Captain America: Civil War sees Tony Stark collapsing under the guilt of lives lost under his watch, continuing the themes of PTSD and accountability that were explored with the character in Iron Man 3 and Avengers: Age of Ultron. As seen in the trailers, he has come to believe that the Avengers have too much power to operate with no degree of oversight.
Just how many lives have been lost on Tony’s watch, though? More importantly, how many of those deaths was Tony either directly or indirectly responsible for? As a new video shows, the answer may surprise you.
Keeping track of all of the human and alien deaths in Marvel’s Phase 1 and Phase 2 films, YouTuber Ben Chinapen (a.k.a. Ben from Canada) cut together every kill that Tony can claim as Iron Man and visualized them as a presentation at the Stark Expo (complete with cheering crowds). This includes every death in Iron Man, Iron Man 2, The Avengers, Iron Man 3 and Avengers: Age of Ultron. The grand total? A staggering 75,157 living beings killed (plus 76 robots). If that seems hard to believe, you must remember that it was Iron Man who guided the nuke to the Chitauri mothership that was the staging point for the invasion of Earth.
Tony isn’t the only one who’s gotten his hands dirty, either. Ben previously cut together a similar video for Captain America and found that Steve Rogers had taken out an impressive 14,089 himself (including robots). This count was bolstered significantly by dropping a super-helicarrier on Washington, D.C., as well as Cap’s activities in World War II. That video included the events of Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Avengers: Age of Ultron.
If there’s one takeaway from these videos, it’s that the Avengers are capable of racking up massive casualties so long as the enemy has thousands of troops stationed in a craft of some kind. It will be interesting to see if Ben continues this series for other Avengers as well. After all, fans need to know how many people Hawkeye has one-shotted with an arrow, don’t they?
In all seriousness, the Iron Man video does shed a bit of perspective on Tony’s mindset heading into Civil War. Keep in mind that at the beginning of Iron Man, he was a weapons dealer who had no real idea of the impact that his weapons made. Over the course of Phase 1 and Phase 2, he’s gotten a firsthand look at just how destructive his creations can be and how difficult it is to be the line between the oppressors and those who would be oppressed. Some argue that his “pro-Accords” stance is against his character, but as we can see here he’s obviously seen and done enough in eight short years to give him a serious change of heart.
Next: Avengers: Infinity War Movies Won’t Feature Different Avengers Teams
Captain America: Civil War is in theaters now. Doctor Strange opens November 4, 2016; Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 – May 5, 2017; Spider-Man: Homecoming – July 7, 2017; Thor: Ragnarok – November 3, 2017; Black Panther – February 16, 2018; Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 – May 4, 2018; Ant-Man and the Wasp – July 6, 2018; Captain Marvel – March 8, 2019; Avengers: Infinity War Part 2– May 3, 2019; and as-yet untitled Marvel movies on July 12, 2019, and on May 1, July 10, and November 6 in 2020.
