Fiction with Cosmetically Fascist Villains do nothing to oppose real Fascism.

For one thing all through the Cold War Nazi imagery in fiction was frequently treated as synonymous with Soviet and East German imagery, and that has had a lingering influence on what "Nazi" imagery means in fiction to this day.

The use of the term "Storm Trooper" in Star Wars has actually contributed a great deal to why most people don't actually know what that term actually meant.  They were not brainwashed soldiers trained from childhood or genetically engineered clones or any other kind of professional solider.  They were a purely volunteer paramilitary force made up from members of the Nazi Party engaging in gang like street violence against supporters of other parties before the party had actually taken over the Government, and once Hitler actually did have full control of the government he actually phased them out.  A group in fiction that actually does resemble what the Storm Troopers actually were are the Patriotic Knight Corps from Legend of The Galactic Heroes.

I've watched a couple recent Video Essays on YouTube about what a great Anti-Fascist movie Casablanca is, and I find it kind of annoying.  That movie addresses nothing about actual Fascist ideology, it didn't have the guts to make it's concentration camp escaping refugees Jews or Romani or Queer or any other victims of the 3rd Reich who mainstream White American audiences might have trouble empathizing with.  The historical figure Victor Lazlo is based on was half Japanese, so seeing him played by such an Aryan looking actor is very offensive in my book.

As far as that movie is concerned Nazi Germany's main sin was invading and occupying other countries, particularly France, not anything about their treatment of marginalized groups within Germany.  And that is definitely among their many sins, but it hardly gives Britain or the US or the USSR any moral superiority over them.  Am I the only person annoyed at seeing a movie all about how immoral occupying France is showing no self awareness of the hypocrisy in how the titular location only came under Nazi control at this time because it was colonized by France, and that the film featured no Berbers or Muslims or any other Brown Skinned indigenous Moroccans?

The reading of the film that makes Rick himself an allegory for America, someone who's nature is to oppose tyranny and who's only flaw was taking too long to take action, I find an incredibly problematic form of American Exceptionalism.  A lot of what the Nazis did America did first, the Concentration Camp was invented for the massacre the Cherokee under the Andrew Jackson administration.  It also reflects how allegedly Anti-War people suddenly think it's wrong to be Anti-War when the Enemy is Fascist, but the truth is the people in America who wanted us to go to war with Germany even before Pearl Harbor happened were the Fascists of America, the KKK and other Segregationist Southern Democrats, while many American Communists like W.E.B. Du Bois opposed the US getting involved in the war even after Pearl Harbor.

Focusing too much on Cosmetic Fascism only helps blind us to the Fascist tendencies in ourselves, "we can't be doing the same thing if we don't cosplay as them".  The fact is the character of Captain America is an inherently Fascist concept, yet people get all offended by acknowledging that.  We will never defeat Fascism by fighting it with Fascism.

The fact is things like not wanting to let political refugees leave are also done by Dictatorships that at least claimed to be following a directly opposite political ideology to Fascism, so no you haven't defined Fascism at all by just focusing on that.

Again, Legend of the Galactic Heroes is so much better then most fiction with these themes because it acknowledges the Fascist tendencies that exist on both sides of that conflict.

Oh and you definitely can't keep calling Kylo Ren a Fascist when "let the past die" becomes his slogan, that is the antithesis of Fascism, that is far more characteristic of a Leftist way of thinking.

Update: Scar and The Lion King

Darn it, when I first thought of doing this post The Lion King was the main thing I wanted to talk about, but then these Casablanca videos prompted me to finally do it and I completely forgot.

So when it was announced that the upcoming remake of The Lion King was dropping "Be Prepared" a bunch of Liberals and Leftists on Twitter got all upset saying basically "Disney is dropping the Nazi imagery scene because they're suddenly afraid to offend Nazis" and I'm like, what???? Their Star Wars marketing is pushing the "Empire/First Order are Space Nazis" harder then it's ever been pushed before.  Lucas at least admitted the similarities were cosmetic and he was more talking about despotism from any ideology.

I actually think it's highly problematic that this film slapped superficial Nazi imagery unto it's villains when it was the ideology of the Good guys in the film that was far closer to being Fascist.  The Hyenas are demonized immigrants, it may not reflect the real world opinions on Immigration of the writers but that's still what is going on in the text.  Scar is also coded as Queer, the people who had Pink Triangles in the Concentration Camps.  The film is also as pro Monarchy as any Shakespeare play.

The fact is accusing your political enemies within the power structure of secretly working with a demonized foreign outsider is frequently the framework of Right Wing Conspiracy theories like those used by Hitler and Robespierre and modern John Birch Society inspired American conspiracy theorists.

A lot of discussion has happened on YouTube recently about the racist implications of "Always Chaotic Evil" fantasy races like Orcs and Goblins.  Well the Hyenas in this movie are basically Orcs.

The improvement I'm hoping for from this remake is to actually try to correct or at least address these problematic implications, but whether it does that or not I certainly won't miss the dumb Goosestepping Hyenas scene.

The Night is Darkest just before The Dawn

Popular opinion seems to go in circles with whether or not it's good for fiction, particularly Superhero fiction, to be dark.  With endless debates on whether or not it's good to make a dark version of something not dark before, or visa versa.  Or whether some Darkness is just Dark for the sake of Dark without a real purpose.  And my general thoughts are each scenario is different.

For this post however I want to focus on how a key factor in whether or not something Dark appeals to me comes down to whether or not there is still something positive and hopeful in there, particularly in how it ends.  But I of course realize to an extent even that is subjective, Happiness is an emotion, and different people emotionally respond to different things differently.

Mirai Nikki aka Future Diary is an example of an Anime that gets written off as gratuitously GrimDark and Violent by people who didn't finish it.  But it had a happy ending, a very happy ending, I remember watching it I felt about the happiest I had all year (I first watched it earlier this year, 2016) up to that point.  It's happy even without the OVA but the OVA makes it even better and so I wish the OVA would get dubbed.

A Happy Ending can be made even better and more rewarding if the journey to get there was a dark and difficult one.  The Book of Ecclesiastes can easily seem like the most depressing book of The Bible, but it's end is positive and uplifting.  Romans chapter 8 has been called Paul's summery of Ecclesiastes.

Madoka Magica is another Anime franchise with a reputation for being "Tragedy Porn".  Do I consider that reputation fair?  It depends.  The original 12 episode series takes us down a dark and emotional journey that subverts many expectations of the Magical Girl genre.  But it ultimately ends exactly how a Magical Girl show should, with a positive ending.  Then came Rebellion and did the opposite.  It seems another Madoka Anime is coming, maybe this one will end happily again.  But even if it does I fear it just means we're going to get an endless cycle of this franchise going back and forth.

In a way this is part of how Madoka parallels Evangelion.  The original series of Neon Genesis Evangelion was a show who's central theme was depression.  But the final two episodes ended with Shinji deciding he wants to live.  Then End of Evanglion comes to replace those last two episodes, and everything about it is debatable including if it was a happy ending.  The thing is it's ending didn't make me feel happy and no analytical analysis of it will change that.

Now what I'm talking about here can itself fit into two categories.

First is that even a very dark story can still have a completely conventionally Happy Ending.  Perhaps with something bitter sweet about it, some price had to be paid.  But overall good prevailed and everyone lived happier lives from that point on.

A great example of this would be Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's, the second Nanoha Anime series.  Some might say that Anime isn't truly Dark but just very Dramatic.  I suspect that argument would be based mainly on how no characters in the story are truly evil.  But to me the key to a truly dark story is to show that someone doesn't have to be "evil" to wind up doing things that are harmful to other people.  Morality isn't always that simple.  It's been described (by Digibro) as a War Story that doesn't take a side, in a sense at least half of every great Dark work of fiction I've liked can be described that way.  This series is an incredibly emotional roller coaster ride, one of the most brilliant I've seen.  And I watched it even more recently then I did Mirai Nikki and it managed to top it on emotionally uplifting me.  Anyone who can watch the whole thing and not shed a tear simply has no heart.

Batman Begins and The Dark Knight Rises could also fit in this category.

Second would be stories that do have truly Tragic endings, sometimes very tragic endings.  But still with some glimmer of hope for the future.  Maybe that hope comes from nothing more then clear evidence that the survivors have learned from the mistakes that lead them there, like how The Dark Knight (the film which provides the title for this post) ends.

Or maybe it's because it's a Prequel that essentially ends with the birth of the Messiah who we already know will fix everything in the future.  Like Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of The Sith or Fate/Zero.  Thing is though, in both of those cases I feel even when viewed by people not knowing it's a prequel, (which has happened more for the latter), the ending message that the seeds are already planted to set everything right in the next generation would still be apparent.

Now I want to talk about two films where my assessment on this issue would probably be much more controversial then every example discussed above.

Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice is a film I have very mixed feeling for.  The balancing scales of my feelings towards it have fluctuated several times, which is amazing for a film that still hasn't been out long enough for children convinced on it's opening night to be born yet.  My issues with it certainly come down in large part to feeling it was more dower then it needed to be.

But the issue of comparing it to the other big Superhero Versus film that came out a month and a half later is where I most consistently get defensive of it.

At face value Batman V Superman can easily be labeled a much darker and bleaker film then Captain America: Civil War.  But Civil War certainly had things about it that were dark.  And both films try to end on a positive note, but Civil War's positive ending feels inauthentic to me.

BvS earned it's Happy Ending.  Bruce Wayne's character development makes sense, no matter how much you may want to mock a key plot device of it.  And so does Wonder Woman's.  All the talk about how many people are afraid of Superman adds more meaning to how he earned humanity's trust with his final sacrifice.  The exact scenario that brought about why he had to use the Spear feels way to contrived, but emotionally it works.  In the Crisis to Crisis DC Continuity Superman was once told "The last time you inspired anyone was when you were dead", but in this continuity His death is the beginning of him being an inspiration, and that is why I reject the idea that they should have held off on that story-line.  Bruce Wayne goes from someone who is doing harm even though he's not Evil, to someone inspired by Superman.

Civil War however dedicates most of it's last act to subverting the same Versus movie trope BvS handled beautifully.  But then wants us to buy at the very end that now Tony's going to cover for Steve.  Well I don't buy it.

Here is my real issue with Civil War

When I first reacted to Civil War, I couldn't fully put my finger on what bugged me about it.  Now I can.

It's that it puts so much effort into setting up only to subvert the whole "of course they'll come together in the end" expectation of a versus story.  I know the comic didn't end with them coming back together, well I don't like the Comic either but at least the Comic didn't have a subplot dedicated to baiting and hooking fans who like that message.

And it's insulting to me in regards to how this movie is compared to Batman V Superman.  BvS may have a darker tone.  But BvS ended on a message of hope and unity that Civil War literally said "____ You!" too.

In BvS things were darkest just before the dawn.  Civil War was just another Marvel movie all about setting up future movies.  BvS had a couple scenes that were there just to set up future movies, but with Civil War the very plot itself was only made to be a cliff hanger.

I saw Captain America Civil War finally

It was entertaining.  But like any versus movie it frustrated me, and it not being as endlessly dark as BvS isn't enough to make this movie based on far inferior source material a superior movie.

Here's what I find funny though.  Age of Ultron had a lot of material dedicated to assuring us there were NO Civilian Casualties, all for the purpose of sticking it to Man of Steel and appealing to that film's haters, and I criticized that aspect of it at the time.  And now they did this storyline which is entirely dependent on there being civilian casualties.  So it's like they are reveling they lied to us before.

About Captain America being Hydra and the fan reaction

I'm pretty sure this story-line is going to be stupid, like what they did to Cassandra Cain during One Year Later.  And will not at all be a serious thoughtful exploration of what I'm going to discus below.  And it's particularly insulting they did this the day after Marvel said it'd be inherently out of character for him to ever have a male lover.

The thing is the argument has always existed that what Captain America is unwittingly reinforces Fascist and Aryan ideology.  This was mentioned like a decade or more ago in the History Channel documentary Comic Book Superheros Unmasked.

And the argument I keep seeing even from liberals when this is acknowledged is "but that's the point, it's the Irony of Hitler's ideal Aryan punching him in the face".  And hearing it expressed that way only makes me more uncomfortable with it, defeating Fascism with Fascism is actually a victory for Fascism.  (And yes Fascists can be in conflict with each other, Mussolini actually hated Hitler, under slightly different conditions they'd have been on opposite sides.)

And it kind of is an unintentional SciFi analogy to my more cynical outlook on the real history of WWII.  The Allies did commit virtually all the same offenses the Axis did, especially in our treatment of Japanese Americans, and then one upped them with dropping the Bomb.  (And the concentration camp was actually invented in America under the Andrew Jackson administration to deal with the Cherokee.) but History is written by the winners.  Nazism lost, but Fascism merely changed it's face.

Oliver Stone's Secret History of the United States critiques the conventional view of WWII from a liberal perspective.  Pat Buchanan's The Unnecessary War does so from a Conservative perspective.  I as a truly Bi-Partison Libertarian-Communist see value in both their takes so I recommend both, though I ultimately agree with neither on everything.

Acknowledging this about Captain America has become less popular since his movies became big hits.  My fellow SJWs currently love MCU Steve Rogers, so the idea of condemning his basic archetype as inherently problematic the way the same websites do James Bond and Indian Jones is currently unthinkable to them.

I'm not saying the character should be rejected, the movies are a lot of fun, I personally took on Winter Soldier's harshest critic on this blog.

But an Elseworlds kind of story exploring the logical conclusion that perhaps the Aryan who punched Hitler in the face actually believes a similar Nationalism just for a different nation, I think is a very valid concept.   The founders of the CIA fought Nazism during WWII but then worked with Fascist groups to oppose the USSR during the Cold War, like the whole P2 scandal in Italy, Hydra could easily be used as an allegory for that inconvenient truth.  Again I don't think that's what this current twist is actually doing.

But I keep seeing the meme repeated that this is especially gross because Captain America's creators were Jewish.  As if Jewish writers couldn't possibly write something problematic.  A lot of American Jews are on the Trump bandwagon right now, so they are not inherently immune to the appeal of Fascism.  And many Palestinians Arabs feel for very valid reasons that the Israeli Government is no better then Nazi Germany.

But I'm not going to suggest Jack Kirby was a Fascist.  Just that it's valid to criticize him.  And that Death of the Author applies to all Authors not just privileged ones.

The Golden Age comics never addressed the Holocaust or other real War Crimes of the War.  They just depicted Germans as mustache twirling villains and the Japanese as demons.  Cap punching Hitler was always designed to appeal to American Tribal Patriotism, whatever deep down motivated the authors, on the page it was never about the real reason that war is now considered a just one.

I won't be seeing Civil War

There were things I loved about Batman V Superman and things that bothered me.  But the problems I had are all because it's a Vs film.  So that's why it really bothers me that BvS's disappointment is seemingly only further guaranteeing Civil War will be a success.

Batman V Superman is at least based on Comics that were well regarded despite my personal issues with some, from DKR to the Death and Return story-line to hints of Infinite Crisis and Injustice.  Civil War is based on a comics story-line everyone hated originally and that I never saw defended before this movie was announced.

BvS was a direct sequel to a movie that while flawed I really liked, Man of Steel.  Civil War is most directly a sequel to Age of Ultron, which while I enjoyed it, I ultimately consider a disappointment, and I would also consider AoU inferior to BvS.

I keep hearing that Marvel has Earned it's VS movie by having the relationships between these characters established.  No, that is crap, to me this idea of having them fight is only justifiable even remotely if they have indeed just met and still don't understand each other.  Hence the fighting we saw in the first Avengers movie.

That's why the Civil War premise was offensive to me in the comics and it's offensive to me for the Movies.  It's because I care about the movie versions of these characters that I hate seeing their characters assassinated like this.  Each trailer pisses me off even more.

I'll watch the movie eventually on DVD, but I will not support it in theaters and all other Comic Book fans who want to discourage stupid vs films should do the same.  Please don't reward the failure of one Vs movie by propping up another.

Captain America: Civil War may kill the MCU

I have seen every MCU film so far but Ant-Man and I have liked each of them, I've gone against convention and considered the first Iron Man the weakest.

I've been less consistently impressed with Marvel on television but still liked much of it, the AOS tie in with Winter Soldier was fantastic, and I loved Agent Carter season 1.  I haven't gotten a chance to check out the Netflix shows yet.

I have defended Winter Solider and Guardians of the Galaxy against their critics.  And I personally love that Iron Man 3 wasn't another generic foreign terrorist but actually dealt with false Flag Terror.  My Dad hated Iron Man 3 at first but upon re-watching it he really liked it.

But I have felt that doing Civil War was a bad idea from the start, I tried to be optimistic for it but the Trailer has not alleviated my fears.

The original story-line in the Comics was one of the most hated Marvel has ever done, probably only One More Day and the Clone Saga are more hated.  And the people who do like it would probably all agree that an only 2 to 2 and a half movie could not do justice to the story-line.

Now it's being adapted into a universe where the initial premise doesn't apply because the MCU doesn't even do secret identities.

One thing that can be said about the original story-line, as stupid as it was, Steve taking the position he did made sense with his character there.  But this trailer is telling us Steve is simply against the idea of Superheros having accountability what so ever.  I like seeing Captain America go against the government when it over reaches it's power, but this does not fit that.

The people at Marvel were considering Civil War before Batman V Superman was announced.  But the earliest reference to it was considering it for an Avenger movies, no latter then the 3rd one.  Not a movie coming only a year after Age of Ultron.

Everyone was talking before Age of Ultron came out about how the disagreement between Steve and Tony in that was going to set up Civil War.  And continued to think that even after it came out.  But it didn't.  Even leaving side that Steve and Tony's issues in that film were resolved by the end, this Civil War trailer if anything has switched them around from were they were in that film.  It's completely random.

What's really grating is it seems like most of Steve's reasons for his actions is just about Bucky.  It shouldn't be that damn hard to get understanding for the fact that Bucky was brainwashed.  The whole set up is contrived to fit where the previous films left everyone.

I will of course disagree with anyone who said this trailer revealed too much.  Any entire important character were absent.  As I've said before I like a trailer to tell me what I can expect, and I appreciate that this one has told me to expect exactly what I feared.

The Force Awakens meanwhile is the first time ever this close to a film coming out that I honestly don't know if I'll like it or not.  I'm someone who's expectations have always been right.  With TFA it could go either way, it could be exactly what I'm hoping for or exactly what I fear base don what little we've been shown.  I'm going to see the movie, the fact that it has John Williams assures me that it at least can't be as boring as Superman Returns.

I respond to a review of The Winter Solider, and it's website in general

The Fanboy Perspective is a website I've been following for awhile.  I agree with much of what is said there, but he's one of those internet bloggers who can't handle dissenting things being said in comments, so I got blocked from leaving comments.

Like him I consider The Dark Knight the best Comic Book Superhero movie, and love all 3 of Nolan's Batman movies.  And like him I love Man of Steel and am excited for DC's upcoming movies.  And like me he defends Sucker Punch and points out why it's better then Inception.

On The Dark Knight I go further probably in saying it's my favorite movie period.

But I can't agree with how much he hates on the MCU films (though I'm also getting a little fatigued with their approach).  And he's one of those people who worships the R rating and has no respect for how what you don't see can be more impactful then what you do see.

To him Watchmen is the second best Superhero movie.  While I like that movie, it fails at capturing what it could have from the Comics way too often for me to truly praise it on a level remotely worthy of being along side the Nolan Batman or MCU films.  And compared to other Snyder films, I like MOS and Sucker Punch both far more, and probably feel even 300 was handled better, but 300's premise has limited appeal to me to start with so it's not a movie I watch as often.

The Dark Knight is perceived as being "legitimate artistic cinema" in ways other Superhero movies never have been.  To Fanboy Perspective that is all the more reason to look down on other Superhero movies when they are "shallow" and mere "Popcorn movies".  To me The Dark Knight should be viewed as vindicating the less "Respectable" Superhero stories, as proof they were never worthy of being looked down on in the first place.

I want to remind everyone of one of my favorite Paul Feval quotes

"That insignificant literature sometimes has higher aspiration, but it never declares them, and that is the secret of its power."

See I disagree with this attitude of looking down on what seems like less "legitimate" and "respectable" literature to begin with.  To me it is far more rewarding to find the deeper thought provoking material in what seems like superficial shallow popcorn action films like Guardians of The Galaxy, or soapy teen girl dramas like Pretty Little Liars, then it is to notice it in a pretentious art-house film that is doing everything it can to make sure you don't miss it, yet still thinks it can qualify as subtle just because it didn't have a narrator spell it out to the viewer.  As much as I love The Dark Knight, it usually leans towards the latter.

What prompted me to finally address him here is his recent Winter Soldier Editorial.

He makes a lot of valid points, yes Winter Solider is simplistic in a lot of ways, but still far less simplistic then the original Star Wars Trilogy (The Prequels are hated on by certain morons for being more complex and ambiguous).

But his suggestion that it would have improved the film to fridge Peggy Carter, the MCU's only truly strong female character, is offensive to me.

And I disagree with calling Munich an Action film in any way, Munich is an example of what happens when a director is trying as hard as he can not to make an action film even though the plot requires action to happen.

Here is the thing, one can do the same thing he does to undermine the suggestion that The Dark Knight deals with any true moral ambiguity.

In the last year or so I've become more willing to accept the flaws of The Dark Knight (I always accepted that "five dead, two of them cops" was a plot hole, most likely a carry over from an earlier draft where Ramirez wasn't left alive).  It's still my favorite movie, and will probably never leave my top ten.  But it does have failures.  Something many people who fell in love with Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back in 77-80 haven't been able to do in far more time even though they have far more flaws.

The key grey area is the sonar plot.  When I first saw the movie I was so in awe of seeing a movie have Batman do something that ever so slightly alludes the side of Batman that results in things like Tower of Babel, War Games and Brother Eye/OMAC Project.

However at the end of the day, it was okay for Batman to cross this line just once because he always planned to fry the system after using it.  The same way so many other movies and cop shows have hand waved having their heroes doing questionable things, it's okay in this fictional context because we know these characters can be trusted.

It's not quite so simple when Batman does these kinds of things in The Comics.  He stood by his decision to create contingency plans for the League.  Even after War Games he was unwilling to fully admit he'd crossed some dangerous lines.  Yet the writers were clearly criticizing Batman for crossing those lines.  In the comics Batman pulling those kinds of things has negative consequences, in TDK it didn't.

As far as it being wrong to lie about what Harvey Dent did. That is only even really suggested in the sequel.  And I'd be less bothered by it taking a sequel to address that if other things about that Sequel didn't completely undermine why I loved TDK's ending.  To me Rises is a great stand alone film, but a horrible sequel and why I can't consider the Nolan films a True Trilogy.

Back to Winter Soldier.  Does putting all the villainy on HYDRA really undermine the questions it brings up?  To me HYDRA is only a slightly more cookbooky version of how I view the real Military Industrial Complex, (the not as direct as people make it sound Nazi connection included) in fact I probably feel more sympathy for HYDRA.  To me what undermines things is how for the sake of a climax with immediately high stakes HYDRA had to be planning to do something horrific right away, even though they had been patiently biding their time for 70 some years.

And some HYDRA villains including Alexander Perice, are presented as villains who honestly believe they are doing what's best for the world on some level, but like Light Yagami have been corrupted by power.  People fail to see this in HYDRA simply because Red Skull was such a textbook Supervillian in a different movie, and because of the Nazi connection, because people forget Nazis were real people with real beliefs behind what they did.

The perception that DC are the ones who are rushing

Neither of Marvel's 2016 films have started filming yet, for DC one is done the other recently started filming.  Civil War will be out before Suicide Squad, and has a grander scale, yet it is much later to start filming.

Plus Wonder Woman starts filming this November even though it won't be out till 2017.

So far DC is putting more time into each individual film then Marvel is.  Plus Disney is gonna rush the traditional SW film schedule to give us 3 (2 main series) movies in less then a year and a half.

It looks like it's Disney/Marvel that doesn't want to take their time.

I'm sick of this alleged Marvel/DC contrast

There is a contrast obviously, but it's being greatly exaggerated. As if there was never anything serious in the Marvel films and never any humor in DC films.

I LOLed constantly during the Nolan trilogy and MoS. And I was quite deeply emotionally moved by Guardians of the Galaxy, and really sunk my teeth into the political message of Winter Solider.  Let's not forget that on TV Gotham and The Flash are both more flamboyant then the AoS, and Daredevil is grittier then any DC show.  In the 60s, 70s and even 80s to start with at least the contrast was the opposite.

By the time Batman V Superman actually comes out this contrast will be forgotten, because Civil War will be the main movie Marvel is hyping, and that will be a Dark story, darker then any DC film ever has been or will be. There is no way to make it a family friendly film. And I suspect Age of Ultron will have a fairly bleak ending to set the stage for that.

The conflict will not be a misunderstanding between Batman and Superman that is inevitably resolved by them coming together against the real villain. The Heroes will legitimately be murdering each other over an ideological disagreement. And frankly I hate it, I hated it in the comics and I hate that they're shoehorning into the MCU.

To me the main reason DC's 2016 Spring season Blockbuster will be better is precisely because it won't be as unnecessarily dark and violent in ways that bastardize the characters, sucking all the likability out of heroes we love and for at least one outright vilifying them.

Captian America is an Archetype

Captain America is a more archetypical character then people realize. They see his Americanness and figure he can’t very relate to any Ancient Archetypes.

The thing is that Steve Rogers is for the U.S. what Lancelot is for the English and D’Artagnan for the French, and Achilles and Hector to the Ancient Greeco-Romans. Each is that culture’s concept of their ideal Solider/Knight.

And that often includes a willingness to go against their own Government when it goes bad.  And that is why Winter Solider is an awesome movie.