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 are looking at Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I’m Pete Wright.

Matthew Fox:
I am Fox Matthew.

Kyle Olson:
I am a Kyle Olson.

Pete Wright:
And today we’re talking about minutes 101 through 105, which begins with finding some bad guys we were looking for and ends with Bucky doing Bucky. All right, we’re back. We’re here. We’re in some fighty-fighty moments, fighty-fighty cross-cutting moments. And it also happens to be, I think, one of the seminal moments for the next era of the MCU. Who knew it was going to be buried in these five minutes?

Kyle Olson:
Whoa.

Pete Wright:
What do you think?

Kyle Olson:
Bold statement.

Pete Wright:
It is a bold statement.

Kyle Olson:
I hope you have the facts to back it up.

Pete Wright:
I hope so too. Dear God, I hope I do.

Matthew Fox:
So I want to ask a question.

Pete Wright:
Where do we stand?

Matthew Fox:
If I can go back to actually something from last week just a bit.

Kyle Olson:
Aha.

Pete Wright:
God, that was long, a long time ago.

Matthew Fox:
In part, because to me there’s so many things I love about this movie. And this scene has a little bit of what I’m about to talk about, but it’s mostly in the last five minutes. I wish that the loyal SHIELD people weren’t quite so thoroughly ROFL-stomped. Every time you see the people being like, “Okay, no, Cap called us, we’re gonna come, we’re gonna stand up and join Cap,” they’re immediately wiped out, whether it’s by Insight or, in this case this time, by Bucky. Is that a thing that either of you have thought about?

Pete Wright:
Well, I definitely thought about it in these five minutes, because it’s super obvious what’s happening right now, and it’s unpleasant for these poor guys.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah. Yeah.

Matthew Fox:
Yeah. So we’ll talk about it as part of these minutes. I just gotta go on record as like, I wish there had been a little bit more effectiveness from —

Pete Wright:
Mira.

Matthew Fox:
Because it kind of looks like SHIELD and the seven dwarves. I mean, Cap and the seven dwarves.

Pete Wright:
Captain and the Seven Dwarfs, a little bit.

Matthew Fox:
I’m upset! I wanted England to win. Anyway, go ahead.

Pete Wright:
Okay. So where we begin these minutes is with some rolling and punching and fighting. It’s in situ with Cap in the middle of a fight on the deck of the Insight. And then, is there anything of particular note in this roll and punch?

Kyle Olson:
Just between here and later on in 102, I felt so happy for Cap because he finally got to do the fighting he was trained for. This is proper World War II, guys with guns, and he gets to run and jump and punch and throw the shield. He must have been like, “Oh, muscle memory.”

Pete Wright:
He does look giddy, yeah.

Kyle Olson:
No space gods, no robots. It’s just like, “Oh, good old-fashioned just people with guns trying to kill me. Boy, it takes me back.”

Matthew Fox:
He is a fighter. He’s been dragged kicking and screaming into multi-classing into rogue.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah.

Matthew Fox:
He did not like it. And now he’s like, no more sneak.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah.

Matthew Fox:
I’m not rolling sneak again for the rest of this movie. I’m just being a fighter.

Kyle Olson:
He’s like, yeah, exactly.

Pete Wright:
It’s pretty great, that part.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah, it’s pretty great.

Pete Wright:
And I would say, just while we’re talking about that, Falcon’s doing Falcon too, right? There’s some awesome flight effect going on here. And one of the things that I don’t recall in other minutes, certainly in later movies, is he has like handles on these wings. There are moments in this movie where his arms are outstretched and he’s holding onto them like a glider. And we just finished watching — we watched Captain America: The Winter Soldier again and just finished it like last week.

Kyle Olson:
Wait, that’s this movie.

Pete Wright:
I mean, not that. I mean, wait, it was Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Everybody gets a Winter Soldier buddy-up.

Kyle Olson:
Ah, okay.

Pete Wright:
And his wing moves are just now completely automated, right?

Kyle Olson:
Yeah, yeah.

Pete Wright:
And this one, I kind of like the tactile nature of him. I kind of can’t get over you calling me out on “wait, that’s this movie.” I can’t let that out of my head, because now I’m very confused by titles. I like the tactile feeling of him using the wings with his arms. I think that’s a very cool addition.

Kyle Olson:
Well then, here’s a reference you didn’t expect to happen. It’s very Condorman. Yes, that’s right, I brought up the live-action Disney movie that I adored as a kid and was completely lost to history.

Pete Wright:
Please, give us just a brief presy on Condorman, because that is new to me.

Kyle Olson:
Condorman. Condorman is — oh, Condorman — I believe it is, first of all, starring the Phantom of the Opera himself.

Matthew Fox:
I have never heard of it.

Kyle Olson:
It is from like 1980.

Matthew Fox:
Michael Cross —

Pete Wright:
That’s what I was gonna say, Michael Crawford.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah, Michael Crawford as the lead guy. The premise of it is that he is a comic book creator who is then contacted by the government, who wants to make his thing real to stop an evil supervillain. So basically, what if Bob Kane got to be Batman, or whatever.

Pete Wright:
Wow.

Kyle Olson:
He actually really gets the full treatment. And it’s Condorman, so he has a full glider suit with wings and everything, and it is ’80s-tastic.

Matthew Fox:
So wait a minute.

Kyle Olson:
Yes.

Matthew Fox:
I’ve recently learned — I’m trying to stay up to date with the kids’ lingo, and I’ve recently learned a new term. Is this a DCOM?

Kyle Olson:
Sam, I’m too old for that. So what is a DCOM?

Matthew Fox:
Oh, a Disney Channel Original Movie.

Kyle Olson:
No, it is not. It was actually — that was a lie. It was a theatrically released movie. It came out in theaters at the time that everything Disney touched turned to crap.

Pete Wright:
Wow, I’ve never even heard of this.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah. It was like at the time of, you know, Apple Dumpling Gang. It was sort of in that dizzy patch where they just could not find a hit to save their lives.

Pete Wright:
What was Condorman’s ability? Because what I know of condors is they soar.

Kyle Olson:
It’s much more — he was much more Batman, where basically he was just a guy and he had a suit and he had a cool car and cool gadgets. It was more like — I guess Roger Moore Bond was a big influence on it.

Pete Wright:
Okay. So he must have been fighting the Russians. It was a KGB kind of thing.

Kyle Olson:
Yes, yes, it was. Absolutely. There’s a whole exciting chase sequence with the Condormobile and a bunch of really cool black Porsches.

Pete Wright:
Hm. And he could soar in the air.

Kyle Olson:
He could soar, yeah. He had a full glider pack, just like this, that would extend all the way out.

Pete Wright:
Okay. All right.

Kyle Olson:
So I think that was it. But getting back to your actual point —

Pete Wright:
Well, I’m relieved that we had that sidebar, just for the record.

Kyle Olson:
And I believe it is streaming. I mean, I have the DVD, but I believe it is streaming on Disney Plus.

Pete Wright:
Of course you own the DVD.

Kyle Olson:
Of course I own the DVD. I had to join the Disney Movie Club when that was still a thing to get it, ’cause that was the only way it was available.

Pete Wright:
Wow. Commitment.

Kyle Olson:
So — I think at this point they were still trying to sort of explain how the things worked, because you have that thing. But by the time even later in this fight, we have no idea how he actually controls these wings, because they’re turning and they’re flying, and he spins around in midair and is firing both guns.

Matthew Fox:
Right.

Kyle Olson:
If he’s hovering and flying, then who’s flying the wings?

Pete Wright:
Yeah.

Kyle Olson:
It sort of just becomes that thing of, don’t think about it too much, it’s just cool.

Pete Wright:
It’s okay, they’ve earned their wizards. It’s okay.

Matthew Fox:
And I’m actually going to give what I think is a pretty good in-plot explanation for it, because at this point, this is an air rescue device. It is not an offensive weapon. It is meant to get into enemy territory to find people, help get them out, etc. And so, although I don’t really know how he carries someone out if he has to use the hands, but moving past that — you know, maybe he marks them for the helicopter to come later. Who knows? The point being, it makes sense that there aren’t weapons attached to it.

So if he wants to use weapons, he’s gotta hold them in his hands. And then at a later point, Tony Stark takes a look at this and goes, “Okay, well, that’s fun what the army did. Let me kind of make 3.0.” And that’s when the wings become mentally controlled, or controlled by his left testicle, or whatever the hell Stark does. So, given that this is just something he literally stole from the army, the fact that it is lower-tech than it is in later movies, I think actually makes a lot of sense.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah, absolutely.

Pete Wright:
I do too. And it just highlights that Sam is just the ordinary man again. He’s just wings and some pararescue training. And he’s flying towards some very big bullets, because that’s just what he does, right? He’s not dead yet. I have a great affinity for this Sam Wilson. I think it’s awesome.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah, absolutely. Especially that it turns out that they do have air defenses, but they’re not designed for something that small. They’re meant to shoot down other Quinjets or helicopters or something.

Pete Wright:
He’s very twisty.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah, exactly.

Matthew Fox:
And in this moment I think also — we’ve talked a lot about sidekicks over on Superhero Ethics, so it’s something I’ve thought a lot about. And I think a bad sidekick is someone who does all the same things that our hero does, but not quite as well.

Pete Wright:
Yeah.

Matthew Fox:
A really good sidekick is someone where the superhero can do 80% of things awesome, and the sidekick fills in that other 20%. And I think this scene especially is a really good illustration, where yeah, Cap can do all sorts of crazy combat things, but he cannot get from one of these helicarriers to another, unless they’re perfectly positioned, without the help of someone who can fly. And so I just think it’s a great use of the sidekick as someone who is not as powered but has a distinctly different set of powers that are highly relevant to what Cap needs.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah.

Pete Wright:
That’s a really good point.

Kyle Olson:
‘Cause if this had been like Cap and Red Guardian —

Pete Wright:
Yeah. Yes.

Kyle Olson:
Then it really wouldn’t work, because they’re both just staying next to each other like, “Oh, are you gonna throw the thing?”

Pete Wright:
Yeah, it’s a buddy movie, not a sidekick movie.

Kyle Olson:
Yes.

Pete Wright:
Okay. After some of the early punchy-punchy fighty-fighty bits, we do go back in and have a very elegant conversation with Pierce and the commissioners. There’s champagne poured, champagne tossed, and Commissioner Singh gets his one line with a bullet: “Not if it’s your switch.” And then he’s done. And that was it. Nice line, if you can get it.

Kyle Olson:
So we go back to this thing of Pierce questioning the — because right now things are a little bit dicey for the plan. So when he’s doing his whole pitch, how sincere do we think he actually is being? Is he really trying to see, like, “So, how about Hydra? Have we considered Hydra? Anybody thought about Hydra?”

Matthew Fox:
When I saw this movie, I thought, “Come on, no one really thinks like that.” Today, my opinion has been changed. Especially because — Pete, I know why you love that line of “not if it’s your switch,” and I agree with that. But to me there’s another whole part of what he is saying, which is that not only — because he says, “Now, what if we could just stop all these people from doing all these things?” What he doesn’t mention is: by murdering them.

Pete Wright:
Yeah, yeah.

Matthew Fox:
Although that’s clear intent. And the idea that, if someone’s gonna do something bad, do you go directly to killing? Do not pass go, do not pass arresting them, just go directly to shooting. And, not to make it about the real world too much, but in our own world, that’s actually a debate we’re having right now, about how quickly can we start using lethal force as part of law enforcement, or ICE, or whatever it is.

Pete Wright:
Yeah.

Matthew Fox:
So, like ten years ago I would have said this is complete nonsense. Today I’m like, no, actually I believe that. I would have thought before that no human would actually think like this. Now I see a lot who do.

Pete Wright:
Yeah.

Matthew Fox:
So to me it’s totally believable that he’s like someone — someone like Grillo. No, what’s the name of the guy who’s the head of Insight? He becomes Crossbones.

Kyle Olson:
Oh yeah, Frank Grillo is the actor, yeah.

Pete Wright:
Yeah, Frank Grillo.

Matthew Fox:
Grillo, thank you. He just wants power. I don’t think he cares about anything else.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah. Oh yeah.

Pete Wright:
Rumlow. It’s Brock Rumlow.

Kyle Olson:
Brock, yeah. Brock is just all about, “Yeah, just give me the paycheck, I don’t care.”

Matthew Fox:
Yeah, but I think Pierce genuinely believes he is making the world a better place by doing this.

Pete Wright:
That, I think, is the open question for me. I don’t know if I can tell, because he is Hydra, right? There are two points. One — I take your point absolutely, and I think the line “not if it’s your switch” works in the context of this scene because it’s a one-off. But the line should be, “We don’t want this switch. Humanity doesn’t want this switch.” And that’s the line that would have completed the other side. The implication of “not if it’s your switch” is: there is a switch, and somebody else should control it. And that’s not great.

Matthew Fox:
Well, it’s not great, but I think it’s realistic.

Pete Wright:
Yes, no, I totally agree.

Matthew Fox:
Because remember, this is the same council that said, “We’re willing to nuke New York to save the world.” Which — a totally different question, I don’t think is a crazy decision by them. But for the people who are willing to do that, I believe they would say, “We don’t hate this switch that exists,” but they think it should be we, the council, instead of one individual person.

Pete Wright:
“We need a switch.”

Kyle Olson:
Mm-hmm.

Pete Wright:
Right, absolutely. And the other side of this point is: is Pierce someone on the side of his fervent belief in doing good? And I’m not convinced that that’s true. I think he is Hydra, and that’s the gambit, because the movie cast Robert Redford. And so we’re meant to question that ideology, that perspective. And for me, I’m constantly on the fence, because I look at his Robert Redford face and I think, “He would never.” But really, he’s Hydra. We’re to believe that they are evil, capital E. And I think he’s standing for evil. This feels to me like he’s still a part of trying to convert the council, who will convert to Hydra.

Matthew Fox:
I guess maybe this just comes down to how we see Hydra and how we see villains, because to me — and granted, the MCU, including TV, has defined what Hydra’s actual goals are 80 million times, and none of them make sense with each other. So Hydra can be whatever the hell we want it to be. But when I say he thinks he’s doing good — to me Hitler qualifies, to me Stalin qualifies. So I guess there’s some level where I just don’t believe that the Grillos of the world can actually ever amass that much power. I think you have to have some belief in what you are, in order to get others to follow you.

Pete Wright:
Yeah.

Matthew Fox:
So I guess to me that’s where I come down: yeah, I think his goals are completely evil. But I do think — and maybe here’s the middle ground — I think that if you start off by saying, “I know how to make the world a better place,” the preservation of you and your power is justified because it makes the world a better place, and eventually it just becomes the continuation of you and your power. And so maybe that’s the middle ground there, because it may just be that he wants the power for himself and he is lying to himself and telling himself that he’s doing it for the right reasons. But I think if you put Wonder Woman’s Lasso of Truth on him and said, “Do you really think this will make the world better as you understand it?” I do think he would say yes.

Pete Wright:
Because “as you understand it” implies “because I will have a consistently growing power base in this world order.” All right. I buy it. I buy it. We do get the punchline to the joke that was started in a deleted scene.

Kyle Olson:
That’s right.

Pete Wright:
Uh —

Kyle Olson:
Because suddenly one of the council members has some pretty serious kicky-punchy powers. And then, to all the movie-going audience — the photostatic veil, this thing that Black Widow has apparently had this whole time. Why didn’t she use it when they were on the run? It doesn’t make any sense. But she has the cool thing where she peels it away, and it turns out Natasha Romanoff has been in there the whole time, waiting for her moment to strike.

Pete Wright:
The whole time, meaning from when the council arrived at the facility, right?

Kyle Olson:
Yeah, because — remember, if I remember back, that scene happened right around the same time that Cap was on the other side of the Potomac. That was where the four of them were there, and you’re like, “Hey, what happened to Black Widow?”

Pete Wright:
They came up in the grass.

Kyle Olson:
And it turns out Black Widow was already in the lobby.

Pete Wright:
Yeah.

Matthew Fox:
So I have two questions here. I’ll ask you questions one at a time. First, I would have called this the “face-changey thingy,” but you used a much more official title: photostatic veil. Does that mean this is a thing that exists in the comic books? This isn’t technology that the Russos made up.

Kyle Olson:
No. Yeah, it’s from the deleted scene. So it was created for the movie.

Matthew Fox:
Okay, but that’s where they name it that.

Kyle Olson:
That’s where it came from, yeah. Because literally the box is labeled that in the deleted scene.

Matthew Fox:
Got it.

Pete Wright:
Photostatic veil.

Matthew Fox:
Okay. ‘Cause I was like, that’s quite a difference if I just call it “the thingy” and you have a whole thing.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah.

Matthew Fox:
But my real question, I guess, is: what happened to the woman that Natasha’s impersonating?

Kyle Olson:
A good question. I assume that she had a —

Pete Wright:
Wouldn’t it be great if Natasha killed her?

Kyle Olson:
Well, if she knocked her out anywhere in the vicinity of the Triskelion — yeah, I don’t think she made it out.

Pete Wright:
Yeah, you’d think somebody would find — yeah, I don’t think so.

Kyle Olson:
If she’s in a janitor’s closet or whatever, I don’t think she walks away like, “Whoo, what happened?”

Pete Wright:
Dusting off. I guess she’s just wearing a slip, because Natasha also stole her fancy blue suit.

Matthew Fox:
Yeah.

Pete Wright:
And so Natasha has gone full Jenny Agutter, and it’s awesome. There’s some good fighty-fighty, punchy-punchy here too.

Kyle Olson:
Uh-huh.

Pete Wright:
And then we get the data dump.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah. And once again, Natasha gets to have that cool line: “I’m sorry, did I step on your moment?” A-plus.

Matthew Fox:
Except, I remember it as “I’m sorry, did I step on your moment?” A-plus. Then I rewatch it, and I remember it’s “I’m sorry” — 20 seconds of removing the photostatic veil, now that I’ve stepped on my own moment — “can I ask you if I’ve stepped on your moment?” I’m picking nits, but to me that’s like, come on guys, let her say the line all at once.

Pete Wright:
It intercuts here, and of course the intercutting is perfect thriller pacing for the movie, because we intercut between Cap, we intercut between Falcon, we intercut back into the Triskelion, into the council room. And in the spirit of continuation of this scene, we jump away and now we’re back. And Councilman Rockwell says, “What are you doing?” And Pierce says, “She’s disabling security protocols and dumping all the secrets onto the internet.” Natasha says, “Including Hydra’s, Pierce, and SHIELD’s. If you do this, none of your past is going to remain hidden. Are you sure you’re ready for the world to see you as you really are?” And she says, “Are you?” Big moment.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah, but right before that, she hesitates, though.

Pete Wright:
Yeah.

Kyle Olson:
There’s just that fraction where she stops typing. So she literally then is running through her head, like, “Am I ready?” She’s already ahead of him; he’s still trying to do his pitch. But she really does have that second of, “Oh yeah, I’m about to be exposed to the world.”

Pete Wright:
Right. And this is my pitch that this moment, this five minutes, is where SHIELD dies, right? This data dump is the grand reset. It’s the grand informational EMP that resets all expectations about what SHIELD is, what Hydra is. Everything is reset. And that changes the entire board — before Ultron, before Fury goes dark, the works. Everything changes in these five minutes, right here in the Triskelion. Agree or disagree?

Kyle Olson:
Yeah, I’m just wondering if this was part of Cap’s plan. Was this always what it was going to be? Because he says, when they’re in the base, “It all goes.”

Pete Wright:
Yeah, because remember the last time Cap was busy and Natasha was doing something — they were on the boat in the beginning, like a thousand minutes ago, and she was doing something on her own.

Kyle Olson:
That’s right. And the exact opposite thing.

Pete Wright:
It’s a great question.

Kyle Olson:
She was hiding SHIELD secrets.

Matthew Fox:
And also — I think it is very clear, Pete, that what you’re saying is correct. And in one of the few moments where Marvel movies and Marvel TV shows have been well coordinated, Agents of SHIELD literally — there are three episodes where you see the build-up to this movie and then the aftermath of this movie. And I think it is a level of integration of the two stories that has never been matched. To me it is absolutely clear that before they wrote the first word of dialogue of Agents of SHIELD, they knew what the plot of this movie was gonna be. Because the whole setup was that by the end of season one, they are the only remnants of SHIELD anymore. They’re on the run and they’re trying to rebuild SHIELD. So yeah, I think that’s definitely true, and I think that was very intentional.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah, but apparently — according to, I think, the MCU book that came out recently — it was a big surprise to the showrunners when they were up and running and they had done, I think, maybe the first season, and maybe into the second season.

Matthew Fox:
Oh, right, okay.

Kyle Olson:
And then Marvel brass sat them down and said, “So, we’re destroying SHIELD.”

Pete Wright:
Uh-huh.

Kyle Olson:
And they went, “Our show’s called Agents of SHIELD.”

Pete Wright:
Agents of —

Kyle Olson:
They’re like, “So, yeah, you’re gonna have to figure that out.”

Matthew Fox:
Oh, never mind.

Pete Wright:
But I think the result is the same, and the story is even better, because it’s one of the great narrative pivots that the showrunners of Agents of SHIELD accomplished. Because it feels exactly like you described it. It feels perfectly aligned between these two things.

Matthew Fox:
Yeah.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah.

Matthew Fox:
And to be clear, it was in the first season. The movie takes place between episodes sixteen and seventeen.

Kyle Olson:
Oh, was it? Okay.

Pete Wright:
I want to go back and watch those two episodes again. You’re absolutely right.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah. The one that tied — I don’t know if you guys talked about it much on Dark World, but the one that ties into Dark World, that storyline is really good.

Pete Wright:
It was really solid, yeah.

Kyle Olson:
Where they find there’s another Asgardian living on Earth. And it’s Peter MacNicol.

Pete Wright:
Right, right.

Kyle Olson:
It’s such a great arc. I give a lot of props to those guys.

Matthew Fox:
And Sif — I think Lady Sif was the first movie character to appear in a Marvel TV show.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah. And then eventually even Nick Fury would show up on the show.

Pete Wright:
Yeah.

Kyle Olson:
It was always downstream. That’s why — I’m reading from the people who were working behind the scenes — they would have to say, “Hey, would you mind putting this in their movie?” And Marvel would just never take their calls. So it was always like they had to get it downstream.

Pete Wright:
And yet they would lob these giant storylines. “Shoehorn this into your 23 episodes.”

Kyle Olson:
Yeah. It was a Herculean task, so I give it up to the showrunners and writers and producers of that show, who had to do the impossible. And I think they did very well for what they were allowed to do and the budget they were given in the time frame.

Pete Wright:
For sure.

Matthew Fox:
It’s too bad that in later seasons that ends. The end of the show does not line up with Endgame in the way it should, or even with Infinity War.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah. However, if you are a SHIELD fan, there is a really cool fan edit that someone did in the style of the end of Endgame for all the Agents of SHIELD characters, where they have their signatures up on there and they have the big thing. It’s really nice. It’s like, “Oh, this is the proper send-off that they should have had.”

Pete Wright:
Oh, that’s touching.

Matthew Fox:
What is the name of the book that you’re mentioning?

Kyle Olson:
Uh, “MCU: How the” — something something something — let’s see.

Matthew Fox:
Okay. Pete, if you’re okay with it, we will put the title of that book in the show notes along with a link, so that when you purchase it —

Kyle Olson:
“MCU,” yeah — “The Reign of Marvel Studios.”

Matthew Fox:
Okay, we’ll have a link in the show notes, and that way it’ll also be one where you can support the podcast a little bit by making that.

Pete Wright:
Got it. Yep, for sure.

Pete Wright:
We’re talking about the death of SHIELD, and SHIELD is dead, because of the data dump.

Kyle Olson:
Yes, yes.

Pete Wright:
And we’re getting close to the end of our minutes, but not before —

Kyle Olson:
RIP.

Pete Wright:
We do have the ROFL-stomp good-guy bit. And they actually say it out loud, to highlight how terrible the moment is: “We’re the only air support Cap’s got.”

Kyle Olson:
Oh, yeah.

Matthew Fox:
Which, if I was Falcon, I’d be a little annoyed by, just gonna say.

Pete Wright:
A little peeved.

Kyle Olson:
Like, “I’m right here.”

Pete Wright:
Yeah, it’s not a great look. As they march out toward their Quinjets, and then Bucky is here.

Kyle Olson:
It’s almost like being on a Star Trek away team and saying, “Captain, I found something.” It’s not gonna end well for you.

Pete Wright:
No, it does not end well. And we do have, of course, the stomping by Bucky. What we haven’t talked about yet is that this is the execution of the ultimate technology swap, right? And I wonder if we need to spend just a few moments trying to discern what exactly is happening that Cap and Sam are trying to accomplish, hopping from carrier to carrier.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah. So, when they talked about it, they said that all three carriers have to be connected in order to stop it. Because if one goes off, then you’re still going into the catastrophic numbers of millions of people dead because of the space guns. So they have to go in and — they call them servers, but they have to basically put those blades into the control things, because it’s all being run remotely. I got the impression that the people who are on the ships aren’t actually the ones controlling it. I think probably the plan was originally to have — I don’t know, maybe not Pierce directly, but maybe even Zola — actually running it, before everything changed.

Matthew Fox:
Mm-hmm.

Pete Wright:
Yeah.

Kyle Olson:
It’s all sort of controlled from the ground. So the idea is to have the different command codes, so that Maria can be the one controlling them and not them. And then all three have to stop. But there’s a numbers game here, where it’s three helicarriers, two people actively trying to put the blades in. So I guess they were hoping they would be able to team up onto that third one, but that, unfortunately — spoiler alert — is not what’s going to happen.

Pete Wright:
So the actual server blades — it’s as you might expect. It’s a lit-up tray where they put the card in the slot, put it back in. This movie came out in 2014. In 2016, Rogue One comes out, and don’t we have a very similar interface, in a galaxy far, far away?

Kyle Olson:
Yeah. I’m glad they didn’t try to have them, like, putting in a thumb drive. We already saw the SHIELD thumb drive. The idea of, like, turning it and then flipping it over and then putting it in, then flipping it back and then putting it — no. I like the big handheld clunk when it puts it in.

Pete Wright:
Yes.

Matthew Fox:
I’ll say something both positive and negative. In defense, positively, of Rogue One — they were trying to justify explanations of the technology that was like the 1970s idea of what technology “long time ago, galaxy far away” could have been. So I’m kind of okay that they didn’t imagine wireless transference of huge amounts of data. On the other hand, the Rogue One data thing and this thing both have the same odd little quibble: they’re open-air.

Pete Wright:
They’re open-air.

Kyle Olson:
Mm-hmm.

Matthew Fox:
And I don’t know anyone —

Pete Wright:
And the Rogue One one is on a salty water planet. Tell me those aren’t just rotting.

Matthew Fox:
Yeah, it makes no sense.

Pete Wright:
At least it didn’t hit the way Scarlett Johansson’s other USB movie hit — Lucy, where she turns into a USB thumb drive. That’s right, I said it. It’s a terrible movie.

Kyle Olson:
Ooh, strong stance. Do you have any thoughts on Ghost in the Shell?

Pete Wright:
Don’t even start with me, Kyle.

Matthew Fox:
Cultural appropriation. Should have been an Asian actress.

Pete Wright:
Don’t even start. Oh my God.

Matthew Fox:
But yeah, in both cases, the idea that it is so unguarded, so easily accessible, it’s not locked deep in the bowels of the ship —

Pete Wright:
Such fire.

Matthew Fox:
It’s quite ridiculous, but is necessary for the plot. So here we go.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah, at least we don’t have a big red countdown clock anywhere.

Matthew Fox:
Yeah. But wait, we breezed through the ROFL-stomp thing, and so we didn’t actually get to ask my question that I was gonna ask at the beginning, but — here.

Pete Wright:
Fair.

Kyle Olson:
My question is, what is a ROFL-stomp?

Matthew Fox:
Oh. R-O-F-L. I like that Pete just quoted my term without, you know —

Pete Wright:
Because you’ve already educated me on it before.

Matthew Fox:
Yeah, it’s — you know, ROFL, rolling on the floor laughing. So to stomp someone in a way that is so over the top that it makes people laugh. Like, “I didn’t just beat you up. People laugh about how much I beat you up. I ROFL-stomped you.”

Kyle Olson:
Okay.

Pete Wright:
It’s a term. It’s a term the kids are using.

Matthew Fox:
It comes out of gamer culture.

Pete Wright:
Kyle, I’m surprised you didn’t know that.

Matthew Fox:
I don’t think I’ve ever used it in an actual phrase, but there it is. But to me, my main question is: do you think the movie would have been better in this one small way if the people who stand up with Cap had actually been effectual in any way, shape, or form? To me this is a bad example. The even worse example is the two guards pull out their guns first, are pointing the guns at Insight and ready to take action because Cap told them to, and then somehow Insight pulls out their guns and mows them down before they can do anything. And of course then we get other scenes where Abed tries to stand up and gets just knocked over immediately. I just — it’s a small quibble, but I’m alone on this island of thinking, “I wish the SHIELD people had done something a little bit more helpful.”

Kyle Olson:
Well, yeah, the fact that just in these five minutes all help from SHIELD is disabled.

Pete Wright:
Yeah.

Kyle Olson:
Just that fast. I guess it’s raising the stakes, I guess it’s focusing the action back on our heroes. But it does seem like — what, you guys are trained agents. I know that you probably had coffee with this guy before, or saw him in the hallway and stuff too, but it seems like a spy organization would be a lot quicker to be able to respond to a chaotic situation like this, and everybody just gets wiped out this fast.

Pete Wright:
Well, everybody else on the deck is running hither and yon, and these guys are taking their sweet time. It doesn’t make SHIELD look great. But the other problem I have with it is Cap just gave this resounding speech, right?

Matthew Fox:
Thank you, that’s exactly my point.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Pete Wright:
And what this implies is there are exactly six guys who are loyal to SHIELD, and now they’re dead, right?

Matthew Fox:
Right. And my question is, if you cut out his giving the speech, does it affect the outcome of the movie in any way, shape, or form?

Kyle Olson:
No.

Matthew Fox:
And that, to me, is the disappointing part. He gives the great speech, and if we’re saying one of his abilities is not only that he punches really good and he blocks bullets really good, but that he inspires people —

Kyle Olson:
Well, I guess we did have the whole “captain’s orders” moment before, where basically the guy wouldn’t launch it because of that. So there was that.

Pete Wright:
All right, seven guys. There are seven guys. And there were all the people who held up their guns, right?

Kyle Olson:
Yeah. And the ground crew — let’s not forget that a pilot can’t just jump in a plane and go away. It has to be prepped, it has to be all this stuff.

Pete Wright:
Yep. That’s fair.

Kyle Olson:
So all those guys were out there running around with the big headphones on.

Pete Wright:
But I stand by Matthew’s point. It does make SHIELD look deeply ineffectual.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah, yeah.

Matthew Fox:
And my point is more than that. It’s that I want there to be more, because yes, the people say “captain’s orders,” they don’t get ROFL-stomped, they get stomped pretty quickly.

Pete Wright:
Yeah.

Matthew Fox:
I’m sitting in my chair as I’m laughing about that. But yeah, I just wish there was more of a payoff to Cap’s speech. That’s my point.

Pete Wright:
Because I think it would have been better if we had had some sort of balance to the fight. Really, it’s just Sam and Cap and Natasha against the powers of evil. And that, I think, is the point of a Captain America movie. And yet I think it would have been made better had there been some allegiance to Cap.

Matthew Fox:
But there isn’t. Because think about the Howling Commandos. In other movies, Cap inspires people. He gets people to rise up and fight with him.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. Right. Totally. Absolutely.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah. But as we were talking about Quinjets back in the day — you can see also here are the good Quinjets as opposed to the bad Quinjets, because the ones that are chasing Falcon are all black, and the ones these guys are running to are all white. And they’re the ones that, when Bucky shows up —

Pete Wright:
Yeah. They get blown up.

Kyle Olson:
He takes all those ones out. So we know who are the good guys and bad guys. I guess this is the black-hat, white-hat thing. We don’t want to make it any ambiguity, like, to make sure that when Falcon blows up a Quinjet, we know it’s a bad Quinjet.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. They’re not even parked in very cool places. They’re just parked in like the accessory lot.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah, well, I don’t think they were planning to use them anytime soon, because all the other ones were up on the helicarriers, the Insight carriers.

Pete Wright:
No, they were all up on the — yeah. Sebastian Stan gets some good moves in, and he kicks a dude through a Quinjet rotor.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah.

Pete Wright:
Yeah.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah, very Lost season one.

Pete Wright:
Yeah, right.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah.

Pete Wright:
So all of the action plays, and that is pretty much the last thing that we get, besides Bucky ripping the windshield plumb out of the frame of a Quinjet. And that’s how our minute comes to an end.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah. I know we talked a lot about Falcon stuff too, but that last sequence, that 104, is one of the best flying sequences, I would say, just in movie history. That’s gotta be in the top ten. Just all the different moves and edits — top two — and then him turning into like the ball and smashing through. It’s incredible.

Pete Wright:
Dodging the barrage of missiles that are chasing him and having them run into — yeah, all of that is outstanding.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah, and bringing ’em around. Yeah.

Matthew Fox:
Yes.

Pete Wright:
The effects work is very kinetic, and there’s nothing that takes me out of the film, right? There’s nothing that looks irrational. It’s beautiful.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah, I’m sure that was probably a CG Sam. But as we’re going to see in the future of the MCU, their digital figures have a long way to go still. It’s very, very obvious when it is a full CG person. And here you really can’t tell.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. It makes me wonder, as kinetic as it looks, if it’s just — like, that’s the line of their compositing, that they had him on a blue screen flipping around on wires and they composited him into all of these flippy-dippy things. That wouldn’t surprise me either.

Matthew Fox:
Well, and also, because you want to capture his range of motion, it’s not big close-ups of him as he’s doing that. Mostly it’s — and I think that also helps — that he’s small enough in the frame that it’s harder to see if it’s CGI or whatever it is.

Pete Wright:
It’s good work. It’s good work.

Matthew Fox:
Yep. If you can get it.

Pete Wright:
And who knows what’s gonna happen next?

Kyle Olson:
Yeah. Well, I think a lot of people know what’s gonna happen, eh?

Pete Wright:
No, we don’t, because it doesn’t exist until we’ve talked about it on the Marvel Movie Minute.

Kyle Olson:
Ah, the Andy Nelson rule.

Pete Wright:
That never dies. Never dies. We are gonna be back as we get closer and closer to wrapping up this movie. Very exciting. It’s very exciting. Any news or plugs of urgent things that you guys want to talk about as we wrap it up? Kyle, you got anything coming?

Kyle Olson:
Uh, no. Hopefully by the time people are hearing this, hopefully we’ll have seen Spider-Man. So that’s kind of cool. There’s a new Spider-Man movie coming out.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. Oh, why do his eyes turn black in the trailer, y’all?

Kyle Olson:
I don’t know. I’m terrified.

Pete Wright:
I’m a little nervous about that.

Kyle Olson:
Please don’t let it be the other.

Matthew Fox:
There’s a new Spider-Man movie coming out. There’s a new Star Wars coming out. And there is a new co-host for Superhero Ethics: Paul Hoppe, longtime guest, recently published author of poker books, has officially joined Superhero Ethics as a co-host. Check us out. And of course check out the Star Wars Generations podcast, where, by the time this comes out, we will be talking about the new Star Wars TV show, The Ninth Jedi.

Kyle Olson:
Pete, I’m looking for some new reading material. Would you have anything that you could recommend to me? I like sort of, you know, middle grade, that kind of — you know, sort of — oh, really?

Pete Wright:
Let me go through my library. Oh wait, Kyle, I have just the thing. That’s right. I released my next book. It’s called Onset: Manifest, Book One. It is the first of a trilogy, and it is exactly that. It’s a dark YA thriller crossover book. It’s my first full-length novel. I’m very excited about it. And I will say, with great admiration, that my Aunt Mimi couldn’t put it down. She read it in two days.

Kyle Olson:
Wow.

Pete Wright:
She said it was fantastic, and then told me exactly what she wants to happen in book two. So I can think of no higher praise from family.

Kyle Olson:
So you’re like, “Sweet, outline done.”

Matthew Fox:
Well, as one of my favorite authors, JMS — J. Michael Straczynski — often talked about, be careful, because now if you put any of those ideas into the book, your aunt can sue you.

Kyle Olson:
Huh.

Pete Wright:
Yeah, right.

Pete Wright:
I know. Well, let me just say that she was wrong about a lot of stuff that I have planned. So it’s okay. Sorry, Mimi.

Matthew Fox:
I’ll also say, if you want to hear Pete talk about his writing, by the time this comes out, we’ll have an episode on Superhero Ethics about the first book Pete published. He’s really going slow. He took almost three months between publishing his first novella and now publishing a novel. George R.R. Martin, please take notes.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah.

Matthew Fox:
So there’s an episode of Superhero Ethics where Pete will be talking about that book, the ethical choices in it, and probably giving a little preview of what onset is to happen.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah.

Pete Wright:
I love it.

Matthew Fox:
The onset of Onset.

Pete Wright:
Thank you guys for the pitches. I very, very much appreciate it. And on behalf of everybody — Kyle Olson, Matthew Fox — I’m Pete Wright. We’ll see you right here next week on the Marvel Movie Minute.

Kyle Olson:
Enough said.