Why I’m worried about Spider-Man in Captain America: Civil War

Captain America: Civil War seems to be coming together in a logical, satisfying way — except for the inclusion of Spider-Man.

A movie based on Marvel’s Civil War saga was always going to be a hard sell for many comic book fans. Let’s not mince words here: The story was an abomination, a stain on the company’s legacy that went beyond poor storytelling (though there was also plenty of that) to promoting some genuinely troubling agendas. Let me put it this way: Imagine if Game of Thrones presented Tywin Lannister as the hero of the story without any trace of irony, and you’ve got a pretty good idea what reading this story was like.

And the sad thing is, it had a great hook that could have led to an enduring classic. The heroes of the Marvel Universe found themselves on two opposing sides over a new law that compels them to officially register with the government, revealing their identities in the process. There were strong arguments to be made for either side, and much like the movie, the ads for the story continually asked readers, “Which side will you choose?”

The one big problem was that hardly any of the writers assigned to the story seemed to have any interest in actually following through on the concept. Instead, they all simply used it as an excuse to grind their own personal political axes, with zero effort by anyone to keep character motivations or the exact stipulations of the registration law consistent across different titles. And then the guy chosen to oversee the whole thing was Mark Millar, whose personal politics are best described as “slightly to the right of Ghengis Khan.”

The end result of this was that the pro-registration side, led by Iron Man and Mr. Fantastic, acted like tin pot dictators as they gleefully rounded up all their supposed friends who refused to go along with the law and threw them into a hell dimension. And throughout all of this, many fans were surprised to realize we were supposed to be on their side. The story ended with the anti-registration side wiped out, ensuring that true peace and freedom under Tony Stark’s jackboots could continue. Oh, and we were supposed to think Captain America didn’t care about what Americans really wanted because he didn’t have a MySpace page, in a scene I dearly hope gets recreated in the film with the ending it should have had, telling that idiot reporter to stuff it.

To their credit, the Marvel executives didn’t take long to realize just how poorly the whole thing had gone over, and in the years since have taken several steps to correct the mistakes they made, culminating in the launch of a Civil War II story. That will coincide with the film’s release and feature Iron Man as the leader of the pro-freedom side. It’s this that actually first let me have some hope that the film won’t be the disaster many assumed when it was first announced.

And then that hope got a big boost from the trailers we’ve seen. First and foremost, making Bucky Barnes the catalyst for the feud is absolutely the best route they could have taken. Granted, ever since Tony announced to the world that he was Iron Man back in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s inaugural outing, secret identities have been more or less a moot point in the MCU, so they needed to come up with something else to drive the characters to this point anyway. Having such a concrete issue makes it far more believable that all these erstwhile allies could so quickly come to blows.

Yeah, it’s a bit weird that every government seems to still want Bucky’s head when Black Widow and Dr. Selvig seemed to have no problem getting a pardon for everything they did under Loki’s control, but I have enough goodwill for the MCU by this point that I’m willing to trust there is actually an explanation in the film itself.

The other major point in its favor is that it seems to be genuinely balanced between the two sides, with neither being clearly presented as the right side to be on. I was worried about this after the first trailer where Cap’s only response to Tony’s reasonable worries about the lack of oversight on superheroes was, “I just don’t see it that way,” implying that the script would be artificially cutting his position off at the knees by never allowing him to give an argument for it beyond the level of, “I know you are, but what am I?” The second trailer shows that Tony wanting to punch Steve in his perfect teeth is the exact same thing, so I’m satisfied again. Yeah, both major figures acting like five-year olds for a moment isn’t an ideal writing choice, but at least it’s not there to push us in either direction because no one had any faith the story itself could do that.

With all that cleared up, we come at last to Spider-Man. I’ll tell you right now, I have no idea how this is going to work. And I’m not talking at all about his amateurish pajama suit that everyone’s currently obsessed over; for all we know, that’s just the prototype like the one Toby Maguire wore while fighting Bonesaw, so I’m not getting worked up over it. No, what’s really got me bothered is how this seems to violate one of my favorite things about the MCU: its self-contained nature. Even someone who knows nothing about comic books can watch these movies and shows and enjoy them. Maybe they won’t get all the references, but every hero and villain is well-formed enough on their own that not knowing the source material is no obstacle to understanding the story.

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Until now, it appears. Thus far, the only thing even hinting at Spidey’s presence in the MCU is a line from the end of Ant-Man about superheroes who swing and climb on walls, and while the film was being made, that was intended as nothing more than a throwaway gag about a character no one expected they’d actually be able to use. In fact, when the word first came that he would be appearing in Civil War, this is how I pictured it would happen: Every so often, we’d focus in on a single kid in the various crowds watching the superhero fights. Then he’d start taking pictures. Once the final battle was over, he’d pull out a phone and say, “I got the job, Aunt May! The Bugle loved my pictures!” The suspicions many fans would have would be confirmed in a fun way that left us wanting a lot more when he actually became a hero himself.

The second trailer has shown that’s not what happens, and Spider-Man does indeed appear in the film as a fully-formed hero, who’s even on good enough terms with Iron Man to have gotten a cheeky nickname. This isn’t actually the first time they’ve tried something like this, as the Maximoff twins in Age of Ultron were given a similar structure for their introduction. However, they had the advantage of having a perfectly understandable reason why we hadn’t heard of them before, plus they were tied in strongly to the film’s main plot, enabling the film to educate us on their whole deal without distracting at all from everything else going on.

With Spider-Man, I don’t see at all how that can happen, and how his appearance can be anything other than his being a Dawn Summers-style case of “Oh, didn’t you know we’ve been hanging out with this guy for a while?” After all, the film has so much other stuff to cram in that many fans are just plain confused at why it’s being labeled a Captain America film rather than the third Avengers outing, so how much room can there be for him anyway?

Next: Who's on Team Iron Man in Captain America: Civil War?

I still have high hopes for the Civil War film overall, and hey, maybe they’ll prove me completely wrong and come up with a perfectly organic way to fit Spider-Man into the MCU. But for now, I’m keeping my hopes for him quite tempered.