Nick Fury (Marvel Cinematic Universe)


Nicholas Joseph Fury is a fictional character portrayed by Samuel L. Jackson in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film franchise, based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name.
, Fury has appeared in eleven of twenty-three MCU films, beginning with the first MCU film, Iron Man, in 2008, and most recently appearing in in 2019.

Concept, creation, and characterization

Fury originally appeared in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer/artist Jack Kirby and writer Stan Lee, Fury first appeared in Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #1, a World War II combat series that portrayed the cigar-chomping Fury as leader of an elite U.S. Army unit. In 1998, David Hasselhoff portrayed Fury in the Fox television movie ', which was intended to be a backdoor pilot for a possible new TV series, which did not materialize. In 2002, Marvel Comics designed their "Ultimate" version of the character Nick Fury after the likeness of Samuel L. Jackson. However, Marvel Studios initially discussed a potential film role with George Clooney, who turned it down after reviewing some of the comic book source material and finding Fury to be too violent of a character. According to the audio commentary of the 2007 film ', director Tim Story said the script originally contained Nick Fury, but the role eventually became that of General Hager, as having Fury would have forced 20th Century Fox to purchase the rights to that character.
In the mid-2000s, Kevin Feige realized that Marvel still owned the rights to the core characters, which included Fury. Feige, a self-professed "fanboy", envisioned creating a shared universe just as creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had done with their comic books in the early 1960s. In 2004, David Maisel was hired as chief operating officer of Marvel Studios as he had a plan for the studio to self-finance movies. Marvel entered into a non-recourse debt structure with Merrill Lynch, under which Marvel got $525 million to make a maximum of 10 movies based on the company's properties over eight years, collateralized by certain movie rights to a total of 10 characters, including Nick Fury.
Jackson was then offered the role, initially signing a nine-film contract with Marvel to portray Nick Fury in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In 2019, Jackson confirmed that, while that year's Captain Marvel marked the end of his nine-film contract with Marvel, he would continue to portray Fury in future films. Jackson thereafter appeared in a cameo in Avengers: Endgame, and in a substantial role in Spider-Man: Far From Home.
The MCU version of Nick Fury jettisoned a number of details from the original comic book version. Aside from the original character having been white, the original comic book Nick Fury was a World War II veteran who knew Captain America and led the Howling Commandos, and lost sight in his left eye during a grenade attack in that war. In both the original comic book and the Ultimate Marvel versions, Fury was able to remain active many decades after the war because he aged unnaturally slowly due to regular doses of an Infinity Formula. A popular character over a number of decades, in 2011, Fury was ranked 33rd in IGN's Top 100 Comic Book Heroes, and 32nd in their list of "The Top 50 Avengers". He has sometimes been considered an antihero.

Appearances

Fury first appears in the post-credits scene of Iron Man, meeting Tony Stark at his Malibu home to discuss the Avengers Initiative. In Iron Man 2, Fury sends in Natasha Romanoff to pose as an assistant to and assess Stark to see if he is worth recruiting for the Initiative and helps Stark deal with his palladium illness and Ivan Vanko and at the end of the film hires him as a consultant for the Avengers Initiative. Fury makes a cameo in the post-credits scene of Thor, enlisting Erik Selvig to study the Tesseract. At the end of ', Fury informs Steve Rogers: "You've been asleep, Cap, for almost seventy years." He later appears in the post-credits scene to propose a mission to Rogers which leads into The Avengers, the first MCU film where Fury appears as a main character in the film, rather than in a cameo or post-credits scene. In the film, when Loki arrives on Earth to take the Tesseract in order to lead the Chitauri invasion, Fury brings the titular team together. Noting that he does more in The Avengers than in any of the previous films: "You don't have to wait until the end of the movie to see me". About the role, Jackson said, "It's always good to play somebody is a positive in society as opposed to somebody who is a negative... I tried to make him as honest to the story and as honest to what real-life would seem." Jackson compared the character to Ordell Robbie in Jackie Brown, calling him "a nice guy to hang out with. You just don't want to cross him". Jackson earned $4–6 million for the film.
In 2013 and 2014, Jackson appeared as Fury in two episodes of the MCU spinoff TV series, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., "0-8-4" and "Beginning of the End". In "0-8-4", Fury appears in an end tag to scold Agent Coulson over damage caused to a S.H.I.E.L.D. plane during a fight, and expresses his doubts over the loyalty of Daisy Johnson. In June 2013, Samuel L. Jackson expressed interest in appearing in the show as S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury, which led to his cameo appearance at the end of this episode. Executive producer Jeph Loeb said "There were obviously a number of places that we thought Nick Fury would have a big impact on the show, but the more we talked about it, to get him in very early, so that it would kind of christen the show, legitimize it in its own way". It was a challenge for the showrunners to keep Jackson's cameo a surprise due to "this age of tweets and spoilers".
In series continuity, this appearance is followed by the events of the film, ', an attempt is made on Fury's life by Hydra, which is revealed to have taken over S.H.I.E.L.D. Fury fakes his death and, once Hydra's plan to control the world is foiled, heads to Eastern Europe to hunt down the remaining Hydra cells. Regarding Fury's questionable code of ethics displayed in the film, Jackson said, "Almost everything that comes out of Nick Fury's mouth is a lie in some sense. He has to ask, is he even lying to himself, too? He has a very good idea of what's going on but his paranoia keeps him from believing some of it." Jackson added, "You see Nick Fury the office guy, him going about the day-to-day work of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the politics as opposed to that other stuff. It's great to have him dealing with Captain America in terms of being able to speak to him soldier to soldier and try to explain to him how the world has changed in another way while he was frozen in time. Some of the people who used to be our enemies are now our allies – him trying to figure out, 'Well, how do we trust those guys?' or 'How do we trust the guys that you didn't trust who don't trust you?' And explaining to him that the black and white of good guys/bad guys has now turned into this gray area." McFeely said, "Fury represents an obstacle for Steve in some ways. They don't always agree on how S.H.I.E.L.D. ought to be used." The writers gave Fury a more prominent role in The Winter Soldier, since within a plot featuring S.H.I.E.L.D. being dismantled, Fury would "take the brunt of it". They also intended on depicting a character that had so far been depicted as a self-assured, commanding man as vulnerable, to enhance the sense of danger in the Hydra conspiracy.
Fury's appearance in the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season finale, "Beginning of the End", deals with the aftermath of the events of Winter Soldier. In ', Fury shows up on Clint Barton's farm to help and motivate the Avengers formulate a plan to stop Ultron from destroying humanity. He and other former agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. use a helicarrier provided to them by Coulson to help the Avengers in the final battle against Ultron. He also appears at the end of the film, helping the Avengers get their new headquarters up and running. Jackson described the role as a cameo, saying, "I'm just kind of passing by there... Because, it's another one of those 'people who have powers fighting people who have powers'. That's why I didn't get to New York in The Avengers. There's not a lot I could do except shoot a gun."
In the post-credit scene of ', Fury and Maria Hill discuss the Avengers' battle against Thanos's forces in Wakanda, and Tony Stark's current status when they begin to disintegrate with half of the universe. Before fading away completely, Fury uses a modified pager to send a distress call to Captain Marvel. A younger version of Fury appears in Captain Marvel, which is set in 1995, when Fury is still a low-level bureaucrat. Fury appears without his signature eye patch as the film is set before he loses his eye. Feige explained that Danvers is the first superhero that Fury has come across, which sets him on a path to his role working with heroes in later-set MCU films. Jackson described Fury at this point as a desk jockey, who has not yet become cynical towards bureaucracy and who learns in the film that there are superpowered beings who could help S.H.I.E.L.D. Towards the end of the film, Fury loses sight in his left eye after being scratched by the Flerken/cat Goose, and is inspired to create the Avengers Initiative by Danvers' example, naming the protocol after her old callsign. Jackson added that trusting Danvers plays a key role in his development, as they become "compatriots" throughout the film. Jackson was digitally de-aged by 25 years, the first time Marvel has done this for an entire film.
Fury then appears at the end of ' during the funeral for Stark, having been revived by Bruce Banner using the Infinity Stones. Fury appears again in '. He recruits Peter Parker, who is on vacation in Europe, to battle the Elementals alongside Mysterio. However the post-credits scene reveal him as Talos with Soren revealed to have been posing as Fury and Hill the entire time, as they were hired by Fury who is taking vacation in space.
Jackson has portrayed the character in two video game products. Jackson reprised his role as Fury in the 2010 video game adaptation of Iron Man 2, and again in the 2014 video game and its 2015 sequel, Disney Infinity 3.0.
Jackson will reprise his role in the upcoming Disney+ animated series What If...?.

Fictional character biography

Early developments

In 1995, Kree Empire Starforce member Vers crash-lands in Los Angeles, drawing S.H.I.E.L.D. agents Nick Fury and Phil Coulson to investigate. In an ensuing Skrull attack, Fury kills a Skrull impersonating Coulson. Skrull commander Talos, disguised as Fury's boss Keller, orders Fury to work with Vers and keep tabs on her. Vers, escaping capture by the Skrull, uses memories they have extracted to bring Fury to the Project Pegasus installation at a U.S. Air Force base. They discover Vers was a pilot presumed to have died in 1989 while testing an experimental jet engine designed by Dr. Wendy Lawson, whom Vers recognizes as a woman from her nightmares. After Fury informs S.H.I.E.L.D. of their location, a team led by Talos disguised as Keller arrives. Fury discovers Talos's ruse and helps Vers escape in a cargo jet with Lawson's stowaway cat Goose. They fly to Louisiana to meet former pilot Maria Rambeau, the last person to see Vers and Lawson alive. Later, Danvers, Talos, Fury, and Rambeau locate Lawson's cloaked laboratory orbiting Earth, where Lawson hid several Skrulls, including Talos's family, and the Tesseract, the power source of Lawson's engine. Danvers is captured by Starforce, and in the subsequent battle, Fury retrieves Goose, who is revealed to be an alien Flerken. Goose swallows the Tesseract and scratches Fury's face, blinding his left eye. Danvers departs to help the Skrulls find a new homeworld, leaving Fury a modified pager to contact her in an emergency. Meanwhile, Fury drafts an initiative to locate heroes like Danvers, naming it after her Air Force call sign, "Avenger".
Later, Fury "became the Deputy Chief of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Bogotá station", where he "proved his leadership mettle" by engineering the rescue of hostages captured by Colombian rebels at the country's embassy, including the daughter of then-S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Alexander Pierce:

Assembling the Avengers and fighting Hydra

Over a decade later, after Tony Stark reveals himself to be the hero known as Iron Man, Fury visits Stark in his home and recruits him into the Avengers initiative. Similarly, after Steve Rogers is recovered from decades of being frozen, Fury oversees the waking of Rogers, and his reintroduction to society. After Stark is attacked by Russian weapons designer Ivan Vanko approaches Stark, revealing that Stark's recently acquired new assistant "Natalie Rushman" is Agent Natasha Romanoff and that Howard Stark was a S.H.I.E.L.D. founder whom Fury knew personally. Fury explains that Vanko's father and Stark invented the arc reactor together, but when Anton tried to sell it, Stark had him deported. The Soviets sent Anton to the Gulag. Fury gives Stark some of his father's old material, enabling Stark to synthesize a new element for his arc reactor that ends his palladium dependency. At a debriefing after Vanko is defeated, Fury informs Stark that because of his difficult personality, S.H.I.E.L.D. intends to use him only as a consultant.
Following Thor's brief banishment from Asgard to Earth, Fury also enlists Erik Selvig to study the Tesseract. Fury is present when Loki attacks a S.H.I.E.L.D. facility to steal the Tesseract and take control of Clint Barton. Fury calls in Romanoff and arranges the bringing together of Stark, Rogers, and Bruce Banner to fight the threat Loki poses. After Loki is captured in Germany and then kills Coulson while escaping from confinement on the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier, Fury uses Coulson's death to motivate the remaining Avengers to work as a team, leading to their stand against Loki and his invading Chitauri army in New York City. When the World Security Council authorizes the nuclear bombing of the city to defeat the invasion, Fury uses a rocket launcher to take out one of the two jets launching for that mission, but is too late to stop the second, which fires a missile that is instead intercepted by Stark. After Loki's defeat, Fury authorizes the use of alien technology to resurrect Coulson from death.
Some time later, an attempt is made on Fury's life by Hydra, which is revealed to have taken over S.H.I.E.L.D. Fury is apparently killed. After it is revealed that Alexander Pierce is working for Hydra, Fury reappears to override Hydra's control of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s computer systems, forcing Pierce to unlock S.H.I.E.L.D's database so that Romanoff can leak classified information, exposing Hydra to the public. Fury reveals that although Pierce had deleted Fury's retinal scan from the system, Fury had a backup scan of his destroyed other eye. Once Hydra's plan to control the world is foiled, Fury appears to assist S.H.I.E.L.D. agents in the aftermath of those events, rescuing agents Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons from drowning in the ocean and providing Agent Coulson with the Destroyer gun to take out enemy soldiers, before they confront John Garrett and Deathlok. In the aftermath, Coulson vaporizes Garrett and criticizes Fury for using GH325 to revive him. Fury responds that he values Coulson as much as any Avenger, because he represents the heart and moral center of S.H.I.E.L.D., and declares Coulson the new director of S.H.I.E.L.D., tasking him with rebuilding the organisation from scratch, and equips him with a 'toolbox' containing useful data. Under cover of his apparent death, Fury heads to Eastern Europe to hunt down the remaining Hydra cells. After Tony Stark creates the program Ultron, which turns out to be villainous and forces the Avengers into hiding, Fury shows up on Clint Barton's farm to help and motivate the Avengers formulate a plan to stop Ultron from destroying humanity. He and other former agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. use a helicarrier to help the Avengers in the final battle against Ultron, and later helps the Avengers get their new headquarters up and running.

Aftermath of the Infinity War

After Thanos succeeds in obtaining the Infinity Stones and snaps to destroy half of life in the universe, Fury and Maria Hill are seen discussing the Avengers' battle against Thanos' forces in Wakanda, and Tony Stark's current status, when both begin to disintegrate. Before fading away completely, Fury uses the modified pager previously given to him to send a distress call to Captain Marvel. When the Avengers reassemble the Infinity Stones and undo the snap five years later, Fury is brought back, and attends the funeral of Tony Stark, who had sacrificed himself to save the universe.
Eight months later, Fury and Hill investigate an unnatural storm in Mexico, and later encounter the Earth Elemental. A super-powered man, Quentin Beck, arrives to fight the creature. Fury later meets with Peter Parker and gives him Tony Stark's glasses, which were meant for Stark's successor. The glasses are equipped with the artificial intelligence E.D.I.T.H., which has access to all databases of Stark Industries, and commands a large orbital weapons supply. Parker rejects Fury's call to arms, opting to rejoin his class, but Fury covertly redirects the school trip's itinerary to Prague, where the Fire Elemental is projected to strike. Ultimately, the Elementals are revealed to be illusions created by Beck, who is defeated, with Maria Hill destroying a drone sent to kill Fury during the climactic battle. In a post-credits scene, the Skrulls Talos and Soren are revealed to have been masquerading as Fury and Hill the whole time, as directed by the real Fury, who is in command of a Skrull spaceship.

Reception

In a generally positive review of The Avengers, Associated Press reviewer Christy Lemire wrote that "he no-nonsense Nick Fury, the head of S.H.I.E.L.D. — which had been entrusted with the safety of — springs into action to reacquire it by assembling a dream team of superheroes and other sundry bad-asses with specialized skills". Reviewing The Winter Soldier, Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter said that "from a dramatic point of view, the greatest interest lies with Jackson and Redford, two great veterans whose presence lends weight to the fantastical proceedings and whose characters take some interesting twists and turns before it's all over".
Fury was noted to have been "largely missing in Phase Three of the Marvel Cinematic Universe", with both Jackson and fans of the franchise being "bummed that Fury was left out of Civil War and Black Panther", though he later had a substantial role in Captain Marvel. Writing for Variety, Owen Gleiberman said of the latter film that the "digitally de-aged Samuel L. Jackson" in Captain Marvel was "done a surprising favor by the visual trickery. He seems different than usual — lighter and perkier".

Accolades

YearAwardCategoryWorkResult
2008IGN AwardBest CameoIron Man
2011IGN AwardFavorite CameoThor
2014Saturn AwardBest Supporting Actor
2019Teen Choice AwardsChoice Action Movie ActorCaptain Marvel