I don't know if you're finding this interesting or frustrating. I was having fun, but it seems like we're at an impasse. We're looking at the same few facts and making very different assumptions.
The way I figure it, SHIELD has been around for decades. The Air Force grew out of the Navy. Spy agencies have grown and developed as new needs and specialties have arisen. I don't know how, exactly, SHIELD came to exist, but it probably grew out of a combination of existing programs (like the army super soldier project) and the creation of a new international coalition (whether officially sanctioned by the various governments or put together by some unofficial shadowy group of powers behind the thrones I can't say). They've been doing spying and covert ops. Dealing with big global threats in secret. Using agents like Widow and Hawkeye for the field work. And then Iron Man came along. And made a huge public splash. And others started popping up. And Fury decided to expand into superheroes. One more tool in the kit. His bosses* didn't like it, but they were reluctantly willing to let him try it. And then they decided they didn't like the way it was shaping up, so they nixed it. (This is all described in the movie.) But Fury called them together anyway as expert consultants, and the team formed from there.
*It's clear to me that Fury does answer to the council, though he isn't afraid to disobey orders when he thinks it necessary. He reports directly to them. They have final say over his projects (like the Avengers). They ordered him to nuke NYC. When he refused the order, they went down the chain of command and got someone else to send the planes.
Your view is fundamentally different. I'm not sure if it's worth continuing the debate. Happy to if you want.
As for Hydra - I'm also Jewish, and the grandson of survivors. (And closely related to many who didn't survive.) I have mixed feelings about Hydra. It's a way for them to have Cap on screen as a WWII hero without having to get into actual Nazi imagery. In a way, that's a cop-out. But, really, I much prefer that to what we saw in X-Men: First Class.
Shaw was a Nazi scientist who did things that were not nearly as horrible as the things actual Nazi scientists did. But then he was revealed as a cartoonish over the top supervillain (with a strong reference to the Adam West Batman movie) who had considered Nazis to be nothing more than convenient patsies and certainly nothing historically unusual. We already have more than enough people trying to claim Nazi horrors as fictional and/or grossly overstated.
Hydra is the flipside of that. It allows for comic book "Nazis" - cartoonish caricatures with giant robots and sci fi weapons and super powers - while explicitly marking them as fictional and not real Nazis. Yes, it's a dodge. But when you're mixing comic book action with serious history, a dodge may well be the best move you can make.
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Date: 2012-05-31 02:02 pm (UTC)The way I figure it, SHIELD has been around for decades. The Air Force grew out of the Navy. Spy agencies have grown and developed as new needs and specialties have arisen. I don't know how, exactly, SHIELD came to exist, but it probably grew out of a combination of existing programs (like the army super soldier project) and the creation of a new international coalition (whether officially sanctioned by the various governments or put together by some unofficial shadowy group of powers behind the thrones I can't say). They've been doing spying and covert ops. Dealing with big global threats in secret. Using agents like Widow and Hawkeye for the field work. And then Iron Man came along. And made a huge public splash. And others started popping up. And Fury decided to expand into superheroes. One more tool in the kit. His bosses* didn't like it, but they were reluctantly willing to let him try it. And then they decided they didn't like the way it was shaping up, so they nixed it. (This is all described in the movie.) But Fury called them together anyway as expert consultants, and the team formed from there.
*It's clear to me that Fury does answer to the council, though he isn't afraid to disobey orders when he thinks it necessary. He reports directly to them. They have final say over his projects (like the Avengers). They ordered him to nuke NYC. When he refused the order, they went down the chain of command and got someone else to send the planes.
Your view is fundamentally different. I'm not sure if it's worth continuing the debate. Happy to if you want.
As for Hydra - I'm also Jewish, and the grandson of survivors. (And closely related to many who didn't survive.) I have mixed feelings about Hydra. It's a way for them to have Cap on screen as a WWII hero without having to get into actual Nazi imagery. In a way, that's a cop-out. But, really, I much prefer that to what we saw in X-Men: First Class.
Shaw was a Nazi scientist who did things that were not nearly as horrible as the things actual Nazi scientists did. But then he was revealed as a cartoonish over the top supervillain (with a strong reference to the Adam West Batman movie) who had considered Nazis to be nothing more than convenient patsies and certainly nothing historically unusual. We already have more than enough people trying to claim Nazi horrors as fictional and/or grossly overstated.
Hydra is the flipside of that. It allows for comic book "Nazis" - cartoonish caricatures with giant robots and sci fi weapons and super powers - while explicitly marking them as fictional and not real Nazis. Yes, it's a dodge. But when you're mixing comic book action with serious history, a dodge may well be the best move you can make.