Calm down with the 'Civil War' talk already, will you?

               
OK, so the news that Robert Downey, Jr. is set to play a big role in Captain America 3 got everybody running 90 miles an hour with the crazy talk.  With 30 seconds of the announcement, there were a million pieces being filed with the title "Civil War' in the title.  By the end of the day it seemed that a lot of people had settled on it being a done deal that Cap 3 would either set off or be totally about story based on the 'Civil War' Marvel series from about ten years ago.  You would think that there was an official studio announcement that yes, the subtitle of Cap 3 would be Civil War and that the story would be based on it.  But I sure as heck didn't see that anywhere.  Remember folks, until you get an official studio release anything you hear is a RUMOR and nothing else.  'Sources close to the studio' could be anyone from a top executive to the guy who wrote the piece.  Some of these websites do talk to people, but it's more often than not it's a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy.  They don't have Joss Whedon or Kevin Fiege answering their phone calls.  A lot of these stories are people projecting their desires onto anecdotal evidence and creating a narrative.  And these sites are wrong more than they're right.  Now, they very well could be doing a Civil War-type story but I doubt it.  Cap 3 comes out in 2016 and there are way too many things that would have to be set up in order to make it plausible.  Here's my short list:

• Need more people - Right now, we have the six Avengers (Cap, Stark, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Hulk, and Thor) and we're getting Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, and the Vision in the Avengers: Age of Ultron movie. And you can throw in War Machine/Iron Patriot and Falcon.  So that's eleven people. A Civil War story is going to need more people in order for the factions to have any weight to them.  Now there will be more available as the Netflix projects drop, but for a movie coming out in 2016 they don't have a whole lot of time to finish shooting.  

• A place to fit in - Marvel is building towards a big throwdown with Thanos for Avengers 3 in 2018.  Everything they've done has pointed that way.  How do you fit a Civil War story in there, deal with the fallout, and then get back to the Thanos story?  And when is Cap going to fit in time to find Bucky, which is what he was setting out to do at the end of Winter Soldier?  Assuming that he hasn't succeeded on that mission by the time Ultron comes out, that still has to be resolved doesn't it?  2015's slate of films is already set with Ultron and Ant-Man.  Yes, you could use season three of Agents of Shield as your runway, I guess.

• Spider Man? - Spidey is a huge part of Civil War in the comics.  He is the first to comply with the registration act and unmask himself, then goes to work for the establishment side before having a change of heart.  As you know, Marvel doesn't have movie rights to Spider-Man so unless the rumors are true about a sharing agreement being worked out there is no Spider-Man for the film.  Now you could use a character they do have to play that role in the story if need be, but that would kinda suck.

Of course what is very likely to happen is that the movie has the subtitle 'Civil War' and have an entirely different story.  That is, after all, what they did with Winter Soldier and are doing with Age of Ultron.  We'll see folks.  Until then, don't jump to any conclusions.