They made a point at the AV Club and I think it was a good one: that having Hydra secretly in control takes away from a lot of moral ambiguity. “See,” as they said, “the government isn’t that bad. They’ve been lead astray.”
I don’t think it was that good a point. They were led astray by Hydra, but they could just as easily have been led astray by good intentions. After all, in the movie, a lot of people went right along with everything Hydra was doing without ever questioning it.
She was on the phone when Steve spoke to her. She shrugged apologetically and said something about her aunt having insomnia. It was later in the evening.
Is President Ellis mentioned elsewhere in the Marvel movies, or the comics? I saw he was targeted (at the Capitol, not the White House) for the Insight guns.
I imagined that Hawkeye was on assignment of his own and then had his hands full escaping Hydra-tainted SHIELD agents.
One point I saw in a review that didn’t occur to me is Hydra basically took credit for all the awful things that have happened in the world since WWII essentially absolving America and others of all their sins. That bothered the reviewer. To be honest I don’t think it bothers me but it is an interesting point.
He was in Iron Man 3 as an assassination target and played by William Sadler. I suppose it’s not surprising the President is repeatedly targeted by the bad guys.
If the reviewer was saying that since Hydra took credit it absolves others of responsibility, I disagree with that entirely, and I really don’t see how he got that interpretation from a movie that pretty much saw Cap, our main hero, damning SHIELD to the flames for failing hard enough that they let Hydra’s plan actually work.
As for the other Avengers being involved, Hawkeye is the only loose end I wish was explained. Tony de-arcified himself and blew up his suits, Patriot is on perma presidential guard duty (presumably sans faceplate to prevent future unfortunate mishaps) Banner - yeah, no. Thor is awol in London with his girlfriend - I don’t even know if SHIELD is aware that he’s on-planet.
The point is that “well, America is doing things I disagree with… but they are in fact the will of the popularly elected government. What should I do?” is a far more difficult and hard-to-answer-in-a-popcorn-flick question than “America is doing things I disagree with because it has been infiltrated by nazis. What should I do?”.
The issue begins with your disagreements, infiltrate is what matters for the whole procedure… So you got to accept and adopt to the process.
This really should have been under a Spoiler tag.
Not cool.
Well, the thread title does say “Open Spoilers.”
Further thoughts:
Sharon Carter is too young. They’ll have to make her a grand-niece.
Unless Banner was in the mid-Atlantic states, HYDRA seriously miscalculated. Once they unleash Project Insight, Bruce is going to Hulk-out and then what would they do? Their only chance was to zap him unawares and hope for the best.
No rifling? Then how was the bullet so accurate?
Why in the Hell did a ruthless bastard like Pierce leave Natasha and Fury alive? You are stuck in a room with one of the world’s top assassins and one bad mother-fucker and you let both of them just stand there? At the very least he should have fried Natasha when he did the rest of the Council.
Note to house-keepers - always knock!
Avengers seems to have established that Banner is indestructible, even when he’s Banner. “I got low. I didn’t see an end so I put a bullet in my mouth, and the other guy spit it out!” So no matter what, they were going to have an extremely angry Hulk to deal with.
There’s a sentence in the imdb Parent’s Guide (which are always good for a laugh) under Violence - “Innocent cleaning women are gunned down in cold blood.”
Could have been a polygonal bore like a Glock, I suppose.
I’d call the question on that one. There’s a difference between pulling the trigger on yourself - you know what’s coming and the adrenal glands can react - and death at 3000 feet per second. By the time Banner would know of the threat his brain would be gone.
Further complications if it’s not a head shot. A body shot could leave him wounded and then changing and that would certainly bring about a pretty pissed-off Hulk. And that’s trouble. Whether his healing factor would take care of the damage on a return to Banner-form is - to me - unknown.
Great movie, by the way. Though as a long-time resident of the DC Metro Area I’m sure I would have noticed the great heaping building on the Potomac. Much less the flooding that would be caused by having to reroute in on launch of the heli-carriers. Goodbye to the tidal basin and the Mall.
The Tidal Basin and Mall were toast already. All that heli-carrier debris has to land somewhere!
But you get what I’m saying. If they don’t catch Banner by surprise, they don’t catch him at all.
On reflection, that fight scene where the Strike team captures the heroes was pretty much impossible.
We had the Winter Soldier and the Strike team trying to kill Captain America, Black Widow, and Falcon. They were fighting a running battle with gunfire through the streets of Washington. So this was clearly a kill mission not a capture mission. And then Bucky’s mask comes off and Captain America recognizes him. So Captain America suddenly stops fighting, not only Bucky but the Strike team as well. And Black Widow and Falcon surrender as well. Rumlow now decides he can’t shoot them in the street because a news crew has shown up. So he puts the three of them in a van with just two guards to drive them to a location where he can kill them and bury the bodies. Of course, one of the guards in the van turns out to be Maria Hill, who subdues the other guard and helps the heroes escape by cutting through the floor of the van.
So let’s count the way this plan could have not worked:
- Maria Hill might not have been able to sneak into the Strike team.
- Somebody on the Strike team might have noticed Maria Hill was there.
- The Winter Soldier or one of the Strike team members might have successfully shot one of the heroes.
- The Winter Soldier might not have conveniently lost his mask at the right moment.
- Captain America might not have immediately recognized his old friend who he thought was dead and hadn’t seen in years.
- Captain America, who was already fighting a bunch of other former allies, might have kept fighting the Winter Soldier even after he knew it was Bucky.
- Black Widow and/or Falcon might have kept fighting even if Captain America quit.
- The news helicopter might not have arrived at the right moment and the Strike team might have shot the heroes as soon as they surrendered.
- Rudlow might have decided “fuck the witnesses” and gone ahead and shot them anyway.
- Rudlow might have told his team, “Shoot them as soon as they’re out of sight inside the van.”
- Maria Hill might not have been picked to be one of the guards inside the van with the prisoners.
- Rudlow, knowing how dangerous these prisoners were, might have put more than two guards watching them.
- The driver of the prisoner van might have had some way to see into the back of the van.
- Even if he couldn’t see, the driver might have heard somebody cutting a large hole in the back of the van.
- They might have put the prisoner van in the middle of the convoy, where the other vans would have noticed the piece of metal falling out and the prisoners escaping.
- SHIELD, which had the entire city under guard, might have spotted the four people as they moved from wherever they escaped to Fury’s hideout. And then sent the Strike team back to recapture them.
My thoughts as well, and a pain maddened Hulk is not going to be a pretty site. :eek:
There was a time in the comics where Banner was stood next to an exploding grenade. He turned into the Hulk pretty quickly, but the pieces of shrapnel were already travelling through his brain. With them still in there, the Hulk couldn’t heal properly, and because his skull is effectively indestructible, no one could get in there to remove them. Made him go insane for a bit. I imagine a sniper bullet would have a similar effect
That would make a great “HISHE” episode: have Captain America save the country by wrecking the HYDRA helicarriers and then have him watching as they crash into the White House and Capital building.