I think you're drawing some pretty heavy conclusions from a few throwaway lines.
My understanding is that SHIELD has been around for decades. (In Marvel canon, it started somewhere after WWII.) They've got the helicarrier and all this advanced technology and some really highly trained agents. Clearly, they've been doing a lot more than trying to hunt down Captain America. FF, X-Men, and Spider-Man movies predate the shared Marvel continuity. (In fact, that was part of the point of the line at the end of Iron Man: It's not just Tony's introduction to the wider Marvel Universe, it's ours.)
Spider-Man is being rebooted. New origin story, which will likely be tied into the Marvel movieverse, or at least acknowledged as part of it. So Spider-Man hasn't been around before.
I don't know how they'll deal with FF or X-Men or any other additions going forward. But Stark lives in New York. If the FF were around, he should have heard of them. The X-Men have trouble fitting into the Marvel Universe. There's been no hint of mutant powers in the movieverse so far. The idea is that people love superheroes like Iron Man and the Avengers. But the idea of the X-Men is that people hate and fear people with super powers, even if they're fighting for good. It doesn't mesh right.
I could see a new FF movie series down the line, where we find that Reed Richards has been working for SHIELD. Maybe one of the eggheads working on the Cosmic Cube. And then he goes up into space to develop their new orbital platform, and takes his family along...
But I think up until now they've been dealing with covert ops. We see Widow "interrogating" a man (about international arms shipments, was it?) at the beginning of Avengers. A small piece of what's doubtless a much larger picture. Something too big for the CIA or Interpol. But still, it's a fairly routine mission for Widow. (Traditionally, Widow was trained by the KGB and then defected to SHIELD.)
Hydra was established in Captain America. They have super science and maybe some super powers. And Cap worked in semi-secret to stop their plans to destroy or take over the world. I think SHIELD grew from that. An MIB-style covert ops organization dealing with super-scale global threats under the public's nose. Hydra. Possibly AIM. Maybe even some supervillains. Stopping wars and terrorists and so on.
The question is who runs SHIELD. Fury answers to some mysterious board of directors. Are they part of the US military? Or is it some international coalition? Or something else?
(Also, will the recently revealed alien threat cause that mysterious board to create SWORD? Or does SWORD already exist?)
no subject
My understanding is that SHIELD has been around for decades. (In Marvel canon, it started somewhere after WWII.) They've got the helicarrier and all this advanced technology and some really highly trained agents. Clearly, they've been doing a lot more than trying to hunt down Captain America. FF, X-Men, and Spider-Man movies predate the shared Marvel continuity. (In fact, that was part of the point of the line at the end of Iron Man: It's not just Tony's introduction to the wider Marvel Universe, it's ours.)
Spider-Man is being rebooted. New origin story, which will likely be tied into the Marvel movieverse, or at least acknowledged as part of it. So Spider-Man hasn't been around before.
I don't know how they'll deal with FF or X-Men or any other additions going forward. But Stark lives in New York. If the FF were around, he should have heard of them. The X-Men have trouble fitting into the Marvel Universe. There's been no hint of mutant powers in the movieverse so far. The idea is that people love superheroes like Iron Man and the Avengers. But the idea of the X-Men is that people hate and fear people with super powers, even if they're fighting for good. It doesn't mesh right.
I could see a new FF movie series down the line, where we find that Reed Richards has been working for SHIELD. Maybe one of the eggheads working on the Cosmic Cube. And then he goes up into space to develop their new orbital platform, and takes his family along...
But I think up until now they've been dealing with covert ops. We see Widow "interrogating" a man (about international arms shipments, was it?) at the beginning of Avengers. A small piece of what's doubtless a much larger picture. Something too big for the CIA or Interpol. But still, it's a fairly routine mission for Widow. (Traditionally, Widow was trained by the KGB and then defected to SHIELD.)
Hydra was established in Captain America. They have super science and maybe some super powers. And Cap worked in semi-secret to stop their plans to destroy or take over the world. I think SHIELD grew from that. An MIB-style covert ops organization dealing with super-scale global threats under the public's nose. Hydra. Possibly AIM. Maybe even some supervillains. Stopping wars and terrorists and so on.
The question is who runs SHIELD. Fury answers to some mysterious board of directors. Are they part of the US military? Or is it some international coalition? Or something else?
(Also, will the recently revealed alien threat cause that mysterious board to create SWORD? Or does SWORD already exist?)