#first director was still richard stoner but only bc his name is hilarious

[evilkitten3]

i will say that i find it annoying how quick mcu fans are to blame fury about every little thing. like i've seen people object to nat's "eighty people in two days" comment by saying that fury was responsible for most of them (which he was, but quite frankly a government agency that exists to protect earth from extraterrestrial threats should be willing to accept members dying to keep a hostile alien from escaping with the most powerful object earth has literally ever seen, so i actually have no problem with that decision of his - everyone in that base was shown to be highly trained and aware that death was a likely outcome– note that loki knifing several people in the throat did not cause anyone to turn and run. they're secret agent soldiers, this is their job)

BUT nat pinning that on loki isn't fury's fault. we have no reason to think he told her anything but what actually happened, as nat is as much of a professional as any of the soldiers in that base were. i don't know if that was intentional manipulation on nat's part (again, i have no problem with that– twisting the truth to motivate people to fight back against the alien whose stated intention is world domination is fine by me), or if she just made an assumption and fury didn't care enough to correct her (in which case the blame would be somewhat on him but frankly getting into semantics when you need to be focused on the actual alien threat is kinda pointless), or if nat just has a mindset of root cause->fault (which would've been interesting but g-d forbid we focus on nat's personality instead of her ass), but it's still not fury's fault that she said that

fury was one of the best characters in the first avengers movie (which wasn't like cinematic brilliance or anything but you know what it was a fun movie and i enjoyed it cringe isn't real in this instance), and people are way too willing to ignore the surprising amount of depth that movie gave him in favor of "government man bad" (which. ok yes i agree with that in principle irl but tony stark is a billionaire and thor tried to invade a sovereign nation like a year ago; you gotta make allowances for fiction or else they're all horrible)

the council fired two missiles at new york. everyone remembers tony yeeting the second into space, but i think people forget that fury took down the first one (somehow without killing the pilot):

to be clear, the world council are basically his bosses. they ordered him to nuke the city and he refused. they went and did it anyway. hill warned fury and he managed to stop the first missile himself and was also the one who alerted tony to the second.

just..... credit where credit is due, yeah? fury's not a cardboard cutout of a character, he's probably the mcu's first real attempt at a protagonist character entirely in the morally gray zone whose decisions and actions as a character are both shown in a way that also the audience to understand where he's coming from while also giving them the space to say whether they think he was right or not.

the whole "using the tesseract to make weapons" thing makes sense. he has a good reason for it too– even ignoring what we learned in captain marvel, the events of the first thor movie made it clear that aliens were out there and could fuck shit up, something agents of s.h.i.e.l.d. then established he'd known even before that. and he's right– earth really, really, really isn't prepared to defend itself against what's out there.

also, kudos to that scene in particular for doing a pretty good job of giving characters reactions that made sense for those characters (usually this is something that shouldn't need brownie points, but it's whedon, so not basing the whole thing on snark that could come from anyone is a step up). steve is against making weapons with the tesseract bc that's what hydra did (and while he has every right to feel that way and be angry about fury not mentioning that, i feel like it needs to be said that there's a noticeable difference between "i'm making this to take over the world" and "i'm making this so we don't get murdered by fucking aliens"), tony is against it bc he has weapon-making trauma, bruce is against it bc he doesn't trust the government (nor should he), thor is against it bc he thinks humans are meddling with what they shouldn't (which. sure but that's sorta our thing. we're the "hey what's that let's meddle with it" species), clint isn't there, and nat doesn't give two shits.

anyway this is a whole lotta nothing but i love nick fury and he deserves better than being written as a cardboard cut-out convenient antagonist in fanfiction (especially if the author goes out of their way to have coulson and hill be good guys trapped under fury's tyrannical thumb. real subtle, y'all.)

#mcu #marvel #nick fury #samuel l jackson #i know someone is going to interpret this as me saying ''all power to the american military'' so i'll just address that here: #fuck the government fuck america fuck the military fuck colonialism give the land back #also i don't care what the movies try to say shield stands for strategic hazard intervention espionage logistics directorate #and it's international fuck you movies #first director was still richard stoner but only bc his name is hilarious #also no one asked but in my hc clint is only an agent bc people call him that #as far as most of the higher ups are concerned he just showed up one day and wouldn't go away and they let him stick around bc he was funny #and useful sometimes #fury: coulson there's a guy in a nest over there #coulson: oh that's barton. i let him live here and sometimes he shoots stuff for me #fury: ...you adopted him didn't you #coulson: HE NEEDED A HOME NICK #clint: *visibly a grown man who absolutely has a home* *munches doritos* yeah nick what are you gonna do send me back to the circus #fury: ...fine he can stay. (seriously phil just let me know ahead of time when you bring home strays that's all i'm asking) #a few years later clint shows up with natasha #clint: hey she followed me home can we keep her #fury: are you actually asking or...? #clint: not really. i mean i offered her my nest but she said she wanted a job #natasha: i was a black widow #fury: cool gonna need to vet you a LOT but hired