The corporate strings are starting to show. Regardless of the financial motivation for any of their movies or shows thus far, they were at least plausible story ideas. This one was not. The only way it makes sense is Marvel inc demanding a giant clash of the heroes, and in service to its ever-expanding universe. The constant fluctuation of the Avengers' roster makes obvious sense from a marketing perspective, and a fundamental split in the ranks gives them an excuse to keep cycling characters on and off the roster without killing them or coming up with increasingly flimsy excuses why people keep quitting or getting fired from the Avengers. And now, they can split that portion of the franchise and get twice as many Avengers movies out of it, with the ongoing adventures of the Union Avengers and Confederate Avengers. I can just see the beginning of the first Outlaw Avengers movie: "Ten years ago, a crack superhero unit was sent to a secret prison by absolutely no court whatsover for a crime everyone knows they didn't commit. These men, and one chick, promptly escaped from a supermax in the middle of the ocean, to the African underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as superheroes of fortune. If you have a supervillain, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A-vengers!"

Anyway, the battle lines are evenly drawn, with six superheroes on each side, except one side, the one in support of the government taking control of the Avengers, whom I shall refer to as the Union side, is never able to articulate a reasonable or sensible rationale for their position, and if the film were true to the characterization of the individuals, would not have anyone on their team but Rhodey, and maybe Jarvis (only because he has not had enough development to definitively state he would NOT be a rebel). Tony and Natasha in prior films, publicly took anti-government positions, which the movie even admits in the latter case, and the best reason she can give for her change of heart was a vague allusion to public sentiment. Peter's expressed motivation for undertaking superhero activity is nearly a perfect paraphrase of Steve's reasons for refusing to let the government reign him in. He supposedly hates bullies, but that was exactly the reason Steve gave for joining the army in the first place. And if you hate bullies, why are you going up against the handful of outlaws, on the side with all the money, power and troops? Why are you going after a lovable outlaw, a walking American flag, a torture victim, a war orphan and a family man, on the side of a god-robot, two government thugs, an entitled rich dude and a king? And Tachalla is just as much of a loose cannon and rogue as Steve, except he happens to be hunting a guy on Steve's team. That's probably why half of the Union Avengers switch sides at some point or another. This story was blatantly not developed by a writer saying "A government takeover of the Avengers is a logical and justifiable development of previously shown events, which would cause these particular characters to disagree over the issue, and split nearly irreparably." No, this was writers being told "Split up the team, so they fight each other, with half on each side," and trying to get there inside 3 hours. Spiderman joined the team, not because he was a logical recruit for Tony, but because he was the most popular Marvel character left in the bullpen, and never mind that he'd have changed teams if the conflict had lasted long enough for Steve to make a pitch.

Also, every argument voiced in favor of the Union plan is stupid & groundless, and the filmmakers know it, because whenever Steven presents a thoughtful rebuttal, Tony or the Secretary can only reply with quips or anecdotes. Aside from when he is brainwashed, the only Bucky does that is immoral or wrong is failing to kill any of the police officers so lost to basic morality or the proper bounds of their jobs, that they are willing to execute a no-knock warrant with shoot-to-kill orders of engagement, on the basis of a grainy photograph, against a man who has never been arraigned or charged with any crimes. But it's the government who needs to be in charge of the superheroes, because the Avengers are the ones who lack restraint?

The Secretary makes his pitch on the basis of events in the first Avengers film when the aliens invaded New York, when Hydra tried to deploy helicarriers with assassination missions, and when a robot gained sentience and tried to exterminate the human race by lifting up a city and dropping it again. None of which were the responsibility of the Avengers, except maybe the guy advocating the Union plan. The NY invasion was the result of the government having control of the blue cube and losing it, because until a future Avenger pointed it out, no government scientist or agent stopped to think that the property of the cube they had discovered could have reverse consequences. Then the government, acting with the restraint that gives them the moral high ground in their debate with Captain America threw a nuke at one of the most important and populous cities in the world, which the Avengers had to stop. The helicarriers were a government program run amuck, which was only stopped by the intervention of a trio of superheroes, two of whom were the first 2 members of the Confederate Avengers. All that the Ultron fiasco says about the need for restraint and oversight is that maybe Tony needs some, instead of proposing it in response to a mission carried out by his more responsible teammates, against a rogue government agent who was stealing bioweapons, presumably manufactured by a government. Tony was the one who built Ultron against the objections of Steve, after all.

If the Avengers DO need oversight and restraint, the proper people do it are not the governments of the Marvel Universe, where separate officials shown trying to exercise authority over superheroes turned out to be villains in at least four different movies! Senator Stern, Gideon Malick, Alexander Pierce, Vice-President Rodriguez and most of SHIELD were all people who might have been placed in supervision of the Avengers had Sokovia agreement been written a couple of years earlier. The best guy they can find to run stuff now seems to be the same idiot who thinks fighting a giant green monster who wants to be left in peace is best handled by throwing a giant PSYCHOTIC green monster at him! Who wouldn't leave said monster alone, but wanted him for research or some stupid reason. Secretary Ross still has not given up his slavery-minded view that superheroes are government property from the second Hulk movie, as he compares the Avengers not knowing Bruce & Thor's locations as being akin to the government misplacing nuclear weapons. People are not inanimate property, but a guy who sees them as such, is supposed to prevent the Avengers from causing collateral damage?

Even if we ignore so many actively evil government officials, and credit them with meaning well, they tried to kill 7 million people in order to contain the blowback from their losing control of their alien cube, they funded giant murder drones, stole Tony's suit and gave it to a completely incompetent weapons designer in secret alliance with a supervillain, failed to investigate Killian as well as Tony's limo driver did in a few hours, or come close to catching the "Mandarin", drove Henry Pym and his technology out of their grasp, even though he wanted to work for them, and let their SHIELD agents run around willy nilly making choices and carrying out orders in accordance with their personal grudges or self-identification with alien-hybrid cultures. And the aforementioned death squad sent after Bucky, because a bad photograph looked a little like him (speaking of which, why are the security cameras outside the UN in Vienna so inferior to those along a country road in upstate New York, 25 years ago, which zoom in and capture multiple angles of a single car accident? And how prevalent are these cameras that a master assassin could not find a blind spot along that road in which he could fake a car accident? ).

Another stupid argument is put forth by Jarvis, noting a rise in super-villain activity concurrent with the emergence of the various superheroes and the formation of the Avengers. In the first place, if he was right, that's merely correlation, NOT causality as Jarvis claims. Secondly, absolutely none of the villains have been in response to, or motivated by, the Avengers, except for Blonsky being deployed against the Hulk. And even if they WERE in response to the Avengers existing, there is no moral culpability for the Avengers, as one cannot be held responsible for the free actions of another, if one's own actions were legitimate and moral. If the cops start wearing bullet-proof vests, they are not to blame for criminals carrying bombs in response. Aside from moral responsibility, Jarvis never explains how placing the Avengers under government control would mitigate the supervillain escalation response.

Secondly, a cursory examination of the Marvel timeline shows the villains generally moving first. Hydra was up and running before Captain America. The Winter Solider was assassinating people before Captain America was thawed out. Well before any of the Avengers were trained or empowered, Hydra was dabbling with interplanetary portals, seeking alien power sources and messing with Inhumans. Before Tony Stark had any plans whatsoever for a combat suit, he was blowing off meetings with Killian, who had ideas for superpowers, and sexing up Maya Hansen, who had begun her own experiments that would contribute to the making of superpowered villains. His father ripped off a Russian whip-fetishist, and clashed with Henry Pym, preferring co-workers like Obediah Stane. Hundreds of years before any of this, Loki got started as a villain with his jealousy of his father's preferential treatment of his brother. The Avengers not only did NOT start the arms race, they were nearly late to the party!

And even if there were no problems with the government, and there was some substance to the escalation nonsense, we see that people have much better track records going against the government. All of Tony's efforts were achieved outside the system, as were Scott's, and all three Captain America movies feature him breaking orders to go off and do what he thinks is necessary. In the Thor films, Dr. Solveig working privately with Jane Foster comes up with scientific data that SHIELD feels compelled to steal. When he comes aboard the government program, it lets the cube loose and allows an invasion. When he goes private again, he solves the conjunction problem that seems beyond even the ken of Asgardian deities who directly deal with that stuff.

And speaking of crazy scientists, while there have been few to no superheroes who have gone bad or caused excessive damage or loss of life that we have clearly seen, the Marvel film universe is replete with scientists and inventors who are evil, crazy or enablers of evil and crazy people. Yet, while Tony is on a crusade in this movie to ensure the accountability of a double handful of individuals, almost all of whom are close personal friends he knows to be moral and responsible people, one of his first actions is to indiscriminately fund a whole class full of MIT students with no mention of oversight or control on the next Justin Hammer or Ivan Vanko or Cal Zabo or Darren Cross or Whitehall or Killian or Hansen or Schmidt or Zola or Strucker or what was the name of that guy who built Ultron again? There have been more evil scientists or technicians in the Marvel Universe than total Avengers, none of whom have been evil, but which category does Tony want to rein in, and for which one is he writing blank checks? Not to mention, exactly none of the super scientists on the good side aside from the Stark family themselves, have needed his money, such as Hank Pym or Peter Parker or Jane & Solveig or Fitz-Simmons.

Aside from the idiocy of the premise, the major problem was the obvious twist revelation concerning Bucky & the Starks, and Tony's overreaction. Also, for the guys who claim the side of law and order and denounce superheroes not being accountable, and he and Tachalla are the only Avengers who actually try to murder people for revenge. The movie is full of people getting mad at stupid things, like blaming Rhodes' injury on Sam. Rhodes called the shot and Jarvis took it. Is Sam responsible because he dodged? Rhodes is only suffering what he asked Jarvis to do to Sam! Except Sam only had pants and a backpack for protection, instead of Tony Stark's second-best armor.

But in spite of all those issues, I really enjoyed it, and thought it was easily the best movie I have ever seen with Spider-man, and the best movie with a major character role for Iron Man. The action was as good as in the last Captain America and the fighting was better choreographed than Age of Ultron. The dialogue and interplay between the heroes was fun, and the introduction of Spiderman and Black Panther to the MCU were pretty good, though neither gets much character development. The final credit scene suggests Spiderman will continue appearing in the good Marvel films as well. I'd kind of like to see that, instead of yet another reboot where Uncle Ben gets killed and Peter gets bit.