Spoilers The Falcon and Winter Soldier discussion

Especially a species named Homo Superior.

 

That makes absolutely no sense.

HYDRA used the payments to Batroc as part of their attempt to hide the real reason Fury was assassinated, yes. But the Lumerian Star was a HYDRA asset, disguised as a SHIELD boat and launching the Insight targeting satellites. The only reason HYDRA attempted to assassinate Fury, thus necessitating the cover up you're talking about, is that he caught wind that something was suspect in the Insight program. You don't aim Fury at the Lumerian Star if you want to frame him, because that's where you are doing nefarious deeds. If Fury had no idea what was going on, why would HYDRA launch a plan to frame Fury that required them to first put him on their trail? Or that might expose their secret plan to additional scrutiny in the final stages? Why not just, you know, keep their program hidden and let it launch as normal?

Fury was already suspicious that SHIELD had been compromised. He used Batroc as a decoy so that he could have Widow access the Lumerian Star computer, which led him to files that told him he himself had encrypted them, even though he knew he hadn't, which confirmed his theory. He goes to Pierce to try and stop the Insight launch, inadvertently revealing to Pierce that he was on to part of HYDRA's plan and resulting in his meeting with the Winter Soldier. Pierce simply made use of Fury's trail in an attempt to hide the fact that HYDRA "murdered" Nick to cover up their nefarious plans with Insight.

The entire film is a back and forth between Fury and Pierce over who is actually a step ahead the entire time. Fury doesn't realize who he's playing poker against at first, but the whole thing is basically Fury drawing into HYDRA's otherwise winning hand. Pierce develops Insight. Fury figures out something is rotten in Insight and makes his play with Batroc. Pierce responds by raising the stakes with his super soldier. So Fury calls by putting his own on the table.

But it's true, in terms of Batroc, it doesn't actually matter. He goes where the money is and doesn't care. It's only relevant because it's Sharon hiring him, and our choices are "she's up to shady and nefarious things because she's evil", or "he's the go to patsy when you need a merc to open a door you can't be seen to walk through."

 

Hydra hiring Batroc makes perfect sense (as much as the ridiculous plot elements of three helicopter years being able to control the world); in that Pierce would need some form of explanation / deniability as to why the three helicarriers wiped out 2 million people; and why SHIELDs powers would need to be expanded after that incident to protect the world.

So yeah Fury was going to be the fall guy no matter how it went. And Pierce new that Fury would send in a team - and download some data from the Lemurian Star; but if you recall Fury couldn't access that data when he tried because the Zola AI had already encrypted it and protected it so that no person in SHIELD Could look at it.

The reason?

 

The weren't that connected because the shows were made by people not involved in the movies, and over time the two groups seemed to be communicating less and less.
The new shows are very strongly connected to the movies because they are made by the same people making the movies, so they know exactly what's planned, since they're the ones making the plans.

 

Exactly.

Things change.

Three years from now, no one has the same job and every policy has been reversed.

 

Yeah, X-Men really should go that deep but it never does. It keeps going for the "Poor oppressed minorities" thing when it should bother showing the other side as well with "And what are normal humans supposed to do when a new race of superbeings who don't feel Human laws apply to them emerge?"

 

The shows are at the same level as the movies, it won't change.

 

It won't change for the next year.

But what about the next 5 years?

 

SHIELD's powers being expanded? There is no more government, anywhere, to stop them. No more media to shout them down. No resistance of any kind that matters. He would LITERALLY have a gun to the head of every person in the world. What on earth does he need a fall guy for? And, just out of curiosity, how do you blame a guy you assassinated days before for the murders your flying death machines committed well after the fact?

Pierce didn't need SHIELD's powers expanded at all. He had ALREADY gotten them expanded when Insight was approved. He convinced the very people who would most oppose his plans to design and build it for him. Launching them isn't the beginning of his scheme, it's the endgame, the ultimate victory.

Pierce needs no deniability once Insight launches. He needs no fall guy. HYDRA need no longer hide at all. At that point he has taken over the world. Optics no longer matter, and there is nothing anybody can do to stop him because he can kill them from anywhere in the world at a moment's notice and has a future predicting super algorithm.

Fundamentally, your version of the movie requires HYDRA to have beaten themselves by being stupid. The only reason Steve gets put onto the case is because of Fury, and in your take Fury only becomes aware of problems because HYDRA explicitly leads him to the source. I mean, yours is more ironically humorous. "Damn, we'd have taken over the world if only we hadn't tried to blame that one guy for it and had just done it already!" But I'm sorry, the movie just doesn't support that reading at all to my mind. Fury's mistrust of almost everybody is thematically revisited time and again in the film as his kind of superpower. His scheming and compartmentalization of material is explicitly called out, as is the fact that the mission he describes to people is often not actually the mission that he needs done.

 

Hydra's whole plan and Zola's whole monologue states that Hydra has set up the world so that people will willingly give up their freedom. They're not going to destroy the government and throw the world into anarchy. They're going to stage a large false flag attack; and as a result SHIELD gain the power to monitor everything worldwide; and anytime some group rises to fight them, they'll be branded as terrorists and taken out.

Look the whole plot of the movie is ridiculous in that you have to accept that three helicarriers can monitor and control the whole world and that no military force can take them out.

But the whole point of the plan was to do something that would finally convince the world that they needed to effectively hand over their freedoms because hydro found that if you just try to take people's freedom, they resist.

Yes Fury noticed what was going on and tried to take steps to prevent it; but the whole thing with Batroc was engineered by Hydra from the start, to make fury the fall guy for the initial incident that sparks people's willingness to surrender their freedom for their safety.

That's my take on the setup. But again the whole plot is absolutely ridiculous if you look at it and any sort of logical way, because no I don't think that even after a major attack like that people worldwide are going to unite and want some sort of world government with an agency to "keep World Peace" by whatever means necessary. But that's exactly what Hydra expected to accomplish with the false flag attack going forward had it occurred.

 

B Positive, is a new Chuck Lorrie (2 and a Half Men, Big Bang Theory) sitcom, about a whacky lady who decides to donate a kidney to an old friend from High School that she barely knows.

Two characters from this show, getting kidney dialysis together, he big black guy, and the weedy white guy (Thomas Middleditch from Silicon Valley) claim that their platonic friendship duo name is "Falcon and Winter Soldier".

 

Marvel put like a 15 second commercial of Bucky's arm coming off and back on.

It reminded me of growing up watching this:

"I can put my arm back on. You can't. So play safe."

 

Well, that's nostalgic.

 

They made a CGI version of that later on...it stunk compared to how freaky this version was.

 

It's weird, I remember the live action one, but I remember it with the voice over from the CG one.



I wonder if Mainframe/Rainmaker did the animation for this.

 

By who???

But you'll still never convince me that they're not canon.

 

You do remember that Earth blew up moments before Thanos arrived for Infinity War?

 

Good question, because forgiving Zemo is sweeping the fact he is a mass murderer under the carpet. Then again, over the years, i've heard some astoundingly misguided arguments defending the actions of various Marvel characters before (some "understanding" and/or seeing nothing wrong with Thanos' rubber room-worthy theories / the snap, Stark and Ultron, etc.), so if there are fans forgiving Zemo, its just par for the course with some..

 

Well, some forgave Dick Cheney.

 

No one ever bothers pointing out the flaws in any of the Jokers' nihilistic rants, and think he's always right too.

These things just happen.