Suiting up the Avengers

[Crazedwraith]

I think we're all overlooking the obvious here. Stark simply won't provide them. He clearly still has issues about weapons manufacturing as Stark Industries hasn't gone back to it. He considers the Arc reactor the most dangerous thing he's ever made given the fact that he's only ever trusted 3 people to even hold it and 2 to wear a suit that used one, (4 and 3 if you count JARVIS as a person) plus he obviously (and completely correctly) doesn't trust SHIELD.

He doesn't trust Fury or Romanov (which they both admit he has good reasons for), and Cap and Hawkeye are both officers in a military chain of command that was massively compromised. (I know he supposedly consulted on the new Helicarriers, but the only thing we know he was involved with were the repulsor engines, tech that's been available commercially since before IM1) If I was him, with his concerns about weapons he makes being used to kill people they are supposed to protect I wouldn't hand my toys over either.

Tangentially related but all this makes me wonder how they're even going to do Civil War, given neither Cap nor Iron Man seem inclined to be pro-government/pro-registration in the MCU, unless they're doing Civil War in name only.

[Elheru Aran]

I think we're all overlooking the obvious here. Stark simply won't provide them. He clearly still has issues about weapons manufacturing as Stark Industries hasn't gone back to it. He considers the Arc reactor the most dangerous thing he's ever made given the fact that he's only ever trusted 3 people to even hold it and 2 to wear a suit that used one, (4 and 3 if you count JARVIS as a person) plus he obviously (and completely correctly) doesn't trust SHIELD.

He doesn't trust Fury or Romanov (which they both admit he has good reasons for), and Cap and Hawkeye are both officers in a military chain of command that was massively compromised. (I know he supposedly consulted on the new Helicarriers, but the only thing we know he was involved with were the repulsor engines, tech that's been available commercially since before IM1) If I was him, with his concerns about weapons he makes being used to kill people they are supposed to protect I wouldn't hand my toys over either.

Tangentially related but all this makes me wonder how they're even going to do Civil War, given neither Cap nor Iron Man seem inclined to be pro-government/pro-registration in the MCU, unless they're doing Civil War in name only.

Quick and dirty theory off the top of my head:

--Stark is off kilter still given the mindfuck he got from Scarlet Witch in AoU. He starts leaning towards registration as it may allow him to feel more secure about the new profusion of superheroes running around. Other heroes from the Avengers may join him if they feel the same way, or they may pull some second-tier supers off the backburner.

--Cap on the other hand, is now a little more wary about 'The Man' given the events of Winter Soldier. He feels he's been lied to and led about, especially after the whole fracas with Stark in AoU and the origins of Ultron itself. He has less trust in authority and is more inclined to go free-agent. Trying to recover Bucky/Winter Soldier is definitely part of this.

--Fury and what remains of SHIELD are semi-neutral in this; Fury personally may support Cap but it's possible the rest of SHIELD may be backing Stark up.

We have a year or two to see how it shakes down. Should be interesting.

[Simon_Jester]

He doesn't trust Fury or Romanov (which they both admit he has good reasons for), and Cap and Hawkeye are both officers in a military chain of command that was massively compromised. (I know he supposedly consulted on the new Helicarriers, but the only thing we know he was involved with were the repulsor engines, tech that's been available commercially since before IM1) If I was him, with his concerns about weapons he makes being used to kill people they are supposed to protect I wouldn't hand my toys over either.

Come to think of it, when he DID entrust SHIELD with repulsor engines for the Flight II helicarriers, they WERE being used to kill a huge number of innocent people and were stopped literally at the last minute, due to the fact that SHIELD had been ridiculously, comically compromised by Hydra.

So if he'd ever trusted SHIELD before, he certainly wouldn't do so afterwards.

Tangentially related but all this makes me wonder how they're even going to do Civil War, given neither Cap nor Iron Man seem inclined to be pro-government/pro-registration in the MCU, unless they're doing Civil War in name only.

The synopsis we've been given is "Captain America: Civil War picks up where Avengers: Age of Ultron left off, as Steve Rogers leads the new team of Avengers in their continued efforts to safeguard humanity. After another international incident involving the Avengers results in collateral damage, political pressure mounts to install a system of accountability and a governing body to determine when to enlist the services of the team. The new status quo fractures the Avengers while they try to protect the world from a new and nefarious villain. "

As noted, Stark's always been a bit neurotic about wanting to save the world using his own brains and technology, even before Maximoff ker-telepathed him in Avengers 2. After that point he became rather unhinged and paranoid about trying to invent his way out of problems, not only by creating Ultron, but then by (as others pointed out) doing almost exactly the same thing that created Ultron, in an attempt to stop Ultron.

So if Stark becomes convinced that the Avengers are a problem he might very well accept a commission to oversee them and exercise some control over them. Resulting in a confrontation between Stark (who wants to save/control the world and "put it in a suit of armor") and Captain America (who leads the Avengers and tends to distrust that kind of massive control because he sees it as disturbing and Hitlery).

[biostem]

Well, Stark being in favor of the registration thing makes sense - ever since the end of the first Iron Man movie, he was up front that he was Iron Man. The government knows who and where he is, and though snarky & sarcastic, he did appear to the Congressional hearing when summoned. Cap, OTOH, expressed dissatisfaction with how the government handles things, ever since he had to conduct that rescue operation against orders, in the 1st Captain America movie.

[Batman]

Stark also hacked their systems in that very same hearing. I wouldn't count that as a display of Tony trusting the government.

[Simon_Jester]

It's not that he trusts them. It's that he's comfortable working with them, stands in a fixed relationship with them, and doesn't mind them knowing where he lives and what he does. Nor does he mind publicly standing up and delivering an accounting of his actions, even if he may well be self-serving and arrogant while doing so.

Honestly, I don't think the Registration Act plot would work as such in the MCU anyway. In Marvel comics, it's more or less the background to the plot that there are hundreds, probably thousands, of miscellaneous superhumans washing around in the US, including mutants, with many of them having secret identities.

In the Marvel Cinematic universe, the total number of known superhumans is still limited, and the only ones I can think of whose identity is a secret are Ant-Man and Spider-Man. And, okay, I suppose Scarlet Witch might try to keep her identity a secret, but since there is presumably a heap of cell phone video of her saving people with her powers in Sokovia and it's not like she was wearing a mask, that's a non-starter.

So for purposes of having Civil War or something like it (a confrontation between Cap and Iron Man over basic questions of how superheroics fit into the modern world) actually make sense in the MCU, they're presumably going to step away from "US government wants to register superheroes" and towards, oh "international movement demands oversight body calling the shots for the Avengers."

[Elheru Aran]

Stark's attitude to the government (and to a lesser degree, SHIELD) seems to be that of a confidently independent associate-- he can do whatever he wants (to a point) and he knows it. He's not a member of the military (is Cap even part of the Army in the MCU though, or is it just a token rank?) or a SHIELD employee like Black Widow and Hawkeye. As long as he doesn't cross the line *too* egregiously, he can get away with a lot-- mouthing off to Fury and a Congressional committee, for two. Hacking the systems was as much a demonstration of that independence as it was a mildly contemptuous gesture ("your security REALLY sucks, or maybe my phone is just super awesome").

Cap, on the other hand, is used to being under people in a position of authority, taking orders, and so forth. There is a certain friction stemming from his initial origins (being handed off into a rather useless role as a propaganda-show actor rather than being put on the battlefield) and the events of Winter Soldier, but ultimately he's an individual of different, perhaps dated, character than Stark, a thoroughly modern man of the world.

[Simon_Jester]

At the same time, though, while Cap is very comfortable in a hierarchy, he also has a pronounced anti-authoritarian streak in that he will always, always disobey orders and the status quo in order to do what he thinks is right. Or necessary.

In the '40s, he ignored the implicit rules of the "climb that pole and retrieve the flag" challenge. Jumping on that grenade in training was a testament to his courage and altruism, but also to his lateral thinking- getting out of the way was first on most of the other trainees' minds, but his mind was on the problem of neutralizing the threat. Using a car door as a shield against bullets- again, quick thinking, willingness to grab stuff from the environment and just use it. He went into combat, alone, against a fortress full of Hydra troops who had just beaten a whole US Army battalion, against direct orders from a superior officer. He sacrificed his life because he thought it was necessary to prevent harm from the Hydra bomber, while others urged him not to.

In the modern era, he infiltrates a SHIELD armory aboard the helicarrier- presumably NOT a place he was authorized or allowed to go- and retrieved evidence of SHIELD's Phase Two weapons derived from the Tesseract. He responds very effectively when SHIELD assets start being used to attack him and take him down, going rather seamlessly from 'soldier in an army' to 'guerilla fighter fighting the omnipresent resources of the Man,' although admittedly with help from Black Widow. He distrusts Stark's idea of inventing ultra-powerful technologies to control and protect humanity.

So, again, Steve Rogers is a man who never lets 'taking orders' or 'the rules,' or for that matter 'basic common sense,' stop him from listening to what his moral center tells him. And his moral center is actually quite individualist.
______________

Stark doesn't have the same kind of moral center as Rogers. He has a sense of right and wrong, and he has a sense of responsibility, but he's very much capable of overlooking those things when he gets focused on a project or a concept. That's why he created Ultron- because, fueled by the Scarlet Witch's hallucinations, he was driven to create something capable of protecting the Earth, regardless of whether that was the right thing to do. So no one could make him stop and convince him that what he was doing was unsafe or wrong.

Nor could anyone make a dent in his conviction to try pouring Jarvis into the hybrid body they captured from Ultron. Stark turned out to be right about whether that was a good idea, but it wasn't obvious that it was a good idea, since that was essentially exactly the same act that had gotten them into the situation of having Ultron after them in the first place.
___________________

So there's a subtle difference between the way Cap defies other people and the rules, and the way Stark defies other people and the rules. And, conversely, between the way Cap and Iron Man work with authority.

Stark commits unusual and controversial actions, and chooses to defy or work with authority, because he thinks it's necessary.

Rogers commits unusual and controversial actions, and chooses to defy or work with authority, because he thinks it's right.

[Replicant]

On a slightly related note - I rewatched the end battle in Iron Man 2, and found it off-putting that Venko managed to create a suit of powered armor that is superior to Stark's, and that's with the upgraded Arc reactor... I wonder if his drones were superior to the Iron Legion ones in Avengers 2, (we didn't really get to see them in a full on fight, however).

Was the Vanko suit superior?

Tony and Rhodes had just expended a bunch of firepower on Hammer Drones, this included the wrist lasers that would have likely sliced Vanko in half.

Also the fight started at very close range which benefitted Vanko and his whip weapons.

In the end they beat him by crossing the Repulsor streams which took him from perfectly functional to completely out of it while doing no damage to either Iron Man suit which were only 6 or 8 feet from the epicenter of the explosion.

[Simon_Jester]

I will say, at the least, that the Hammerdrones appear to have been effectively unarmored- War Machine's Gatling gun ripped them to shreds, and I can't imagine it doing that to anything with Iron Man-style armor plating.

Of course, Ultron drones also prove vulnerable to that same Gatling gun (and to other things like being bashed by a shield in the hands of a mildly superhuman man), so it's not like every weapon system assembled using Starktech, even good Starktech like Ultron presumably has at his disposal, is as tough as an Iron Man suit.

[Kojiro]

Of course, Ultron drones also prove vulnerable to that same Gatling gun (and to other things like being bashed by a shield in the hands of a mildly superhuman man), so it's not like every weapon system assembled using Starktech, even good Starktech like Ultron presumably has at his disposal, is as tough as an Iron Man suit.

I think that while the drones may have been made with Stark know how, it's highly likely they weren't made with Stark resources, specifically in the armour department. Hell a lot of the drones have exposed parts and we know full well Stark can build an enclosed system. What armour Stark uses exactly isn't really well defined- the only line we have is 'gold titanium alloy' which doesn't begin to explain how armour so thin can stand up to what it does.

That said in AoU Warmachine doesn't actually have a gatling gun. It has the same back mounted weapon it does in IM3 as Iron Patriot.

Now I'll grant you I thought it was a gatling gun but if you look here or here you can see it actually has what looks like a 'Warning: LASER' marker on it. That said it does operate almost identically to the IM2 gatling gun... but it's clearly not a gatling gun. I honestly think no one thought about it since we didn't see if fire in IM3. Between the sticker and complete lack of an ammo feed the idea of a laser weapon doesn't at all seem far fetched.

Which isn't to say the drones are durable- they're clearly not. More just being pedantic.

[Simon_Jester]

Of course, Ultron drones also prove vulnerable to that same Gatling gun (and to other things like being bashed by a shield in the hands of a mildly superhuman man), so it's not like every weapon system assembled using Starktech, even good Starktech like Ultron presumably has at his disposal, is as tough as an Iron Man suit.

I think that while the drones may have been made with Stark know how, it's highly likely they weren't made with Stark resources, specifically in the armour department. Hell a lot of the drones have exposed parts and we know full well Stark can build an enclosed system. What armour Stark uses exactly isn't really well defined- the only line we have is 'gold titanium alloy' which doesn't begin to explain how armour so thin can stand up to what it does.

True. Now, what with them stealing War Machine they certainly had a chance to look at Stark's material for armor... But reverse-engineering an impervious slab of solid kabongium armor might well have been too time-consuming, so there wasn't enough (or any) available for Vanko to build his first-generation "drone better" Hammerdrones.

That said in AoU Warmachine doesn't actually have a gatling gun. It has the same back mounted weapon it does in IM3 as Iron Patriot.

...D'OH!

OK, somehow I simply did not notice that. Boy is my face red. Since we don't know what kind of gun that is, it may well have a lot more penetrating power than a 7.62mm chaingun.

Now I'll grant you I thought it was a gatling gun but if you look here or here you can see it actually has what looks like a 'Warning: LASER' marker on it. That said it does operate almost identically to the IM2 gatling gun... but it's clearly not a gatling gun. I honestly think no one thought about it since we didn't see if fire in IM3. Between the sticker and complete lack of an ammo feed the idea of a laser weapon doesn't at all seem far fetched.

But is it visibly more like a laser or more like a bullet-firing weapon?

Which isn't to say the drones are durable- they're clearly not. More just being pedantic.

No, that's good, I'm glad you caught that. Anyway, Hammerdrones are frail enough that sustained 7.62mm fire can bring them down (granted, probably armor piercing bullets, but still), and just getting punched by an Iron Man suit is generally enough to send them down and out.

[Crazedwraith]

I think that while the drones may have been made with Stark know how, it's highly likely they weren't made with Stark resources, specifically in the armour department. Hell a lot of the drones have exposed parts and we know full well Stark can build an enclosed system. What armour Stark uses exactly isn't really well defined- the only line we have is 'gold titanium alloy' which doesn't begin to explain how armour so thin can stand up to what it does.

True. Now, what with them stealing War Machine they certainly had a chance to look at Stark's material for armor... But reverse-engineering an impervious slab of solid kabongium armor might well have been too time-consuming, so there wasn't enough (or any) available for Vanko to build his first-generation "drone better" Hammerdrones.[/quote]

War Machine was build out of the MKII Armour anyway which had the less advanced material science in it. Though this was mostly just 'The Icing Problem' (which was presumably solved by Hammertech or AIM upgrades since it never comes up as problem for War Machine)

[Lord Revan]

isn't there 2 War Machine suits? the First one that's an upgraded Iron Man Mark II and a second that was purpose build by Stark Industries for War machine?

[Kojiro]

isn't there 2 War Machine suits? the First one that's an upgraded Iron Man Mark II and a second that was purpose build by Stark Industries for War machine?

That is correct. The Iron Patriot/Warmahine in AoU is a second suit.

But is it visibly more like a laser or more like a bullet-firing weapon?

Audibly is sounds like a slug thrower. With the gatling we could see tracers, an ammo belt and shell casings. With this we get something that could be tracers but the weapon is mounted on a 'V' shaped rack that allows it to move around with no visible ammo feed.
Warmachine MK1 with gatling:

Warmachine MK2 with...not gatling:

This is one of those odd times where what you see on screen just doesn't add up.

[Crazedwraith]

isn't there 2 War Machine suits? the First one that's an upgraded Iron Man Mark II and a second that was purpose build by Stark Industries for War machine?

That is correct. The Iron Patriot/Warmahine in AoU is a second suit.

Oh, I didn't know that. Did they mention it in one of the films? I thought Iron Patriot was just War Machine extensively refurbished by A.I.M.

[Kojiro]

It's not in the films directly. It comes from various sources, like the Marvel wiki and the licensed kits. On close inspection you can see they're different. There's also the fact the MK1 requires an assembly rig to get in/out of while the MK2 has the whole fold apart step in/out anytime configuration.