Okay, so lemme start off by saying that I'm far from a comic book geek. In fact, I probably fall somewhere short of comic book casual. Basically, I don't read 'em. I never have. The only thing "Silver Age" or "Golden Age" mean to me, is that somebody once told me Silver Age comics tended to be ridiculous even by comic book standards. In short, I didn't know exactly what sort of conflict to expect in Civil War. I figured there'd be... well, some variation on some kind of actual civil war. Y'know. Drones, politics, some very fundamental and serious examinations of the importance of checks and regulations on the use of exceptional power vs... well, the individual liberties of government bureaus, I guess, or whatever the heck the other side's priorities are.
What I got just seemed kind of like an excuse plot to get a couple of superheroes beefin' at each other, which was relatively underwhelming, in that light. Now, certain war-like aspects certainly did exist: Snap decisions based on half-assed intel that end with Americans blowing up a lots of foreign civilians and infrastructure, reckless attempts at assassination without trial in the name of protecting our fundamental freedoms against terrorist attack, the U.N. not really doing anything about anything... that kinda stuff. But that's just general incompetence, not actual war, per se.
And then there's the part where everything comes off as contrived. Bear with me here: why's Cap start off with being such a dumbass about the Accords? I get that he has an issue with giving the U.N. a blank check to tell him whom to blow up or not to blow up, but how does it never manage to hit him that it's more bullshit that the US has a group of operatives who regularly violate international borders to carry out extrajudicial interventions, with no legal authority or oversight whatsoever, (but often with US government assistance and dispensation), and wreck everything nearby on a goddamn whim? Only an American could actually feel entitled to that kind of power. Sure, Putin isn't shy about that sort of thing - but at least he doesn't pretend that he actually has a fundamental right to.
Granted, he's the Captain of 'em, but isn't he just supposed to represent all the good things about America? Throwing in that sense of exceptionalism is a dangerous move. Nobody wants to see him turn into a fat, ignorant racist with a red baseball cap and a penchant for raving about walls and Muslims. That'd make for a real shitty bunch of movies.
Anyway. Villain Plot Step 1: Get the U.N. to find Barnes. Pretty asspulled how this happened so quickly, but fair enough. He could just as well have been prepared to wait. It wouldn't necessarily affect his plan if this had taken longer, except insofar as this would give everybody more time to gather evidence about the bombing beyond a shitty half-second shot of grainy video.
Step 2: Intercept interrogation of Barnes. Mmmmaayyyybe. It'd be damn hard to be sure of where they'd bring him in the first place, and of exactly what psychiatrist they'd bring in, and that nobody would recognize that individual - but, put that down to preparation and a little luck. It'd be impossible to be confident that Barnes gets brought in alive in the first place, though, since that relied on the Captain going rogue (fairly predictable), having excellent top-tier intel (much less predictable), and actually succeeding at fending off the task force (not really predictable at all). But so far, fairly acceptable.
Step 3: Rely on Cap and Bucky successfully making it to the silo, (not good odds), Stark finding out their destination, (not bad odds), and deciding to go after them alone to help out (really shitty odds). In the super unlikely event that this actually pans out, he then needs Tony to lose it and absolutely chimp out after watching the video, which also wasn't guaranteed to pan out at all.
