I think you’re dead on with all your points, concerns and criticisms of the MCU. Civil War was a shitty crossover, like most crossovers, and I abhore the government crackdown on super-powered/”gifted” trope. We’ve seen it in fucking Smallville for Darkseid’s sake. Most importantly, Civil War makes no sense within the construct of the MCU as it stands. Nobody Marvel has introduced so far has a secret identity (do they?); they all work for SHIELD and are government agents. This is the Ultimates, not the Avengers. They are already kind of registered with the government.

And so, Civil War (if it’s done in any sort of capacity) will certainly be done in the inverse: in the wake of SHIELD’s destruction, that has given the Avengers autonomy, and the result is Ultron. The public’s justifiably pissed/scared/upset, and following Tony Stark’s massive mistake with Ultron, Steve Rogers sees the government and Tony as the problem. From what he’s seen since coming out of the ice, he’s not wrong, and his opinion will fracture the team.

I’m mostly concerned with what this will do to Tony’s character, as you said, but it kind of makes sense that if he blames himself for Ultron, that he’ll be the one who wants registration. In the comics, it smacked of egotism, power and basically Norman Osborn. In the movies, perhaps they can sell it as Stark punishing himself, constricting himself, preventing himself from making any more mistakes…leading him to make another one by not trusting his fellow heroes to help through his grief/shame/pity party. It’s obvious through their overall chummery and the fact that Bruce Banner is more than familiar with Tony’s feelings that he’d stand by his pal Tony on this one.

Then Cap and Tony will have a tiff, and it’ll go to blows, Cap will prove he’s right, because Cap is ALWAYS right, and hopefully that’s pretty much the end of it. Honestly, that’d be fairly compelling, and gives these characters a lot to wrestle with, and another feud would be fuel for another team-building exercise like in Avengers, when Thanos/Kang/whomever shows up to rally them all together again. BUT, if it’s not, and it’s an entire manipulative movie dedicated to heroes fighting each other, that’s stupid and insensitive to the heroes we grew up with. WHAT KIND OF MESSAGE IS THIS TO CHILDREN?! Beat up your buddies? Betray your friends? Gulp, kill them? If this leads to Cap’s death, they will have done a massive injustice, rather than simply adapting Ed Brubaker’s Death of Captain America storyline.

But, there are certainly evidence/rumors that it’s more than that. There’s the fact that Marvel and Sony are in negotiations to share Spider-Man (coinciding with the Civil War news); normally, that would be worth about 13 minutes of pretending to websling around one’s apartment in your Spidey underoos, but under the hospices of Civil War, it makes me feel dirty. I hated that Spider-Man shed his secret identity, and hated even more that Tony Stark tricked him into it/used him to promote a cause. It also, again, would feel disjointed and out of nowhere if Spider-Man was brought into the fold all of a sudden in Civil War. Hey, this guy’s been a thing, and what, his name is Peter Parker? What a mess. I’m thinking the timing on this was just unfortunate, and that even if Sony and Marvel SOMEHOW came to an agreement on sharing webhead, that it wouldn’t come into play for awhile yet.

The more concerning factoid is that there’s been chatter that Avengers 2 introduces a new team in the end credits sequence: Cap, Falcon, War Machine, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Black Widow and probably Vision. This indicates a much longer falling out, with Hulk, Tony, Wasp/Ant-Man (?) and Hawkeye on the other side, which sounds convoluted (and comicbook-y), and inevitably leading to the massive blockbuster, West Coast Avengers. 😉

Plus, as we’ve discussed and agreed on multiple times in the past: Marvel has struggled to develop interesting and dynamic villains. Outside of Loki, the best villain in the MCU has probably been Bill Paxton’s Clairvoyant/Agent Garrett, and he was on a few episodes of their low-rated TV show. Or Dr. Zola, and he’s been in like 3 scenes in two Captain America movies. This trend, unfortunately, might be why they settled on this (potentially misguided) solution: we can’t make good villains, but we’re incredible at creating heroes. Why not make them antiheroes, or choose America to figure out who the villain is? America loved Walter White, after all. I shudder at this entire paragraph, but if Civil War is what Marvel’s set on for Captain America 3, this logic follows.

But if the new Avengers lineup is simply a change in the status quo (and a nod to the ever-shifting Avengers rosters in the comics), to allow RDJ to slowly exit the picture, I’m onboard, with of course, the added caveat that a new Avengers team without Captain Marvel or Black Panther is a crock. I’d almost guarantee that those would be the two that will find themselves filling the Quicksilver/Scarlet Witch shoes in Avengers 3, leading into their own solo movies. Yes, it’s taking longer than it should, and DC/WB beat them to the punch with Wonder Woman, and all the reasons you said about Feige’s plan are valid, but I’m still certain that it will happen. If Marvel pulled a WB and announced their slate through 2020, I think many of your concerns/complaints about female heroes and minorities would be momentarily assuaged. Of course, if not, then they have some ‘splaining to do, and it’s easy to ponder if the Civil War news is the chink in Iron Man’s Mark 146 armor that causes Marvel’s cinematic universe to implode.
Even so, who knows when we’ll learn the rest of Phase 3, which seems more and more like a sequel showdown. Marvel won’t play WB’s game (at least not the same way; and it doesn’t need to, yet), and for now, we’ll have to settle with Agent Carter, the incomparable badassness of Melinda May, perhaps Elektra on Daredevil and Netflix’s forthcoming Jessica Jones show, and brush aside that of the three notable characters Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has killed, two of them were lesbian women in the comic books (Victoria Hand, Izzy Hartley).

However, I should have mentioned and given credit to Marvel for Agent Carter, a show I’m very excited for, and she is indeed a great character. Though I would still point out how much less investment they have to put into a 15-minute short and a short-order series than a full-length action blockbuster. Agent Carter is a great step, it’s just not enough for me to amend my stance that Marvel is showing that developing properties with women or minorities is simply not a priority for the company. Especially not when every day brings a new rumor of another middle-aged white guy in the running for Doctor Strange.