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Same World Orders

Spoilers ahead for Captain America: New World Order.

However, if a movie can be spoiled by knowing just the plot and some elements, it wasn't very well crafted. Spoilers are a new idea that is one of the reasons for the decline in an understanding of media. Everyone goes into Romeo and Juliet knowing how it ends. Knowing that Rosebud was a sled doesn't spoil Citizen Kane. Also, Rosebud wasn't a sled, it was a vagina, but if you believe in spoilers, you're probably not ready for that subtlety.

Digression over, now let's talk about what New World Order said, possibly by accident.

In the film, Harrison Ford's President Ross is an angry president who is motivated by his image. He makes choices in order not to seem weak.

In addition, he has been compromised such that he turns into a Red Hulk and literally destroys the White House. This could not be more prescient.

Twice in the movie, Captain America can only prevent outright war by fighting not against the foreign enemies— in this case Japanese fighter pilots— but against Americans.

First, compromised and brainwashed fighter pilots. We don't see what happens to them post-destruction of the planes they are firing at America's allies from.

Second, when President Ross becomes Red Hulk Ross.

I want to make this simple: this movie itself says that the only way for Americans to stop a rogue president is to get up and do the difficult, dangerous, killing fight.

The only place where the movie falters is the ending. But this is to be expected because this is a Disney movie, after all.

The President is reminded of watching the cherry blossoms and his care for his daughter, and this de-Hulks him.

I ask you to imagine what this movie says if this does not work. The movie is incapable of imagining it, by the very nature of the kind of movie it is.

At the end, off-screen, the president takes responsibility for turning into a Hulk, destabilizing world peace, and willingly submits to imprisonment.

Marvel comics are, of course, a childish fantasy.

So if we consider what the movie accidentally says, consider this: the only way to prevent abuses of power from compromised leaders is to fight them.

It's just too bad the Disney of it all means only the safe ending was allowed.

Disney accidentally made a subversive movie then, one that says directly what the only option in response to tyranny is. It failed the landing because of its ideology, but a careful reading of the text of the movie shows that the meaning of the movie is not in the requisite ending.

So, with the asterisk of the comics are better and the cancellation of JMS' clear anti-fascist Captain America book is a tragedy, after viewing this movie there is only one question:

What Would Sam Wilson, aka Captain America, do?