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Captain America: Civil War - pre-release discussion, news, rumors, etc

An interesting analysis of Captain America's character. Despite all the Capt I've read, I never picked up on things like this.

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An interesting analysis of Captain America's character. Despite all the Capt I've read, I never picked up on things like this.

That is interesting, though I wish they'd gotten a better narrator for it. I wouldn't call Cap a "warmonger," though. That means someone who promotes, advocates, or tries to precipitate war for its own sake. A warmonger is someone who wants to start fights, to be the aggressor or to encourage others to aggress -- the very kind of bully that Cap is fundamentally opposed to. Cap fights defensively, not aggressively. He's a believer in the idea that you should never start a fight, but always finish one. So Cap's not a warmonger -- he's a soldier. Fighting may be all he knows how to do, but he wouldn't choose to start a fight that wasn't necessary.

As for Thor, he lost the worthiness to wield Mjolnir when he did become a bully, when he started unnecessary fights for personal glory. When he learned to fight selflessly in defense of others, he became worthy again. And that's what Cap has always done -- which is why he was able to budge Mjolnir when no one else could. If anything, an Asgardian weapon like Mjolnir would find a warrior more worthy, not less. So it's an interesting analysis, but I can't really agree with it. Cap's inability to be anything but a fighter, even for a good cause, may well be a character flaw, but it's not the reason he couldn't lift Mjolnir.
 
the Youtuber obviously has a bone to pick with Cap. his fear is not the war being over...his fear is coming home to nothing. Cap didn't feel lost and aimless because he had no one to fight fight after being unfrozen...he suddenly found himself in a world that was alien to him. his beliefs and values were seen as outdated or hokey.

Cap doesn't create conflicts or seek them out. because Cap lives in a fictional universe there will always be conflict. and because he wants to stop these conflicts that somehow makes him a bad person? no sir, i don't buy it.
 
I agree the video is off on Captain America's character. Scarlet Witch made him dwell on everything he has lost. Peggy's line "We can go home" after the war, but Steve can't go home, the one he grew up in. I think he may be a bit jealous of his friends, since most can go back to their homes after a battle, but he can never ever go back to the home he knew. It is long gone because of the passage of time. I wonder if that's the reason he can't pick up the hammer.
 
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^Good catch, both of you. I should've seen that. You're right, it isn't the end of fighting that Cap fears, it's the loss of the world he knew. Peggy is there briefly in his vision, and then she's gone.

I wonder if that's the reason he can't pick up the hammer.

Well, keep in mind that almost nobody can pick up the hammer, even though plenty of these characters are "worthy" in their own way. Being able to move the hammer is the exception that needs to be explained. Cap was the one who actually managed to budge Mjolnir a tiny bit, enough to garner a worried look from Thor, which means he's closer to being "worthy" than any other human in the room.
 
And yet, a cluster of floating vibranium atoms powered by two meshed AI's can swing it around with great ease. Then again the Mind Stone may simply have overwhelming power greater than that of Mjölnir so as to get past any of it's enchantments.
 
And yet, a cluster of floating vibranium atoms powered by two meshed AI's can swing it around with great ease. Then again the Mind Stone may simply have overwhelming power greater than that of Mjölnir so as to get past any of it's enchantments.

IIRC, the final "spark" that gave the Vision life was lightning that Thor called down and channeled through Mjolnir itself. So the Vision has probably got a bit of Mjolnir's essence inside of him.
 
Christine Everhart (Iron Man 1-2) returns for another WHIH Newsfront Special...
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Note General Ross announcing his retirement from the army.
 
And yet, a cluster of floating vibranium atoms powered by two meshed AI's can swing it around with great ease. Then again the Mind Stone may simply have overwhelming power greater than that of Mjölnir so as to get past any of it's enchantments.

IIRC, the final "spark" that gave the Vision life was lightning that Thor called down and channeled through Mjolnir itself. So the Vision has probably got a bit of Mjolnir's essence inside of him.

And then there's Cap's less romantic analogy about the elevator....
 
"Essense" "Spark" all nonsense words. The Vision creature is an artificial lifeform, Mjölnir either recognises something like that as worth being wielded by or has no programming to deal with it.

Odins remark of it having no equal was proved bull minutes later by his own staff being able to remotely control the Bifrost, activate it in the absense of Heimdall's sword, vapourise enemies when Mjölnir could only give them a bad burn. The Mind Stone made Loki's spectar an equal to it and took no scratches from many repeated blows from an angry Thor. Heimdall's sword can cut through starship hulls, Vibranium has been shown to resist the Stones and Mjölnir alike.

At this point, it's a cute oversized tool with a weight problem, but hardly all that mystical anymore.
 
"Essense" "Spark" all nonsense words. The Vision creature is an artificial lifeform, Mjölnir either recognises something like that as worth being wielded by or has no programming to deal with it.

Remember what Thor said to Jane in the first movie -- he comes from a place where science and magic are the same thing. Asgardian technology is Clarke's Third Law in action -- sufficiently advanced to be indistinguishable from magic. So technological and mystical language in Earthly terms are both equally imperfect approximations -- just as "particle" and "wave" descriptions are equally imperfect approximations of quantum phenomena. Call it essence or spark, call it kernel code or root privileges, but Mjolnir's influence was part of what brought the Vision to life, and therefore it's logical to surmise that some sort of connection therefore exists between them and permits the Vision to wield it.
 
I don't remember the movie real clearly, so this might not work entirely. But I had assumed that Vision was able to lift Mjolnir at that point because he was a new, completely innocent lifeform, who had not done anything to make him "unworthy".
 
I took it to mean that he was so noble and without sin that he was worthy, not that he was merely a newborn.
 
I don't remember the movie real clearly, so this might not work entirely. But I had assumed that Vision was able to lift Mjolnir at that point because he was a new, completely innocent lifeform, who had not done anything to make him "unworthy".

Again, though, that's treating "worthy" as the default setting, as if the baseline were "able to wield Mjolnir" so that being unable to wield it was something that needed explanation. It's the other way around -- the default is being unable to lift Mjolnir.

Come to think of it, though, I'm not sure that's parsing the incantation correctly. It goes, "Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor." That isn't saying that only worthy people can hold the hammer, it's saying that only people who hold the hammer and are also worthy shall thereby get the power of Thor. Now, anyone can hold the hammer by the handle, even without lifting it (though maybe that's taking the phrase a bit too literally). But only worthy people can get the power of Thor when they hold the hammer. So it follows, logically, that only people who possess the power of Thor can lift the hammer. And maybe the Vision possesses some part of the power of Thor because Thor used his power to animate the Vision. And that's why Vizh can lift Meow-Meow.

(Of course, the incantation was originally written for comics in which the hammer transformed Donald Blake into Thor, which is what "possess the power of Thor" meant. At first, Thor was just a powered-up form that Blake turned into, like Prince Adam into He-Man, before he was later established as a separate persona in his own right who'd been bonded with Blake and eventually became permanently separated from him. So the incantation is rather less meaningful now than it was to begin with. Particularly in the first Thor movie. Why call it "the power of Thor" if Thor himself can lose that power?)
 
the wording is even more dodgy now, seeing as how the 'if he be worthy' part allowed a woman to possess the hammer.
 
But I had assumed that Vision was able to lift Mjolnir at that point because he was a new, completely innocent lifeform, who had not done anything to make him "unworthy".
If that were the case, any infant could lift the thing.
 
This is what happens when a writer makes a quick, off-the-cuff call based on "you know what would be really cool?" Instead of taking the time to think it through.

Sorry Mr. Whedon, but I have to give you a failing grade for this lesson in Consequences of Writing 101. Please try to think things through next time.
 
I don't see a need to complicate the situation where we can just go with the simplest explanation: The Vision lifts Mjolnir because he's worthy. Certainly, that seems to be the implication when it happened. The moment, when it happens, is an interruption and conclusion to the characters questioning whether they can trust him. The implication is that, yes, they can trust him because he's worthy.

It's the conceit of stories like this artificial lifeforms, upon "birth," already basically have fully-formed adult personalities (as opposed to, say, acting like newborns with lots of data jammed in their heads). Whether or not that's realistic, that's the conceit. If so, then there's no reason the personality the Vision is born into upon can't be a worthy one, especially given the exceptional nature of the birth.
 
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