16 Problems Nobody Wants To Admit About Captain America: Civil War

There are three events that matter more than anything in Civil War: the death of Goliath, the death of Captain America, and Spider-Man publicly revealing his secret identity. They are the flash-points that the narrative depends upon, and all have to be dealt with perfectly for Civil War to work (or replaced satisfyingly at least).

The deaths are fairly easy to set up and execute, but the Spider-Man moment poses its own problems thanks to the circumstances of his gesture. By the time he unmasks in front of the world's media at Tony Stark's behest, he has to be a recognisable figure for the decision to actually matter: he has to have gone through a lot as Spider-Man and Peter Parker for his "coming out" to actually have high stakes.

But in the MCU, the Spider-Man who will remove his mask will be five minutes old. He won't yet have an origin, he won't yet have stakes to worry about. He'll just be a kid who will then have to deal with his revelation in his own movie series, without having a secret identity at all (robbing the character of a key element).

Marvel should have brought back Toby Maguire and have him unmask, before handing over the Spider-reins to Asa Butterfield for the rebooted franchise. That offers stakes, gravitas and a massive fan-pop Marvel simply won't get now.