Cap­tain Amer­i­ca – the last good guy

Captain Amer­i­ca: Civ­il War, the lat­est con­stel­la­tion point in Marvel’s Cin­e­mat­ic Uni­verse, marks Chris Evans’ fifth out­ing as square-jawed boy scout Steve Rogers. But while the tone of the char­ac­ter has dark­ened over the course of the series, Cap remains the moral heart of The Avengers, cor­rect­ing Tony Stark on his lan­guage and remind­ing every­one of their duties to pro­tect inno­cent peo­ple. You can ques­tion his rea­son­ing (as Stark and many oth­ers do), but you can’t argue with his motives – Cap­tain Amer­i­ca is a good guy.

The char­ac­ter may have recent­ly passed his 75^th anniver­sary, but it’s that qual­i­ty – doing good for the sake of doing good – that makes him an anom­aly in the ever-expand­ing world of cin­e­mat­ic super­heroes. Iron Man is in many ways a clas­sic anti­hero, a sar­cas­tic, cyn­i­cal arms deal­er with PTSD and a pen­chant for par­ty­ing. While Dis­ney and Mar­vel Stu­dios have so far stopped short of por­tray­ing the ​‘Demon in a Bot­tle’ alco­holism sto­ry­line from the comics, on screen Stark has always been some­thing of a loose can­non, the per­fect foil to Rogers’ true-blue inscrutability.

There are sev­er­al oth­er exam­ples of this across the MCU – there’s the tor­tured souls of Wolver­ine and The Hulk; Black Widow’s ter­ri­ble past; Thor’s fam­i­ly issues; even the book­ish Peter Park­er takes to the streets moti­vat­ed by the death of Uncle Ben. Mean­while, over at DC, Batman’s vig­i­lan­tism has always been eth­i­cal­ly ambigu­ous – Ben Affleck’s Dark Knight is prone to brand­ing crim­i­nals and, to para­phrase Heath Ledger’s Jok­er, break­ing his ​“One Rule”.

In this cyn­i­cal age it’s under­stand­able – even log­i­cal – that this is the new norm. Just as the com­ic books that inspired them evolved over time, so the biggest super­hero movies have become more moral­ly com­plex. So where does that leave a do-good­er like Cap­tain Amer­i­ca? Chris Evans was ​‘A Man Out of Time’ in more ways than one when he first donned the shield in 2011’s The First Avenger. And yet, it worked – and con­tin­ues to work.

A prod­uct of the ​‘Great­est Gen­er­a­tion’ ide­al of self­less ser­vice and doing your bit, he is intro­duced as an under­dog des­per­ate to join the fight when war is declared; not out of revenge or to seek cathar­sis but because it’s the right thing to do. A jump in time allowed for a seam­less change in tone for the 2013 sequel Win­ter Sol­dier, a film that evokes the para­noid thrillers on which co-star Robert Red­ford built his career in the ​’70s. Still, Evans’ Rogers remained stead­fast, uphold­ing his belief that those in posi­tions of pow­er will act hon­ourably and ratio­nal­ly when the time comes.

In Civ­il War he stretch­es that belief to break­ing point, fac­ing off against his fel­low Avengers to pro­tect both his free­dom and his friends. As he valiant­ly declares in the trail­er, ​“We try to save as many peo­ple as we can. Some­times that doesn’t mean every­body, but you don’t give up.” It’s an old fash­ioned phi­los­o­phy, but one that pro­vides the basis for arguably the most inter­est­ing Mar­vel fran­chise instal­ment since the first Iron Man movie. Maybe the anti­hero will always be more appeal­ing, or more relat­able. But in an are­na dom­i­nat­ed by flawed pro­tag­o­nists, Evans’ Avenger con­tin­ues to stand out. For now at least, it appears the nice guy fin­ished first.