Captain America: Civil War


        In Captain America: Civil War, the Winter Soldier, aka Bucky Barnes, aka Steve Rogers’ lifelong best friend, is framed by a guy by the name of Zemo for exploding the United Nations. It is revealed that this action by Zemo was done for the purpose of watching the Avengers destroy themselves. The effects of this plan were enhanced by the division between team Iron Man and team Captain America over the Sokovia Accords. Team Iron Man was in support of global government oversight of Avengers operations while team Cap was against it. So, long story short, team Cap is momentarily stopped by team Iron Man, in the name of the Accords, on their way to find Zemo, a big fight ensues, and Rhodes gets seriously injured, planting a seed of vengeance in Tony’s heart. Later, Tony’s vengeance reaches its peak when Zemo reveals that Bucky, as the Winter Soldier, killed Tony’s parents. It didn’t help the situation that Steve reveals that he knew about Bucky killing his parents. This causes a brutal battle between Tony and the super-soldier duo. This fight happened in great part because of the vengeance in Tony’s heart.


Vengeance is never a good thing. It finds its root in selfishness with the desire for control of the enaction of justice and is a response based entirely upon emotions. Emotions can be either good or bad and, therefore, is not dependable to use as a lens through which to enact justice. Emotions also derive from the heart, which Jeremiah says is deceitful (Jeremiah 17:9). Vengeance also blinds its host to the breaking apart of their relationships with others and even relationships outside of themselves. This is directly contrary to Jesus’ command for us to love our neighbors as we do ourselves (Matthew 22:39). Jesus even calls us to love our enemies (Matthew 5:44).


Tony was not the only one with vengeance in his heart. For the entirety of the film, Zemo was enacting his vengeance on the Avengers for the death of his family in Sokovia (refer to Avengers: Age of Ultron). T’challa, aka Black Panther, sought vengeance towards whoever killed his father with the UN explosion. He was the one who came to realize the impact that vengeance had on the world around him and let go of it. It is pretty well summarized in his own words. “Vengeance has consumed you. It’s consuming them. I’m done letting it consume me.”


Is vengeance consuming your heart? If so, how so? What has it caused you to say and do? What is it causing you to want to say and/or do? Will you genuinely apologize for these things? Will you choose, instead, to show them love despite what they have said/done and not reciprocate the hurt they have caused you?



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Black Widow

Image
In Black Widow, Natasha Romanov goes on a journey of redemption through dealing with her past. She reunites with the family that she has known since childhood. This redemptive process started taking place when she first joined SHIELD before the events of Iron Man 2, the film where she was introduced. At this time, she blows up the building where the man who forced her to be raised into an assassin, Dreykov, was in at the moment. His daughter also happened to be present. Natasha had always resented that Dreykov’s daughter had to be collateral damage. Back to present day in the film, she is reunited with her sister who tells her that Dreykov is, in fact, not dead as Natasha had previously believed. In the process of trying to take the Red Room down, the place where they were both raised to be assassins, they end up fighting someone who has the keen ability to mimic 1:1 the combat moves that they watch known as Taskmaster. Towards the end of the film, Natasha is face-to-face with Dreyko...
Read more

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Image
In Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Shang-Chi is a man whose past comes to catch up with him instantly. His mother came from a mystical people who held themselves with grace and protected multiple dimensions from an evil creature seeking to devour without sparing a single soul. His father was a man who had found a set of ten rings that gave him eternal life and power, an ability which he greatly abused. When Shang-Chi was child, he and his younger sister watched as their mother was murdered by a group of her husband’s enemies from his past. From that time forth, Shang-Chi’s father trained him to become a highly deadly assassin. When he was 14 his father sent him on a mission to kill the man who killed his mother. Not able to go through with it, he settles in San Francisco, leaving his sister behind with his father in the process. 11 years later, the evil creature previously mentioned cunningly entices Shang-Chi’s father with the cries of his late wife asking for her husband’...
Read more

Avengers: Infinity War

Image
          In Avengers: Infinity War, during their travels to Earth, the Asgardian people encounter Thanos and his children known as the Black Order. Thor, Hulk, and Loki try to prevent him from being able to use the space stone, which was the Tesseract, but are proven powerless against Thanos. Once the Great Titan, Thanos, successfully retrieves the stone, he destroys the ship, leaving the bodies of the Asgardians that were on that ship, along with the unconscious Thor, to float off in space as they continue their search for the rest of the Infinity Stones. Later on, the Guardians of the Galaxy find him and bring him aboard their ship. While catching them up on the situation, Thor holds up the spoon with which he is eating his food and realizes that he needs a new weapon to replace his broken hammer, Mjolnir (see Thor: Ragnarok) in order to be able to take on Thanos, so he takes Rocket Raccoon and Groot with him to Nidavellir. While there, they help a dwa...
Read more