Spoilers Marvel Cinematic Universe spoiler-heavy speculation thread
- Thread starter bbjeg
- Start date
I'm just going to say this to start with: I don't think you can talk about Hydra without talking about Nazis. So, yeah, I'm Godwinning this thread to start with. Sorry.
Hydra. Not Hydra-SHIELD, Hydra. SHIELD is a separate organization that has been infiltrated by Hydra; they are not the same things, any more than MI-6 was the same thing as the KGB just because of Kim Philby.
Shockingly enough, fascist regimes do not particularly care if they are well-liked as long as they can count on the secret police and military power to keep the populous in line.
Eclipses 9/11? More like, eclipses the First World War. Remember, Hydra's plan was to kill the 20 million people most likely to rebel or lead a resistance movement. That's death on a scale nearly unimaginable; only about four or five wars have ever in human history exceeded such a death toll.
I take it for granted that Hydra's plan was two-fold: To use the Insight hellicarriers to take out the most important leadership targets in the U.S. during the first strike, and then to usurp control of SHIELD bases and assets throughout the planet in order to take out military resistance from the world's governments in conjunction from the hellicarriers.
It was the USB that Black Widow took from the Lumerian Star. The Lumerian Star was being used as a launch vessel for the satellites the Insight hellicarriers would link with to coordinate their initial attacks. SHIELD believed the data used to guide the hellicarriers would let them target genuine potential terrorists, but Hydra was using Zola's algorithm to target potential anti-Hydra resistance leaders and fighters instead. That's why Fury was very disturbed when he realized he couldn't access the data on the USB drive -- as Director of SHIELD, he should have been able to, and his being restricted from that data confirmed his suspicion that somebody was acting within SHIELD to usurp control of Project Insight for even more sinister ends.
No. Fury realizes that Project Insight has been compromised and must be delayed as a result of his inability to access the data on the USB drive Black Widow retrieved from the Lumerian Star. If the data that had been uploaded to those satellites had been what SHIELD and Fury had intended, he would have been able to access it. The fact that he wasn't told him that someone was using the Insight satellites for a purpose he had not approved, which confirmed his pre-existing suspicion that SHIELD had been infiltrated by someone.
Armin Zola is his name, not Zoloff. And Zola was not running Hydra. Rather, he was helping Hydra determine who to target. As far as we can tell from CA:TWS, Alexander Pierce was the head of Hydra.
They knew he wanted the delay because he suspected something was up. Better to kill him, usurp the directorship of SHIELD, and then make sure the hellicarriers launch on time. And just to be safe, they deployed their most effective assassin against him, the Winter Soldier; so far as we know, Nick Fury was the first person the Winter Soldier ever failed to assassinate.
I did find myself wondering if perhaps their goal was to set Pierce up as the U.S. President after assassinating President Ellis, the Cabinet, and the Congress, and perhaps framing the Insight hellicarrier attacks on someone else. But between their plan to kill 20 million people in the course of a single day, and then Agents of SHIELD showing Hydra laying siege to every SHIELD base on the planet, it seems most likely to me that Hydra simply meant to rule openly, as Hydra.
I do wonder if there were more Hydra uprisings we didn't see? Maybe they infiltrated and tried to take over U.S. and allied Armed Forces bases in addition to SHIELD. Maybe NORAD had its own Hydra uprising to fight? U.S. CENTCOM H.Q.? It would certainly have helped to neutralize any military response to the hellicarriers murdering the world's governments.
Not as intriguing as the idea that good people with benevolent goals can be seduced into using oppressive methods by fascists who corrupt our institutions from within.
Listen, Hydra are literally based on the Nazis. Even though Marvel Studios has depicted them as (somewhat unrealistically) abandoning anti-Semitism and racism, Hydra are still basically just fantastical fascists. And like it or not, mass-murdering fascists do exist in real-life, as a casual review of 20th and 21st century history will reveal. There's nothing implausible about it. Hell, if you want a look at how fascism can grow even within a nominally democratic society, just read the U.S. Department of Justice's report on the conduct of the government and Police Department of the City of Ferguson.
So while I don't expect a superhero movie to be a nuanced look at the nature of fascism, I also think it's absurd to pretend that it's completely implausible that someone could try to launch a fascist coup or establish a mass-murdering regime. Hell, just look up the other September 11th -- the one that put Pinochet in power in the Republic of Chile. He had the Chilean Armed Forces bomb the presidential palace, dissolved the Chilean Congress, turned their capital city's soccer stadium into a giant concentration camp, and killed thousands of people. Does that mean Augusto Pinochet was a "mustache-twirling comic book villain?"
It's already an allegory for the USA PATRIOT Act. And what, exactly, do you think expansionist fascists want, if not to take over the world? What exactly do you think is the goal of totalitarianism? I remind you again, Hydra are basically based on the Nazis. It's not like Hitler was trying to conquer Europe because he was bored.
There was nothing desperate about it. Those themes were integrated into the world of the Marvel superheroes very well.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier is essentially Captain America Does Seven Days in May. I think what you're asking for is a straight variation on Seven Days in May. Which is really not a reasonable thing to ask a Captain America movie to do, because it is a foundational conceit of the Marvel Studios films that they have to fit secondary genres into the conventions of the superheroic genre.
Remember, 20 million dead in one day. More dead in one day than in any but four or five wars in all of human history. And those 20 million are the ones most likely to cause the uproar, to lead the crowds, to form the crowds.
Yeah, that's a valid question. My speculation is that either Hydra planned to take out the non-Hydra SHIELD agents (as depicted in Agents of SHIELD's episode "Turn, Turn, Turn") and then use their control of SHIELD's infrastructure to defeat any military retaliation, or that Hydra was also infiltrating and usurping control of the major world militaries at the same time.
This is a film predicated on the idea that there is a 70-year-old cabal of spinoff Nazis who have successfully infiltrated the United States government and the most powerful international paramilitary organization on the planet at the highest levels, all without anyone detecting or exposing them prior to their attempt to kill 20 million people in a single day, and that the only man who can stop them is a scientifically enhanced 95-year-old man given super-strength with 1940s technology who then slept for 70 years without aging.
There is a point where you have to engage in some suspension of disbelief.
Well, remember that the SHIELD Hellicarrier in The Avengers has cloaking technology, and that SHIELD has access to all kinds of fantastical technologies that no one else does. It is frankly somewhat implausible to imagine that a conventional military force is guaranteed to be able to take out those hellicarriers -- particularly if Hydra is smart and has the very first shots take out the world's major military command-and-control centers first.
Sure, they'll retaliate. But if Hydra controls the Insight hellicarriers and has control of every SHIELD base (including SHIELD's massive capacity for electronic infiltration and surveillance, seen in The Avengers), then the world's major military powers are in serious trouble.
It's an allegory for the U.S.'s real-world use of targeted drone assassinations, which critics have pointed out have resulted in the deaths of many, many innocent people in nations such as Pakistan and Afghanistan. Yet it would seem that most "decent people" support these programs, in spite of the innocent children they tend to kill. People can be very irrational when they are afraid -- a fact Zola comments upon when he talks about creating a world so unstable that people will trade their freedom for security. And it is not that Zola expect people to willingly hand control over to Hydra after the Insight attacks -- it's that he's saying humanity has already given up huge amounts of its freedom to organizations like SHIELD, and that Hydra will usurp the powers SHIELD has been given but should not have been given in order to take over.
The problem is, you're comparing Hydra's takeover to the process of gradually subverting a democratic political culture into a fascist political culture ("Can we use this crisis to convince people to give up their freedoms?"), when you should compare it more to a fascist coup d'etat like Pinochet in Chile, or the junta in Argentina.
By your logic, the Chilean Air Force would have been unwilling to bomb the Palacio de la Moneda in broad daylight; the Chilean people would have rebelled upon seeing their National Stadium used as a concentration camp; and, of course, the German people who have rebelled at the Holocaust.
The unfortunate fact of the matter is that fascist regimes can often produce mass acquiescence to horrific human rights violations.
Your assertion would be reasonable if you were talking about a mass movement, where natural variation in human temperaments could be counted upon to produce "true believers" in a cause who nonetheless have different attitudes about how to achieve that cause. Hell, even the Nazi Party had a "moderate" wing before the Night of Long Knives led to them being purged/murdered.
But Hydra is not a mass movement -- it is a conspiracy that exists within a paramilitary organization and which has apparently infiltrated other governments, militaries, and corporations. As a result, its numbers are comparatively small, resulting in a more ideologically homogenous group than a mass movement would produce. And let's not forget the fact that Hydra has access to brainwashing technology that doesn't exist in reality.
Hydra. Not Hydra-SHIELD, Hydra. SHIELD is a separate organization that has been infiltrated by Hydra; they are not the same things, any more than MI-6 was the same thing as the KGB just because of Kim Philby.
Shockingly enough, fascist regimes do not particularly care if they are well-liked as long as they can count on the secret police and military power to keep the populous in line.
Eclipses 9/11? More like, eclipses the First World War. Remember, Hydra's plan was to kill the 20 million people most likely to rebel or lead a resistance movement. That's death on a scale nearly unimaginable; only about four or five wars have ever in human history exceeded such a death toll.
I take it for granted that Hydra's plan was two-fold: To use the Insight hellicarriers to take out the most important leadership targets in the U.S. during the first strike, and then to usurp control of SHIELD bases and assets throughout the planet in order to take out military resistance from the world's governments in conjunction from the hellicarriers.
It was the USB that Black Widow took from the Lumerian Star. The Lumerian Star was being used as a launch vessel for the satellites the Insight hellicarriers would link with to coordinate their initial attacks. SHIELD believed the data used to guide the hellicarriers would let them target genuine potential terrorists, but Hydra was using Zola's algorithm to target potential anti-Hydra resistance leaders and fighters instead. That's why Fury was very disturbed when he realized he couldn't access the data on the USB drive -- as Director of SHIELD, he should have been able to, and his being restricted from that data confirmed his suspicion that somebody was acting within SHIELD to usurp control of Project Insight for even more sinister ends.
No. Fury realizes that Project Insight has been compromised and must be delayed as a result of his inability to access the data on the USB drive Black Widow retrieved from the Lumerian Star. If the data that had been uploaded to those satellites had been what SHIELD and Fury had intended, he would have been able to access it. The fact that he wasn't told him that someone was using the Insight satellites for a purpose he had not approved, which confirmed his pre-existing suspicion that SHIELD had been infiltrated by someone.
Armin Zola is his name, not Zoloff. And Zola was not running Hydra. Rather, he was helping Hydra determine who to target. As far as we can tell from CA:TWS, Alexander Pierce was the head of Hydra.
They knew he wanted the delay because he suspected something was up. Better to kill him, usurp the directorship of SHIELD, and then make sure the hellicarriers launch on time. And just to be safe, they deployed their most effective assassin against him, the Winter Soldier; so far as we know, Nick Fury was the first person the Winter Soldier ever failed to assassinate.
I did find myself wondering if perhaps their goal was to set Pierce up as the U.S. President after assassinating President Ellis, the Cabinet, and the Congress, and perhaps framing the Insight hellicarrier attacks on someone else. But between their plan to kill 20 million people in the course of a single day, and then Agents of SHIELD showing Hydra laying siege to every SHIELD base on the planet, it seems most likely to me that Hydra simply meant to rule openly, as Hydra.
I do wonder if there were more Hydra uprisings we didn't see? Maybe they infiltrated and tried to take over U.S. and allied Armed Forces bases in addition to SHIELD. Maybe NORAD had its own Hydra uprising to fight? U.S. CENTCOM H.Q.? It would certainly have helped to neutralize any military response to the hellicarriers murdering the world's governments.
Not as intriguing as the idea that good people with benevolent goals can be seduced into using oppressive methods by fascists who corrupt our institutions from within.
Listen, Hydra are literally based on the Nazis. Even though Marvel Studios has depicted them as (somewhat unrealistically) abandoning anti-Semitism and racism, Hydra are still basically just fantastical fascists. And like it or not, mass-murdering fascists do exist in real-life, as a casual review of 20th and 21st century history will reveal. There's nothing implausible about it. Hell, if you want a look at how fascism can grow even within a nominally democratic society, just read the U.S. Department of Justice's report on the conduct of the government and Police Department of the City of Ferguson.
So while I don't expect a superhero movie to be a nuanced look at the nature of fascism, I also think it's absurd to pretend that it's completely implausible that someone could try to launch a fascist coup or establish a mass-murdering regime. Hell, just look up the other September 11th -- the one that put Pinochet in power in the Republic of Chile. He had the Chilean Armed Forces bomb the presidential palace, dissolved the Chilean Congress, turned their capital city's soccer stadium into a giant concentration camp, and killed thousands of people. Does that mean Augusto Pinochet was a "mustache-twirling comic book villain?"
It's already an allegory for the USA PATRIOT Act. And what, exactly, do you think expansionist fascists want, if not to take over the world? What exactly do you think is the goal of totalitarianism? I remind you again, Hydra are basically based on the Nazis. It's not like Hitler was trying to conquer Europe because he was bored.
There was nothing desperate about it. Those themes were integrated into the world of the Marvel superheroes very well.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier is essentially Captain America Does Seven Days in May. I think what you're asking for is a straight variation on Seven Days in May. Which is really not a reasonable thing to ask a Captain America movie to do, because it is a foundational conceit of the Marvel Studios films that they have to fit secondary genres into the conventions of the superheroic genre.
Remember, 20 million dead in one day. More dead in one day than in any but four or five wars in all of human history. And those 20 million are the ones most likely to cause the uproar, to lead the crowds, to form the crowds.
Yeah, that's a valid question. My speculation is that either Hydra planned to take out the non-Hydra SHIELD agents (as depicted in Agents of SHIELD's episode "Turn, Turn, Turn") and then use their control of SHIELD's infrastructure to defeat any military retaliation, or that Hydra was also infiltrating and usurping control of the major world militaries at the same time.
This is a film predicated on the idea that there is a 70-year-old cabal of spinoff Nazis who have successfully infiltrated the United States government and the most powerful international paramilitary organization on the planet at the highest levels, all without anyone detecting or exposing them prior to their attempt to kill 20 million people in a single day, and that the only man who can stop them is a scientifically enhanced 95-year-old man given super-strength with 1940s technology who then slept for 70 years without aging.
There is a point where you have to engage in some suspension of disbelief.
Well, remember that the SHIELD Hellicarrier in The Avengers has cloaking technology, and that SHIELD has access to all kinds of fantastical technologies that no one else does. It is frankly somewhat implausible to imagine that a conventional military force is guaranteed to be able to take out those hellicarriers -- particularly if Hydra is smart and has the very first shots take out the world's major military command-and-control centers first.
Sure, they'll retaliate. But if Hydra controls the Insight hellicarriers and has control of every SHIELD base (including SHIELD's massive capacity for electronic infiltration and surveillance, seen in The Avengers), then the world's major military powers are in serious trouble.
It's an allegory for the U.S.'s real-world use of targeted drone assassinations, which critics have pointed out have resulted in the deaths of many, many innocent people in nations such as Pakistan and Afghanistan. Yet it would seem that most "decent people" support these programs, in spite of the innocent children they tend to kill. People can be very irrational when they are afraid -- a fact Zola comments upon when he talks about creating a world so unstable that people will trade their freedom for security. And it is not that Zola expect people to willingly hand control over to Hydra after the Insight attacks -- it's that he's saying humanity has already given up huge amounts of its freedom to organizations like SHIELD, and that Hydra will usurp the powers SHIELD has been given but should not have been given in order to take over.
The problem is, you're comparing Hydra's takeover to the process of gradually subverting a democratic political culture into a fascist political culture ("Can we use this crisis to convince people to give up their freedoms?"), when you should compare it more to a fascist coup d'etat like Pinochet in Chile, or the junta in Argentina.
By your logic, the Chilean Air Force would have been unwilling to bomb the Palacio de la Moneda in broad daylight; the Chilean people would have rebelled upon seeing their National Stadium used as a concentration camp; and, of course, the German people who have rebelled at the Holocaust.
The unfortunate fact of the matter is that fascist regimes can often produce mass acquiescence to horrific human rights violations.
Your assertion would be reasonable if you were talking about a mass movement, where natural variation in human temperaments could be counted upon to produce "true believers" in a cause who nonetheless have different attitudes about how to achieve that cause. Hell, even the Nazi Party had a "moderate" wing before the Night of Long Knives led to them being purged/murdered.
But Hydra is not a mass movement -- it is a conspiracy that exists within a paramilitary organization and which has apparently infiltrated other governments, militaries, and corporations. As a result, its numbers are comparatively small, resulting in a more ideologically homogenous group than a mass movement would produce. And let's not forget the fact that Hydra has access to brainwashing technology that doesn't exist in reality.
Dang. That kind of explaining makes TWS even scarier than it already was. Thanks, OBAMA er I mean SCI.
This was probably discussed before, but regarding the HYDRA breakout:
Pierce was sending a message with his phone right after Widow took off her Coucilwoman disguise, was that the strong overriding signal to all HYDRA members like Garrett to attack and seize SHIELD assets? That seems to fit, but I know there was some discussion about the timing.
Pierce was sending a message with his phone right after Widow took off her Coucilwoman disguise, was that the strong overriding signal to all HYDRA members like Garrett to attack and seize SHIELD assets? That seems to fit, but I know there was some discussion about the timing.
Well here's the problem with that:
Day 1 evening: Fury shot and apparently killed at Cap's apartment
Day 2 daytime: Cap meets Pierce, branded traitor, escapes Triskelion, Cap and Widow evade STRIKE at mall
Day 2 evening: Cap and Widow meet Zola at Camp Lehigh in New Jersey, narrowly escape being killed
Day 3 daytime: Cap and Widow seek help from Falcon, force Sitwell to divulge Insight details, battle Winter Soldier on the highway, captured by STRIKE, Hill breaks them out
Day 3 evening: Hill takes Cap, Widow, and Falcon to Fury at secret dam base
Day 4 daytime: showdown at the Triskelion
Day 1 nighttime: after HYDRA signal goes out, Hand orders the Bus tractored to the Hub on suspicions that Coulson is HYDRA, Hand also orders attack on Garrett, Garrett regroups with Coulson's team, May tries to call Fury for Coulson but is informed that Fury is dead
Day 2 daytime: Coulson's team and Garrett arrive at the Hub on the Bus, Garrett is exposed as the Clairvoyant and HYDRA member, Coulson and Hand look at a situation map detailing S.H.I.E.L.D.-HYDRA conflicts
The timelines just don't match up. Fury was seemingly killed on the evening of day 1, and the helicarrier crisis happened midday on day 4. But Coulson's team got called by Fury on the afternoon of day 1, but that night, Hand had the Bus re-routed due to the HYDRA revelation.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier:
Day 1 morning and afternoon: Cap meets Falcon, deploys with Widow and STRIKE to Lemurian Star, successfully rescues people including Jasper Sitwell, Cap returns to Triskelion, sees Project: Insight, Fury tries to meet Hill but is attacked by HYDRA on D.C. streets
Day 1 evening: Fury shot and apparently killed at Cap's apartment
Day 2 daytime: Cap meets Pierce, branded traitor, escapes Triskelion, Cap and Widow evade STRIKE at mall
Day 2 evening: Cap and Widow meet Zola at Camp Lehigh in New Jersey, narrowly escape being killed
Day 3 daytime: Cap and Widow seek help from Falcon, force Sitwell to divulge Insight details, battle Winter Soldier on the highway, captured by STRIKE, Hill breaks them out
Day 3 evening: Hill takes Cap, Widow, and Falcon to Fury at secret dam base
Day 4 daytime: showdown at the Triskelion
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - "End of the Beginning" and "Turn, Turn, Turn"
Day 1 daytime: Coulson's team meets with Hill, Sitwell, Blake, Garrett, and Triplett at the Hub, fly to high skies to plan hunt for the Clairvoyant, Sitwell excuses himself to the Lemurian Star, everybody deploys to investigate suspects in Britain and eastern U.S., Deathlok attacks May and Blake in Georgia, everyone regroups at the Hub, everyone hunts down Deathlok to Florida, Ward kills the fake Clairvoyant, Coulson's team receives word that Fury has returned and is waiting at the Triskelion
Day 1 nighttime: after HYDRA signal goes out, Hand orders the Bus tractored to the Hub on suspicions that Coulson is HYDRA, Hand also orders attack on Garrett, Garrett regroups with Coulson's team, May tries to call Fury for Coulson but is informed that Fury is dead
Day 2 daytime: Coulson's team and Garrett arrive at the Hub on the Bus, Garrett is exposed as the Clairvoyant and HYDRA member, Coulson and Hand look at a situation map detailing S.H.I.E.L.D.-HYDRA conflicts
The timelines just don't match up. Fury was seemingly killed on the evening of day 1, and the helicarrier crisis happened midday on day 4. But Coulson's team got called by Fury on the afternoon of day 1, but that night, Hand had the Bus re-routed due to the HYDRA revelation.
Some great analyses of the movies here, but I think it boils down to HYDRA's MO is to infiltrate other organizations for its own purposes as long as it suits them.
Yep.
I read that long response to my email but still can't se any endgame to a successful deployment of the helicarriers and elimination of that many targets. It would do nothing to further HydraShield's cause. It seems less like a logical plan and more like film writers desperate to incorporate some themes into the villain plot of the story and still have it be a safe bet that teenagers who thought Avengers was "k-e-w-l" would eat up.
I believe that you mean *seceding from the Nazi party.
^^ Whether or not Hydra are Nazis from an in-universe perspective, Hydra are clearly just an example of the "A Nazi By Any Other Name" trope from a creative standpoint. They're a variation on the idea of Nazis.
Overthrowing the world's most powerful governments and militaries and leaving themselves the most powerful instrument of violence ever developed in the history of the MCU Earth, thereby allowing them to establish a fascist regime? How does this not further their cause? Worldwide totalitarianism IS their cause.
Listen. This is a Marvel Studios film. Obviously, the third act is going to end with something going "Ka-Boom." That's just the creative conceit of the kind of films Marvel are doing: They fit the secondary genre into the primary genre of the superheroic adventure.
You either accept that creative conceit or you don't. But it's absurd to be upset at a Captain America movie for being a Captain America movie. Just like it would be absurd to be upset that Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy didn't end with a shoot-out and an explosion: It's just not the kind of film they were doing.
Overthrowing the world's most powerful governments and militaries and leaving themselves the most powerful instrument of violence ever developed in the history of the MCU Earth, thereby allowing them to establish a fascist regime? How does this not further their cause? Worldwide totalitarianism IS their cause.
Listen. This is a Marvel Studios film. Obviously, the third act is going to end with something going "Ka-Boom." That's just the creative conceit of the kind of films Marvel are doing: They fit the secondary genre into the primary genre of the superheroic adventure.
You either accept that creative conceit or you don't. But it's absurd to be upset at a Captain America movie for being a Captain America movie. Just like it would be absurd to be upset that Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy didn't end with a shoot-out and an explosion: It's just not the kind of film they were doing.
I'd be down for that, if the writing were there. The writing on most Marvel animated output sucks ass so they would need to get it together if they are going to do official MCU stories.
My only condition other than better writing-- any movie characters need to be voiced by the movie actor.
I'm not too bothered about that. As long as they didn't sound jarringly different I could live with it. Some voice actors are pretty skilled mimics too.
I think they could, but I'd rather they didn't, or at least did it in a way that respects the status quo and leaves the live action MCU X-Men free.
If the animated stuff adheres to film continuity I don't want Wolverine in the animated avengers and missing from the movies. A crossover between different Earth's with some kind of portal (the new FF movie seems to have one) - fine. A world full of mutants never mentioned in the movies ? No...
As long as the animated stuff has high quality writing (like avengers EMH), and not horrible writing like the current stuff, i'm on board. I don't care if they use the movie actor's voices or not. I think doing Direct to DVD stuff would be the best route. That way they wouldn't be constrained to a super young demographic like Avengers Assemble and Ultimate Spider-Man are, and they'd probably have different people working on the projects, too.
Given the way they're moving forward on AoS, it seems they're committed to the idea of substituting inhumans in place of mutants.
Of course that doesn't in and of itself prevent them from using the animated format to re-imagine X-Men characters as a new inhuman faction, separate and secluded from whatever else is going on in the movies and TV shows.
Fantastic Four are somewhat easier to integrate if you narrow their scope to deal mostly with extra-dimensional hijinks and not so much anything Avengers centric and just out of the public eye in general.
I'm happy with the different characters remaining in their separate universes. I would be even happier if we could get FF and SM movies of the same quality as the MCU and X-Men movies.