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Any statement that a tyrant is definitely not fascist but some other sort of tyranny is difficult. SMG has pointed out that fascism is happy to furnish its cultural cache with any other ideology's used furniture as long as it furthers the goal of achieving validation by fighting an external enemy.
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Apr 29, 2014 15:02
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Xealot posted:Or reverse engineer Erskine's serum In-movie-universe, that's how we ended up with Blonsky's Abomination in the Ed Norton Hulk movie. Abomination is what you get when you mix Captain America with the Hulk. Some Pinko Commie fucked around with this message at 15:51 on Apr 29, 2014 |
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Apr 29, 2014 15:11
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Wade Wilson posted:In-movie-universe, that's how we ended up with Blonsky's Abomination in the Ed Norton Hulk movie. It's kinda how we got Hulk as well.
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Apr 29, 2014 15:14
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:In strict plot terms, they're actually trying to find where the stolen USB key is - not trying to kill him. However, in terms of the presentation, the elevator scene is a life-or-death struggle, because it's really unclear what they're trying to accomplish and the Nick Fury scene has set expectations (the elevator scene features roughly the same 'surrounded by feds' imagery). The tension comes from not knowing why they are trying to capture him or Fury. SuperMechagodzilla posted:At the same time, it's a life-or-death struggle where the baddies put themselves in a position to be easily taken out. SHIELD has the technology to laser a dude from orbit and tap every camera on the planet, but they employ six thugs in a glass cage. The film is creating a narrative where the villains are both hypercompetent and snivelling weaklings. See what I mean about the 'Jewish Conspiracy' imagery? This doesn't help your argument. The 'laser a dude from orbit' thing is actually 'shoot them from a big plane' and isn't possible until the big planes are in the air, which at this point in the film is the mystery that Cap is trying to solve . So your argument comes down to "why didn't antagonist do [x]" where x is a thing that would've been smarter, which is the weakest form of film criticism imaginable, up there with "why didn't they just fly the eagles into mordor?"
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Apr 29, 2014 15:14
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Seldom Posts posted:So your argument comes down to "why didn't antagonist do [x]" where x is a thing that would've been smarter, which is the weakest form of film criticism imaginable, up there with "why didn't they just fly the eagles into mordor?" The eagles in LOTR are just angelic figures that carry the heroes to Elysium upon their 'deaths' - like the elves ferrying Bilbo to their island. Their presence is clearly a reward, and not a right. I'm not talking plot holes or tactical realism, but the basic symbolism employed to construct the narrative. If the film is ostensibly about wiretapping, but wiretapping is only 'shown' through expository dialogue, the film is not really about wiretapping. The whole DNA-scanning thing is really about biometrics and the concept of 'precrime', but that's not really visualized either, outside the racial profiling joke and the map covered with crosshairs. Even The Dark Knight has a throwaway image of Batman trying to cross-reference Joker from a face database. A good contrast would be Spielberg's Minority Report, where the film actually is about genetic engineering, predestination, omnipresent biometric scanners and whatnot. There are constant scenes of Tom Cruise's character trying to modify his biology to get around the various surveillance technologies. He's constantly getting sick or poisoned. There's also a subtheme of characters watching and interpreting films - like in Spielberg-buddy Joe Johnston's Captain America 1. It's all about simulation versus reality, how different types of media affect perception and all that. There are numerous references to Fahrenheit 451. The film ends with a big stack of books. Relevant here: you're repeatedly shown images 'from the future' in Minority Report when, in Cap 2, you're merely told that Zola's algorithm works.
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Apr 29, 2014 19:08
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:
You are shown it targeting people, so you know it does work.
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Apr 29, 2014 20:06
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bobkatt013 posted:You are shown it targeting people, so you know it does work. Well, you're shown that Zola's algorithm can actually pick names. Not that those names are terrorist threats (they picked Iron Man and the President! Those are the good guys!)
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Apr 29, 2014 20:11
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bobkatt013 posted:You are shown it targeting people, so you know it does work. That it can generate a list of names does not show that Zola can actually predict the future, or what the basis is at all. Now, there's something to be said for how arbitrary the computer-generated conclusion appears to an outside observer, hence the Wargames reference. But Wargames still had all that imagery of the computer actually going through the calculations - showing, essentially, its POV. With Zola, you do not see the calculations, but do see his ability to edit together a nice rapid-fire montage of historical footage. That's actually pretty interesting: a filmmaking AI.
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Apr 29, 2014 20:38
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Remind me again what anyone's trying to prove or disprove about Zola? It really doesn't matter whether or not his algorithm works; it probably wouldn't, given that the film takes the stance that you can't trust a system to make judgements about people. Hydra is going to kill millions, Cap needs to stop them.
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Apr 29, 2014 20:46
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Tharizdun posted:Well, you're shown that Zola's algorithm can actually pick names. Not that those names are terrorist threats (they picked Iron Man and the President! Those are the good guys!) It's not supposed to target terrorists. It targets those who would be opposed to or resist hydra and their ideals of order. RBA Starblade fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Apr 29, 2014 |
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Apr 29, 2014 20:46
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Halloween Jack posted:Remind me again what anyone's trying to prove or disprove about Zola? It really doesn't matter whether or not his algorithm works; it probably wouldn't, given that the film takes the stance that you can't trust a system to make judgements about people. Hydra is going to kill millions, Cap needs to stop them. Minority Report is interesting because the precrime program actually seems to work, until the errors start popping up. The conflict isn't over whether bad guys will kill 20 million innocent people, but over just how much control you have over your own self (hence the numerous scenes of Cruise losing control of his body to illness, addiction, grief and so-on. I like the gag where the future tasers induce vomiting). As with Jurassic Park, the message is that such algorithms will not work because 'life will find a way'. Cruise's awareness that he's fated to commit murder changes his fate, creating a sort of feedback loop where - as in Terminator 2 - you make your own fate. Human subjectivity is something that cannot be accounted for by the 'computers.' It's a philosophical question of how freedom is possible at all, where Cap 2 'merely' says that unfreedom is caused by the aforementioned pain-worshipping satanists.
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Apr 29, 2014 21:13
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Having seen the movie again last night, I'll clear up some of the confusion on HYDRA's motives in detaining Cap: he was holding a secret he did not reveal to anyone following Fury's murder (at least not in the immediate aftermath), and it's a pretty simple one: "SHIELD IS COMPROMISED". That's all Cap knows. This is all Fury tells him, because that's really all Fury was able to uncover as well, and it was enough to have him killed over. HYDRA is not looking to recover the Lemurian Star thumb drive, and do not even know it exists. Pierce fears that Cap knows something -- what exactly, he doesn't know. But just like Fury, whether they can see the whole angle or not is irrelevant. He knows SOMETHING, and whatever it is, it could lead him to learning more and stopping the Insight launch. Which of course is exactly what he does. Cap was going to be targeted and killed by the Insight helicarriers anyway, so it's likely that had they been able to detain him on the elevator they would have tortured him to reveal what he knew and who he'd told before disposing of him entirely.
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Apr 30, 2014 00:37
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Cap 2 'merely' says that unfreedom is caused by the aforementioned pain-worshipping satanists. This seems like a lazy reading, considering that the hero rejects the option of merely defeating the "pain-worshiping satanists" to restore SHIELD< and dissolves SHIELD entirely. He explicitly rejects the "it's only
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Apr 30, 2014 17:26
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Yes, Cap and Black Widow both state that unfreedom is caused by giving in to the lure of secret, unaccountable power.
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Apr 30, 2014 17:31
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:With Zola, you do not see the calculations, but do see his ability to edit together a nice rapid-fire montage of historical footage. That's actually pretty interesting: a filmmaking AI. Pretty impressive for a computer with a magnetic tape hard drive.
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Apr 30, 2014 17:57
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Red posted:Pretty impressive for a computer with a magnetic tape hard drive. Everything about Zola in general was awesome. I love that he has a USB hub hooked up to him so it's no problem. It's a HIGH TECH hub because it glows a little. This was so much fun. It's my favorite of the MCU movies by far, followed by Captain America 1 and Thor 1. I wasn't expecting that at all as CA1 especially was the one I was most skeptical about before seeing it. I feel like this one in particular got the violence and the action exactly right. I had no problem with any spatial awareness as to where anyone was or what they were doing. Great sound too at least where I saw it, I knew where his shield was at all times thanks to that. I'm not understanding the argument going on about Zola at all. The algorithm has to be stopped because, were it to work perfectly it would end up wiping out almost all of humanity. Much like in The Terminator (they changed this a bit in T2 to make Skynet nuking everything it defending itself) the program would eventually see its own people as a threat after making sure all of its perceived enemies were put in their place or killed. Were it to not work perfectly it would just indiscriminately slaughter millions of people. Either of these scenarios are bad beyond the more banal debate of its internal workings. The very heavy handed theme they were going for though is that a hyper militarized enforcement of society like that will inevitably eat itself alive. Other things that stood out: Falcon was a brilliant character to put into this movie, everything about him is great and I hope he's around a bit in Avengers 2. Like others have said Mackie totally owned it. The Winter Soldier's robotic arm is amazing. It looks EXACTLY like how cybernetic limbs are portrayed in Marvel comics. Winter Soldier himself ended up being really well done, the way he was talked up pre-release and the trailers made me afraid he was going to be like Kai Leng. Black Widow was the biggest surprise for me. I hated her character in Avengers. It was great to see her and Cap become buddies and for her to actually get enough screen time to open up about how she realizes she's a know it all, is paranoid, etc. When the fake cops were blowing away Fury's car towards the beginning of the film, that immediately reminded me of when two undercover NYPD detectives fired 50 rounds into a vehicle in 2006 because someone reported that one of the passengers might have heard one of the passengers possibly say they had a gun (zero weapons were recovered). The two detectives responsible for this were cleared of any charges. I don't think this evocation is a coincidence as it happens in the movie not long after Fury's own speech to Cap about paranoia and the story about his grandfather. There's an excellent WWII documentary series called The World at War that first aired in 1973. PBS would show it constantly when I was growing up in the 80s. That documentary clip of Peggy Carter looks, sounds and is written so much like it came from that series it amazed me. I notice she's listed in the cast for Avengers 2. Is this going to be the present day her or another flashback or something? It was extremely cool that we got some background about Nick Fury's family. Also the "both eyes open" moment is amazing. The post credits (midway credits? whatever) thing with Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, should I still spoil that? Man people weren't kidding about that being thrown in at the last second. I know the post credit things are mandatory now but we're a long way from "I'd like to speak to you about the Avengers Initiative."
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May 2, 2014 05:03
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I actually got really excited because I have that USB hub...
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May 2, 2014 05:18
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Snak posted:I actually got really excited because I have that USB hub... Hydra agent spotted!
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May 2, 2014 05:39
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It's not so much that the USB hub is glowy. It's that there is a hub at all when less than ten seconds ago Cap & Tasha has been saying that the place hadn't been visited in decades .
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May 2, 2014 06:07
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Speleothing posted:It's not so much that the USB hub is glowy. It's that there is a hub at all when less than ten seconds ago Cap & Tasha has been saying that the place hadn't been visited in decades . They walk in and Black Widow says that it couldn't have come from there because the tech is ancient, since she sees the tape reels everywhere. They see the hub like two seconds after and start everything up, not seeing the problem here.
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May 2, 2014 07:14
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Presumably they see the problem but do not feel the need to vocalize it because they are both espionage masters and they are in a hurry and the audience is not that dumb. You know what, you're right. When they see the USB hub, they should do a voiceover flashback to a few seconds before so that Black Widow (and the audience) hear Black Widow saying "this tech is ancient." Flashbacks are a great way to explain stuff in movies.
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May 2, 2014 14:29
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Snak posted:I actually got really excited because I have that USB hub... I noticed the keyboards on the Shield Helicarrier bridge in the original Avengers movie were Saitek Eclipse II's, just like the one I'm typing on now.
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May 2, 2014 16:49
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Halloween Jack posted:
I think the best way for them to handle it would be for Cap and Black Widow to get into an argument about it... Widow: This tech is ancient! what could be down here Cap: Why would you say this tech is ancient, there's a really modern USB hub RIGHT THERE Widow: Well obviously I meant all the other tech, someone must have been here recently Cap: Then why didn't you say that! Widow: I'm sorry that I don't always say exactly what describes the exact situation literally! Cap: Apology accepted! ...that way the sperging about dumb details is already built into the movie.
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May 2, 2014 17:03
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Snak posted:I think the best way for them to handle it would be for Cap and Black Widow to get into an argument about it... To Cap, everything in there is from the future, so he wouldn't be able to call her out on it.
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May 2, 2014 21:45
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GigaPeon posted:To Cap, everything in there is from the future, so he wouldn't be able to call her out on it. I think it would be funny if Cap severely overestimates the coherence of modern technology. I can imagine him having all these electronics that people give him and he just assumes they will all work together because they are all future gadgets. I'm sure that he learned was USB is, but probably takes the 'universal' part too literally. And yes, I mean, it's a USB hub with a blue light on it, and in 1944 he was fighting guys with guns with blue lights on them that shot blue death rays. So he might not even think it's future tech...
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May 2, 2014 23:25
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The blue just means it's USB 3.0, duh.
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May 3, 2014 02:00
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I like the way the show Sleepy Hollow handles "man out of time" stuff. Ichabod Crane isn't shocked or horrified by new technology but he insists on treating voicemails as proper letters and having meaningful conversations with OnStar personnel.
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May 3, 2014 05:22
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Maxwell Lord posted:I like the way the show Sleepy Hollow handles "man out of time" stuff. Ichabod Crane isn't shocked or horrified by new technology but he insists on treating voicemails as proper letters and having meaningful conversations with OnStar personnel. Sleepy Hollow is way better than it should be.
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May 3, 2014 05:25
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A lot of that is a result of the cast of Sleepy Hollow being absolutely delightful. Which is why, while I love the action scenes, I really really love the character moments in the MCU. And why I want the next Avengers installment to do more with Hawkeye, because Clint is a great character if they just let him be, and I'll defend him until the end. It sucks to see viewers dismiss characters I've grown attached to, but I understand our investment levels are different. The BadassDigest review of the Winter Soldier suggested that Age of Ultron had a scene where the Avengers were having a party, and the mere thought made me so happy. I have a terribly fannish affection for these characters, and the idea of them interacting and being friends and having a nice time makes me ridiculously giddy.
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May 3, 2014 05:59
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I've recently been made aware of the fact that some people genuinely thought Natasha's "Shall we play a game?" line to Steve was meant to reference Saw instead of Wargames. This makes me sad.
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May 3, 2014 07:25
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WarGames came out years before I was born, but I STILL laughed at that line. Luckily some older fans have been actively correcting the confusion. The people who consistently refer to Bucky as an "evil villain" are nearly as bad, but they're also getting squashed. And plenty fans under 30 are familiar with Robert Redford and how ironic this role is.
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May 3, 2014 08:03
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Minority Report is interesting because the precrime program actually seems to work, until the errors start popping up. The interpretation that Zola's algorithm works only works if you somehow come to the conclusion that the film endorses Hydra's belief system. In fact, they've successfully built a machine that will kill twenty million people based on their SAT scores and call records, and nothing more. It's a very obvious criticism of our new missile-empowered surveillance state that creates great danger and solves nothing, and hardly the only one in this movie. You have actually reached the opposite conclusion of the movie, but your reading is really lazy, so the former is forgiven as a symptom of the latter.
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May 3, 2014 08:23
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:The interpretation that Zola's algorithm works only works if you somehow come to the conclusion that the film endorses Hydra's belief system. In fact, they've successfully built a machine that will kill twenty million people based on their SAT scores and call records, and nothing more. It's a very obvious criticism of our new missile-empowered surveillance state that creates great danger and solves nothing, and hardly the only one in this movie. I don't follow. This is like if the villains claimed to have discovered faster-than-light travel, but their rocket only runs on puppy blood. So they gather up 101 Dalmatians, and ready the woodchipper... but Captain America saves the day! "Thank goodness! Now America is free of the terrible threat of space travel." Meanwhile, the rocket is actually just a wheelbarrow.
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May 3, 2014 15:46
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:The interpretation that Zola's algorithm works only works if you somehow come to the conclusion that the film endorses Hydra's belief system. False.
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May 3, 2014 17:39
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:I don't follow. No, it's like if they made a machine that shoots puppies that ran on puppy blood and then Captain America saved the day. Fascism is bad, is what I'm saying. Hbomberguy posted:False. Big fan of racial profiling, are you?
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May 3, 2014 17:44
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Eh It'd be nice if they showcased Captain American's mental abilities a little more, he's super intelligent as well. Not like a genius but he can memorize maps from just a glance and read at probably the highest level possible. He just doesn't understand cultural references, he pretty quickly learns new technology and how it works. It's just all the cultural references and such that he does not understand. He's at the peak of human perfection mentally as well and is considered a tactical Genius. That's why that scene bothered me, as Cap would have by now learned about modern computers etc... Everything about him including his very spirit itself and drive was enhanced.
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May 3, 2014 17:52
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Unoriginal Name posted:Big fan of racial profiling, are you? Does racial profiling actually reduce crime statistics and help catch more criminals? I don't care. It's still wrong.
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May 3, 2014 18:56
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I haven't seen this movie yet and will tonight. 3D vs 2D?
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May 3, 2014 21:41
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2 D is generally superior, especially with how much rapid movement there is.
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May 3, 2014 21:59
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3D has never worked for me. For some reason I have never experienced the sensation of depth that everyone else raves about, even though I have two functional eyes. The last time I was impressed by a 3D film was when I saw a tech demo at an amusement park, wherein they used really cheap techniques like poking the camera lens with a finger. Maybe there's something wrong with my brain.
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May 3, 2014 22:17
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