3 powerful themes from "Captain America: Civil War"

I think Captain America 3: Civil War may have been the strongest film yet in the Marvel universe. It's a tough call given how tremendously entertaining "the Avengers" was and how quirky and brilliant "Guardians of the Galaxy" turned out to be. Nevertheless, it was great and it got better on reflection.

I was clued in to two brilliant reviews of "Civil War," both by Devin Faraci who does good work over at Birthmoviesdeath.com. I recommend them both for the way they help you process and understand the movie and also because Faraci explains things in a way that make it easier to offer my own thoughts on the movie.

Don't read these or anything below if you are looking to avoid spoilers*

The first explains why Civil War is in fact a Captain America movie, continuing the tale of friendship and loyalty between Steve Rogers and his pal Bucky.

The second explains the importance of Spider-Man's role in capturing one of the main themes of the film: which is taking personal responsibility vs looking to pass it off.

I noticed three major themes that gave this blockbuster some real punch. As I noted with Guardians of the Galaxy, sometimes the blockbusters made for mass audiences have deeper and more powerful truths than the more artsy films nominated for Oscars.

Theme 1: Taking real responsibility

America today is filled to the brink with people who feel the weight of responsibility and are trying to pass it off through processes that aren't actually helpful or wise, much as Iron-Man did. I've got an everyday example that I think will drive this point home: The bureaucratic processes at your job.

Y'all know what I'm talking about. The way modern institutions work is as follows:

1. Something goes terribly wrong due to oversight or moral failure on the part of an employee.

2. The company promises to make sure this will never happen again.

3. The company institutes bureaucratic process and documentation to protect themselves in the future without actually decreasing the chances of future problems.

4. The new process overloads employees in paper work and leads someone to commit a different oversight or moral failure.

5. Company promises to make sure this will never happen again...

If you've worked for any heavily regulated business like the medical field or education you know what I'm talking about and even if you don't this style of problem solving is probably pervasive enough that you still know exactly what I'm talking about.

This is the sin of Iron Man in "Civil War" he's not looking to actually own the problem and own the solution, he's looking for bureaucratic solutions that can absolve him of guilt. Just like your HR department.

Theme 2: A system is only as good as the people involved

We could just as easily call this section "why ideology is useless." The Captain's concluding monologue included the line,

"My faith's in people, I guess. Individuals. And I'm happy to say that, for the most part, they haven't let me down. Which is why I can't let them down either."

The essence of Captain America's character in the Marvel films has always been about moral leadership. He was chosen for the serum because he had enough character to be trusted not to abuse the power. Defeating the Nazis (or Hydra I guess) couldn't just be about wielding power but had to be balanced with caution, and that caution centered around who was allowed to wield the power.

American political debate generally centers around policy prescriptions and the underlying ideologies. When a policy or government works or doesn't work then people on both sides will rush to explain why the opposing ideology was to blame or how their own ideology shouldn't take the fall for this particular failure.

It's all a smokescreen, ideology matters considerably less than who's wielding power and the character and motives of the people at the top.

Take a look at the wide variety of different political systems in place in the Bible and tell me when God affirms or disapproves of leadership because of their ideology. He doesn't, because he's much more concerned with what they're doing and why they're doing it.

Theme 3: Greater love hath no one than this...

The way Captain America challenges us to consider moral authority as the primary qualification for leadership and power is a very worthy message. Civil War does a great job pitting that qualification against the notion of trusting instead in bureaucracy or ideology.

The problem anyone will point to as a justification for siding with #TeamIronMan is that humans aren't worthy of that trust. That's why we have the law, bureaucratic oversight, and ideologies, so that humans can be guided to the proper course of action.

But as the Captain intuitively understands and demonstrates, these are are ultimately untrustworthy. Being relational beings, what humans need above all other things is an example...

"Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being borne in the likeness of men. 

And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every other name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord."

We don't really have a choice but to respond to Christ-like self sacrifice and service. It's inherent to mankind to respond and trust ultimately in that example. The message of the Captain America series is ultimately that of the gospel, and almost certainly unintentionally so.

That's the power of Jesus' example, that "at his name every knee should bow," it's simply not possible to point to higher truth without pointing to him.

Everyone loves Iron Man, he's hilarious and he's flawed in a way that makes it easy to connect to him. Either you think you're like Iron Man or you wish you were, that's what makes him the perfect antagonist to have to respond to the Christ-like example of the Captain.

I know these are ultimately just silly superhero movies but they still represent our ideals and ourselves as we'd like to see them or they couldn't resonate. Rather than chasing some kind of grim, violent depiction of the world where we can feel safe to fail to aspire to any higher examples, Captain America instead points us to the cross.

That's why his weapon is actually a shield and that's why these Marvel films are some of the most enjoyable and powerful movies coming out these days.