I did manage to tune in just in time to catch the "I will take the Ring to Gondor scene."
Let's recap.
Fury wanted to start a team of superheroes but the idea was shot down. The only way to revive it would be to get a common enemy.
Thor showed up on earth and Loki blew stuff up. But Thor went away before the gods in question could be a common threat to unite around.
Fury immediately hired Selvig to wake up the tesseract, something that had been sleeping for a very long time (since during World War II) and the only thing on earth capable of sending a signal to the entire cosmos saying, "Come here and kick our ass."
The fact that it says this is not unknown to Fury because it's part of the briefing he gave Barton. When Barton points out that the interference is coming from the other side it's because he's been told that there are two sides: Earth and Where The Wild Things Are.
Fury intentionally activated the cube knowing it would send out a signal to Where The Wild Thing Are. Fury explains that the only idea he was behind even more than making an arsenal of weapons intended for the sole purpose of committing mass murder was the Avengers Initiative which was to fight threats they couldn't fight on their own and there weren't any in the neighborhood.
So he did two things. One was create the mass murder weapons. (Bigger than anything merely nuclear could ever murder.) The other was to put the light on knowing that it would draw threats they couldn't fight on their own.
In the words of Captain America, "He's got the same blood on his hands as Loki does."
But that's not the thing. That's not what makes him utterly evil, not even close. That's just chumming the waters around a swimming area.
No, what makes him utterly evil is this:
The Black Widow told Fury that Loki's plan was to unleash the Hulk.
Fury proceeded to lie to Bruce Banner, push Bruce Banner's buttons, refuse to allow Banner to let off steam even for a second thus forcing all the anger to build up inside of him ensuring an explosion, I'm not sure whether having his flying monkey insult Banner thrice over should count because I don't know if she was in on it (it should be noted that the character of the Black Widow is way too awesome to be restricted to the position of Fury's flying monkey and it is a shame she was for so much of the movie), treats Banner as an object, a threat, a child, an enemy, scum, an idiot, and much much worse and did all of the things governed by the word "treats" in five words --that's like a high speed barrage of emotional body blows. He is doing the emotional equivalent of beating Banner to the ground and kicking him while he's down. The only question is whether he's wearing steel toed boots or the James Bond ones knives stick out of-- there's a minor interlude where Fury has Rodgers' doing the work of saying that Banner isn't allowed to let off any steam but instead has to keep it all inside until it boils over but Fury is soon back to intentionally pushing Banner's buttons: he no longer even addresses Banner instead he's started treating Banner like an object and is ordering his flying monkey to use force to remove Banner from his own lab in so doing treating Banner not just as an object but also as a prisoner, an enemy, a criminal, and of course a monster, he quickly follows this up by lying to Banner about his transparent plot kill Banner that he has taken so far as to redesign is fucking flying air craft carrier to include a "Let's murder Bruce Banner" cage within it, and finally he goes to his gun.
This being the last act of Fury before other forces intervene it might do well to dwell on it somewhat.
Like any intelligent person Fury doesn't want his gun to fall out of his holster. That way bad things lie. So it is restrained and requires him to remove the retraining strap and get ready to draw. His trigger finger is positioned so that as soon as he pulls the gun from the holster he'll be able to get his finger on the trigger in minimum time. You don't put your finger to trigger unless you intend to fire.
What is it that makes him prepare to draw on Banner?
After his sustained campaign of pushing Banner's buttons Banner spilled the one sure fire way to summon the Hulk. Shooting Banner doesn't work. Instead of killing him it transforms him. He doesn't get wounded, he becomes the Hulk who happens to be impervious to bullets in a Mongo kind of way ("Don't shoot him; you'll just make him mad.) Drawing a gun on Banner can't help the situation in any way. Fury knows this. There are only two possibilities: one is that nothing changes. Banner continues to weather Fury's unending onslaught without losing control. The second is that Banner transforms into the Hulk.
There are no other possibilities. The gun cannot be used to hurt Banner. It cannot be used to scare Banner. It is not a threat to Banner. The only thing the gun can do is cause Banner to transform into the Hulk against his will.
Fury knows this.
He's just had it explained to him in small words even a child could understand.
Still he prepares to draw on Banner.
This just caps off everything he's done since he learned Loki wanted Banner to transform into the Hulk. It is completely consistent with all the rest.
And that's why Fury is utterly evil.
Between the time he learned that Loki wanted Banner to transform into the Hulk and when the computer finding the cube defused the situation there is not a single thing Fury does in Banner's general direction that does not read as a transparent attempt to get Banner to transform into the Hulk.
Nobody is that stupid.
Nobody.
Fury learns that Loki wants the Hulk unleashed and then heads off to speed along the process. That's fucking evil.
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Compared to that stealing Coulson's cards from his locker, putting blood on them that may or may not have been stolen from Coulson himself (they were collectible asshole) using the cards and the blood wrapped in a pack of lies in an attempt to cause a severe guilt trip in someone who has already had to deal with the fact that all of his friends and family died of old age while he was under the arctic ice to manipulate him into doing the job Fury already should have done but has shown a singular lack of interest in actually doing really doesn't even seem to rate.
Sure that's nasty sickening bullying controlling abusive assholic behavior, but look at what he did to fucking Banner.
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Some people have wondered why the Hulk goes after the Black Widow. The fact she was the only one in the room probably played a role, but the fact that Fury made sure to identify her as Banner's enemy during his whole "Let's see if I can destabilize this guy emotionally" campaign probably didn't hurt.
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Addded:
Minor note for the "Not As Bad As"ers out there. Nick Fury is utterly evil, but he still doesn't manage to be the most evil person in the film. That honor goes to the people who outrank Fury (thus probably explaining how he got his job.) Their plan was, and I shit you not:
Let's nuke Manhattan thus taking out all of our own defenses while doing nothing to shut down the portal and allowing the enemy to send their several additional motherships (and that's just the ones that we know of because they're visible) through the portal unmolested and set up shop in whatever neighboring towns and cities they take a liking to destroying any possibility of containment and giving the alien invasion force an near unassailable foothold on earth.Their particular reasons for having this plan are never gotten into, maybe they just wanted to test fire one of their weapons of mass destruction.
What is clear is this: Loki doesn't get to be most evil because there's an entire cadre of humans who are nominally his enemies that are pulling out all the stops to do his job for him.
I think Nick Fury is *supposed* to be at least kind of evil (from the movie, and animated series). He wants to create an 'official' means of defending against all the weirdness that keeps popping up, without needing to rely on civilian 'superheroes' to do it... which makes sense. His particular idea, contrary to his 'superiors' is to create (and control) the Avengers). But he's willing to do just about anything in order to make that happen.
ReplyDeleteAs for the 'let's Nuke Manhattan' plan... the real reason it was implanted was, of course, to add tension. In universe... I dunno, maybe they thought if they stopped the first wave, then they could buy time to ship in reinforcements? As it was, they couldn't stop the first wave in time, but if they could buy time to mobilize... reacting with panic at the invasion, one city is a 'small price to pay' for the whole world.
Of course, that they never thought 'hey, what if we shot nukes *through the portal*' is kind of sad...
The portal was situated such that something would need to be fired near vertical for it to even go through, much less actually hit the target. Nuclear weapons are not, to my knowledge, designed to make right angle turns.
DeleteFiring through the portal would require a plan, and forethought, and strategy. I think one thing we can definitely say about the council is that their brains were not something they wanted to use. They wanted a push button solution. Push button, nuke Manhattan, pray everything will be ok.
Very little thought involved. They're not thinking things through, they're just hoping for the best.
Or, to think about it another way, they're people with a bunch of weapons of mass destruction, they know that the enemy is over there, they're going to put those two things together and not think if it makes sense.
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If they were thinking they'd notice things. Like the fact that Thor's Chrysler Building ploy worked and caused the enemy to relent, holding most of their forces in reserve
Meaning that taking out all of those still on earth at a cost of taking out those defending earth would be a loss. There would be no one on site to challenge those previously held in reserve and any kind of containment would be lost. The other side would be able to mobilize faster than the earth side and the only thing that had previously kept them contained (the fight) would be gone.
If they had been paying attention they would have noticed that the weather around the Stark building was surprisingly calm considering that there was a giant hole between Manhattan (at sea level so assume standard earth atmospheric pressure) and an unknown point in space (presumably a vacuum.) If they had been thinking they'd have noted that this means that the effects a nuclear detonation on earth had upon those on the other side of the portal would be muted.
Muted from what? Well the portal opens straight up and there's a reason nuclear detonations on the earth's surface aren't spheres. It's easier to spread destruction sideways than it is to send it up. Also, though I don't think the council could know this, earth's gravity was propagating through the portal even when particles (such as air) were not.
The overall point is that I don't actually think they were thinking. The six mother-ships alone, which were just the ones headed toward the not-that-big-to-a-mother-ship (but giant by most standards) portal at the same instant, represent a serious problem. No mundanes managed to touch them. Those that were brought down were brought down by Iron Man and the Hulk, the Hulk and a god (Thor), and Iron Man flying inside one and firing basically everything. The Hulk, Iron Man, and Thor would all get nuked. Leaving no one capable of taking one of those out. Even if the still alive one already on the earth were killed by the nuke (that seems reasonable to me) the other six potentially represent six other cities under siege since short of nukes no one has found much in the way of non-Hulk-Iron Man-Thor weaponry to deal with these things.
With Manhattan nuked they'd have no cause to tarry there, there's no reason they couldn't each go in a different direction and nest in whatever city they took a liking to, with their foot soldiers along for the ride, of course.
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So, again, to reiterate: I don't think the council was thinking. I think that they were people with nuclear weapons, faced with a crisis they'd never prepared for, and looking for somewhere to fire their nukes so they could feel as if they were accomplishing something.
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* As I recall there were six mother-ships on the way to the portal, god knows how many waiting in line for their turn to go, when the nuke went off. There were four mother-ships, again, if memory serves, that had come through to earth before then.
The first volley of the next wave was bigger than everything that had come before put together.
When you say 'motherships' are you referring to the serpent things? Because I was thinking of the huge, well, mothership out in space. I also seemed to have been recalling that they launched the nuke *before* the Avengers, well, assembled. At that point, there was really no excuse, because they were *winning*.
ReplyDeleteThough, in any event, they may not have realized how quickly the enemy forces would fill in the gap.
As for launching a nuke through the portal, it likely wouldn't be that hard. It has to ultimately go to vertical, but it has the whole open sky to do it in. Most missiles are capable of that, I would think, even if it might require a bit of programming. If nothing else, you could probably launch one from the ground. The main problem would be getting through without it being shot down...
In any event, yeaaah, I think 'lol nuke Manhattan' might have been the worst of many feasible reactions...
Yeah, mother-ship isn't the right word because a mothership is supposed to launch smaller shships where the giant ships launched foot-soldiers. Troop carrier doesn't work either because troop carriers are not noted for how dangerous they are in themselves.
DeleteSerpents if you prefer.
Anyway, the timing of the order was like this:
-The Avengers assembled
-Hulk and Iron Man took out the first serpent
-The containment strategy was put in place.
-Thor and the Chrysler Building made the portal difficult to cross. The serpents are so large that no more than two of them can fit through at a time. Of the two that were trying to get through when Thor did this, one died (that was not in my previous counts) and the other retreated back into the portal.
-The council made the phone call ordering the nuking of Manhattan. The next few things are while they're still on the line.
-Thor and the Hulk killed another serpent.
-The National Guard arrived.
-The containment strategy, previously only a theory, proved effective.
-The council again demands that Manhattan be nuked, Fury says not while his team is containing the situation. (More accurately not unless becomes sure they can't.) And hangs up.
-The Hulk kicks Loki's ass.
-Romanov heads to the roof to get a closer look at the portal making device.
-Jarvics doesn't consider Jonah a role model (Fred Clark would agree.)
-Iron Man takes out a fourth serpent.
-The Council overrides Fury and orders Manhattan to be nuked.
-JARVIS doesn't consider Jonah a role model (Fred Clark would agree.)
ReplyDeleteSmile.
So he did two things. One was create the mass murder weapons. (Bigger than anything merely nuclear could ever murder.) The other was to put the light on knowing that it would draw threats they couldn't fight on their own.
ReplyDeleteIn the words of Captain America, "He's got the same blood on his hands as Loki does."
First of all, Steve's comparison of Nick Fury and Loki was the DUMBEST THING I have ever heard. When you take on a role as a leader - especially a political, military or intelligence leader - you're going to have blood on your hands, regardless. As a military leader, Steve should have realized this. Considering it was his plan that led to the SSR's assault on the final HYDRA base near the end of World War II, he has the blood of all of those SSR/Allied soldiers who were killed, on his hands, along with those of Chester Phillips. Steve is lucky that he does not have Bucky's blood on his hands.
Two, the idea for creating weapons from the Tesseract came from the World Security Council, not Fury's. He's guilty of going along with it. But it was Howard Stark who found the Tesseract. It was the SSR and later, S.H.I.E.L.D. (in the form of Howard Stark, Chester Phillips and Peggy Carter) who kept it and tried to form weapons or energy from it. To lay all of the blame on Nick Fury seems ludicrous beyond belief.