What's up, enthusiasts? Welcome to the Nerd O Dome. You're listening to I Am A Nerd, where we celebrate nerdy things old and new with our like minded peers, and that means you. I'm your host, The Direct Edition, and today we're gonna be counting down to Captain America, Brave New World.
I have here with me, Zero Cool, the symbol of infinite and boundless chill. What's up Zero? What's going on buddy? So, Cat Brave New World is due to hit theaters February 14th. And, for one this ain't your daddy's Cat from America. So, I figured we were going to take a look at a few of the characters, stories but mostly focus on some of the stuff that's where he's showing up at in the MCU.
I guess we can talk about how did we get [00:03:00] here? Right. I guess it all started with nice little brisk run, nice little morning jog, little morning jog. Now, how many, how many times you've been out on a morning jog and you just say, Hey, what's up, bud? And then all of a sudden you've got a sidekick.
How's that work out? That's how it happened. It's exactly how it happened. That's how it happened. My boy Sam Wilson was trying to get his fitness on. And little did he know, he would be upstaged by government provided steroid using the symbol of peace and freedom. On your left. On your left. Left words that will forever be remembered.
And I got to say, when they brought that back in the end game, that was perfect. Right. Could not, you could not have asked for a better insertion from a previous film other than. Hey Cap, on your left. You really couldn't have. And I think he was waiting those entire three movies to just get them back for that [00:04:00] one time. Sam's just sitting in the corner. Can I say it? Can I say it? This time, I'm on your left that beginning, that took place of course, Captain America Winter Soldier. And from there, it was like that was like all she wrote. You know, it was Falcon's first appearance in the MCU and he's been like team cap ever since. Pretty much, yeah. Even spent time in the brig. Yeah, he did. After the Sokovia Accords.
It was him, it was, I was about to say Hank Pym, but it wasn't, it was Scott Lang. Scott Lang. Barton. Barton. And, Bucky. Yeah, I believe Bucky was there. The only ones that weren't there was, was, no, Vision was on the other side. Him and Scarlet Witch were on the other side. Yeah. No, no, no. I think they were, I think they were opposite, weren't they?
Or were they on the both sides? Been a hot minute since I seen that, uh, You know what? They were [00:05:00] opposite. That's what I thought. Because Clint went, came and he broke, uh, Scarlet Witch out. Cause I think she was on team cap and I think Vision was a, uh, was a rock solid Iron Man. Yeah. How the split in between the viewing of the accords and split the relay relations. And I mean, it came out civil war. I mean, it was exactly what it said. Yeah, you know, I have to admit that wasn't my favorite cap. My favorite was winter soldier.
Oh, absolutely. But with civil war, I, it felt a little crowded. I would say that. As far as a, for Captain America film, it felt a little crowded. And then that's when you got a, uh, Spider-Man introduction. Yes. You got a Spider-Man introduction and you got a Well, no, uh, I was gonna say you got a, a Black Panther, but that happened in, um, when the Soldier mm-hmm
I felt like it should have been an Avengers movie instead of a Captain America movie. Absolutely. That's, that was my thought on it. I'm not saying that it was bad or anything like that. No, it was a good movie [00:06:00] overall, but you're right, it could have, if you weren't focused on so many characters, you could have gotten a little bit more underneath all of the surface tension and all of that going on with Cat, with Iron Man, with, you know, just a couple of other side characters.
Yeah. Agreed. And that's one of the things about a movie, whereas in the comics, you look at the Civil War, you've got a lot more depth and intrigue and, and like I said, bullying under the surface tensions, whereas you just couldn't put that on the movie because we ain't got enough run time, unless you want to do an in game three hour run.
Yeah, because if we talking like comic wise, Civil War, it was a ton of shit that happened. I mean, from They brought in the Young Avengers. They brought in Spider Man, the reveal of Spider Man to the, to the world. Um, they brought in Punisher. They brought in Punisher vs. Cap and how he does things and the villains and, and [00:07:00] Like you said, we ain't got that much time to cover in the movie.
We ain't got that much money to cover on the movie. These are already expensive movies, so we ain't got that much money. So that, that little eight issue series or However long it was, they had to condense it into two hours, but not counting all the sub issues and all the tie ins and whatnot and stuff like that.
I think I got a whole short box of just civil war. I believe it. So now Cap and Falcon have been teaming up since the seventies. It's like they've been teaming up for a long time and It wasn't until, I think 2014 is where Cap took over for, or when Falcon took over for Cap. it also made way for like, a new Falcon. we got that in the form of Joaquin Torres, and that was when Sam made his progression to Captain America. [00:08:00] Which, everybody wasn't too happy about. And a lot of people say, you know, Sam didn't earn it. Sam was just given it. Sam wasn't accepted, but if you look back in the issues, if you look where, where the older Steve Rogers, once he lost his super serum and he started to age and he handed the shield over to Sam, you can see Vision, Hulk, Thor, all of these characters right there and he takes the shield and they're like, You the cap, you the captain.
Yeah. You, you got that stamp, you got that seal of approval right then, right? So we ain't nobody gonna challenge it. We gonna keep it moving.
So now if we hop back over to the MCU, we see Ka handed off the shield. Similar story he is similar story as far as Ka being old and handing off the shield to Falcon. Uh, that happened in Endgame, but with the Endgame tie in, it was, he chose to stay in the past, instead of him [00:09:00] losing the super soldier serum.
Yeah. Which made sense based on, on what the plot of the movie is. Right. Somebody had to return those stones. Who better to, to entrust that with than a man that has. that you just can't question. So he's going to make that and he always gets the job done. So he's going to make it happen. But cap finally gets that, that reward for all the sacrifice that cap does for all the things that he, he has been for so many years.
And the leader, he finally gets to have that little bit of reward, a little bit of peace. And he's always been that man out of time. And you really don't realize it until I will say about end game, when Peggy dies, and he's at the funeral, and it's just like, you can see it on his face almost, like all the missed opportunity that he had because he wanted to do what was right and be Captain America and fight for the world.
That was the cost of sacrifice. So then, when they do the time heist, [00:10:00] it's almost like he sees it as his second chance. And he's like, well, I'm not going to pass this opportunity up and I couldn't blame him. Absolutely not. That man sacrificed enough. It's time for him to rest.
I couldn't blame him. I couldn't blame him at all. And I do hear a lot of people say, well, why didn't Cap give the shield to Bucky? Everybody mad at that. But if you go back to the comics, Bucky didn't want it. But he didn't want it. Bucky always felt that he was not deserving of it. Yes. Cause of, and even it's a similar situation in the movies.
I mean, Bucky was like, dude, I've spent the last few decades as a brainwashed assassin. Can I rest? They were like, bruv, you want me to like pick up a fight with you? It wasn't even rest. He needed to heal. Heal. A better word. Definitely. He needed to heal. And they were just like, oh, Bucky deserved it more than Sam.
I'm like, come on now. Absolutely not. Come on. But, you know, everybody has their own opinions and everybody has their [00:11:00] own way of seeing things and, you know, because Bucky was there at the beginning, Steve Rogers looked up to Bucky, you know, and things of that nature, it was, it was a natural reaction for people to want that to be handed down to another man out of time.
Yeah. I see that. You know, but just like we said, that man had been through so much, he had been programmed as an assassin, as an enemy, as a person who didn't really know who he was. He needed time. And when Steve Rogers, he's older, serum's gone or, you know, time heisting or whatever how you want to look at it, it needed to be passed down because that's a symbol.
The symbolism of the shield and having a Captain America was what everybody needed to see. And I don't think that they could have picked a better, better person than Sam [00:12:00] because Sam embodies that in same integrity. You look at his background, he's a social worker. He was a, uh, service member. He, he's been involved in all kinds of charitable actions.
He resembles. What made Captain America, Captain America, right? That's my own personal opinion I'm like and if you watch Falcon and Winter Soldier then you know, that's where like a lot of that was addressed and and you know, it covered a couple of things and Like at the end game cap gave him a shield everybody thought Oh Falcon's gonna be the next captain he's gonna run with and do everything like that, but When Falcon and Winter Soldier came up, it was more along the lines of, you know, how to uphold this legacy when I've been through all of this turmoil in this country, and can I put that same effort as Steve Rogers did into it?
And he felt like he couldn't at the time. Can I symbolize what [00:13:00] this means? Exactly. Can I live up to that? Yeah. And I mean, anybody that would be handed a shield like that, that legacy right there would have to ask themselves the same question. Can I do this? Can I be enough to make this happen, to be legitimate?
Every person would ask themselves the same question. Yeah, and because he knew he had some big shoes to fill. Absolutely. And, but Falcon and Winter Soldier, I felt like he had to address a couple of things. One was like the weight of the Captain America legacy.
Causing Sam to, to turn the shield over to the Smithsonian, which I don't a hundred percent agree with. But we can't get on. We can't agree with that. Come on now, given that up. Which, I mean, in all actuality, it belonged to Stark. I mean, come on. Well, you know, or in all actuality, it belonged to the Wakandans.
They're metal. Yeah, they're metal in the, in the big scheme of things. There you go. But that's neither here nor there. Let's not dig too far into it.
Although, you [00:14:00] know, thinking of that, and because in the upcoming movie we're going to get a chance to see Harrison Ford enter the MCU, and all I can think of is, The first Indiana Jones, and he takes that cross and he's like, Epilogues in a museum! I thought about that too. I swear to you, I thought about that too.
Falcon and Winter Soldier. It addressed a couple of things. It was like, the weight of that Captain America legacy. Sam not realizing if If he was up to holding up that legacy, it dealt with how that legacy can be damaged when, Walker took over, also looked at the other identities as like Bucky's identity and him trying to come to terms and he was remorseful about the whole Winter Soldier, so he was trying to make amends for his time as a Winter Soldier. Even though, in the big scheme of things, he was not responsible, but because of [00:15:00] who he was, the associations that he had with Steve Rogers, even though he knew he wasn't responsible, he still felt responsible.
Right. And he felt that he needed to make amends, and that's what really In more, in more ways than not would have qualified him to carry the shield, but he knew that he was not the one to do it. Right. That takes a lot of integrity and a lot of measure of a man to say, I don't think I'm worthy.
We all think, we all walk around every day, oh, I'm, I'm good at, I'm this, I'm that, da, da, da, da. But when you can actually sit down and look at it and say, I don't think I'm quite worthy. How much does that say about you? That pride, that ego that you have to get past to, be able to admit your weaknesses and your strengths.
Yeah. Knowing that you have flaws and you have work to do. Exactly. So, one more thing that I wanted to throw in there on the winner. Yeah. Winter Soldier, Falcon and Winter Soldier was probably, you know, we've seen a lot of sad moments in the [00:16:00] MCU between Stark's death, between, you know, Black Widow, between this and that and all that.
But one of the saddest parts that I've ever seen in the MCU was finding out about Isaiah Bradley. And him being treated the way he was treated for numerous years. Yeah. Being the guinea pig, being the test subject, being locked away, being denied the simple act of being free, being a man, being, you know, anything.
And being that person who has pretty much paved the way for others. And that's how he ended up being treated. And it happened in the comics as well. I've read a couple of things here and there and come to find out it was, it was really kind of right along with what had happened that had been written years and years [00:17:00] ago.
But the simple fact that you get to see that and experience with your own eyes that man and you could see how much they had taken from him and yet he was still, still, able to carry on. And a lot of people don't know is that the Isaiah Bradley story it took a page from history and a lot of a lot of our media and a lot of the things that we see.
Oh, it's great. It's flashy, but a lot of these things are actual historical facts. And a lot of people, you know, don't really dive into them, and I'll be honest with you, I'm not the most, you know, learned researcher on certain things, you see things, but then I get curious when I do see them, and hopefully there's a lot of other people that they see this particular, and then it might prompt them to Dig a little bit more and see where this idea actually came from [00:18:00] because you're right.
This was a idea Or it wasn't it was an idea that was taken from actual Facts in history, right? And that's the Tuskegee Airmen being experimented on with syphilis, mm hmm and when they wrote the story that you're talking to in the comics where Isaiah Bradley was truth red white and black and it just The way that they paralleled it and drew from history, it was a huge eye opener.
And, it did make me kind of go back and look and be like, where did this come from? But, I was just floored that they would even allow something like that to be attached to the Captain America mythos. But, you know what? Hopefully, we're not all the way there. Not all the way there. But hopefully as a society, we're willing to look back on our mistakes.
Look [00:19:00] back on the worst parts of our own history and try to learn from it. Hopefully we're there. I'm pretty sure that we're not all the way there. You know. But hopefully we're getting better at doing that. Hopefully. It's kind of a balancing act. Uh, I see the scales go up and I see the scales go down. So, you know, it's always going to be a back and forth.
And, you know, but I know Isaiah Bradley and Falcon wasn't the only people who carried the shield too. I had a list, but was some weird folks on there. One of them being Superman,
Well, I mean, and you, and you know that I'm not a huge Superman fan, but I was, I paused before I said that I didn't want to bring up any, and I'm going to bring it up every single time. I'm gonna let you know, but I got to say, if there was anybody probably in the DC universe that could pick up the shield and carry it and, and do it justice, he might be one of a very, very [00:20:00] small select few. Maybe the only one
we also had Bucky for a time. He was, after, was it civil war? It was, I think it was at the civil war. They put captain on trial in the comics. Yeah. And he ended up being shot on the, the steps of the courthouse and Bucky picked up the shield for a time with there. And it was Bucky. I know, uh, Sam, we had us agent.
Oh, that guy. That guy. We had you as agent. And you know what? I don't remember the actor's name in Falcon and Winter Soldier, but he did an excellent job of making me hate that dude. Not that I needed a big push. So I'm going to give that dude credit, and I will find out what his name is eventually. I'm going to give him his acting chops because I hated that dude like nobody's business.
So, outside of ones that we remember, Isaiah Bradley, Bucky, [00:21:00] Sam, some of the other notable characters that carried Cap's shield, one was Cable. Wow, I did not know that. Yeah., let me see, when did it happen?
They don't say when. Cable's, Cable's a little morally gray. He was just saying he was seen in one of the far flung timelines carrying Captain America's shield after a long quest to obtain it. Wielding it as the ultimate symbol of liberty and freedom. So if ever in the apocalyptic future you need a symbol of liberty and freedom.
There you go. What better one could you have than that? Another dude named William Burnside. And that was when Rogers was presumed dead during, the closing days of World War II. And Burnside tried to fill his shoes as Captain America. There was another guy, I don't know if he's on this list, but Was William Burnside, was he a U. S. agent as well? Or am I thinking incorrectly? I don't [00:22:00] think Burnside was a U. S. agent. U. S. agent was John Walker. Yeah, John Walker, but didn't, didn't he Because he picked up the shield when Cap became Nomad, right? Oh, well, yeah. He was walking around. He had lost faith in the United States and the U. S. government, and he was walking around, and he retired. Pretty much the Captain America persona and once we're going around as Novak Steve Rogers was mm hmm and in his steed John Walker picked up the shield as US agent
But after Burnside Another gentleman by the name of Jason O'Mara
And I think this was during the time that they were trying to tie in, Cat being frozen on ice, but still showing up in comics. And so they were creating characters to, to say, Oh, while he was frozen on ice, these characters were taking up the mantle of Captain America.
And of course, Isaiah Bradley's on here, which we mentioned. Uh, major victory, Vance Astrovik. Now, Vance has a convoluted Origin as well or [00:23:00] timeline as well because he was Justice from the new Warriors. Oh, yeah Vance was just as in the new warriors, but in sometime in the future He has shown he ended up joining guardians of the galaxy and picking up the shield Well, you see and you've you've named off quite a few individuals that picked it up we already talked about quite a few But let's think about, like you said, what the actual shield means.
That liberty and freedom. That liberty and freedom. You know, think about symbols in history. Think about symbols in comics. I mean, can you think of a bigger icon than Capshield? As far as Marvel goes, no. Because I remember when 2099 kicked off. Mhm. And They were going through a whole storyline about another apocalyptic turn, and then guess who showed up in that bitch?
They found Cap frozen in ice in 2099 who [00:24:00] rallied everybody together and won the day. Well the 2099 timeline is near and dear and God awful in my heart. I loved, I loved 2099 Spider Man. And I don't like Spider Man that much, but I loved him and God, the X Men 2099 were so god awful. Don't say that, that was my jam.
Oh, I got them all. That was my jam. I got them all, I read them all, but come on. It was just like you. I loved it, all of them. You asked sixth graders to come up with some characters. Oh, and the art was so bad. It really was. But like I said, it's a it's a love hate relationship with me on the 2099 series But once again finding cap in the ice picking up the shield rallying the troops.
I mean, that's what cap does That's what the shield means to all of these people. Even if it's not kept. Yeah, exactly. That's what the shield can do Well any last words before we wrap this one up If [00:25:00] you haven't seen the trailers for the brave new world Watch them. They just released a new one this week?
Last week? Well, I looked at all three of them. The teaser, the trailer, and then a, it looked like a supplemental. Uh, there was one that just came out and they were talking about how it name drops Adamantium and how Yes, and that's kind of how they're going to try to, to bring that whole stepping stone of bringing the mutants into Mcu.
Yeah. Because you can't have a Wolverine if you ain't got Anna. Man team. Yeah. Anna a Manam. Yeah. And they were, I was reading something on it where it was saying that it was tied to Eternals as well, because that Correct may be where the metal is coming from, the, the eternal that they stopped from birthing out of the earth.
Yep. So, yep. I saw that same one and was quite intrigued because you gotta start somewhere. You got, you wanna bring mutants into the MCU. How are you going to do it? Yeah. And Wolverine is one of the most famous ones that you [00:26:00] can mention. And like you said, he's nothing without. Gotta have the animation.
Gotta have it. So yes, if you haven't seen them, go, go look at the, the trailers. Marvel has just started a brand new series. Sam Wilson's Captain America published 1st of this year. We always kind of thought it was going to be a movie push, but looking at it, it may be a little tad different, especially in the character lineups may not be exactly what you see in the movie, but yeah, you know, because I flipped through it and you have it here.
My initial thought was that is Ross was always red hook and come to find out like from this, there's been other red hooks. So check that out and, we'll talk about that a little bit later on. Second, issue of that is going to come out on February 12th. So you'll have a couple of days to read that before you actually go to go see the movie.
Alright, and with that, we're going to throw [00:27:00] this mighty shield on this episode and see you guys back here next week. Don't worry, we will bounce back. So we're going to catch you guys back here next week as we continue our countdown to Captain America, Brave New World. And remember, live your best geek life, play games, read comics, watch anime, geek responsibly. Peace.[00:28:00]
