No Mutants Allowed

The big conflict of the plot is that the Libertarian douche that is funding their paramilitary organization has a crisis of conscience and decides to make his private army be regulated by international bodies because they just keep killing people and that the friend of a high profile member of the team has to deal with consequences for his crimes.

Pretty weird summary. Bucky was basically mind raped and had literally no agency

Same thing with the fact that they made a mustache twirling cartoon millitary industrial complex bad guy from a prior movie the figurehead for the regulation to indicate that the US puppeteering the Avengers might not be totally clean

I mean obviously the Avengers were never going to be able to he independent NGO for long but I thought the division/conflict is probably one of the best executed plots in the MCU despite the film being ugly to look at and kinda low stakes by comparison.

Yet the previous Captain America movie was about Cap America opposing Shield becoming a world police who can execute people with no oversight and having too much power.

You say Independent NGO, I say Privately funded paramilitar organization serving the interests of a person who was proud of privatizing world peace. I mean, these movies are kinda hilarious in how they try to have themes but absolutely no communication between writers.

I'd argue there's a difference between what the Avengers were doing and what Hydra was planning tho. The Avengers were reacting to very active paramilitary terrorist cells with world crippling weapons, HYDRA was planning to create a shaped society by gunpoint

Did you skip Iron Man 3 and Ultron? Both of those movies are entirely about how Tony changes heel to something way more big picture and responsible, hence why he's the one supporting the accords

Yes, and then he becomes the de facto bad guy in Civil War for that change, while in Ultron he mostly gets justified and vindicated by the narrative and the other characters for being reckless. I mean, they even play him being angry at a guy killing his mom as his "crossing the line" moment where he needs to be put down violently.

I didn't think he was played as the bad guy at all. Both sides are right for different reasons. Tony's right because on paper the Avengers are a reckless and dangerous idea, and it's the difference between negotiated surrender versus unconditional surrender later on.

Caps right cause the Avengers in reality are good people with good intentions, and signing papers wouldn't have stopped the Lagos incident and if they followed the accords in the OG avengers movie, NYC would have got nuked.

Come on dude, the movie is called Captain America. The narrative follows him, the only motive that is presented as compromised is the accords while Captain America is presented as the correct one, he is the one that has the villanous breakdown, Black Panther even sides with Captain America at the end.