Also, I keep trying to tell people that Tony Stark’s position is actually sensible, but most people don’t seem to get it. I do think it’s sort of an interesting phenomenon, though: Iron Man was everyone’s favorite MCU character, but when Civil War rolled around, a lot of those same fans went “Team Cap” before the film even came out. Besides, seeing as Avengers was put together by S.H.I.E.L.D. in the first film, weren’t they kind of under government control anyway? That part kind of gets me.

I’ll add an extra pro to the film you didn’t mention: Hawkeye! This was the film where Clint finally started acting like the character we know from the comics. I feel like Avengers 1 and 2 were maybe too concerned about Hawkeye sounding like Iron Man (as Clint was the wisecracking voice of dissent in the early Avengers comics, a role Tony fills in the films), which is probably partly why they made him a mind-controlled pawn of Loki’s in the first and focused more on his personal life in the second. But he was just great here– maybe Tony switching to a role of authority made the writers feel like they could give Clint his spark, or maybe the writers and directors figured out how to write Clint in a way that didn’t feel like he overlapped too much with Tony. Not sure which, but I liked the results.