Kyle Olson:
Welcome back to the Marvel Movie Minute, a weekly podcast where we disassemble a film from the Marvel Cinematic Universe into five-minute segments and then examine them in obsessive and occasionally hilarious detail. I’m Kyle Olson from the Craft and Chaos Podcast.
Pete Wright:
Hi, Pete Wright from TruStory FM.
Matthew Fox:
I’m Matthew Fox from the Star Wars Generations podcast, where we’re about to cover Maul Shadow Lord, and the Superhero Ethics Podcast.
Kyle Olson:
Rob will not be joining us today as he is in the finals of a Mortal Kombat tournament. We wish him nothing but fatalities, animalities, and babalities. Today we’ll be discovering the dangers of commuting as we examine minutes 26 through 30 of Captain America: The Winter Soldier from 2014, directed by the Russo Brothers. We rejoined Nick Fury and his extremely handsome and totally trustworthy pal, Alexander Pierce, during their chat. Nick discovered someone else had been using his SHIELD account, and is asking Pierce to delay Project Insight until he can investigate.
Pete Wright:
Do you think this is Pierce using his authority at the office for inappropriate personal favors? HR would like to know.
Kyle Olson:
Oh yeah, I suppose this — we have two people at the top colluding, bending the rules to suit their purposes.
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Matthew Fox:
Here is where — all respect to Nick Fury, because he often is on top of the ball. But here is where he missed the ball — or dropped the ball, I suppose, is the proper phrase — because has Nick Fury ever been able to get Tony Stark to do anything?
Pete Wright:
Absolutely right. He’s never gotten it to succeed, ever.
Matthew Fox:
So he should have immediately been like, Mr.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Matthew Fox:
Pierce, why are you asking me to do something that — Tony Stark is not going to some girl’s birthday unless she’s turning 18. And yes, I mean that to be as creepy as it sounds, because that’s Tony Stark.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, let alone mingle.
Matthew Fox:
That’s the only time he’s going to. Well, okay, maybe if the mom’s hot. Maybe if it’s like a Spider-Man situation.
Kyle Olson:
Mm.
Matthew Fox:
But otherwise, Pierce has to know Nick Fury’s never getting Tony Stark to do that.
Kyle Olson:
Well, it’s a whole room full of lies at this point.
Matthew Fox:
So.
Kyle Olson:
I mean…
Pete Wright:
Yeah, yeah, layers upon layers.
Matthew Fox:
I’m just saying, I think that should have been one more cue to Nick Fury of like, hmm, something doesn’t feel right.
Pete Wright:
Something’s awry.
Matthew Fox:
Just calling Hill is not going to be enough.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. It reminds me of there was an actual party that one of Robert Downey Jr.’s friends got him to appear at. Like, “my son loves Iron Man, you have to come.” And so he did. And then the kid was absolutely destroyed, because he thought Iron Man was going to show up, and then just this guy walks in.
Pete Wright:
Just Tony.
Kyle Olson:
It’s just Tony. And there’s a famous picture if you go out and look — RDJ is holding on to this kid who’s like bawling his eyes out, and he’s just looking at the camera like, well, I mean, I tried to do something nice.
Pete Wright:
That’s so sad.
Kyle Olson:
Right.
Pete Wright:
What a bummer. Okay. So that’s where we are — we’re just picking this up.
Kyle Olson:
That’s where we ended, so we’re picking it up right as they sort of make that deal, or whatever — Alexander was like, okay, I’ll hold off, as long as you can get Iron Man to show up.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
So from here, we cut over to see what Sam’s job is. They don’t actually say what it is, but essentially some sort of center where Sam works, and we join essentially a therapy session or a PTSD support group in medias res. We’re coming in and we hear the voice of Garcia — we don’t know her first or last name — but we know that it is played by Angela Russo-Otsot. And if you think that name sounds familiar, you’re right, because this is the younger sister of the Russo Brothers. Maybe it’s nepotism, but it’s not just nepotism, because she has a serious list of credentials.
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Kyle Olson:
She was a writer on Daybreak, which is a fantastic show that not enough people saw, and The Shield. From this, she would go on to write Cherry for them and is the executive producer of many of their projects. She has a long and distinguished career. She is definitely a Hollywood power player at this point, but she is also a trained actress. And so she gets to do cameos and some other stuff like this. And I think even though she only got a couple of lines, she does a great job.
Pete Wright:
She does, for sure. And she’s one of those faces — when you do see her, I recognize her in other properties. It’s fun to see her in these things. We should also say this is the first experience of ours, I think, where we discover the Russo Brothers love their support groups. This is not the last support group that we will see in the Russo canon of Marvel contributions.
Kyle Olson:
Yes, yes, that’s true.
Matthew Fox:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
They love people getting their mental health support as needed.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, exactly. And she’s telling this very — I’m sure very true — story from someone of…
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
…her difficulties coming back after being deployed. Seeing a bag and thinking it’s an IED, swerving out of the way, and then getting pulled over by the cops. We have that theme — even Sam will say a little bit of this — that there are things you leave, and there are things you bring back, and you don’t always get to choose.
Pete Wright:
Right.
Matthew Fox:
I thought that moment in particular was really powerful for how it grounds this story in what’s happening in the real world. Because that could have easily been, you know, “in my dreams I keep looking up and seeing that hole in the sky and the Chitauri that killed my mother,” or whatever it was. And people in the audience might go, “oh cool, that’s a reference to the other movie.” But I don’t know anything about that. Whereas this is happening at the time when probably one in every ten people in the theater is back from Iraq or Afghanistan, or has a family member who’s back, or knows someone like that who probably is having some degree of PTSD.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. Yes.
Matthew Fox:
And the IEDs — that was the very specific thing we were talking about all the time in this country.
Pete Wright:
Right.
Matthew Fox:
So yeah, I just thought that was such a nice moment of: yes, we’re telling this fantastical story, but we’re telling it about very real things and bringing attention to very real issues. People who aren’t directly connected to it might be reading about it in the newspaper, but they haven’t actually connected with it in a real way until this.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, because it takes that superhero thing and brings it back to: yes, he is a superhero, but he also is a soldier.
Pete Wright:
Man, that’s…
Kyle Olson:
And so that’s everybody in this room — they’re all soldiers, and they all served in wars. And as we’ve heard, war never changes.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, right. Just hearing that — the munitions check of IED — because I remember viscerally when that term became a part of my day-to-day. Every story was about, look, there are these IEDs and they’re killing people and they’re…
Matthew Fox:
Right.
Pete Wright:
Absolutely horrible. This is what our military is dealing with. And so to hear them sort of check that munition as a thing in this movie was enormously grounding, I think. That was really appropriate.
Matthew Fox:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
How do you feel about Sam’s role as the sort of veteran-in-chief of the group?
Kyle Olson:
I think it’s really smart. I think this was a really good choice on their part — to have it be not just a pal, like a guy, or someone that Cap had saved, or an inventor. That would have been one thing.
Pete Wright:
Mm-hmm.
Kyle Olson:
But having a fellow soldier, and also having one who’s working with people who are coming back from war. And that’s exactly what Cap is. So it’s like — not only is it now your friend and a fellow soldier, but someone who knows the journey you’re on, even if you don’t know that you’re on that journey.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Matthew Fox:
Right.
Kyle Olson:
It was a really smart move.
Matthew Fox:
And it does a great thing for the power relationship between the two, because…
Kyle Olson:
Right.
Matthew Fox:
Bucky — Bucky was always the one Cap looked up to, who Steve Rogers looked up to.
Kyle Olson:
Mm-hmm.
Matthew Fox:
And then it switched somewhat, but still — he knew me before. And right now, everyone who isn’t trying to kill Cap looks at him as up on a pedestal. And so to have something where, you know, this guy looks at Steve Rogers as someone who can impress people if he comes to help him at the center — but also more, Steve has something that this guy can give him, because Steve is one of those people wrestling with — he is having trouble sleeping at night. And here is something he can look to Sam for, because Sam knows more than he does. I think it really helps establish that this is not just going to be a Robin to his Batman.
Kyle Olson:
Mm-hmm.
Matthew Fox:
This is someone he can see as an equal. Even though on the physical level, nobody else in the world is — that he knows of.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. And then after the meeting sort of ends, the two of them have their conversation. We find out a little bit more about Sam’s story. They talk about the guilt and regret, and Cap says, “Did you lose someone?” And then Sam goes on to tell the story of how his partner got shot down by an RPG while they were on a flight. Now, as we’re listening to it, we assume they’re in helicopters, but later on we’ll find out when he says “flight,” he means it.
Pete Wright:
No detail given. Yeah. Taking just a brief step back, I do love that Sam clocks Steve as the running man.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. Yes.
Matthew Fox:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Again, speaking of things that ground us — he doesn’t call him the hero.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
He doesn’t call him Cap. He calls him the joke that they share together.
Matthew Fox:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
I thought that was a really smart choice.
Matthew Fox:
By the way, check out a great episode on the Next Reel podcast that both Pete and I were on, talking about the movie The Running Man.
Kyle Olson:
Cross promotion.
Pete Wright:
That’s right. Welcome back to the film board.
Matthew Fox:
There we go. The film board, that was it.
Pete Wright:
Film board, yeah.
Matthew Fox:
That was it.
Pete Wright:
So we get — you guys have brought up before, already, this idea of grounding these guys as soldiers together. That is where their Venn diagram meets — as soldiers, as men, as veterans, as people who are living through their own trauma just in different ways. It is an intimate commonality that they share together, and it’s unexpected. Another thing the Russos introduce to the MCU is an interesting, grounded male relationship that isn’t sort of vaudevillian.
Kyle Olson:
Mm-hmm. And from that conversation, Cap immediately asks, “Did you lose someone too?”
Pete Wright:
Yeah, I believe…
Kyle Olson:
And then Sam tells the story. But he then doesn’t go, “Oh, did you?” And this is, I think, what’s really smart — because this is the counselor training of: I’ve told you my story, but I’m not going to say, “And now it’s your turn to share.”
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Right.
Kyle Olson:
No, it’s like, when they’re ready, they’ll do it. But he’s not asking about Cap’s war experiences. He’s not asking what’s troubling him.
Pete Wright:
Right.
Kyle Olson:
He’s just saying, like, oh — like the baby tax.
Pete Wright:
Because that would be such a foolish question to ask. The only answer is: son, I’ve lost generations.
Kyle Olson:
Yes.
Matthew Fox:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
Right. I’ve lost everything.
Matthew Fox:
And I think one of the things this scene does — and it may raise a question that you two weren’t even thinking about, or most people who weren’t…
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
[pause]
Matthew Fox:
Weirdos like me aren’t thinking about. But it answers a question that at least a part of the audience might be thinking about, which is: Cap was created because America was at war.
Kyle Olson:
Yes.
Matthew Fox:
Both outside and inside the cinema, America’s at war.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Matthew Fox:
And there’s a part that might be thinking, like, why isn’t Cap in Afghanistan or Iraq or something like that? Clearly because that sounds like a very boring movie, as well as an incredibly controversial one — but also because he’s part of SHIELD. But I feel like this does the thing of acknowledging that this guy who was created to be a soldier in America’s wars — we’re at least connecting with the fact that America is fighting wars at the time this movie is taking place. And so the connecting to soldiers is important, but it also does it in this very specific way that kind of addresses the question somebody might walk into the theater with: wait, why wasn’t this happening?
Kyle Olson:
I remember when they did the reboot of Sherlock — the Benedict Cumberbatch version — and they were trying to figure out how to update it for a modern audience. They were looking at the biography of Watson, and they’re like, oh yeah, it says he was a military doctor who served in Afghanistan.
Matthew Fox:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
And that’s from the 1890s too.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
And by the time it came back, we were at war again in Afghanistan.
Pete Wright:
In Afghanistan.
Kyle Olson:
So they didn’t have to change anything. It was like, wow.
Matthew Fox:
Yeah. Apparently the British press who were critical of what was happening had a field day with, like, look —
Kyle Olson:
Like…
Matthew Fox:
Sherlock Holmes shows — anyway, we’re now way off in Tangent Land.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, but time is a flat circle.
Matthew Fox:
No, it’s a great point. It’s so important.
Kyle Olson:
Look at that — it comes back around. But then we see that Sam once again shifts into his professional mode and starts to feel out, essentially, “Why are you here?” He doesn’t actually flat-out say it, but it’s like: you’re not here just to see me.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
I mentioned this place, but I didn’t say come by anytime. Cap is there, and maybe even he doesn’t know why. But Sam has started to pull that out of him.
Pete Wright:
Right.
Kyle Olson:
Are you going through something? And they ask the question: are you thinking about getting out?
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
And Cap sort of doesn’t know.
Pete Wright:
And Steve doesn’t have answers.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
It’s fascinating. And the scene doesn’t quite end — it’s not like Steve walks away. There’s something that continues between these two men as we cut away to something different.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
We’re not invited to that part of the conversation, but I’m deeply curious what it is.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, so…
Matthew Fox:
I promise you, a million fan fictions have continued that conversation.
Pete Wright:
So you’re saying there’s an answer.
Kyle Olson:
AO3 is for that. But this is — we’re also now playing with time, because all this stuff with Nick is happening at the same time…
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
…as Cap has — we saw him drive off after having seen Project Insight, and this is where he went. Which is interesting.
Pete Wright:
Right, right.
Kyle Olson:
After talking to Peggy and stuff too, like he immediately was like, there’s this guy.
Pete Wright:
I can think of one other guy who might just have the kind of spirit I need to decompress with after seeing what I’ve seen.
Kyle Olson:
Right. But we could go on about trauma, and this is still an action movie and there’s action to be had. So we cut from there, after ending on the question of “What makes you happy?” and Cap saying, “I don’t know” — which is an interesting place to leave him as he’s about to have this huge adventure.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
Then we cut back to Nick Fury, who is driving in a 2007 Chevrolet Tahoe through the streets of — Cleveland. I mean Washington, D.C. That’s because this is where they shot it. He has apparently a very sophisticated onboard system, because he immediately calls Maria Hill and we see a little picture of her pop up. Maria Hill, of course, introduced in The Avengers, played by Cobie Smulders — another fantastic character that has shown up numerous times and in my head is still out there having adventures.
Pete Wright:
Oh yes, forever.
Kyle Olson:
Let’s just remove that little piece that Billy says.
Pete Wright:
Well, she retired.
Kyle Olson:
She’s a super spy, so yeah.
Pete Wright:
She retired to Los Angeles, and she’s trying to hook up with that handsome psychiatrist on Shrinking.
Kyle Olson:
She retired. That’s right.
Pete Wright:
It’s gonna be fine. Here’s the thing — have you ever been told, after you say “I’ll be there in X time,” someone says, “You have Y time,” and thought that was a rational, nice thing to have said to you?
Kyle Olson:
I know — this is one of those TV and movie things that always drives me crazy. They do it in Star Trek all the time.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
Like, “I need 12 hours.” “You have four.”
Pete Wright:
You have four.
Kyle Olson:
If it would take me four hours, I would have said four.
Matthew Fox:
Pete, I’m going to suggest that it is perhaps either A, you and your partner have phenomenal communication, or B, that you don’t remember the early days of childhood, because I have had some moments where I have groggily looked at my phone and texted my wife and said, “Hey, thanks for being on duty. I can be out there in like 20.” And she texts back, “No, you’ll be out there in five.”
Pete Wright:
Yeah, you have three.
Matthew Fox:
I’m having fun at the card store. Is it cool if I come back in like thirty minutes? She’s like, “No, be back here in ten.”
Pete Wright:
No, you have five.
Matthew Fox:
I’m just saying there is a context.
Pete Wright:
Okay, there’s a context. Yes. I may have aged out of those sorts of demands. This is one of the things that happens in this minute. She says she’s somewhere else. She says, “I’ll be there in four hours.” He says, “You have three, under deep shadow conditions.”
Kyle Olson:
Ooh, deep shadow conditions.
Pete Wright:
Oh, so scary.
Kyle Olson:
That’s my Nine Inch Nails cover band.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, it’s a good one. I can already see the cover.
Kyle Olson:
Uh-huh.
Pete Wright:
Maria Hill — welcome back to the chat. I’m glad to have you. And then Fury acknowledges things are not going well.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. I wonder what’s in his head right now. What are the next three hours?
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
What is it that he is going to be doing? What was his plan before things are about to get derailed?
Pete Wright:
Right. And did we expect the three hours to begin right that minute? Because he hangs up and there we are.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
He is now being surrounded by these cars of generic authority.
Kyle Olson:
That’s right. We hear the voice of his onboard system. This is the voice of Robert Clotworthy. He has 199 credits on IMDb.
Pete Wright:
Wow.
Kyle Olson:
He is a prolific voice actor. He was — for us nerds — the narrator of Empire of Dreams: The Making of the Star Wars Trilogy. He made his debut on an episode of Emergency in 1973.
Pete Wright:
No kidding.
Kyle Olson:
Pete, do you remember Emergency?
Pete Wright:
So vaguely. I’m sure it was one of those Nick at Nite experiences.
Kyle Olson:
I remember watching it as a kid. That was one of my favorite shows when I was a very small child.
Pete Wright:
Really? No, I don’t have quite that sense memory of it.
Kyle Olson:
I mean, it was — if people think of CHiPs, I don’t even know what the… what does it become now? Is it Grey’s Anatomy?
Pete Wright:
Yeah, probably.
Kyle Olson:
Because it was two guys driving around in an ambulance getting into episodic adventures.
Matthew Fox:
Paramedic — 9-1-1 is probably the closest.
Pete Wright:
Oh, 9-1-1, yeah, yeah.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, yeah. 9-1-1. There you go. So it’s all part of the genealogy of it.
Pete Wright:
We love to dramatize emergency medical services.
Kyle Olson:
So obviously this is some sort of AI-ish thing. This isn’t quite Jarvis-level, but it’s still pretty sophisticated. Do we have a name for what this thing is? Usually they’re acronyms — anyone have any suggestions?
Pete Wright:
I don’t have one.
Matthew Fox:
I want to make a joke about how it’s not that super over-advertised thing they put in a lot of American cars today, but I can’t remember the name of it to make the joke.
Kyle Olson:
OnStar?
Matthew Fox:
Yes, OnStar — it is definitely not OnStar.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
OnStar, yeah, right.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
It’s CarPlay Platinum.
Kyle Olson:
That’s Unstar. I was going to call it Clot because his name is Clotworthy, but it sounds a little diminutive — because it does a great job.
Pete Wright:
Oh, that’s good.
Kyle Olson:
We’ve seen —
Pete Wright:
It does. It has a lot of tools at its beck and call.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, exactly.
Pete Wright:
The fact that it can diagnose window integrity is extraordinary. And that’s an excellent point, yeah.
Matthew Fox:
Wait, wait, wait. I think the fact that it can diagnose bone integrity — like it’s part of the car, it’s doing an x-ray on Fury himself — that to me raises my eyebrow.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, and I got the impression that it was sort of like — even though it could communicate out — it was an on-device thing. This isn’t something from above. It felt like it was in the car, monitoring him and all the systems and the environments, and was able to go out and check data as it goes.
Pete Wright:
Mm-hmm.
Kyle Olson:
So as the action scene starts, we have a police car pull up alongside, and these two guys give Nick a hard look. They’re both staring at him and he says something like, “You wanna see my lease?” They don’t answer, but they do a little whoop of the lights and then drive off.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
And that was the signal, because after that we have police cars come in and pincer from all sides.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
Blam, right to the side of his car, push to the side, and then police cars surrounding him entirely, and then a SWAT van rolls up and people start coming out fully geared with machine guns ready to fight.
Matthew Fox:
Before we jump into the action scene, can I just say two quick things?
Pete Wright:
Sure.
Matthew Fox:
One — I’ll just say it’s green-passing, but the “do you want to look at my lease?” — that’s another kind of rip from the headlines: cops looking askance at a Black man in an expensive vehicle…
Kyle Olson:
Mm-hmm.
Matthew Fox:
…and wanting to see proof that the vehicle should be his.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Matthew Fox:
That’s another rip-from-the-headlines moment. But I also want to really talk about the call to Agent Hill. Why doesn’t he call Cap?
Kyle Olson:
Well, I think they just had a fight.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Matthew Fox:
Yep.
Kyle Olson:
And also Cap has just shown he doesn’t like this shadow world.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. And what we know is Fury and Hill are bosom friends — they get each other.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. That’s right.
Matthew Fox:
Right.
Kyle Olson:
The better question is, why doesn’t he call Natasha? Because that seems like an issue.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Matthew Fox:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
But all of this happens very quickly. That could very much have been the next call.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Matthew Fox:
Right. Yeah. I just think it’s interesting that he doesn’t.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Matthew Fox:
I think you’re right as to why. Even though he went to Pierce partly because of Cap — still, I think it’s that he sees Cap as a little bit above it all, and he’s not sure Cap would come.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. Right?
Matthew Fox:
Or, whatever it is.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Matthew Fox:
Okay, now onto the action scene.
Pete Wright:
[pause]
Kyle Olson:
So from the impact, Clot essentially says Nick’s left arm has been fractured, and we see a little x-ray-like thing pop up that’s actually scanning the inside and outside of the car.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
Pretty sophisticated.
Pete Wright:
It’s not a ridiculous bit of future-casting.
Kyle Olson:
I’m pretty impressed with it. No.
Pete Wright:
You can kind of see — give us some years, and our cars will probably be able to do that sort of stuff.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. And hopefully take orders from us, as this one does, and not from some far-off authority.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Right.
Kyle Olson:
Because even when it wants to do things to help, it follows orders. Nick says, “Not yet, not yet.”
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
And it waits. We also get to hear — this is another thing I really like, because there’s always the question of —
Pete Wright:
And you have more than the other content.
Kyle Olson:
My wife got angry at me one time when I talked about the fight scene in The Matrix in the entryway when they’re storming the castle. When they go through the metal detectors. And I was like, yeah, I mean, those guys were just cops doing their job. Two armed terrorists attacked them and they fought back.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
And she was like, “You ruined it for me. It’s so amazing.” And I was like, well, those guys don’t know that they’re in the Matrix. They’re just like, hey, people are trying to blow up the building we’re supposed to protect.
Pete Wright:
So wait — are you suggesting that these guys attacking Fury are just regular cops who don’t know?
Kyle Olson:
No, see, that’s why I think they did well in this — Clot then says “DC Metro shows no units in the area.”
Pete Wright:
Oh, good. Okay. Yes, right.
Kyle Olson:
So what we know — well, what those of us who’ve seen the future know — is that these are actually Hydra agents.
Pete Wright:
Yes, yep.
Kyle Olson:
So these are either SHIELD agents working as Hydra, or full-on Hydra agents dressed in gear.
Pete Wright:
They…
Kyle Olson:
And so therefore, go nuts, Fury.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, all bets are off.
Kyle Olson:
We are okay with the bullets flying.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
We’re going to be okay with all these guys being taken out, because these are neo-Nazis and they get what’s coming to them.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, yeah.
Kyle Olson:
So —
Pete Wright:
There is a place where the car says “damage detected, I’m going to give you the anesthetic injection.” He says, “Wait,” and then: “Get me out of here.” “Propulsion systems offline, rebooting” — which seems like, oh, thank goodness the AI is programmed with the number one customer support response to any…
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
…problem with your computer.
Kyle Olson:
That’s right, that’s right.
Pete Wright:
“Have you tried rebooting?”
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Matthew Fox:
Uh-huh.
Pete Wright:
And they just build it into the system.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. And it just rebooted that system, not itself.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Right.
Kyle Olson:
Which I thought — that’s good design.
Pete Wright:
Because he never lost the conversation.
Matthew Fox:
Although I do wonder — I think that was a fun little additional joke, because you know, it doesn’t need to be rebooted in an ’85 Chevy.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Matthew Fox:
The idea — there’s a bit of a horror moment of, I just want my car to turn on and the engine to turn and the wheels to turn.
Kyle Olson:
That’s right. That’s right.
Matthew Fox:
“What do you mean my computer has to reboot?” To me that’s a great little moment of: yeah, this car is pretty advanced, but sometimes you want analog still.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, right.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. So they unload, and we see the gauge going further and further down, and Nick pulls himself back away from the door as they’re firing and firing and firing. And then they bring out the thumper. I don’t know what this thing is.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
I couldn’t find any real-world version of this, but I think it’s sort of Hydra tech, essentially. And it screws itself into the ground and its whole job is basically to swing this heavy thing really hard and smash through whatever’s in front of it. And so we see the whole car rock — it goes up on two wheels and then back down — that’s how hard it hits.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
And Clot keeps warning him. The window’s going down, and Nick keeps delaying: “Hold off countermeasures, hold off, until they get to 1%.” And then we find out what countermeasures are — a mini turret that pops out of the center console — and Nick just unloads on these guys.
Pete Wright:
Center console.
Kyle Olson:
And it’s one of those great moments — he waited until the absolute last second when it was down so he wouldn’t be breaking his own window, and then let them have it.
Pete Wright:
When they’re all nice and close, yeah. Where does he keep his gum and sunglasses? That console is useless.
Kyle Olson:
Right.
Matthew Fox:
Well, I think you have to have a pretty intensive application process to get this vehicle, because no one who gets road rage should ever drive it.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Right.
Matthew Fox:
How often have you been really mad at someone who cut you off in traffic, or has a really stupid bumper sticker, and you’re like, “Gosh, if only I had a quad cannon machine gun right now.”
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. So I will say —
Pete Wright:
Anybody coming from one of Samuel L. Jackson’s performances in a Tarantino movie might suggest he’s not the guy to drive this car.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. Right.
Matthew Fox:
Well, that’s why he’s an actor. Nick Fury and Samuel Jackson are actually different people.
Pete Wright:
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Kyle Olson:
But I will give credit to Pierce. I’m assuming that as soon as Nick walked out of the office, he placed the call: alright, let’s go.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Because what kind of time do you think it took? I mean, of course we now know that the Triskelion is a thousand stories.
Kyle Olson:
Well, I would say they were probably already in position. If Insight is going live the next day, they’re probably already there.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
So I wouldn’t be surprised if they were already in the area. I would say this is probably within half an hour of that conversation.
Pete Wright:
I like — how long do you think it would take Nick Fury to get down to his car? Like it’s what, ten minutes, and they’re driving down the streets — yeah, I think you’re right.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, yeah. Certainly inside a half hour.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. So they were prepared. They were just activated early and went after him.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
But I will give Pierce credit — he sent a lot of guys. It wasn’t one of those “we’ll just send one person to take him out.” No, no, they came, they rolled deep. For Nick Fury, he was not underestimating him at all. They came ready. Not only tons of guys with machine guns, but also the thumper.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
They were taking this as a serious threat. They were treating him at Cap level.
Pete Wright:
It’s reasonable to assume that they know everything about the car Fury is driving.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, I was wondering about that too. I wanted to talk about that, because it seems like they were surprised by the Gatling gun. So I wonder if there’s like a standard package and he got the deluxe.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
Or this is a Nick Fury special tweak.
Pete Wright:
Right. Do you think he got it from Tony?
Kyle Olson:
I do. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Like maybe this is —
Matthew Fox:
I mean, the presence of the kind of Jarvis-diet Jarvis suggests that.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, yeah.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Matthew Fox:
Obviously Nick Fury can’t go into Avis or Toyota and say, “Can we design this car?” But would he be so paranoid that he wouldn’t tell people in his own organization about the defense measures of his car? Absolutely he would.
Kyle Olson:
Absolutely.
Pete Wright:
Absolutely.
Matthew Fox:
That is completely who Fury is.
Kyle Olson:
Absolutely, yes.
Pete Wright:
Yes, on board.
Matthew Fox:
Yeah, actually, the more I think about it — Kyle, you’re right — this might be a SHIELD vehicle, but Stark probably did a lot of the —
Kyle Olson:
Well, he’s sort of out of the weapons business, but I think there are plenty of people out there who would be happy to do this for money.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. And where we leave it is kind of in the middle.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, essentially — the systems come back online, Clot starts driving the car while Nick is still firing out the window and trying to figure things out, so it’s…
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
…already pruning routes. And then eventually Nick does take over. But we have a lot of swerving through — I was thinking a lot of The French Connection and Bullitt, because they do the camera mounted on the bumper, which I love. The low angle with the cars swerving in front of it adds that extra element. And they start listing all the systems that are offline, because they tried to go for flight mode — and it turns out, hold on, that is a long SHIELD tradition. There are panels you can see of Jim Steranko drawing Nick Fury in a flying Corvette. That’s where Lola comes from, for Agents of SHIELD fans.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Yep.
Kyle Olson:
And apparently this car has that built in, but it’s offline. The only thing that’s working, at least, is the air conditioning — which in DC, I think people would appreciate. That’s a pretty high priority.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Right.
Kyle Olson:
It is a swamp, after all.
Pete Wright:
The drive is ultimately really interesting and I look forward to whatever happens next. It has a really great heads-up display in this car.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
It is exciting, and then we’re on a high shot and the minute is over. This is not one of those mic-drop five-minute endings. We are in situ and we leave our five minutes there.
Kyle Olson:
And I’ll give a special shout-out to Henry Jackman — we haven’t talked about him before. This is where he gets to really do some nice work with the score. That percussive…
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
…perfect action music to go along with our first big on-vehicle action scene.
Pete Wright:
I don’t have it in my head right now. Is this related to a Fury theme? Do we have a Nick Fury theme, like we have the other hero themes?
Kyle Olson:
Not particularly. No. There’s not really even a SHIELD theme, either.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
It’s just — I mean, even the Cap theme — I was reading some of the reviews of this and a lot of the soundtrack nerds did not like this score, and a lot of it was because they didn’t use much of Alan Silvestri’s stuff from Captain America: The First Avenger. Which I think was a smart choice because we’re going for a very different feel.
Pete Wright:
Yes. This is the theme of the military-industrial complex.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah, yeah.
Pete Wright:
That’s what we get, and it’s great.
Kyle Olson:
It’s modern. For 2014, this is a very modern score, as opposed to a lot of strings and that…
Pete Wright:
Right. Yeah.
Matthew Fox:
Well, and it also helps to highlight — I was debating whether to get to this earlier, but I’ll make it a quick moment. But that’s a lie.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Matthew Fox:
I know I won’t. But going back to the Sam scenes — to me, one of the things that’s a subtle part of Cap’s story in all this. World War II is the last good war. That’s the last war where we don’t have a ton of controversy over why we fought it. In that movie — in Captain America — he’s killing not only Nazis, but Nazis who think Hitler isn’t prejudiced enough. And so much of this movie is taking place at a time where every time America sends troops somewhere, there’s a lot of controversy about it, a lot of people unsure about it, a lot of debate: are we the good guys? And so to make a break with that — and the fact that we’re doing that even down to the sound — I think is very fitting for what this movie is doing.
Pete Wright:
That’s a really good point. You don’t get a traditional orchestral hero theme for being the military-industrial complex in 2014. You don’t get one of those.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. And I also think it’s funny — on a more above-the-table note — that when Samuel Jackson was cast in The Avengers, one of the things he said was, “Please don’t make me run.” Samuel Jackson has notoriously bad knees. And even though he keeps doing action movies, he’s like, “I don’t want to” — and of course he does in the movie. He has to run a bunch of times.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
And in this one, where he gets his big action sequences, he gets to sit in the car. Well done.
Pete Wright:
Although he’s not a diminutive frame, Sam Jackson.
Kyle Olson:
No, no.
Pete Wright:
And watching him crawl across those two seats is — it’s hard not to empathize.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
What it means to get himself across that turret — or, rest armrest.
Kyle Olson:
So the chase will continue into minute 31. We hope you will all rejoin us there. In the meantime, if people want to talk more about this or even cite mistakes that we have made over the course of this episode — dare there be any — Pete, is there a place where they could go?
Pete Wright:
I can’t imagine what those would be, but yes, absolutely. Jump into our Discord server at TruStory FM slash Discord. There are a bunch of channels in there and we’ve got our Avengers Tower where you can come on in and talk to us about what’s going on in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, or any of the previous minutes. The crew’s all there, so we’d love to have you. And Matthew?
Matthew Fox:
I was going to say that while Discord is the place to be and the place I really encourage people, I do want to say there are people who are posting in other places like Facebook about mistakes we make — primarily mine — but also making really great points and things that are informing how I think about this, and I hope all of us are thinking about it. So I would encourage you to move on to Discord, but wherever you are, thank you so much for the comments. We are reading them and we will continue discussing them. And I will try to be more careful not to say that we are doing this show one minute at a time, which I think was in the script — in my defense — but —
Pete Wright:
Noted. It was in the script. That was not your fault. That was an anchor man moment that just happened to sneak in. Always read the teleprompter. And visit MarvelMovieMinute.com — that’s where you can get access to all that stuff. And if you like the show, if you like what we’ve been doing now these nine seasons of dissecting Marvel movies so far, MarvelMovieMinute.com is where you can go to show your support. We love your support there, and you can access some other goodies from there once you become a member. Love to have you.
Kyle Olson:
Alright, well then we will be back here as Nick faces this hellish commute, so make sure you don’t miss it. Enough said.
