#zemo meta

[redstarbonky]

a breakdown of zemo reacting to dr. nagel, or, >:3 face versus :| face

!!!this post is packed with spoilers!!!

we all know by now that zemo tends to wear his villainous >:3 face while interacting with sam and bucky. it's the face of a dude who's not very stressed out! but this expression goes away during the encounter with dr. nagel. in fact, the whole gadfly personality melts away like it was never there.

so here's a BUNCH OF WORDS ABOUT IT while MAXING OUT THE NUMBER OF PICTURES I'M ALLOWED TO HAVE PER POST

tagging @h-zemo because...*vague zemo gestures*

in the dockyard scene, zemo is the first to poke around enough to discover the secret door to nagel's lab. he's a man on a mission...and notably, sharon and the lads have elected not to give him a weapon

in this image he is looking at nagel, who is unaware of his presence. this is the face he wore through most of CA:CW, when he was mostly thinking about how superpeople destroyed his entire country and got his family killed, and how that is all the fault of captain america (sort of), the serum's first and most dramatic success

zemo doesn't even want superpeople to exist. you can imagine what he would think of the continued existence of the serum itself, let alone a person who knows how to make it

not coincidentally, he has this expression the entire time they're dealing with nagel. this is the face of desire to murder

sam has taken nagel gently hostage (sam is good ok?) and 'introduced' him: "this is baron zemo. i know you've heard of him, too, right?" zemo just looks like this and doesn't say anything...

nagel avoided looking right at bucky after initially seeing him (probably thinking that that's the winter soldier, likely known to the world after CA:CW as a dangerous person, an assassin, a terrorist). but he does stop to make eye contact with zemo before sam pushes him along.

in what capacity has nagel heard of zemo? the aftermath of the events of CA:CW? has zemo tried to kill nagel before? i don't want to read too much into the glance here, it can be read as straightforward simmering anger at the intrusion. but nagel looked pretty intently at zemo for the half-second he was allowed to. contrast to sam, whom he barked at immediately, and bucky, who made him freeze on the spot

i don't believe nagel is anything more than a plot point, especially because he's dead by the end of the scene. but would i be surprised if zemo had looked for nagel before? not at all

as sam leads nagel out of the work area, zemo follows...(bonus handsome sam profile in blur-o-vision, you're welcome)

and when bucky subtly threatens nagel with a shot that should have deafened all of them but hey it's television, sam flinches, but zemo just looks dispassionately

like this pic doesn't need to be a gif. he doesn't flinch, he doesn't move his eyes, he's just looking

then he wanders around and looks for a...let's call it 'security system.' because as mentioned before, sharon & co. chose not to give him a weapon. he finds it under the lab table. i believe this gun is what nagel was likely going for when telling sam to gtfo of his lab and starting to leave his work area. zemo was part of a kill squad. he probably knows common hiding places for weapons

zemo casually walks back out, looks at nagel, and seems conveniently positioned to fire the chekhov's gun in his left hand

(btw i don't believe for a second that there's no serum in the lab. i think nagel is just lying, badly, and banking on the three of them having no idea what the finished serum looks like. THEY ARE LITERALLY SURROUNDED BY BLUE VIALS FFS anyway getting off-topic 😶)

then sharon bursts in to tell them they need to hurry up, and zemo takes advantage of the distraction to shoot nagel dead

he has pretty much the same expression when sam and sharon pin him (sam even yells "NO!" for the illicit chemist because he's a grade-A good guy, while bucky wanders around short-circuiting. seriously watch that part again it's hilarious. he's "???😐????" while everyone else is ">:OOO")

we don't clearly see zemo's face again until after he's escaped the burning lab, blown up several dudes, and taken off his thanos cosplay/stunt double face hider/bank robber mask

with a serum creator and a serum lab totally obliterated, the >:3 expression returns, and he's back to his normal, quietly ridiculous, vintage car otaku self.

it's not even just that zemo is pissed off throughout the scene - he's tense. when his >:3 face comes back, it's because he's not stressed anymore!

big ups to daniel brühl for this piece of interesting acting, i'm sorry it COMPLETELY went over my head until i rewatched the episode

[andarthas-web]

Zemo - blaming others for the guilt he carries?

Here's the thing...people tend to blame other the hardest for something when they carry more guilt than they can bear for what happened.

So...what was HYDRA doing in Sokovia?

And how much was Zemo involved in them being there?

I figure that it was others who allowed HYDRA to set up base in Sokovia, after all, Zemo was just one member of the ruling class among many.

And I guess at first, he tolerated them, then came to loathe them.

What if it was HIM who tipped off the Avengers about the base?

What if it was his son was a fan of the Avengers and first suggested it?

What if his wife enthusiastically agreed?

What if he had hoped they would destroy HYDRA, which they DID…but then Tony's carelessness created Ultron, who returned to Sokovia, and this led to Zemo's wife and son dying in the debris from the falling city. What if Zemo lies awake at night, wondering if his wife and son were still alive if he had not laid out the breadcrumbs that led the Avenger into Sokovia?

[kakademona]

As this is the eve of the possible relase of the Zemo show trailer I’ve been thinkg about what might happen to him in tfatws, so everybody get in the clown car cuz my Zemo brainrot is acting up and I’m about to theorize 🤡

There is a possibility of Zemo just randomly being back on his CA:CW bullshit and going from felt depressed might kill myself later to be gay do crimes thanks to the healing powers of solitary confiement, but that doesn’t really stick to the MCU version of Zemo we know so far. Zemos only motivation in Civil War was to ‘avenge’ his family so he himself can die. That was the only reason he targeted the Avengers- not because he hated all heroes or that he disapproved of their methods; it’s explicitly said that Zemo lead a covert kill squad so the audience knew where some of his skills and gray morals came from. He didn’t even target specific Avengers that were involved in the battle of Novi Grad - he just wanted to break the initiative at it’s core. You can interpret that his obsession with tearing the Avengers apart was him coping not only with survivors guilt, but also, as indicated but the voicemails of Zemos wife (”just try to be there, okay?”), guilt of not spending enough time with his family. The man was on his last emotional legs, the only thing that kept him going was the idea that he can somewhat have ‘justice’ and ‘do right’ by his dead family and avenge them, before he can allow himself to die and escape the pain. 

And from that description nothing screams to me “new head of Hydra” or “forming his own supervillain team”. Like, MCU Zemo doesn’t give a shit. He doesn’t give a shit about Hydra and killing it’s members is like whatever man, he doesn’t look forwad to killing innocent people but you bet he will do it, he doesn’t care about avenging Sokovia because it “was a failed state” anyway.

The only way I can see Zemo being involved with Hydra lies in his first scene in CA:CW where, aside from making it clear that he dislikes the organisation, Zemo mentions that most of the Hydra files relased by Black Widow were encrypted and not easy to decipher, but he has experience. So that kinda indicates Zemo has some history with Hydra. In Age of Ultron we see Hydra base located in Sokovia, so maybe Zemo as a member of Sokovian intellgence was either fighting Hydra or had to work with them. Other connection could be Zemos dead father - in the comics he was a high ranking member of Hydra. Maybe Hydra is after Zemo because they are looking for a new Supreme and Zemo has the perfect CV for that position. Or maybe they are after Heinrich’ Zemo work and Helmut is the only way to find it.

Zemo forming the Masters of Evil or Thunderbolts is like ??? It’s cool in the comics but again, MCU Zemo doesn’t have plans for world domination.

So far his entire plan has been:

1. bury my dead family

2. avenge them

3. kill myself

4. ???

Why would this deeply depressed man want to build his own team, to what end? Zemo already won in Civil War. And it got better, after Endgame Ironman and Balck Widow are dead, Captain America is missing, Thor is gone. Avengers are no more. Would it bother Zemo that they are remembered as heroes? Maybe, but he didn’t give a shit about that in CA:CV, so why would he now?

Other question is if he would join the Thunderbolts ran by Secretary Ross. That would make more sense to make him more of an antihero/antagonist, considering how they gave him a heartbreaking motive and backstory in CA:CV. The irony of Zemo joing a superhero squad would great. Why would he want to do it tho?

There is one way Zemo could get some motivation (I’m going full clown here so it’s okay to laugh): he could connect the dots and realize that him breaking up the Avengers did indeed lead to the Snap. There are theories saying that he would be happy about it because thanks to Thanos Avengers are gone and that Zemo will wear the purple mask to honour him... and yeah, that could work. But you can also spin it another way: if you accept the theory that Zemos actions in CA:CV lead to the Snap happening,then it’s kinda the same way Tony’s actions lead to the battle of Novi Grad. And the death of Zemos family. Again, the irony is great, especially if you consider how the tragedy of Novi Grad pales in comparison to the concequences of the Snap. Zemo could not give less shit about the universe, but perhaps he could also feel partly responsible.

TL;DR who the fuck knows what Zemo will do that man is a bisexual wildcard he might as well steal the time machine and try to save his family but accidentally sends himself to medieval times and thats where he picks up his mad sword fighting skills idk

[kakademona]

Not excusing Zemo’s actions, he did what he did and should answer for it, but... the way people dismiss his trauma to the point of calling it a ‘sob story’ and at the same time gushing over other character’s traumatic experiences and conveniently ignoring that they also have red in their ledger? Amazing what framing can do. It just shows that to get sympathy you’ve got to be a ‘good victim’. Something terrible happened to Zemo, it affected him and he reacted badly. It’s realistic that severe emotional trauma can cause people to do bad things. It can make you mentally ill. And having your family, including your child, killed in one go and having to find their corpses, all thanks to a sudden interference of foreign military forces, is severe emotional trauma. It changes who you are and how you think. But Zemo is a ‘bad victim’, because he reacted badly to the bad thing thus deserves no sympathy. You don’t have to like him and there’s no excuse for his actions, but ignoring his pain, motivations and what he represents as a character - a regular person from a small, developing country who lost everything because some rich dude decided to play god - that’s very convenient.

[yeahcoolduck]

this is meta about Zemo fahre[.]tumblr[.]com/post/143948742554/that-zemo-meta what do you think?

I had come across this before, but I have to confess part of it flew right by me because I don’t know what the Manchurian Candidate is.  

Okay scratch that, I just took some initiate and googled it so I have a general idea, but still - a lot of the first half of the meta is wasted on someone who’s unfamiliar with the reference.  As for the stuff about Zemo, I think it’s an interesting spin, and proof yet again that fans are freaking better at this than the pros sometimes.  Given the movie we got, I have no impression that there is anything going on deeper than face value, so to me, Zemo is presented as some annoying revenge-driven plot-device and that’s all he is.  If they wanted me to think he was a CIA sleeper agent, they should have freakin gone there, and would have at the end because it would have been a great twist to an otherwise painfully predictable movie.  It’s not like Marvel is known for subtlety, so frankly, if it’s not explicit, it didn’t happen.

Villain with a hero origin story IS a great trope flip. But - and sorry for going on yet another massive negativity rant here - CACW is neither the time nor the place to be getting into it.  Let me clarify: you know who else was a villain with a hero origin story?  Alexander Pierce.  His daughters were taken hostage in an event which scared him so thoroughly he decided to go totalitarian death-drone over the course of the next twenty years.  But we don’t see that happen in CAWS, and you know why?  Because it’s boring.  Unless the entire movie is about that, specifically, happening, it’s beside the point they’re trying to make, in the scope of the WS movie.  It’s background information.  

Now let me go a little deeper even with that: you know who is a villain with a hero origin story, who we get to see develop into a villain counterpoint to the hero developing into a hero?  Kingpin from Marvel’s Netflix series Daredevil.  I had some problems with this series as well, but it’s villain development was not at all one of them.  We understand where the guy is coming from, we see what happens to turn him into the villain he becomes, we even spend some time in flashback mode to understand his childhood. It can be done, Marvel can do it, but the difference is they had about 13 hours to do it in, not 2 ½ that’s already disastrously split between a trillion other people.  

Can you imagine if WS flashed back to Pierce’s hostage crisis?  It would have been an absurd tangent.  Instead, the narrative addresses it within context - I can’t stress this enough - within context of the burgeoning rift between hero and villain - Rogers and Pierce - as they actively disagree and withhold things from each other prior to the plot kicking it into high gear.  Contrast this to Zemo, who acts for unknown reasons which he communicates to no one until he freaking MONOLOGUES his shit to T’Challa in the final hour.  And who was T’Challa?  Another plot device used to drive Steve further away from Tony, who stands in as a convenient sounding board for Zemo to confess to.  Can you think of another reason why T’Challa needed to be in Siberia?  There is literally no reason, it was done for the sole purpose of EXPLAINING THEIR PLOT to the audience via T’Challa, it had all the finesse of Scooby Doo.

If you don’t have the time to focus on developing your villain a la Kingpin, then your villain should already be developed a la Pierce.  It definitely can be done within the scope of a single, tight, well-scripted movie, but Captain America: Civil War was not that movie and Zemo is a one-dimensional, plot-device, boring disaster.  I’d be be totally down to read the fic that does him justice, though.

[qwanderer]

Civil War and how it puts Loki's character in context

The villain of Civil War, Zemo, is the opposite of Loki in almost every way.

Other than the superficial similarities in their methods, the use of disguises and secondhand mind control, their motives, character, and effect on the heroes are diametrically opposed.

Everything Loki does is calculated to bring the heroes together – “that was the plan” – and it does. Everything Zemo does is calculated to tear the heroes apart – he says so – and it does.

Loki puts on a show, gets the attention of the Avengers in order to make his way into their fortress as a prisoner, to be the one under glass, with all eyes on him. Zemo uses stealth, avoids the attention of the Avengers in order to be the one on the outside of the glass, the one questioning the prisoner, the one no one is looking at because all eyes are on Bucky.

Loki is a prince and a god, supernaturally powerful, driven by the need for recognition. He wants to face the Avengers at their best and test himself. Zemo is no one, very much mundane, and is just as happy to descend into obscurity and have no one ever know who it was that tore apart the Avengers. Just as happy to never have to lift a finger to get it done.

Loki is known for the impact of the lies that he tells, but Zemo will always be known for the impact of revealing the truth.

But most of all, Loki is known for wiggling out of things, using slippery words to avoid consequences, using trickery to get out of fights. And while the narrative of the stories Loki is in usually condemns this and makes him the villain, Zemo is a villain who teaches the very opposite lesson – that the most dangerous thing in the world, the most evil thing, is a promise kept. A promise kept no matter what, to the exclusion of all else, at any cost.