back from everything. He can put down the thing that makes him a weapon - a nuclear deterrent as he called himself back in Iron Man 2. He can lock them up, put them away, and be a normal human being.

Steve and Wanda don’t have that luxury. They have these powers but they can’t just toss them in the basement. Steve will always be the powerful super-soldier. Wanda is infused with these powers and as Steve said “she’s just a kid” but the whole world sees her as this living weapon and no matter what she does, she can’t stop being that weapon.

Tony is making the pragmatic choice as a weapons designer and creator. He is seeing the repercussions of his actions and his creations. It’s the sensible choice and for him, it is certainly the right one. He knows he needs to have limits put on him and that’s fine for him. The trouble is that the accords is that they treat people like weapons. Ross describes Thor and Banner as “a couple of 30 megaton nukes…” and Tony describes Wanda as a “weapon of mass destruction”.

For Steve and Wanda, the accords mean that they will be treated as a commodity rather than a person, and worse than that, they’ll be weapons who have no say in who/what/where they are allocated: “we surrender our right to choose”. There could be conflicts they could help in, but if they tried, they would be considered criminals. They outright say that if the non-normals don’t comply, “they will come for me”.

There’s no right position here. The military were correct to suggest that the Avengers needed oversight, but then they treated some of the Avengers as tools and objects to be shelved until needed instead of people who have no choice about the powers they have. They were telling a man who repeatedly defied orders and went behind enemy lines and risked a medical super trial all so he could save as many people as he could that he might be prevented from saving people. They were telling a young woman that she was too dangerous to be given her freedom.

I do want to feel bad for Tony for everything that happened to him, but his weapons and his choices are his own. Wanda, Steve, Natasha, Bucky - those people don’t have the choice anymore. They are what they are and what has been done to all of them can’t be undone by signing a bit of paper. They can’t simply be closed up - “internment” as Steve puts it - because they’re deemed inconveniently powerful.

So back to the point. Steve is already at odds with Tony because of the accords, particularly because neither of them can understand the other’s experiences and why they feel so strongly about it. If it wasn’t for the tension rising over the accords and Peggy’s death, Steve wouldn’t have been pulling back so hard. The accords exist because of his powers, ergo, the choices are only made because he has those powers.

Look at their confrontation about Wanda and the way Tony talks about her like a weapon. Steve is increasingly angry and justifiably so, because if Wanda - a genetically enhanced human being  - is a dangerous weapon in Tony’s eyes, what does that make Steve to him? Tony doesn’t see it that way - he sees the simple clean-cut world of dangerous things being controlled. He’s been trying to do it since the first film, when he saw what his weapons can do. This miscommunication is what drives the wedge more firmly between them. Steve says himself “Every time I think you see things the right way…” and Tony clearly believes he does.

Powered or non-powered, they both have different experiences, see the world in different ways and neither of them can see the others’ perspective. Tony believes he’s doing what need to be done “to stave off something worse” and Steve sees it as a form of captivity.

As for Tony being punished, I can’t really comment on that because I have bias for the poor bastard who was abducted, tortured, brainwashed, forced to murder a ton of people and had just escaped it all and found a stable life, only to have it all go boom. (There does seem to be an excess of Tony angst in a film called Captain America, though…)

Oh lord, if they made my comic ship come true, I would weep buckets, but I suspect it’ll never happen, especially after the chaotic trainwreck that was Brutasha on the back of the abandoned potential of Clintasha.

Mix-tapes were generally put together for a particular person by someone who liked/loved etc them. What struck me is that this mix-tape definitely wasn't made for Peter. Some of the songs are completely inappropriate for a mother to direct at their child.

However, as I recall, mix-tapes often were used to tell a narrative with songs put in a specific order. If you listen to the tracks as parts of a story, you get so much information about Peter's mother, who clearly made this mix-tape. If she made it for Peter, it's to tell him where he came from.

"Hooked on a Feeling" - a guy telling a woman about how he can't resist her and the fact he believes she's in love with him.

"Go All the Way" - ... well, the title really says it all, doesn't it? SEXY TIMES.

"Spirit in the Sky" - I can't help feeling this is much more literal to her than it would be to us, because something has definitely come out of the sky.

"Moonage Daydream" - Basically "I know you're an alien, but I don't care"

"Fooled Around and Fell in Love" - the crush and fooling around has turned into something serious

"I'm Not in Love" - the ultimate break-up song, where someone is sitting in a dark room and having a good cry over all the little trinkets and tokens.

"I Want You Back" - does exactly what it says on the tin.

"Come and Get Your Love" - Again, self-explanatory, with a note of "ffs, will you get your butt back here, because I'm waiting".

"Cherry Bomb" - It took me a couple of listens, but this is about someone who isn't who she's expected to be, a "wild girl". I'm assuming this would be when she found out she was about to be a single mother in the 80s.

"Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" - ...I'll let you figure out what a song about a jaded person planning to cheat on his/her long-term lover means in the context of this story.

"O-o-h Child" - Someone had a baaaaaaaaaaaaaby.

"Ain't No Mountain High Enough" - And even after all of that, she's still ready and willing to be there for the man she loves, no matter what comes between them.

So in conclusion, Peter's mother had a swept-off-her-feet kind of romance with this man, who shortly thereafter revealed he was an alien. He wasn't meant to fall in love with a human, but these things happen. When he had to leave, he had to leave her behind. The break-up was hard and she never got over it, but despite everything and the way people judged her for her behaviour, she didn't care. She had a child, whom she loved, and if her lover came back, she was ready and waiting for him.

Oh, Steve’s anxiety has been there from day one, especially when he’s in a situation where he is very uncomfortable. He fidgets, he fake-laughs, he - when tiny - has a habit of smoothing his fringe, he babbles around women he likes (that whole “I got beat up there, there, there” conversation. Oh Steve, sweetie, no).

In many cases, anxiety can be triggered by your surroundings and the way people treat you. First big trigger is the fact that Steve would have grown up during the Great Depression, in a time when the poorest got poorer and were shafted time and time again. They would be struggling for work, for money, even for food, especially in New York with such a huge population, which is bound to be a high-pressure environment.

And then there’s the fact that Steve was disabled. He had so many illnesses that would have marked him out as different. He was used to being considered weak and helpless. Look at all the times he tells Bucky he can fend for himself and that he doesn’t need help, something he has clearly said over and over again. He doesn’t want to be the burden that he considers himself. There’s a lot of self-loathing wrapped up in it. He doesn’t feel like he’s worth anything unless he can be useful and do something.

It was much clearer when he was skinny!Steve, the stubborn little mook from Brooklyn, before he ended up a superhero. Watch the scene before he goes out on the stage as Cap for the first time, his uncertainty and expressing his nervousness and looking fearful. Watch his expression when he gets on the stage for the first time.

That’s where the change happened: Cap is a role for him. Cap is big and strong and no-nonsense. Cap punched Hitler. Cap is a hero. Cap will call you out when he thinks your morals are in question.

The trouble is that while Cap has some of Steve’s traits, Cap isn’t Steve. Cap is the idealised version. Cap is what Steve aspires to be and he wears the name like his mask. Cap is how he thinks he should be and what he wanted to be. Cap will never be treated like he’s fragile. Cap can survive anything you can throw at him. Cap can get smashed off buildings and get up and keep going without complaint (even if he’s probably bleeding internally). Cap can stand up to anyone and not end up bleeding in a back alley.

Steve, on the other hand, is the man who goes and hides in a bombed out pub to cry about his dead friend, so no one can see him being weak. Steve is the man who, when confronted with someone asking about the ice, retreats behind his mask again.  He does it time and again and he only lets people see the real him when he trusts them. Peggy and Bucky could see right through him, but they knew him before the serum and they knew exactly where his issues stemmed from. Sam and Nat definitely got there in CA:TWS, along with Wanda in CA:CW.

Tony, though… I feel bad for Tony, because he’s friends with Cap, but he just doesn’t get Steve at all. He doesn’t see that so many of Steve’s issues come down to his past, who he was, what he lived through before the serum. There’s a degree of privilege going on there (Manhattan millionaire versus a poorly sick Irish son of the Great Depression), plus there’s probably the fact Howard Stark never bothered to mention much about Steve’s backstory aside from “small and skinny and I made him sexy”.

First off, thank you :) I’ve been a bit behind on my posting, but that’s mostly down to not watching much Marvel lately and being caught up with writing.

Now, as for Steve...

The simple answer is that he really, really doesn’t. You have to bear in mind that Steve Rogers had and still has the self-preservation skills of a snowball in hell. He picked fights with people far bigger than him and regularly got beaten for it. He put himself into dangerous situations without regard or concern for his own well-being. Steve Rogers is not good at taking care of himself. Not physically and definitely not emotionally.

We see the first hints of it at the beginning of Avengers, when he's at the gym with the punchbag. He's there in the middle of the night, which suggests he's not sleeping, which isn't unusual at all for people with PTSD. It's a distraction technique, rather than dealing with how he's actually feeling.

The fact he is having flashbacks is also a major, major sign that he's not dealing well with his new situation, especially since he's been out of the ice for less than a fortnight at this point. Re-experiencing is one of the most typical symptoms of PTSD.

When Fury shows up, Steve is civil, but when Fury brings up one of the parts of his trauma - aka the tesseract - Steve's whole expression and body language completely tenses up. He also avoids Fury’s questions about whether he’s having trouble sleeping, being evasive and turning the topic away to other matters. You'll notice he becomes curter, more hostile, and turns and walks away.

He remains pretty much in a constant state of tense and irritable throughout the duration of Avengers, even if he's trying his best not to let it show. But it shows in the way he snaps at Tony and the way he turns on Nick re. the HYDRA tech in the basement. It's just when he's had a chance to punch some aliens and be back in the front line that he starts to feel a bit better. There's something familiar and maybe even comforting about being in a war zone.

This comes up again at the beginning of Winter Soldier, when he and Sam cross paths. Sam, who works with veterans, recognises the way Steve shuts down on him the moment Sam brings up the ice. He can see that Steve still has major issues with it, so he offers the hand of friendship as a fellow veteran, someone who knows the same hardships and has been in battle zones before.

That's what gets Steve to actually approach the VA and almost maybe perhaps possibly think about getting help. Sam's a fellow soldier. Sam has fought like he did. Sam has lost people like he did. They can understand each other, and for the first time, Steve doesn't feel so adrift in a world of spies and superhero billionaires and Gods and monsters.

It's one thing to try and get help for your PTSD. It's another thing entirely when one of the faces of your PTSD walks back into your life and beats the seven shades of hell out of you. Any thought of self-care that Steve might have had goes straight out the window.

And then we get to Civil War and Steve is ALL BUCKY ALL THE TIME. And hey, look at this list of symptoms of people suffering from PTSD and tell me who they describe:

persistent, distorted blame of self about the cause or consequences of the traumatic events

persistent fear, horror, anger, guilt, or shame

markedly diminished interest or participation in significant activities

feelings of detachment or estrangement from others

persistent inability to experience positive emotions

irritable or aggressive behavior

reckless or self-destructive behavior

hypervigilance

exaggerated startle response

Wow, it’s been an awfully long while since I posted here, hasn’t it?

My main thought about Sharon Carter is that she was woefully underused in both films that she appeared in. We know she’s related to Peggy and we know she’s a SHIELD agent that Fury trusted to watch out for Steve, but beyond that, she’s little more than a cypher, almost an echo of who Peggy was back in The Olde Days. Oh, and she’s “nice”.

I know there was a lot going on throughout both films, but it really did feel like she had been shoe-horned into the story simply because Sharon Carter is Steve’s love interest in the comics. Yes, she got a couple of good action moments, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that her primary role in Civil War was to be ‘the love interest’.

And let’s take a moment to bask in the relationship that had all of zero set-up. The last time we saw them interact in TWS, Steve was clearly not happy about being lied to and was curt to the point of rudeness when he crossed paths with her in the hall. And suddenly, almost as soon as Peggy is in the dirt, they’re making moon eyes at each other?

No. Not Sharon, who clearly respected and loved her aunt. And definitely not Steve. Not the man who was so thoroughly in love with Peggy, even after all that time. Just look at him in TWS and the love and grief he feels for her. I could see him bonding with her then, but really, going as far as The Most Awkward Kiss Ever Committed To Screen Because It Was Too Soon?

Plus it really diminishes Sharon’s role as go-between and stealth operative, stealing stuff for them under her bosses’ nose when some people might see it as her only doing this out of a crush on Steve Rogers. Having them as friends in this film would have been much more effective, with an obvious and growing affection, rather than ramming them together so quickly. And let’s be honest, they had to wedge in a female love interest because otherwise, they would have to acknowledge the Steve and Bucky relationship shares tropes that are borderline vintage war movie romance.

And here’s something that has always bothered me: allegedly, no one knows where Steve and Co. are, but Tony says he “knows someone” who knows. This someone is never named, but moments later, Sharon is meeting the Beetle Boys under a bridge. Is Sharon playing both sides? Is that how she managed to get the uniforms out with no one questioning it? Or did Tony suspect her all along and plant a tracker? All these questions! If anyone can explain, please let me know.

So in conclusion, after this rambling train of thought, Sharon Carter has potential to be a great character, if the writers didn’t frame her first as ‘love interest’ and second as 'badass’. Badass should come first. Love interest? Well, that should develop and not happen immediately over her aunt’s coffin.

Let me clarify your statement there - I did not want Clint to be TAHITI’d as my first choice for his story arc. I indicated that it would have made some kind of sense to explain the ridiculous and badly-written introduction to this cluster of familial plot points that go absolutely nowhere and do not look like they will appear again except in snarky one-liners. 

It makes no sense for them to exist in the context of him being an Avenger with no one knowing about them. I mean, he has time to have a wife and three kids while being a full-time Avenger, and no one notices him nipping off to the middle of nowhere? Especially in the wake of the whole oh, by the way, SHIELD has been corrupted by HYDRA for a long, long, long time. I could honestly buy into the family-as-a-created-memory-to-deal-with-trauma thing much more than the way they were brought into the narrative.

My actual preference would be that the family wasn’t written in for no reason other than to make it clear that Barton and Nat are only friends. Which was why it happened. Oh, and don’t forget, to give Nat angst about the fact she is an incapable baby-mama which is one of the reasons I will never, ever, ever watch this film again. I may or may not have some rage there. Ask my friends. They have heard it all.

I have also seen a rather horrific theory that Joss intended to use Clint’s family as they appeared in Ultimates - basically brought in for the purposes of being killed in horrible ways. And given Joss’s history for doing dramatic death scenes for people, I could believe that.

There were so many more significant things going on, and I can’t help but thinking that Thor’s vision relating to the Infinity Stones is somewhat more crucial than lol Clint can’t finish building things and Aunt Nat is brooding on his babies.

Sorry for the delay on this one. Turns out writing a novel can be a bit of a distraction :)

Regarding Ross, my theory is that they needed a viable military ‘villain’ who was already familiar through the MCU canon, even if a lot of people never actually watched the Hulk films. It was easier to bring in someone with canon backstory, rather than having to develop a whole mess of new military characters. The only other option would have been Major Talbot from Agents of SHIELD (who was also a Bruce-related military character), but since a lot of people don’t watch the films, it wouldn’t have made much sense.

It also makes sense to use Ross because they need someone who basically is the living incarnation of the negative elements of the US military structure: the shoot first, ask questions later: the blunt instrument instead of precision weapon mentality. For example: the man who will drive a whole load of tanks across an open school field to subdue a runaway man.

I don’t think Bruce is going to factor into any part of Tony’s storyline, I’m afraid. Off the back of the Ultron fiasco (and the mutters that Bruce was meant to shoot himself into space to protect everyone - I don’t even know…), I suspect Tony is pretty much forced to cede some authority given that he almost destroyed the world. Letting him do whatever he wanted is the reason Ultron came into being in the first place.

It’s less to do with guilt (although there is likely to be plenty of that, if we actually get decent Tony characterisation this film around) and more to do with the fact they have this one guy who basically refers to himself as a nuclear deterrent (IM2) and has the capacity to build ultimate AI weapons of mass destruction without anyone to stop him (AoU). He has to be put under some controls for the safety of the world, and I think that’s what Steve and Sam are talking about when they mention him being restricted.

I suspect the military aren’t the ones restricting Tony. It feels like it’s the NSA who are holding all Tony’s strings because he is the biggest threat to national security that they have. Meanwhile I suspect the military ones are the ones putting the shackles on Steve, because above all else, he was the US Army’s ultimate soldier. The army see him as theirs, and therefore, as one of their soldiers, he should do what they want him to do.

And this is where I think/hope the conflict arises from. Not only do we have Tony and Steve both dealing with the fact they have very different perspective of where they stand personally. You have their conflict, then you have the larger conflict of when do you say “screw orders” and do the right thing. And then you have the even larger and more topical conflict of politicking and bureaucracy facing off against the combat mentality of the army.

The window in question is this one:

This definitely isn’t a coincidence, especially since this is one of the windows of Howard’s lab and he was the original designer of the Arc reactor. On this copy of the blueprint from Iron Man 2, you can see the window’s resemblance to the Arc reactor:

It’s something of a chicken and egg scenario: did Howard get the idea for the shape for the reactor from something in his room, or did he have the idea for the shape and stabilising elements of the Arc reactor at the back of his mind all the time and have the incorporated into his home so he wouldn’t forget about them. Call it mental stimulation, a memory trigger or what you will.

Knowing Howard’s tendency to hide his scientific inventions in plain sight (see the design for Tony’s new element hidden in the layout of the Stark Expo model), I suspect he had the windows decorated like that to keep that particular project in mind for a time when he was able to build it.

As he said to Tony in the video reel “I’m limited by the technology of my time”. I suspect that was a problem he had his whole life. The Arc reactor was achievable in his lifetime, but before he was able to build it, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d left the shape of it all over his home as a constant reminder of the work he still had to do.

Now as for the Frost-Lamarr parallels, I will leave you with a quote from Tara Butters in an interview in August 2015:

Oh boy, this is a big can of worms for you to open. Bruce Banner is one of my favourite Marvel characters, so I’ll start with him and how Hulk-smash his characterisation made me:

First off, him agreeing to go along with the development of this AI without taking all reasonable precautions and agreeing to keep it from the rest of the Avengers made me twitch. According to the MCU-verse (Norton!Hulk is MCU, since General Ross from that film is showing up in Civil War), Bruce was turned into the Hulk by experimentation that went wrong, because protocols weren’t followed.

Bruce would not ever let a science experiment go ahead so sloppily, knowing what it did to him. He would never lie about it and hide it from members of his team, who he is meant to trust. Most of all, he would not just roll over and take it when Tony says so, because we’ve seen he’s pushed back at Tony more than once before. He clearly thinks it’s a bad idea, and I don’t believe Bruce Banner, victim of extremely bad ideas designed to save the world, would EVER EVER stand by and let it just happen because Tony says so.

Then we have Bruce’s whole arc in the first Avengers film, where we see how screwed up he is by everything that happened to him: he doesn’t trust the military or anyone like them because of what they did to him (see turning him into the hulk/being hunted and chased for his life across South America, and even tracked down to India) but through the course of the Avengers, comes to see that the Hulk is a useful weapon that can be unleashed.

Instead, he is taken back several steps to the hand-wringing, uneasy version who hides at the edge of the battlefield until needed. Where is my Bruce who walks the hell up to a giant flying alien beastie and punches it in the face? Where is the man who smiled and said “I’m always angry”. No, thank you. Do not undo the fine character development that was there.

Then we have how he treats his team mates. Quite aside from being cowed by Tony re. the experiment, where’s the Bruce who sassed everyone? Where’s the Bruce who is snarky and dry and eyerolls at them all like he did while they hunted the tesseract? And most importantly, where is the man who worries about his friends? Where is the man who, when Natasha tells him her deepest ad most heart-wrenching secrets, does nothing. Says nothing. Does not even react to it or offer her some kind of emotional support?

Nat has seen him at his worst. She has been attacked by him and she reassured him that they were okay afterwards (see Avengers 1). And when she offers her most private secrets, he just stares at her. (I could go into a rant about Betty here, since she has been casually erased from the MCU, but then this would turn into a novel) I get that he’s coping with horrendous and awful stuff, but seriously, when someone you’re meant to care about is clearly having a hard time to, you could at least say “I’m sorry”.

We also have his confrontation with Wanda. By this point, I’m pretty sure they’re all meant to know what the Maximoff kids have been through and what they have lost. And yet he says to a teenage girl that he would strangle her. Bruce Banner. The man who hates to hurt people. The man who - if you include comic backstory - was an abused and traumatised child. Would strangle a clearly-traumatised and grieving angry child, especially when she’s trying to make things right. Yep. So in character.

And lastly on the Bruce front, the gun. Bruce Banner carrying a gun. Bruce, as set up in these films is incredibly bad with weaponry. He avoids it for the most part. He knows he’s far more dangerous than any gun. That whole scene with the cage could have been improved so much (if we’re going with a shipper perspective here), if he had arrived to help her, and she just shakes her head and says “I want you, but I need the Hulk”. It would have been much more impressive to see him rip the bars open to get her out.

Now as for Natasha, it’s pretty much her Mommy-Natasha thing that is her arc through the whole film: she’s the one who does the lullaby for the Hulk, she’s the one who gets broody over Clint’s kids, she’s the one who had a graduation ceremony that sterilised her, and she’s the one moping on her own in the dark over baby photos in her second-last scene.

If this had been foreshadowed anywhere in the previous films, okay, fine. Nat wants to be a mother, but can’t be biologically. Fair enough. However, the last time we saw Nat, she was with Steve and she had just blown every one of her covers open, and pretty much bared her true self to the world for the first time.

For the first time in her life, she had a chance to go and do what she wanted to do and be who she wanted to be, and it would have been fantastic to see her learning to be herself for the first time. More dork Natasha with her smiley emoticons, and casual clothes, showing up to fight with the Avengers “because you boys need all the help you can get”.

Instead, her arc in Ultron keeps coming back to one of two things: romance with Bruce or babies. Sure, she fights from time to time and does have some pretty shiny combat moments, but still, Bruce or babies. She’s supposed to be best friends with Clint and/or Steve at this point, but we don’t get more than a couple of moments with them as parts of a group, because hey! Romance and babies. And don’t even start me on the fact that her major interaction with Fury, her mentor, friend and ally, comes down to “dude, did you matchmake me with greeny?”

Marvel has always and will always make their villains relevant based on current events. Captain America was written during WWII (by Jewish gentlemen no less) to basically get the public riled up about what was going on in Germany. It didn’t just stop with the Nazis being villains. The Isaiah Bradley arc of the Captain America stories dealt with the fact the US Government experimented on (and killed) African Americans as part of their tests for vaccination medications.

In which case, I’m not surprised that they’re doing the same for white supremacy. Also, I find it interesting that the current villains we’ve had in the latest run of films have been bureaucracy (Cap 2) and corporate greed (Ant Man, especially relevant since this film was in development when the economy crashed). And from the sounds of it, this time around in Cap3 the villain is the National Security Agency.

Tony felt incredibly out of character, especially after his massive arcs through the Iron Man films and The Avengers.

IM1 was about him discovering him, IM2 was the repercussions of him discovering himself and the first step to playing nicely with other, The Avengers was meant to be increasing his play-with-other ethic, while IM3 was processing the scale of his involvement in the Avengers and proving to himself that he is still capable of being a hero without his suit.

So much of his journey has also been about learning to openly depend on people, and admit his vulnerabilities to them. By the time you get to the end of IM3, he trusts Bruce and talks to him. He trusts his judgement enough to basically unload all his emotional issues on the man.

And then, in Ultron, every bit of his character that his been built up - teamwork, friendship and trusting the other Avengers, talking to people, not bulldozing his way through life without taking a moment to think of the consequences - is forgotten.

I don’t know what annoyed me more: the way he strong-armed a clearly unhappy Bruce into pushing forward the AI development (and don’t even get me going on how OOC it would be for Bruce to sanction the development of something with that potential risk on a networked machine, because GOOD GOD! Do not create an AI on a machine that is connected to the bloody internet!) or the way his past acknowledgements of his part in war crimes was completely glossed over.

IM1 was so much about him trying to come to terms with being a weapons dealer. He said himself he had to see Americans killed by the weapons he had built to protect them. And suddenly, in AoU, he’s all “that was never my life”. I’m sorry, but at the time when the Maximoff twins lost their family, that was completely your line of business. Saying “lalala, wasn’t me” doesn’t change the fact that you were actively encouraging the purchase of Jericho Missiles at the beginning of your arc.

It’s downright sloppy storytelling as well, because that plot point was never resolved. Tony never had to face the twins with the knowledge that his weapons killed their parents. He just knows he was accused of making weapons and denied it. Which is BS.

If Tony knew he had even remotely been connected to their parents’ death, it would have been a great arc, with both them and him trying to resolve exactly what to feel about the other. Tony saying he was trying to make amends for things done in the past in his name would have been so much more bearable than “that was never my life”. Yes, Wanda planted horrific images in his mind (incidentally, the one moment in the film where Tony apparently gives a damn about the rest of the gang that isn’t involving combat or The Banter), but he cannot deny what his origin story was and his origin story was that life.