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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
It's totally strawmanning. S.H.I.E.L.D. represents Security, Cap represents Freedom. S.H.I.E.L.D. is revealed to secretly be heavily infiltrated and controlled by Hydra, while Cap never grows or changes throughout the film; he starts the movie as unequivocally right in the debate between him and Fury, and remains so throughout; the film's take is that his stance doesn't need to be developed, the other characters just needed to come around to how Right his Freedom stance is so that they can defeat the literal Nazis that represent Security.
Widow even spends a scene repenting her wicked, wicked crimes of protecting people in service to S.H.I.E.L.D., and Cap's ultimate decision is that S.H.I.E.L.D. must be annihilated in its entirety; after spending the entire film being right, he shifts the world-state towards Absolute Freedom, deeming that not one thing about S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Security merits salvaging, and the entire rest of the cast immediately agrees with him.
Winter Soldier presented an incredibly simplistic and remarkably extreme take on its central theme. Freedom v. Security was largely just an excuse to hook people into Cap blowing up Nazis some more.
edited 12th May '15 12:45:46 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Okay, this is pretty awesome.
I just wish the pictures weren't so obscured on some of them.
edited 12th May '15 12:44:48 PM by spashthebandragon
I've got fanfics for Frozen, Spectacular Spider-Man, Crash Bandicoot, and Spyro the Dragon.That is an absurdly reductionist reading of Winter Solider. Nick Fury and the other non-Hydra SHIELD agents were all proponents of security, and Captain America himself supported SHIELD's mission and was working closely with them. The movie even ends with the acknowledgement that somebody still needs to do the work that SHIELD was doing.
The movie did exactly what it needed to do- give several characters who exist across the section and let each of them have their say.
Even if it had only done half of that, it would have been a far more thorough exploration of it's theme than Ao U managed. Hell, they couldn't even settle on a reason that AI is Bad. Ultron is just banana pants evil, and that's that.
"Unfocused" is the one word that I keep seeing crop up in every review that is critical of the movie.
Yeah, the good guys have fairly diverse viewpoints. That's fair.
The bad guys are all still neo-fascists, though.
I mean, granted, I'm against spying on folks. But it's not because all spies are neo-fascists.
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.AI being bad wasn't a theme of Age of Ultron. The heroes defeated the evil AI by building a better AI.
At no point was an argument presented as to why S.H.I.E.L.D.'s way of doing things was bad in and of itself; instead, Hydra's presence undermines any actual discussion that could have taken place. Then Cap demands they throw the baby out with the bathwater, and both Hill and Widow immediately decide he's totally right.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.No, but the ones who aren't abandon their pro-Security stance the moment Hydra shows up.
Hydra is considered sufficient reason, in and of itself, for why Cap was right about everything.
edited 12th May '15 12:58:43 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.In fairness, y'know, there was in fact the fairly pressing matter of the three giant flying death machines SHIELD was about to use to kill millions of people. That's not really a time where slowly, surgically removing HYDRA from SHIELD would've been your best option. Immediate and decisive action was required.
Dumping all that information onto the web is a good way to make sure HYDRA doesn't have plans for a second set of giant flying death machines or anything. Leave the organization in tact and it could just try this shit again.
I'll granted this makes the film's metaphors complete shit but it's hard to find fault with the internal logic.
edited 12th May '15 1:01:42 PM by Wackd
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.It occurs to me that Agents of Shield means that Fury then immediately went behind Cap's back to secretly restart SHIELD and that many civilians would have been screwed in Age of Ultron if he hadn't.
Good job, Cap!
Forever liveblogging the AvengersYep. But Age of Ultron is a different movie, written by different people. In Winter Soldier, his stance was "Hydra and S.H.I.E.L.D. are the exact same damn thing, and both have to burn."
- Nick Fury: We have to assume everyone aboard those carriers is HYDRA. We have to get past them, insert these server blades. And maybe, just maybe we can salvage what's left...
- Steve Rogers: We're not salvaging anything. We're not just taking down the carriers, Nick. We're taking down S.H.I.E.L.D.
- Nick Fury: S.H.I.E.L.D. had nothing to do with this.
- Steve Rogers: You gave me this mission. This is how it ends. S.H.I.E.L.D.'s been compromised. You said so yourself. HYDRA grew under right your nose and nobody noticed.
- Nick Fury: Why do you think we're meeting in this cave? I noticed.
- Steve Rogers: How many paid the price before you did?
- Nick Fury: Look, I didn't know about Barnes.
- Steve Rogers: Even if you had, would you have told me? Or would you have compartmentalized that, too? S.H.I.E.L.D., HYDRA, it all goes.
edited 12th May '15 1:11:03 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.That's what makes them the bad guys, rather than just being proponents of security.
Again, no they don't. They decide to stop Hyrda's plan because they were capable of being pro-security while still thinking that Hydra's plan was just plain evil. They rally around Steve because he's the natural leader to take down Hydra. Nobody suddenly decides that they don't believe in security after that; just that SHIELD is too corrupted and that if they have to destroy it to take down Hyrda then it's a necessary sacrifice. Nick Fury goes right back to being a spy afterwards, just with a lower profile.
That wasn't Steve's stance until he found out that SHIELD was actually full of Hyrda agents. Before then, he considered SHIELD to be a little shady for his tastes, but he was fully willing to work with them because he has always felt that somebody had to stand up to fight evil.
An AI that's better because... uh... Thor had a magic pool dream? You're kind of just furthering my point here. The movie takes a bunch of tropes from AI is Evil, but can't commit enough for it to be an actual theme. Ultron is just a thing that happens. There's no meaning to it.
Yes, actually, there was. By Steve, back when he first found out about the new Helicarriers. But Nick Fury disagreed. Quite a few of the goods guys *don't believe* that SHIELD's way of doing things was bad in and of itself, and the movie wasn't simplistic enough to think that it had to claim such or, even worse, try to prove it to the audience. That's why security vs freedom was a theme of the movie, not the hamfisted moral of a Saturday morning cartoon.
edited 12th May '15 1:23:18 PM by Bloodsquirrel
Yes, they do. Maria Hill, Fury's right-hand officer, abruptly sides with Cap without anything more than a cursory, "He's right," when Cap rants about how they have to burn S.H.I.E.L.D. to the ground alongside Hydra.
Meanwhile, Widow recants her affiliation with S.H.I.E.L.D. in response to the Hydra discovery, referring to her career as "trading the KGB for Hydra" even though we've always seen her working directly on Fury's authority, and it was that work that even revealed Hydra's presence in the first place - and from that moment on, she is 100% on the Freedom train, eagerly leaking all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s secrets and even testifying for them in the epilogue, before setting out on a personal quest to redefine herself as something other than the despicable monster S.H.I.E.L.D. made her.
No, he wasn't. Before he found out about Hydra, he was contemplating quitting because he was disgusted with his work at S.H.I.E.L.D. He hated them well before he found out about Hydra; Hydra just gave him an actionable reason to destroy them.
edited 12th May '15 1:21:49 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Honestly, I am tempted to post my article about Black Widow earlier just to answer all the questions about the themes of Age of Ultron. But I'll stick to my schedule, so expect a link in next weeks Saturday. But here the short version:
The movie is about creation and evolution. Early in the movie Ultron claims that humans build what they fear and that they create children only to be then fearful that they will supplant them. That humans don't want the world to change, and he wants to force that change. And then the movie proceeds to constantly show that the opposite is true. The Farm scene is not just about giving Hawkeye more screentime, it is about adding the most simple version of evolution and creation to the movie. It is quite remarkable that the movie doesn't end simply with destroying the superior machine, but with creating an even better version of it. Tony and Bruce create Ultron but it goes wrong and Ultron turns against them. Then Ultron tries to create his own version of a child but it goes wrong (thanks to the Avengers interference) and Vision turns against Ultron.
At the same time the movie picks up the themes of Iron Man 3 and The Winter Soldier, which were both about fear and how our fears lead us to questionable decision. I mean, I can't be the only one who noticed that Tony motivation in creating Ultron is exactly the same Alexander Pierce had for starting project Insight. Which is why Steve reacts so angry. He already had to stop one guy who thought he could make the world better by stopping "dangers" ahead of time.
Meanwhile, Widow recants her affiliation with S.H.I.E.L.D. in response to the Hydra discovery, referring to her career as "trading the KGB for Hydra" even though we've always seen her working directly on Fury's authority, and it was that work that even revealed Hydra's presence in the first place - and from that moment on, she is 100% on the Freedom train, eagerly leaking all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s secrets and even testifying for them in the epilogue, before setting out on a personal quest to redefine herself as something other than the despicable monster S.H.I.E.L.D. made her.
You're engaging in far too much generalizing here. You keep making the leap from "Somebody acknowledges that SHIELD is a problem" to assuming that they no longer believe in any sort of secrecy or spying at all, even when presented with direct evidence to the contrary. Hell, even when you're *posting* direct evidence to the contrary. Re-read the conversation you posted. Nick Fury still believes that SHIELD can be salvaged. He's just in a very poor bargaining position.
But he still agreed to do it in the first place. He never hated SHIELD. He didn't like some of their methods, but when does he ever disagree with the notion of an organization like them existing in the first place?
He doesn't. The closest we got was a scene in Avengers where he claims Fury "has the same blood on his hands as Loki", which is astonishingly stupid and I assume a case of Writer on Board.

I mean, but...like, in real life, where this issue is actually relevant, I'm pretty sure none of the people arguing for more security are secretly affiliated with evil organizations.
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.