As I see it, a helicarrier is a pretty big target. Would they truly be that valuable? Plus, the Project Insight helicarriers seemed to be experimental/prototype/unprecedented ships. Previously existing helicarriers must not be as powerful.
Agents of SHIELD. Season 1 Discussion Thread
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I think this discussion is running into two underlying issues:
1. I think one of the basic problems with the films' and show's depiction of Hydra is that we don't really get a sense of their political agenda. We know that, like a certain genetically-enhanced mouse, they want to Try To Take Over The World -- but like with the Brain, we have no real idea what they'd do with it, what the World According to Hydra would look like, except insofar as we get this vague sense of their being fascist due to the presence of pseudo-fascist iconography and their origins within the Nazi Party.
This is similar to the problem The Dark Knight Rises had with the Bane-controlled League of Shadows. We get some of the iconography of the extreme left, of communist groups, and some vaguely communist-lie rhetoric, but we don't get a real sense of what the World According to Bane would look like.
In both instances, we have the producers essentially wanting to have as their antagonists an organization that is motivated by an extremist ideology (to lend moral gravity to the conflict with the heroes), yet the producers want to avoid actually telling us what that extremist ideology is. So the end result is that the villains seem somehow flat, somehow two-dimensional, because we're left not really knowing what they believe in. We get only a generic sense of what iconography their images were derived from -- Hydra with generic pseudo-fascist iconography, the League of Shadows with generic pseudo-communist iconography.
2. I for one find it highly implausible that an organization that literally grew out of the Nazi Party could possibly not be fundamentally racist in nature. Fascist movements are essentially based on the psychology of tribalism; they fetishize the "in group" and try to create a sense of both superiority to, and beseigment from, whatever "out groups" the in-group is set against. In a fascist worldview, it is not that freedom is bad -- it is that freedom only rightly belongs to the in-group, and that the out-group represents a threat to the in-group's resources which should only be tolerated if that out-group is subservient to and dominated by the in-group; out-groups must become "beings for others," to borrow Paulo Freire's term. That's why fascist movements lend themselves so well to racism, heterosexism, and religious prejudice.
With Hydra, we don't get a sense of who their ideal "in-group" is -- but seeing persons of color join an organization founded by Nazis just stretches plausibility. It makes no sense that a Nazi organization could just abandon the central tenant of Nazism, and it makes even less sense to imagine a fascist or pseudo-fascist organization that isn't organized around the tribalist mentality that breeds racism and bigotry.
I really like the idea of Hydra as a long-simmering fascist movement hiding just under the surface of society. But I think the idea of "equal-opportunity fascists" and the lack of detail about what Hydra really wants (like the lack of detail about what the League of Shadows really wanted) hurts the show -- and in many ways hurts Agents of SHIELD more than it did Captain America: The Winter Soldier, since the film could concentrate on one Hydra mission and not have to deal with them as ongoing characters.
An arc reactor, several arc reactors are self-contained inexhaustible(????) fuel source, the size (sizes) of a shoe box, to a camper van.... Unless that sucker was nuclear, the USS Kittyhawk (Decommissioned in 2009) has a 4 million gallon fuel capacity... so you have to wonder what they were doing with all that extra unused space, more missiles, or more soldiers?
A disco? I mean why not, they stuck a bar on a plane that also has a flying classic sports car in the back. SHIELD is nuts.
You've made me recast West Side Story in my head, with Hydra vs. S.H.E.I.L.D. goons.
I kept meaning to mention that, and kept forgetting. I'm sure we haven't seen the last of helicarriers on screen. Though there wouldn't be anything wrong if they decided to keep them out the movies for the next year or three, and then have a big surprise helicarrier reappearance in some future movie.
As for where they are right now, I suspect Shield agents still control them. Though I don't think the remaining Shield heirarchy would be terribly opposed to letting Talbot and the US govt store them someplace safe until everyone could be certain that the helicarrier crews were free of Hydra agents.
Or maybe Tony will buy his own personal helicarrier, slightly used, and it can replace Avengers Tower as their base of operations.
But even if Shield is temporarily out of commission, if you've got a helicarrier sitting around, you're not going to mothball it forever. It's going to take flight again sooner or later.
I guess it's similar to the Enterprise (Galaxy class version), i.e. room for labs, engineering workshops and its main purpose.. carrying planes (hence the name). They are more like mobile command centers such as real life aircraft carriers so i guess space is still a premium commodity on such a ship.
However i guess they are all inoperable currently because such a huge ship needs a big support network and deep pockets neither of which Shield can afford currently and Hydra is still trying to take over Shield.
The government may try to get ahold of one or more so best scenario is that Shield may have some secret bases where to store these things but then given Hydra the locations may be known to them so the most safest way is to cripple them so they can't fly and can maybe be restored to nomal condition with modest means.
Intervention before Enforcement, except after C.
Arc reactors don't run forever, Tony's chest pieces constantly had to be refueled and he even states the Stark/Avengers tower unit will run the building one 1 year before it needs to be refueled.
Whatever power plant the Helicarriers use, it's more conventional, even if there are seprate generators for the turbines/repulsors.
Whatever power plant the Helicarriers use, it's more conventional, even if there are seprate generators for the turbines/repulsors.
Even if it did how do you refuel the jets, the entire reason for the carrier or feed the agents/Hydra still manning her. You don't have to find the cloaked carrier just her logistics trains.
With Maria Hill and Tony Stark in the leads.
Um. Are there any Marvel characters named Riff and Bernardo?
The bar, I get. These agents get shot at or something or other on a daily basis. If they want a drink when the day is through, they deserve it. The car is just paying homage to the comics.
Besides, what should a flying car look like? It's not like it could blend back in after being seen.
Why a disco?
As stated in the movie, the goal is essentially a totalitarian peace. They want a world where there are no wars or violence simply because no one has the freedom to do anything. They don't trust people because people are dumb, panicky dangerous animals.
The "in group" is HYDRA. They trust HYDRA and distrust everyone else. It's probably better to think of HYDRA as Nazi-allied rather than from the Nazi Party. While it was certainly created by Schmidt, he eventually rejected even Hitler. It also recruited scientists outside the Nazi Party, like a Swiss scientist by the name of Armin Zola who did more to shape HYDRA as a part of SHIELD than anyone else. His goal always seemed to be science uber alles, not race.
Hitler gave them the resources they needed to do their experiments, but the man in charge always seemed to have his own agenda as well and saw himself better than Hitler. It was this influence that led them to continue to develop. It's like those who wonder if Nazi Germany could have been able to fight better had they not diverted resources to the final solution or if they had not invaded the east. To me, that question is oxymoronic. Hitler's ideology was tied to the final solution and the subjugation of the Slavic peoples. Had he not done those two things, he wouldn't have done anything. However, HYDRA is along that line of thinking. For people who view power as the ends in itself, the ends of the Nazi party are needless distractions that weaken that end. To make a long post short, I don't find it implausible, as you seem to say, just something that was an alternate history that you have to think about a bit to reach.
I've not read all the replies about this episode, so I'm sure this has been mentioned before.
I liked the line about Barton, it was small, and probably something along the lines of "Get Barton back." I liked it because it implied he was out on a mission and presumably that's why he wasn't around to The Winter Soldier.
I liked the line about Barton, it was small, and probably something along the lines of "Get Barton back." I liked it because it implied he was out on a mission and presumably that's why he wasn't around to The Winter Soldier.
Actually, I completely missed that.
Probably not much, but often when in tough situation you wish Person X was there, thinking they could make a difference.
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