The letter has Cap saying the Avengers belong to Tony now, and he wants him to lead them because he doesn’t like the idea of Tony being alone in one of his big mansions. He says we all need family, that Cap’s been on his own since he was 18, never feeling part of anything, even the army, and so he puts his faith in people, and that he can’t let them down (which is why he’s going to break into the prison to free the others.) He apologizes for not telling Tony the truth about his parents. He says he understands that they’ll never agree on the Accords, but they’re both doing what they believe is right, which is all anyone can do. He ends by promising that if Tony needs him, he’ll be there.
So, yeah, you could nominally justify this as a judgment of good, but it really feels tacked on to me. I realize the epilogue can be used for expositing the story judgment, but usually it acts as an extension of what we’ve seen in the climax (e.g. Jane nearly dies to save Ted even though they fought throughout the movie, and in the epilogue Ted is at Jane’s bedside in the hospital asking why she did it, and she says, “because we’re family” or something.) In this case, the epilogue is completely contrary to the final scene of the climax. I mean completely reversed. For that reason, I have trouble taking it as an expression of story judgment. It feels more to me like a way of mitigating that story judgment of bad: of saying to the audience, yeah, it all went to shit and things turned out badly for everyone, but it’s not completely horrible.
One last thought occurred to me regarding this issue of whether Captain America: Civil War has either A) A single storyform over which we argue about whether the MC is Steve or Tony, or B) Two storyforms, one in which Steve is the MC and the other in which Tony is the MC, or C) My new pet theory: that there is an ongoing handoff between Steve and Tony for the MC (and thus the IC) throughlines.
Arguing for option B or C, here is my coup de grace: often the Dramatica storyform is described as representing the author’s intent (though of late this has been quite reasonably adjusted to the author’s message since they may not have fulfilled their intent.) The Russo Brothers have described their intent – and I think they succeeded in this – to have the audience alternately see the story from Cap’s perspective and from Tony’s.
So given that this was their intent and that it seems to have worked, is it not reasonable to think that the Dramatica Storyform encapsulates this either via an ongoing handoff in the MC or via two storyforms? Otherwise we have a critical aspect of the authorial message that isn’t described by the Dramatica model.