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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
Maybe after being made into data on a reel to reel he secretly longed for death.
Forever liveblogging the AvengersHe seemed pretty happy with his job as creepy Hydra scientist who writes murder algorithms. He was part of the Hydra team. He wasn’t “abandoned,” he had his own home in his evil computer bank.
He's not rotting. He's surviving, as he himself points out making him into a computer was so he wouldn't die ("In 1972 I received a terminal diagnosis. Science could not save my body. My mind, however, that was worth saving."). Why would he be ungrateful that he essentially became immortal?
He's also not rotting in the sense that he has a internet connection. He dredges up several facts he'd have no way of accessing if he was landlocked to that basement. The most noticeable of which is Nick Fury's death and file, going by the fact he died mere hours before that scene.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."Given that he's the one actually behind the algorithm that formed the evil plan of Winter Soldier, a very recent development, it's difficult to believe that he was dumped in the facility and left to rot. There's no indication that Zola even wanted to leave, and given Marvel's interest in having his android body appear in Ant-Man, it's possible that we might even find he's alive and kicking one of these days.
I read his role as him being the actual Bigger Bad of the movie, but whose state means that he cannot actively leave his vulnerable position: kind of like Sauron. He's the one behind everything, but he can't take an active role in anything any more.
I choose to interpret Zola as a true believer of the Hydra cause - he simply realized that Red Skull was insane.
I choose to believe that he beamed his consciousness into space and will later become the Kree Supreme Intelligence.
edited 19th Apr '18 8:28:19 PM by KarkatTheDalek
Oh God! Natural light!Cap shooting people would be boring. He typically only shoots on rare occasions; he tries not to kill in the first few action scenes.
His fist fight with Batroc is pretty much Steve playing with his food before kicking it in the face.
Agree to disagree on Bucky. I still say it’s well set up and you have no soul
Emphasis on brainwashed. Also, uhm, most of the fandom would probably disagree. Check out the winter soldier or Bucky tags on tumblr. Woobie might be an understatement.
edited 19th Apr '18 8:46:07 PM by wisewillow
...Uh huh.
Funny, most people seem to think that being brainwashed and tortured into becoming a murderer is what makes him so sympathetic.
Oh God! Natural light!Personally, Zola as a chilling robotic mastermind beats Zola as a funny robot sidekick any day of the week.
I do agree they could have saved him for a future outing, but the idea of him joining SHIELD in any form doesn't really seem interesting at all.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."I will say that Zola the funny robot sidekick is pretty at odds with the tone they're trying to establish.
Not to mention, letting Nazis into their midst was exactly what caused this mess to begin with.
Oh God! Natural light!I think there's an Alternative Aesop Interpretation which may or may not be on the YMMV page that a lot of how you interpret the movie is whether you think of Hydra and SHIELD as two separate things. My interpretation is that Zola is every bit as much a part of SHIELD as Peggy Carter and there's really no difference between Hydra and SHIELD. They're the two sides of the Military Industrial Complex as well as the Cold War's agencies.
Which is why the Captain had to destroy it all.
edited 19th Apr '18 8:47:24 PM by CharlesPhipps
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.![]()
I'm kind of on board for a somewhat weaker version of that. I forget if it's in Winter Soldier or Agent Carter (I think the latter?), but they explicitly tie Zola becoming a Boxed Crook to the real life Operation Paperclip
, and I feel like if you look at their being a "story of SHIELD" from Agent Carter to Civil War, it's a pretty depressing story of how the morally compromised decision to let Zola get away with his crimes and make use of his intelligence was an original sin that set up consequences that eventually came due. Even more so if you assume (as I do) that Agent Carter indicates that Zola and Fentoff/Faustus jointly founded Hydra and were behind turning Bucky into the Winter Soldier.
Like it's weird because I love Peggy, but it's hard for me not to conclude that her life's work was a failure because she (or at least her co-workers) were willing to employ evil in pursuit of the greater good.
edited 19th Apr '18 8:57:38 PM by Hodor2
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I think it was in Winter Soldier; I seem to remember roboZola referencing Paperclip directly, and I think in Agent Carter he just says a line or two to Faustus in their cell.
I do wish the show had dug more into the founding of SHIELD and how it was in trouble from the start.
edited 19th Apr '18 9:07:15 PM by Pseudopartition
I think its' an interesting argument that Hydra got away with 90% of what they did not because they were evil geniuses but gathering power, doing acts of terrorism, murder, and being involved in shady shit is what intelligence agencies DO.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.Which is why the Captain had to destroy it all.
As far as Cap blowing it all up, that seems to be undercut by Black Widow essentially declaring that she's going to rebuild SHIELD (but right this time). This is another problem with the conspiracy plotline, incidentally. How is she going to ensure that Hydra doesn't get a foothold again? (Chances are, she isn't, and Hydra agents within SHIELD is going to be a plot point again later. And it will annoy me intensely when it happens.)
It's Black Widow who verbally references Operation Paperclip and later Zola goes in more detail about it ("They thought I could help their cause. I also helped my own.")
"All you Fascists bound to lose."I mean, I took all of that to suggest that Bucky was still in there, and many other people did to.
Look, you're free to feel however you like about the movie, but I must confess, I think your takes are...bad.
Oh God! Natural light!It's worth noting that a real life reason for why Cap's strength and acrobatics are much more pronounced in The Winter Soldier is because he was viewed as fairly underpowered in The Avengers. A lot of fans didn't like him struggling to hold his own against Loki, contributing little combat-wise in the Helicarrier attack, and then having the "mook cleanup" job during the climactic fight. (Me, I liked that he was the one most directly saving civilians during the battle.) So the considerable ramp-up of his abilities is in direct response to the fans.
I like this idea that Zola kept himself entertained for 40 years with the Internet.
edited 19th Apr '18 9:38:30 PM by Tuckerscreator
Yeah, gonna have to say that pretty much everything Native Jovian's said about Bucky is not just subjectively but also objectively (per director commentary and the like) incorrect. The whole point is that despite HYDRA trying their absolute damnedest to torture and brutalize it out of him at every chance possible, and the movie makes it evident that they tried very, very hard, Bucky absolutely is still in there. Sebastian Stan's acting chops tend to be centered around his physical skills rather than his eloquent speech abilities anyway, so even though he doesn't have a lot of lines, a lot of his internal struggle is communicated via his face and body language instead. And you do see that anguish from time to time, even if his abuse by HYDRA makes it difficult to voice it aloud.
And I thought the fights were actually a lot more grounded in The Winter Soldier than The First Avenger. There's a lot more feats of physical dexterity for sure, but on the whole the combat feels a lot more raw and with higher stakes in comparison to the floaty and heavily choreographed action pieces of TFA, where yes the action is more subdued, but it comes across as a result of technical and budget limitations rather than an artistic choice.
Regarding Zola, it's the same writers behind both movies, but I agree with Karkat's take that, looking back it seems like the suggestion is that his issue with Red Skull was less being a Punch-Clock Villain and more a difference of philosophy, where he felt that Skull was too focused on hijacking HYDRA for his own goals, while he himself would stay truer to its original vision of Lawful Evil.
edited 19th Apr '18 10:10:25 PM by AlleyOop

Besides, I never got the impression that Zola was a Hydra diehard in The First Avenger. He seemed to be in it for the science, and by the time he realized what was going on, he was too deep to back out. Certainly he seemed to obey Red Skull more out of fear than respect.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.