Civil War - A Mature and Powerful Spider-Man Story

hey joke man it wasn't it wasn't personal hey we can we can talk this out right oh god my name is joe [Music] civil war was a massive comic book event back in 2006 which aimed to completely shake up the marvel universe they had everyone in it the avengers x-men fantastic four george bush but we're not here to talk about war criminals we're here for my boy peter and what he was up to during the whole thing if you've been on my channel at all you know i'm a massive fan of j michael straczynski who i think did a perfect job telling a very personal story despite the grand scale of the event it's one of my all-time favorite spider-man stories which is is that a controversial opinion no as usual i'm going to go through the main beats of the story and then focus on the particular bits that i'm really passionate about i'm not going to cover every single thing there's just some stuff you need to read for yourself so you can watch this video and then go and read the comic or you can do the opposite okay the road to civil war begins when peter mj and ant-may are invited to stay in avengers tower after their house was burned down the issue opens with peter being woken up by tony stark who was spying on him and mj in their bedroom the whole time and yes i could talk about how the eagle statue being used as a secret camera is actually a metaphor for how the us government uses symbols to promote freedom and civil rights while secretly abusing said freedom with regulations and mass surveillance which ties into the main theme of the whole story and ultimately makes you question the very society you live in but really it's just a joke about tits there's a brilliant little fourth wall break when peter goes down to meet tony in his lab some readers noticed that in the previous issue mj had her arm broken and then the writers kind of forgot about it because it's never brought up ever again tony addresses this by explaining that they've got this super revolutionary technology that fixes broken arms within seconds and he just used that off screen and then they look at the reader like yeah [ __ ] you strazinski always has a metal layer to his writing and yes this is perhaps one of the less subtle examples but i much prefer something like this over something like deadpool where he's trying to like my balls every five seconds anyways tony explains to peter that there are difficult times coming and he needs someone he can count on to watch his back and because tony's been so good to him and let him stay in avengers tower and all that peter gladly accepts the role of iron man's sidekick and promises to never betray him can't wait to see how this one turns out peter gets a new suit from tony called the iron spider you might have heard of it and he soon discovers that the suit is bulletproof this is something i've always wondered about and it's why i kind of like the stark tech in homecoming if spider-man knows the avengers if he lives in the super high-tech world why don't they just help him out a bit you know just give him something to shield his balls at least and that's exactly what strazinsky was thinking not the balls part but i mean maybe but maybe maybe he was thinking about balls throughout his run he was always trying to pick apart every superhero trope and examine them and this story was no exception the suit also becomes a symbol for the conflict between peter and tony when they fall out but don't tell anyone i said that the next day tony takes peter to washington to discuss the superhero registration act with the senate basically the government has been seeing all these superheroes flying about unsupervised and they're not happy with it so they're trying to pass a bill that would require all superheroes to register with the government tony argues against this saying that superheroes do more harm than good that's right iron man is originally against the registration act which you wouldn't know if you just read the main civil war book peter times in with a really good point about how if superheroes had to give up their secret identities their families would be put at risk and there'd be no one to take care of the bad guys tony later tells peter off for this explaining that well yeah what he said was the truth the truth doesn't belong in the law again drawing on the whole freedom versus the law theme hinted that earlier after the titanium man attacks the senate and spider-man saves the day the politicians are like okay maybe you're not so bad and they reconsider the act the superheroes have won once again peter gets home to mj and everything seems fine however as peter falls asleep at the tv it's slowly revealed off screen that there has been a major disaster in stanford connecticut where a battle involving superheroes has ended up in the deaths of hundreds of people and badly injured many more this is probably my favorite set of panels in the whole story there's something just so eerie about it how peter is just so oblivious not only to the disaster itself but the events to come which will turn his whole world upside down this small moment foreshadows the end of his life as he knows it and he's not even awake for it it's kind of terrifying this is where the main civil war event kicks off the stanford disaster turns the general public against superhumans with pretty much everyone in the country now backing the registration act tony and peter go to the white house where the president says that he'll be signing the act effective immediately meaning all superheroes will have to register with the government or they'll be hunted down and imprisoned while tony was originally against the act he says that he has to take the lead in making people register because if he doesn't do it someone worse will and because tony has to set a good example it means his trusty sidekick spider-man has to do the same peter now has to unmask or him mary jane and aunt may will be prosecuted and jailed on the other hand if he does unmask every supervillain on the planet will want to carpet bomb his family this obviously freaks the hell out of peter who knows that he's screwed either way there's a little moment i really love when peter's on the plane back from washington he calls up his bank and asks for the total amount in a savings account making sure he can withdraw it at any time and that's it that's the whole scene but you can just tell how stressful this is for him i think it perfectly encapsulates the feeling of being scared and alone being forced to make a dreadful decision that will end up badly either way i mean anyone who's had to look at their bank balance recently will tell you the same thing peter talks to his family about the situation and surprisingly ant-may supports the decision to unmask she says that if peter unmasks to the public they'll see him for the hero that he really is mary jane agrees that he's nothing to be ashamed of so he should stand his ground and take responsibility just like uncle ben would want him to five minutes before he's due to unmask on national television peter meets with tony he says that despite how hard unmasking will be he did make a promise to tony to stand by him no matter what and so in possibly one of the most stressful moments of his life spider-man reveals his identity to the world in a matter of seconds peter parker becomes a household name the sheer amount of google searches for him end up crashing the entire internet including the porn sites i just find it funny how some kid will be reading that and be like what the [ __ ] is porn also fun fact when spider-man homecoming came out and there was that one joke apparently there was a huge boost in google searches asking what porn was so yeah spider-man introduced the whole generation to porn and remember how aunt may said that the public would see peter as a hero well everyone is just so keen to shower him in their love what i love about strzezinski's writing and i might have said this before don't know don't care but i love how perfectly he balances tone it goes from a harrowing stressful experience to a four-page long joke about peter being ignored on the phone and yet it doesn't feel like the drama has been interrupted all of a sudden for the sake of a cheap laugh it all feels part of the same cohesive narrative anyways jay jonah jameson files a suit against peter for 5 million dollars an angry protester almost shoots mj in the face and super villains across the globe are all planning on how they're going to eradicate piers entire bloodline i don't know what he's been smoking but i want it peter's whole life is going to [ __ ] and as if things couldn't get any worse tony announces that he will be sending out a team of superheroes to hunt down those who don't register and on that special team completely against his will is spider-man peter confronts tony and is obviously like [ __ ] you pal and tony's like yeah you're right i should have talked to you before i put you on my government death squad but like i did it so come meet the other members of my government death squad peter reluctantly uses the iron spider suit to fight and imprison the superheroes who refuse to register eventually he comes face to face with captain america who tells them that it's not too late to join their side peter can't exactly betray iron man and his team and the government so he's forced to lose the respect from steve which he tried so hard to earn after the fight peter reflects on how yes he is technically on the right side of the law he just hopes he's on the right side morally and hopes that god can forgive him for his sins heavy [ __ ] the next issue has virtually no spider-man action at all save for the very last page the issue follows peter as he's intensely debating on the right decision to make in order to make up his mind peter asks tony to show him where exactly they're keeping all these people they've rounded up tony obliges and gets mr fantastic to send them to the negative zone an alternate dimension where they've constructed a big [ __ ] off goth castle after peter sees the conditions they're keeping the prisoners in he rightfully calls tony out for it he responds with an incredibly powerful speech about how it's the [ __ ] law and you can't just put an atomic bomb on house arrest they return to earth and while tony goes to take a [ __ ] peter asks mr fantastic why he's going along with all of this and reid responds with this beautiful story about how decades ago his uncle got in trouble with the government basically his uncle was a bit weird and funny and everyone loved him so the government thought he must have been a communist and made him testify in court quite rightly reed's uncle told the government to go to hell which didn't end up well for him his career was over he lost his family his home and in the end he lost his life the moral of the story is that even though reed's uncle was morally right he picked a fight with the law and we can't just choose what laws we want to follow or we're no better than the bad guys it's weird that a superhero comic that's you know meant to be for little babies is dedicating a whole portion of its issue to sit down and talk about where the law stands between right and wrong and i can't get enough of it it's of course implied that reid is wrong and peter leaves with iron man having been told multiple times by his idols that the law is the law and you shouldn't go against it even if it's the right thing to do peter has finally had enough he immediately tries to sneak his family out of iron man's supervision only to be met with resistance from iron man himself peter [ __ ] him up and ditches the iron spider suit before escaping to a motel with ant-man mary jane after making sure they're safe he hijacks a news program and admits to the world that he was wrong he snitches on iron man's torture palace and delivers a powerful monologue about the soul of the country and how some things are worth dying for in order to do the right thing that's the way he was raised and that's why he'll do everything within his power to oppose the registration act it's an incredibly emotional art for peter he does stand his ground and he does take responsibility like ant-may said he would but it's on the opposite side of where he thought he'd be meanwhile kingpin who's finished smoking his heavenly stash of heroin has ordered a hit on peter and his family because why not [ __ ] him he has an assassin stationed outside the motel to keep careful watch and pull the trigger when the time is right captain america sees peter's message on tv and meets up with him secretly and we get another big story this time about captain america's past and what it means to be a patriot even if your whole country is against you i won't go through all of it mainly because the movie just ripped the speech straight out of the comic except they dumbed it down a little bit it's a genuinely inspiring moment and it's unapologetically preachy i mean did you want a man who wears his country's flag to be subtle for you and so peter joins captain america's underground squad becoming an official fugitive of the united states government and iron man's team the two sides clash in a final battle while the city watches in ruins while peter still has to fight against those he wants called friends he finally knows he's fighting for the right side in the aftermath of the battle peter returns home to mj and aunt may which alerts the assassin outside the motel the assassin finally seeing the opportunity for a triple kill aims his rifle at the window alerting peter's spider sense the assassin fires with peter just managing to shield mj from the bullet however he looks up in despair to see that it hit aunt may instead and she begins to bleed out onto the carpet as the life drains from her eyes if you're a fan of the comics yeah you know where this ends up and i'm not here to talk about that this story on its own is riveting it's incredibly powerful and deals with really mature themes in a very well written way the messages it has are not at all subtle and they're not trying to be even the title reflects the very core of spider-man the war at home despite the grand scale of the event and so many characters involved schrozzinski kept the story personal to peter parker we were there with him every step of the way and that's something so important to his character apart from this story i'd also recommend front line which is another civil war tie-in which deals with the aftermath of the stanford disaster it takes the character of speedball who was originally a goofy superhero in the 80s and turns him into a tragic villain after he accidentally causes the destruction in stanford in fact i might make a whole separate video dedicated to this book because i should stop doing that actually i said in my ultimate spider-man video that i would make a separate video on green goblin and months later this one guy was like don't think i forgot [ __ ] and a bunch of you were waiting for my thoughts on the way home well keep waiting [ __ ] no i'm joking my thoughts are no different to pretty much everyone it was a huge trip of nostalgia and one of my favorite cinema experiences of all time i'm just glad i managed to dodge covered and i got to see with my friends sure there's some technical issues like cgi isn't that great in some areas compared to other blockbuster movies but it's not really about that i don't really see it as an objective film more of a once in a lifetime experience that everyone can come together and collectively enjoy so yeah look forward to the next video i'm gonna start making them more frequently now that i get more than 50 views in one year and there's actually people wanting to see more that blows my mind i've always seen youtubers be like oh thank you guys so much for the support and uh you know i'm like shut the [ __ ] up but i get it now i'm very appreciative of any comment i get even if it's someone telling me that i should locate the nearest bridge and jump off it i want to keep making videos on things i'm passionate about and i hope you guys stick around for the presentation rather than just the thing i'm talking about because there's only so many spider-man comics i like and you ain't gonna catch me talking about the [ __ ] brick wall from the 70s [Music] [Applause] [Music] psychotic [Music]

Channel: alex lennen

Views: 976,180

Keywords: spider man, civil war, video essay, marvel, comics

Id: Vz1mKql_GWw

Length: 16min 35sec (995 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 07 2022