Pete Wright:
Welcome back to the Marvel Movie Minute, a weekly podcast in which we assemble to explore the films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, five minutes at a time. In this, our ninth season, we’re looking at Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I’m Pete Wright.
Kyle Olson:
You went a little bit pirate there. I’m Kyle Olson from the Craft and Chaos podcast. Yar?
Matthew Fox:
And I am a very sick Matthew Fox.
Pete Wright:
Oh man, today we’re talking about minutes twenty-one through twenty-five, which begins with Peggy and old Peggy and ends with a hushed favor shared between the bestest of friends. We’re back in nostalgia land. And if I recall from last week, Kyle, this is some of your favorite material in the movie.
Kyle Olson:
Oh well, I’m a huge Peggy Carter fan. I think Hayley Atwell’s version of Peggy Carter is phenomenal, and the more we get to see her, the better it is. We sort of ended last time in the flashback, and we kind of thought that was it — it was him looking at this amazing archival footage he had probably never seen before, with her talking about him. And then we transition over to: Peggy Carter is still alive.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, yeah. See, this one —
Matthew Fox:
For the moment.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, yeah. We’re keeping the clock ticking on Peggy Carter. But let me just say, last week, Kyle, you asked me if it was a surprise that Peggy would show up in this movie. In the video, it was not a surprise. But this cut was absolutely a surprise — that she’s there, aged up, and still just as dope as ever.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. So before we get into their actual conversation, what are your guesses on how long she was in makeup to go from what Hayley Atwell is to this woman we see here? Because that is Hayley Atwell. That is her later.
Pete Wright:
It’s complicated to answer that question because of all the innovation they did to pull this off. I did read up on it, so I may be spoiled. I’ll give it to Matthew.
Matthew Fox:
I was thinking about this as I was looking at her, because I wasn’t sure if it was prosthetics with all the wrinkles and stuff, or just pure makeup. I’d say maybe three hours, four hours?
Kyle Olson:
No, about twenty minutes. They basically put a wig on her and that was it. All of this was done digitally. This was one of the first times that the anti-aging technology we had seen in the X-Men movies and things was reversed — they actually added wrinkles onto her. I even have an image of them shooting this scene, and it’s literally just her with a couple of dots on her face and a gray wig. All of what you’re seeing was done afterwards by a group called Lola — the Lola Visual Effects team — who were one of the first to do this sort of thing. And now a bunch of different houses are doing it, but they were innovators of wrinkling actors as opposed to unwrinkling them.
Pete Wright:
We’ve talked about Lola quite a bit on the show because of Skinny Steve. They are actually the same team that did Skinny Steve in The First Avenger. What is so interesting about this is that Hayley Atwell may have had an easy run on makeup for this, but the other people they brought in did not. They did try prosthetics in test footage. They had a young woman, they tried different layers of prosthetics, all kinds of different old age makeup. And eventually they ended up finding an elderly woman to stand in. They put the rig on her head, recorded her, and stole her wrinkles and skin translucency and applied them to Hayley Atwell, which I find absolutely diabolical.
Kyle Olson:
Well, yeah. I think she — I’m sure that little lady is sitting there watching it in the theater when it came out, going, “Those are my victims.”
Pete Wright:
I recognize that liver spot.
Kyle Olson:
I’m in the movie.
Pete Wright:
Look at my crease. Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
If you needed an episode title, I think you just found it.
Pete Wright:
I think this is actually outstanding and it didn’t take me out of the movie at all. I was completely hornswoggled by this effect. I really was.
Kyle Olson:
I was bamboozled.
Pete Wright:
I was bamboozled. Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
Knowing that, when I watch it closely, around the lips is sort of where I see it most — that’s where it gets a little — but that’s even now with the AI stuff we have to deal with.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
Lips are some of the hardest things to do. But the rest of it I thought still looks just phenomenal.
Pete Wright:
And the only shot where I can really pull it out is when she turns her head and then turns back while talking. That’s when the lips start to look a little off.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
But when she’s just sitting still, it’s incredible. It’s incredible.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Okay, so do you want to talk about the nostalgia piece, Kyle?
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. I like this because — as far as Steve knows — this may be one of the only people who knew him from then who’s still alive.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
We know there are others around, but as far as he knows, she might be literally the last link to his past. She’s the person who knew him as little Steve, little skinny Steve. And now they’re here, and she’s still the same Peggy — where he’s saying all this stuff like, “I wanted to —” and she’s like, “You were always so dramatic.” And Peggy gets him. She understands this dude all the way, because yes, he is — even into Civil War —
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
He’s kind of a drama queen. He really has his big, “I’m going to make my stance.” Like, all right, Steve, it doesn’t always have to be a declaration. But she sees through all of that, and I love that.
Matthew Fox:
It made me wonder if there was some other version of this scene — maybe it never made it to paper, it was just in someone’s head — where they talked a little more directly about the direction that Shield had gone in. Because one thing from the first movie, and I think we saw in some of the other stuff with her, is that he’s the idealist and she is somewhat more of a realist.
Kyle Olson:
Yes.
Matthew Fox:
And he says at one point, “Part of the only reason I’m involved with Shield is because I know you founded it.” There’s a little bit of a, “Because you are good and right and true, if you founded it, then the organization is too.” And I can see a version of this scene where he talks a little more explicitly about his concerns with where Shield is going, and she has some of that, “Come on, Steve, this is the world we live in.” I think we still get that, and we certainly get the nostalgia stuff, which is obviously all foreshadowing what we’re going to be getting with Bucky later. But I was left wondering if at some point in someone’s imagination, the idea of what Shield should be — and what Steve thinks she would have let it be — was going to be part of this conversation.
Kyle Olson:
This is where I feel like I wish they were still doing the one-shots, because it feels like post-Avengers, after the Chitauri, Steve — as now leader of the Avengers and super popular — finds out Peggy is still alive and has that meeting with her, and that’s where he sort of makes the decision to join Shield. That’s not a movie, but man, that would be a great twenty-minute short, or one of the one-shots.
Pete Wright:
Right. Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
I mean, it didn’t need to be in this movie. We didn’t need to see that as a flashback or whatever. But oh man, I really would like to see that reunion happen — the one we never saw.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, it makes Steve’s experience in Shield whole. Because this really is the first of the MCU films to spend any significant time —
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
— thinking about Steve’s status as a man out of time. And the Peggy scene is kind of the emotional proof of concept for this theme. That he is still alive carrying some of the spirit of the original Shield makes his retaliation against modern Shield more resonant, I think. And I think you’re right — that ends up being a hole.
But on Peggy’s part, the dementia element they introduce — the fact that she’s dealing with neurological decline — is super important, and I don’t think it’s just pathos for pathos’ sake. She’s forgetting and re-recognizing Steve in the span of seconds. And it’s a devastating kind of language for what Steve experiences on a different register entirely. Like, you can be present and awake and still functionally lost in time.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. Yeah, she re-experiences it, and then he has to go through —
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Matthew Fox:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. You’re having this moment of, “Oh, she’s a nice old lady,” and it sounds like he’s been coming to her on a regular basis and talking about what he’s going through. So he has someone.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
And then she turns away and goes back, and it’s all gone.
Matthew Fox:
You were talking about that scene that could be a short. I think it also could have been a scene in Avengers — and I’m not saying the movie needed it — when the team has broken up and Steve is trying to decide if he’s going to work with this Fury guy. And so he looks to Peggy to try to help figure that out.
I will say I appreciate the dementia explanation, because I love that scene with one exception: her moment of, “Oh Steve, it’s really you, you did come back.” Because I was sitting there going, is this…? It felt off to me. It felt forced. And I wasn’t sure if that was acting choices by Hayley Atwell, or if it was about the makeup and her facial expression not quite ringing true. I think the idea that it’s because she’s fading in and out of comprehension makes sense, but at least to me that didn’t come through 100%. That one portion of that minute lost me a bit.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, that landed for me. I also like the fact that what you see Steve go through — there’s that phrase going around about how the movie camera is a machine that captures you thinking. Watching Steve have to understand what happened, you can see from his expression that this is not the first time this has happened. He’s gone through this multiple times. And he shifts into that caring thing of, “Oh, you owe me a dance” and all that. But the editors and the Russos give it room to play — they keep on that for just a couple of seconds, so you see it land on him. Like, okay, we’ve reset back to then. All the stuff we were just talking about — I can’t — and now we have to go back to, “Oh yeah.”
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
And then he’s going to have to tell the story again. Once again he’s disconnected. Another link to his past has been severed, and he’s still lost.
Matthew Fox:
It raises so many great questions. One of the things I’m now really wondering about: in this timeline, the movie is going to tell us about Hydra slowly taking over Shield and things like Project Insight coming along — in part because of Fury’s concern about the neighborhood getting more dangerous, the story of his grandfather walking home. When does Agent Carter leave Shield? Would she have approved of Project Insight? Maybe she would have. Or is it only once she starts to mentally decline and has to step back that Hydra starts — I’d be very curious to know what that timeline is.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. We know that as of — I’m trying to remember from Ant-Man — it’s the seventies, I think, and she’s still there. Because they do that flashback and it’s Howard and her, and that’s when Pym walks in —
Pete Wright:
Oh, in the very opening sequence.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, it has that big — and I think that’s in the seventies. So she was still there at that point and it was Shield. It had already made the transition from the SSR to Shield. But it must have been somewhere in the early eighties or so.
Matthew Fox:
Because by the time of the first Avengers movie, clearly she’s not in any way part of that discussion of, “Do you nuke New York, do you let the Avengers work?”
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, it would make sense. Even as we said, we’re going to meet the council — it makes sense she would be there if she was still involved.
Matthew Fox:
The other thing I was wondering about: I looked up the TV show Agent Carter. It comes out just about a year after this. This movie comes out in the spring and that show starts in January the next year. And the process of making one of those big TV shows is long enough that I feel like when this is happening, Agent Carter’s show is already being discussed and in the beginnings of production.
I don’t know what the process was, and I wonder if you guys do, but we talk a lot on this podcast about moments that feel like something is being put into a movie to help seed the ground for an upcoming project — and that that’s to the movie’s detriment. And to me, this feels like the Russo brothers figured out how to do it right. If someone said to the Russo brothers, “Look, we need to have Peggy Carter in this in some way, because we want to start reminding people of who she was — she’s going to get her own show down the road” — this scene doesn’t feel forced at all, the way that kind of thing so often does.
Kyle Olson:
I don’t think — I mean, who knows, those conversations probably happened — but I get the feeling that the Russos are fans. They have been Steve-and-Peggy shippers from when they watched the first Captain America, because we see how that pays off at the end of the Infinity saga.
Pete Wright:
Some of the most emotionally powerful moments in those movies.
Kyle Olson:
Right. They literally bent the rules of the universe to put these two together because they loved them as a couple so much. So I think it was basically keeping that flame going — them not wanting to end that story, working with her, wanting to do it more. I’m sure it was all pseudo-organic, like, “Wouldn’t it be fun to?” And then a lot of people got involved.
That show is still worth watching, by the way. If people have not seen it, it is on Disney Plus at time of recording. Two great seasons. I wish they would have gone farther. You kind of get an inclination of who she was going to get together with, even though it doesn’t really happen before the series got canceled. It does raise some interesting questions — maybe we should do a kind of sideshow, because the one-shot they did and the series don’t line up.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, they don’t line up.
Kyle Olson:
I found a whole Reddit thread where people were trying to figure out how to mesh the two together, but that’s a whole other conversation.
Matthew Fox:
Were you guys surprised when she said — and he says he changed her life in so many ways — even that he saved the life of the man who went on to be her husband?
Kyle Olson:
Yep.
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Matthew Fox:
How’d you react to that? Because to me that’s a moment of them not going for the low-hanging fruit, and I appreciated it. Because the way to really lampshade that is to have her say, “I waited for you. I waited for decades.”
Kyle Olson:
I waited for you. I waited for decades.
Matthew Fox:
Right. And the idea that — again, because she’s the practical one. If the roles had been reversed, Steve would have waited. And her feeling was, “He’s dead. He will be one of my first loves. That’s sad. But I’m still going to have a life. I’m still going to have children. I’m going to find another wonderful person.” To me that’s a very important character moment for her.
Kyle Olson:
And keep saving the world.
Pete Wright:
And because of the complications of Agents of Shield, we don’t ever really know who Peggy Carter’s husband is in this universe.
Kyle Olson:
They never definitively say who the person is or what happens to her kids.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
She says she has kids, but we have no idea what happened to them, where they are, or who they are.
Matthew Fox:
Right.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Yet.
Matthew Fox:
Sharon Carter is her niece, right?
Kyle Olson:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
Yes. Yep.
Matthew Fox:
Okay.
Pete Wright:
Okay. So from here we leave the bedside and transition to Fury’s office, where Fury gets to realize he doesn’t have all the passwords. As nerds, are you a little bit excited when the computer keeps saying, “No, you don’t get to have this”?
Kyle Olson:
Isn’t that fun? It was also fun that he sees — he has this Shield-branded thumb drive, which I don’t know why they didn’t sell — and finds out it’s encrypted. He can’t look at the data because it was encrypted by him —
Pete Wright:
By him.
Kyle Olson:
— by Nicholas J. Fury. And he’s so used to having access to all information that immediately this sends him into, “Everything has to stop.”
Pete Wright:
Love it. Yep.
Kyle Olson:
I can’t look at this one file. We’ve got to shut it all down.
Pete Wright:
This is what happens when you give the CEO all the passwords, all the permissions — they throw a tantrum when something doesn’t work.
Kyle Olson:
That’s right.
Pete Wright:
That’s right. I said it. And so he stomps up forty floors to meet his buddy — his best buddy.
Kyle Olson:
How big is this building supposed to be?
Pete Wright:
So big.
Kyle Olson:
I feel like he had a pretty high view, because they get in the elevator and they go down for a while to get into Project Insight. So there are another forty floors above him.
Pete Wright:
Above him, yeah. Yeah, I don’t know.
Kyle Olson:
Wow. Okay.
Pete Wright:
I mean, there are a thousand floors in the building in the Triskelion.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, I guess so.
Pete Wright:
So yeah.
Matthew Fox:
I think it was on an earlier episode of this show that we talked about how D.C. actually has an ordinance that a building can’t go higher than the Washington Monument. I don’t think this building qualifies.
Pete Wright:
No.
Matthew Fox:
I think it goes significantly higher.
Pete Wright:
Yes, yeah.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, yeah.
Pete Wright:
So he goes — and I don’t think there’s anything else to cover apart from the “secure the room” moment, which I always love. Those electrostatic windows, whatever you call those things.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Those are fantastic. But apart from that, the rest of it is standard whizbang. Then we go upstairs and interrupt a council meeting in progress about the Lemurian Star hijacking, and again there’s fantastic production design with the conical reflected holograms of the other World Security Council members, with Pierce holding court. Robert Redford — it’s our first chance to meet Robert Redford — who the Russos have been signaling Robert Redford vibes for a long time leading up to this.
Kyle Olson:
Yes, yep.
Pete Wright:
All of the promo was like, “Three Days of the Condor, you’re going to love it,” and here’s Robert Redford. Was this a surprise?
Kyle Olson:
I think they used him pretty heavily in the advertising, so we knew he was coming. But just because this is his first appearance, let me do my thing.
Pete Wright:
Do it.
Kyle Olson:
Playing Secretary Alexander Pierce: Robert Redford — born in California, 83 acting credits, 10 directing credits on IMDB. Pete, I’m afraid to do this because it has to be you.
Pete Wright:
Well hey.
Kyle Olson:
It’s time to play the IMDB game.
Pete Wright:
Oh God, no.
Kyle Olson:
There are four. For those of you who don’t know, IMDB picks four movies for every actor on there, and no one has any idea why these four are showing up. They don’t seem to have any rhyme or reason — it’s not about ratings, it’s not about fan votes. It is a complete mystery why the four are up there. He’s had so many amazing movies that there are no weird random ones that appear out of nowhere — these are all recognizable. But with so many to choose from, it’s hard to figure out which four they’re going to be. What are your thoughts? And Matthew, feel free to play along too.
Matthew Fox:
I was going to wonder — I’m the chopped liver of this conversation, apparently, but —
Kyle Olson:
I know Pete knows this game, so I wanted —
Pete Wright:
My problem is that there are way too many movies. Even though the world likes Robert Redford, it makes me think maybe one of the more recent films — like The Old Man and the Gun or something — might be up there just to throw him a bone. But it’s got to be — okay, Kyle, all right. Let’s go.
Kyle Olson:
Okay, come on. Let’s do it.
Matthew Fox:
So I think the big four.
Pete Wright:
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Kyle Olson:
Sundance, 100%. Ding. First win. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Matthew Fox:
I’m going to put — because I think this is the first of his political thrillers, it’s the one directly connected to real life, and I think it’s what he’s very well known for — All the President’s Men.
Pete Wright:
Okay. Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
Ding! Two down. What are the other two?
Pete Wright:
Are they going to put another Redford-Newman? Because if so, are they going to put The Sting on there? That’s where I might go. Is The Sting one of his top four?
Kyle Olson:
The Sting is not one of those.
Pete Wright:
Oh God. Okay.
Matthew Fox:
Drawing on what Pete was saying earlier about the older-man era, but also because it’s a fun callback — it’s a kind of silly movie, but one that people now look at as a really good performance by him — I’m going to put Sneakers on the guest list.
Kyle Olson:
I would love if Sneakers was on that list, but unfortunately it’s not one of the four.
Pete Wright:
That would be — oh man. The Natural!
Kyle Olson:
The Natural! Ding, number three. Three down.
Pete Wright:
Okay. So we have one more. Four guesses and we’re done.
Kyle Olson:
That’s true. Any last-minute Hail Marys?
Pete Wright:
All Is Lost.
Kyle Olson:
No. It is Ordinary People.
Pete Wright:
Ordinary People.
Matthew Fox:
People, yep.
Pete Wright:
Ah God.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. So those are the four. The question becomes: why did Robert Redford decide to do Captain America: The Winter Soldier? He’s a very prestigious actor and director who could pretty much do whatever he wanted. Creator of the Sundance Film Festival, philanthropist, all of this — why do this? And the answer he gave was that he was interested in the next-generation technology. He was interested in how they were making these big-budget movies with green screens and digital effects. He wanted to be on set and see how it was done. He was a film nerd who wanted to understand — “We used to dress up as cowboys and run out of the thing, but now you guys are in studios with green screens. How does this work?” And so he really wanted in. Of course, they put him in and built a set, and he didn’t actually get to see any of the green screens or special effects. But apparently he had a really good time on the movie — enough that he would eventually come back and reprise the role.
Pete Wright:
Well, he’s a treat, because he is a grounding agent for this movie. He is an element that makes it feel less like a superhero movie and more like a thriller. And arguably it may be the most important casting the Russos were able to do for this movie — to enter quadrants it might never have appealed to.
Matthew Fox:
Yeah. And I think there’s something about the way this scene plays out that really mirrors the scene from the first Avengers where the council wants to nuke New York and Nick is the one pushing back against them. And I think — spoilers, forgive me — Pierce is not going to be a good guy by the end of this movie. But this scene doesn’t do what some movies do, where they try so hard to show you that this person’s a good guy that you’re thinking, “Okay, clearly he’s going to have his heel turn soon.” Having him play that role of, “I am the one standing against the bureaucracy, standing on the side of let’s really get things done instead of just covering our ass” — him playing the Nick Fury role — really cements this guy as Nick Fury’s ally, Cap’s ally. He’s not going to be one of the real bad guys. And I think that makes his eventual true heel turn that much more powerful. Very intentionally done and very well done.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. Because we see him standing up to these politicians and bureaucrats, not immediately going, “Oh yeah, whatever you want, we’ll take care of it.” He is the one leading this conversation, not taking orders.
Matthew Fox:
And we’ve seen someone do that before. The fact that we saw Nick Fury do that means we have a natural inclination to want to agree with this guy.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, yeah.
Kyle Olson:
As we move off of Robert Redford and into the regular thing, I can tell you that from personal experience, his appearance did bring in two brand-new people to the MCU: my parents.
Pete Wright:
There you go.
Kyle Olson:
The first Marvel movie they saw was this one because Robert Redford was in it. They had no interest until that point. So that’s two tickets I know were sold specifically for this, because I got a text in the morning when it came out saying, “Hey, we’re going to see this. What do we need to know?” And I was like, oh God.
Pete Wright:
Oh no.
Kyle Olson:
What do I tell my seventy-ish-year-old parents about everything they need to know about the Marvel Universe going into this?
Matthew Fox:
Did you have a moment of vindication on behalf of fifteen-year-old Kyle, who always wanted his parents to listen and they didn’t really care? And now you’re like, “See?”
Kyle Olson:
You took me to the comic bookstore and you wouldn’t listen when I wanted to tell you, and now here we are.
Matthew Fox:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Oh, that’s fantastic.
Matthew Fox:
Am I right also that we’re now at a point — and have been for the last ten years — where a lot of big-name, Oscar-caliber actors who are not normally associated with superhero films wind up having one-off cameos in Marvel projects? Glenn Close is the one who most comes to mind, but I feel like a lot of others — Sigourney Weaver in the Defenders TV show —
Kyle Olson:
John C. Reilly, yeah, there’s a lot of them.
Matthew Fox:
Exactly. And my sense is that it kind of started with Redford. He was, to me, one of the first of like, “Oh, I don’t think of him in a comic book movie. That’s a new thing.”
Pete Wright:
That’s an interesting observation. I don’t think it ends at Marvel. Does Viola Davis do a DC part without Redford doing this?
Kyle Olson:
Mm, yeah, that’s true.
Matthew Fox:
Yeah, yeah.
Pete Wright:
Right. I don’t know.
Kyle Olson:
Huh.
Pete Wright:
I’d love to see some of the Kremlinology on those discussions — getting those people to pay attention to this. I mean, I’m sure it’s just a dump truck of cash.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. Obviously — right, exactly. Like, someone sits down and goes, “Well, you know, Redford’s in one,” and then they have to be like, “Oh, well, that’s a whole different ball game.”
Pete Wright:
Oh yeah.
Matthew Fox:
It’s like that interview with Harrison Ford where they asked him how he felt about having to do all the makeup and stuff for that Captain America film, and he literally said, “That’s what the money’s for.”
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
So as we start this thing, we see the World Security Council. This is a MCU invention. The closest comic book version is called the National Security Council, and they reported directly to the President of the United States, but the MCU has obviously taken it global.
Pete Wright:
What’s the Pierce representation in the comics?
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, Alexander Pierce is just a Shield agent. His Wikipedia entry is like two paragraphs. He was just a person who worked with Nick Fury a couple of times — he showed up in two different series — and he was never really a turncoat, never really important in Shield. He was just another of many Shield agents who held the chair for a while.
Pete Wright:
A comic book paper hanger made more famous by Robert Redford. Outstanding. And I think you have something for us — is that what you’re about to do?
Kyle Olson:
No, but we have to talk about this — these are first appearances. So we have the council.
Pete Wright:
Yes, we have a whole council.
Kyle Olson:
We start with Councilman Rockwell, played by Alan Dale — originally from New Zealand, 94 credits on IMDB, known for Star Trek: Nemesis. He was in many episodes of The O.C. and Ugly Betty, but most people know him as Charles Widmore from Lost.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, crazy.
Kyle Olson:
Moving to the side, Councilman Singh is Bernard White. Originally from Sri Lanka, 130 credits on IMDB, including The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. He will later reprise this role in an episode of What If. But what I found interesting is he did something pretty amazing in 1985: he did the trifecta. He appeared on Knight Rider, Street Hawk, and Highway to Heaven.
Pete Wright:
What, amazing.
Kyle Olson:
What a 1985 he had. And you’d think that would be enough. But in 2001, he did it again — he appeared on The X-Files, Alias, and Touched by an Angel.
Pete Wright:
I like how he has the heaven corner in both years.
Kyle Olson:
Right? And Matthew, if you have not covered Highway to Heaven and Touched by an Angel on your show, there’s a perfect entry point right here.
Pete Wright:
It’s a twofer.
Matthew Fox:
Yeah, I’ll do an in-depth look at the theology of those shows.
Kyle Olson:
And if you put Charmed in there, you’d have a whole thing.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
All right, moving down, we have Councilwoman Hawley. This is Jenny Agutter from England. She is an OBE award winner, 120 credits on IMDB. She is reprising this role from her first appearance in The Avengers — she was also on the World Security Council then. She is known for Logan’s Run, An American Werewolf in London, and, for a deep nerd credit, Blake’s Seven.
Pete Wright:
Oh, that I don’t know.
Kyle Olson:
Oh yeah, that was a good one. That was the time of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Doctor Who in its prime. There are always rumors about a big reboot or remake, but it never has happened so far. But it’s fun seventies-eighties cheese.
Okay, so then Councilman Yen — this is Chin Han, born in Singapore, 29 credits on IMDB, probably most recently known from Mortal Kombat as Shang Tsung. He also did many episodes of Arrow. He was in one of the best sleeper video games of the last decade, Sleeping Dogs — if you’ve not played that, it is phenomenal. But when you see him, you probably think, “I know a squealer when I see one,” because he is Mr. Lau from The Dark Knight, who the Joker immediately pegs as a person who will roll over when taken.
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Kyle Olson:
So that is your World Security Council.
Pete Wright:
What a rogues’ gallery of character actors they threw on this Security Council. Outstanding.
Matthew Fox:
So in the comic, Shield is a purely American organization.
Kyle Olson:
Pretty much, yeah. It reports directly to the president. Eventually it sort of goes global, but it is thought of as working for the U.S. of A.
Pete Wright:
Okay. I particularly appreciate this sequence because of how hard the Russos worked to shape the film and the political arguments around such contemporary debates. You watch these sequences, you watch the terrorist talk, and you’re thinking drone strikes and preemptive action and Minority Report structures and civil liberties loss. And I think this sequence sufficiently introduces a worldview that directly opposes Cap’s greatest-generation worldview. They went hard on introducing Captain America to modern, non-superhero military and political conflict. And I think it works very, very well.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. And they never say exactly who they’re representing, but you sort of see a wide range where you’re like, “Okay, that’s probably a senator,” and, “This is probably from England, from China.” They never say directly, but you get an idea of, “Okay, these are probably representing some major world powers.”
Matthew Fox:
And there’s a nice moment where, without having to push it hard, they remind you that these people are still somewhat focused on who they are representing, not on the idea that they’re representing the world. We have that one — and as you said, we don’t know if he’s Sri Lankan, Indian, Pakistani, or Bangladeshi — but he talks about how this thing happened very close to his nation’s territorial waters. And I thought that’s a nice reminder that in theory these are people who are supposed to be thinking about world security, not individual nation security, but that’s not where they are.
Kyle Olson:
I was curious to hear both of your thoughts. How much do you think they know about Project Insight at this point? They would certainly have had to sign off on it.
Pete Wright:
I wonder. But I think that’s called into question immediately when Nick enters the room and all of their holograms sink into the floor.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Right? It almost feels like they’re trying to keep a secret from the World Security Council. I mean, I don’t know fully, but it does seem like there is some sort of compartmentalization that Pierce is working toward.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. And I do like the fact that when Nick shows up, Pierce ends the meeting.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, it’s over.
Kyle Olson:
Like, “Can that be more trouble?” And Pierce says, “Depends on your definition.” And then just — all gone.
Pete Wright:
Gone.
Matthew Fox:
Right. Well, we do know that the Hydra penetration has gone even to some of the governmental advisors — like the character, the senator played by Garry Shandling.
Pete Wright:
Garry Shandling. Yeah.
Matthew Fox:
He was in The Larry Sanders Show. And I’m trying to remember if at the end of this movie we see any of these individual people being rounded up. But I think the idea is that some of them are more like Nick Fury — they like Project Insight but haven’t really been let in on the true inner plan — and some of them are more fully Hydra themselves, like Senator Shandling’s character. There’s probably some mix among them.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, because we’ll see them again in actual physical form toward the end. When things get revealed, we’ll see how they react.
I also like the fact that in the conversation we find out that Batroc is not French, he’s Algerian.
Pete Wright:
Algerian. Get it right, Council Member.
Kyle Olson:
I was like, oh, that was fun. “Would you like me to show you a map?” So sassy.
Pete Wright:
So good.
Kyle Olson:
So sassy.
Pete Wright:
What’s your take on the presentation of Fury and Pierce as colleagues?
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, I thought that was fun. I like the idea that we’ll hear the story of how they bonded — but the idea that their paths split at that point, that they were both soldiers and then one decided to become a politician and the other a spy master. And even to connect them in our minds: Samuel Jackson and Robert Redford are not that different in age. They are of a generation. I think Sam was maybe the class below, but if Hollywood were a high school, they would have been there at the same time.
So to have them meet as equals — I think that was really smart. Because if Nick immediately came in as, “Hey, boss, I found a thing, I just don’t know if it’s —” instead of them meeting like, “You run your side of it, I run my side of it — but now that we’re overlapping on this project, something’s gone wrong, because I don’t have access to everything” — that distinction matters.
Matthew Fox:
And it’s a side of Nick Fury we haven’t seen before. Because from the perspective of Cap, Iron Man, and the Avengers, he is who the buck stops with. And even in the Avengers movie, the council doesn’t seem like his boss — the council seems like this group of bureaucrats he has to deal with. But Pierce is not someone whose decision he can ignore. And I think it puts a nice shift on: wait, Fury is not actually the overall boss here. Pierce really is his superior, and Fury knows that. And I think that helps set up a lot of what comes later.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, and you can sort of feel the energy shift when it goes from Pierce running this council meeting to being with Nick. He shifts his energy to something more intimate, like, “Hey, we’re just a couple of guys talking here.” As opposed to the formal, “The project must continue.” It just becomes a couple of guys talking in the back room.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, right. This is a very private water cooler conversation between friends. And that last line — after Pierce says, “Nick, it’s not a favor, it’s a subcommittee hearing — a long one” — Fury says, “Could be nothing, probably is nothing. I just need some time to make sure it’s nothing. But if it’s something —” and this is what we call, for the purposes of our show, a mic-drop minute ender — “We’ll both be damn glad those helicarriers aren’t in the air.”
Kyle Olson:
Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright:
And scene. That’s right. We end on a full line. Because it shows these friends, colleagues, and leaders have a shared interest in what’s going on. And oh my gosh, that’s baiting us — because their relationship is going to eventually be called into question.
Kyle Olson:
So at this point, are you thinking that as soon as Nick leaves, Alexander Pierce is on the phone calling in the hit?
Pete Wright:
It’s got to be, right?
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. Like, as soon as the door shuts —
Pete Wright:
Cleanup on aisle Fury.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Matthew Fox:
Here’s my question: do you think Pierce honestly thought Fury would go along with what Insight actually was? I think from Pierce’s perspective, there was never going to be a world where Fury lives to the end of Project Insight.
Kyle Olson:
Interesting.
Pete Wright:
That is an interesting question, because you can position it as: Pierce knew he needed Fury to get the project launched, but no further.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, because with Fury comes Captain America, comes Black Widow, comes the Avengers — a very valuable piece right there. Replacing Nick at this stage would be really, really dangerous to what they’re doing.
Matthew Fox:
Right. And it adds, I think, a follow-up question we’ll get to when we hear what Project Insight actually is. I want to know what Fury thinks it is. What is it that Fury thinks those helicarriers are going to do — something other than just murdering twenty million people because they might be bad — but that’s still something someone like Cap would probably find objectionable? What is the line that Nick Fury draws: “This is okay, but the actual Project Insight is not”?
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. And what is it about that one file that makes him go, “Stop everything”? It just seems like you’d go talk to the IT guy, because he’s in that building. You could just go down and talk to him.
Pete Wright:
Janny Pooty.
Kyle Olson:
Foreshadowing — we’re going to see him.
Pete Wright:
That was good.
Kyle Olson:
What is Nick thinking is a recurring question through all of the MCU.
Pete Wright:
And we’re going to have a nice run of Nick here in the coming weeks. I’m very excited to see what is going to happen to Nick. And I think that’s it — that’s our five minutes. You guys have anything else?
Kyle Olson:
No. I think it’s all smooth sailing from here.
Pete Wright:
Of course it is. That’s right. We’re just going to hang out in our Adirondack chairs, sip those mimosas. It’s fine. Nick and Pierce.
Matthew Fox:
A Jackson-Redford buddy film.
Pete Wright:
Yep, that’s it. That’s what you get. Thank you everybody for hanging out with us. Don’t forget you can check out — well, let’s see — Matthew, where can people find your shows?
Matthew Fox:
Theethicalpanda.com. There you will find information about Superhero Ethics, a podcast where we discuss a lot of the kind of stuff we’re talking about here. You can also find the Star Wars Generations podcast, which will quite soon — probably around the time this episode comes out — be discussing Maul: Shadow Lord, the new animated show that Star Wars is launching that tells us about Maul — no longer Darth, now just Maul — becoming the criminal enterprise leader that he will be. So yeah, that’ll be exciting.
Pete Wright:
Can’t wait. Kyle, Mr. Wade into the Weird himself.
Kyle Olson:
That’s right. Craft and Chaos. You can find our podcasts — we do shows about how to make art while it feels like the world is on fire. Archives are there and you can ask us questions. It gets very, very silly.
Pete Wright:
This has been really fun, everybody. Thank you so much for hanging out with us. We appreciate your time and attention. On behalf of Kyle Olson and Matthew Fox, I’m Pete Wright. We’ll see you next week right here on Marvel Movie Minute.
