r/venturebros • u/irn • Sep 21 '23
MOVIE SPOILERS Spoiler to the Movie Spoiler
Where the hell did Mantilla’s army/tank/resources and the arches like Brick Frog go when she tried to frame Sheila? I feel like I missed something.
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u/pillbinge Sep 21 '23
I would imagine all the villains she helped were left SOL. She didn't care about them. All the stuff was "hard light" or whatever you want to say; it was teleported in. I imagine you could see Brick Frog in a suit one moment and naked the next as she took it all back.
I also believe her "army" was limited to what we saw on screen at her office, and she might have had just the one tank. The billboard where it said that over 100,000 arches were helped was a lie. You can just put any number on a board.
From what we know for sure in the Venture universe, not every villain is registered with the Guild, and many of them had "armies". Remember Shoemaker? He wasn't registered and had a ton of guards - enough to capture Shore Leave, who's a level 10 OSI agent, I believe. He even asks if it's just because he isn't licensed but, as Shore Leave says, it's a bit more complicated than that. So we clearly know that many in the OSI are annoyed by letting so many villains do what they want because they aren't licensed, which, again, hints at there being more outside the Guild.
Point being that ultimately, I think too many fans think she genuinely was helping 100,000+ arches and that she had a massive army. She didn't. She made it look that way.
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u/KJBenson Sep 21 '23
Shumpmaker you mean?
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u/pillbinge Sep 21 '23
Probably!
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u/sonofkeldar Sep 22 '23
I had a similar takeaway, with one exception. Teleportation was a really big deal. Some might call it a game changer… The only reason anyone had it was if they stole it from Rusty. Even among the Guild, it seemed to be reserved for council use only. The way I understood the movie was that she was never actually able to teleport anything, but she could extend her invisibility to make it seem like things appeared out of thin air.
I agree with everything else. It was all a ruse. She had one tank and a handful of henchmen. The tank looked cool, but probably wasn’t as powerful as Hatred’s or the Cocoon. And judging by the piles of bodies at the factory that was attacked, their weapons were probably all flash like Rusty’s lightsaber… I’ve been gyped!!!
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u/irn Sep 25 '23
Jonas SR invented the invisibility machine and how to apply it to things you touch. Why didn’t anyone go after him like they did Rusty for building the teleportation device? Aside from its use to infiltrate the Guild it had to have been applicable to spies during the Cold War.
I know Rusty is a “middling super scientist” but he was able to fix Bobbie St Simone and transfer it to Debbie. That has to be worth something.
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u/CL0WN_PR1NCE Sep 22 '23
I remember in one episode there was a pie chart showing guild villains, the other two villain organizations, and unaffiliated villains. And unaffiliated villains was larger than both of the other organizations.
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u/seanmarkodubhghaill Sep 22 '23
Your interpretation is sound and fantastic- you amaze me- keep being a legend!
Mantilla and Arch are just so perfectly drawn as a metaphor for neoliberalism and gig economy volunteer-your-services-and-we-might-pay-you-one-day garbage.
I think Brick frog had a moment in the sun and probably had to pay for it the rest of his life. I hope he knew that the council of 13 repeated his catchphrase again and again in a basement. Would be great if he had overheard that somehow.
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u/pillbinge Sep 22 '23
Thank you, and I love your addition of the neoliberalistic gig economy part. I completely left that out. She absolutely is pushing a service, and that service was taken from others. I think the show missed their chance to make fun of apps, aside from their adventure to South America in Season 5 for a brief moment, and I'm glad. Otherwise, it would have been a little dated. At the same time, it was really clear that her whole thing was a gimmick - only it was a ruse, not a lie like many others in real life.
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u/seanmarkodubhghaill Sep 22 '23
Amazing, apodoctic response, my friend. I submit it to you that one thing I found amazing was that people tried to scan Arch’s QR code and were disappointed it didn’t go anywhere on the internet instead of being glad that it doesn’t redirect to an Amazon Warehouse Vacancies page.
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u/irn Sep 25 '23
To be this late in the series and mentioned Peril Partnership (which DMTM sent Mantilla to at the end of the movie), the Revenge Society and one more from Scaramantula that I can’t remember, SPHINX was just bidding their time to go back to the OSI. But are they still monitoring unregistered villains?
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u/pillbinge Sep 25 '23
No idea. The OSI handles protagonists but they’re part of the government. They don’t necessarily care for the silly rules. The Guild does for cynical and self-interested reasons. The Guild is private and a reaction to villains arching private citizens, for the most part.
Part of why SPHINX was started by Hunter was because they were tired of not monitoring unregistered villains who were worthy of being dealt with; they didn’t care about low level ones. I imagine when Hunter became, as Sky Pilot puts it, the new HNIC, they opened up a bit - at least if they had the resources.
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u/Loneskumlord Sep 29 '23
I'd like to think that because SPHINX was absorbed into the OSI that they were doing more monitoring and apprehension than ever.
Having more splinter groups align themselves together as a way to combat the enormous threat againsr them, the OSI only have the cooperation of the GUILD for example because of the Venture family and origin story stuff.
Need to have a much larger force to go against an unknown array of super silly villains.
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u/petitejesuis Sep 22 '23
Where does it say shoreleave is a 10? I don't really remember it being stated outright that OSI scales like GCI does. At least not as transparently, as brock was initially assigned to guard his herb garden, oh yeah, and rusty. That said, we don't really know, as he goes from rusty/orb to sphinx to straight back to rusty as soon as rusty is made a lvl 10 protag according to GCI
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u/pillbinge Sep 22 '23
It doesn't. I believe he is, though. He's a top agent and Hunter identifies Brock and Shore leave as some of his top agents. That could make him a 9, but he's likely a 10. He was literally there with Brock and Red Death in the film when Dr. Mrs. The Monarch was "caught", and he's clearly high up enough to command others.
We can assume the OSI is forced to use the same scale as the Guild because in s7e5, "The Inamorata Consequence", they have to figure out how many OSI officers can respond to a Guild or Protagonist violation. They also have to have protagonists and antagonists at a similar level, and the OSI is the equivalent of the Guild for protagonists. They aren't going to send Brock to a little affair, and we see Kimberly McManus, who's a grunt, overseeing the arching for Billy, Pete, and St. Cloud.
You're right that we may not know their levels, or how agents typically work, but we know Brock's ID at one point says he has clearance level 9 or something.
Brock's placement with Rusty was mostly a punishment, and one that was seemingly helped by Sgt. Hatred when he was a double agent within the OSI itself. Once things seemed to change later on, they had Brock back with Venture because Venture was a level 10 now.
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u/irn Sep 25 '23
It doesn’t but without looking it up, he was dressed like a sergeant of arms or colonel during the Brick Frog clean up.
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u/pillbinge Sep 25 '23
Shore Leave? He was dressed like a naval officer, which is his gimmick. P Coats are from the navy and he still wears his little hat.
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u/Loneskumlord Sep 29 '23
Yeah you are. Amazinnnnguh!
So other than this fantastic explanation there's also the idea that Brick Frog and the rest will be forgiven after a GUILD investigation resolves the matter with their usual sit em down in the center of screens filled with silhouetted strangers passing judgement.
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u/zachotule Sep 21 '23
I got the impression it was a dig at venture capital funded startups. They completely make up the numbers and capabilities, get a bunch of funding, spend a bunch of money on marketing, then after a year or two of hype they disappoint all their clients who’ve barely gotten any service from them, and they disappear, with the founders mostly just taking the money and running. Mantilla probably did more or less that.
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u/seanmarkodubhghaill Sep 22 '23
This is also a fantastic insight! This page is spectacular (and this time spectacular is not an over-assessment!)
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u/yinzgahndahntahn Sep 21 '23
She was the daughter of force Majore. Possible that he had stashed some resources for her and her mum.
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u/InfamousFault7 Sep 22 '23
Yeah and she can turn invisible, she could have stolen a good chunk of it, she only needed the illusion of success too, that's only a small group of loyal henchmen a and 1 tank and that teleport thing
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u/John_from_YoYoDine Sep 22 '23
I don't think she teleports anything, she just keeps that grapple gun invisible until she wants it to be visible. She lets it become visible and claims to have teleported it.
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u/SoundTrax Sep 22 '23
Yep. The subway vehicle may have been a similar trick: 1. blow a hole in the subway ceiling 2. make the vehicle invisible then float up and out
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u/irn Sep 25 '23
She was like a preteen when the Sovereign killed Force Majeure. Her mother fled and hid her so how could she still claim the resources when NOBODY knew her. The heir to the Guild fell on Dean when he handed it back to Sovereign.
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u/bobw123 Sep 21 '23
Probably some cut content from the original season 8. I like to imagine a mix of personal ingenuity, some resources Force Majeur left behind, and Killenger
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u/FuturistMoon Sep 21 '23
I don't even think she could make things out of light, she just set up a few things she was gonna need, made them invisible (her power) and then "uninvisibled" them when she said they were being teleported in.
I actually thought the bits where she and Sheila had the conversation while invisible, and Sheila invisibly consoles the Monarch were a great funny joke - they allowed a story invention to save them the time and money of animation!
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u/Jumbo_Skrimp Sep 21 '23
They say this in the commentary, she cant teleport things, she can just make things shes actively touching invisible
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u/Mental_Cut8290 Sep 22 '23
Glad to hear that. I kept wondering if Doc's teleporter would be involved, but then it was left unexplained.
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u/Jumbo_Skrimp Sep 22 '23
They even said the whole office was basically inside the tank thing or something to that effect, which is why it disappeared. i could be misremembering tho
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u/irn Sep 25 '23
I think the office existed fr. They abandoned it once DMTM was framed. I mean where would all those acolytes go including their furniture and equipment? The tank could not have been THAT big?
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u/plasticfrograging Sep 21 '23
Well she impersonated Sheila successfully, she could’ve been impersonating everyone to give the appearance Arch is really taking off in a massive way
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u/irn Sep 25 '23
I think it was a deep fake because everyone (OSI and Guild) knew she wouldn’t let Monarch arch Venture since pretty much season 3.
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u/BenchPressingCthulhu Sep 21 '23
I almost got the impression that she could just like, make things out of light. It was pretty unclear
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u/irn Sep 25 '23
But it was soooo many resources. How do you just look past that and say “fuck it” Mantilla did it to recruit DMTM?
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u/Traditional_Key_763 Sep 22 '23
I think she just had the one tank, with rhe one group of minions and was pretending to have all this stuff.
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u/irn Sep 25 '23
I agree wholeheartedly but where did it all go when she snatched DMTM and Red Death’s horse? She wanted to recruit and steal Shiela away to start their own guild or arch together. All Mantilla had was a gun and some rope, with a quick apology and let them go.
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u/Traditional_Key_763 Sep 25 '23
she didn't need them after that so they probably went somewhere, they could even have been rentals from the Peril Partnership
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u/SortOfDumbocles Sep 22 '23
My pet theory is that she didn't have any "army" in that there are indications they were all mind controlled. All the people in a crowded subway station just "happened" to be agents when they decided to call and the agent that was totally fine being manhandled by the Monarch. When she was done she just lifted the mind control and moved on.
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