first lines; in the Arctic] Search Team Leader: Are you the guys from Washington? SHIELD Tech: You get many other visitors out here? SHIELD Lieutenant: How long have you been on site? Search Team Leader: Since this morning. A Russian oil team called it in about 18 hours ago. SHIELD Lieutenant: How come nobody spotted it before? Search Team Leader: It's really not that surprising. This landscape's changing all the time. You got any ideas what this thing is exactly? SHIELD Lieutenant: I don't know. It's probably a weather balloon. Search Team Leader: I don't think so. You know we don't have the equipment for a job like this. SHIELD Tech: How long before we can start craning it out? Search Team Leader: I don't think you quite understand. You guys are gonna need one hell of a crane!
[as the shot widens we see a massive frozen ship revealed] [after breaking into the metal aircraft] SHIELD Lieutenant: [speaking into his comm] Base, we're in. [looking around] What is this? [The technician nearly slipps on the ice covering the ground] Careful. SHIELD Tech: [finding the frozen shield of Captain America] Lieutenant! What is it? SHIELD Lieutenant: My God! [into his earpiece] Base, give me a line to the Colonel. Voice from Earpiece: It's 3 a.m., sir. SHIELD Lieutenant: I don't care what time it is. This one's waited long enough.
[March 1942 Tønsberg, Norway] [a villager, Jan, is running to a church] Jan: [subtitled] They have come for it! Tower Keeper: [subtitled] They have before. Jan: [subtitled] Not like this. Tower Keeper: [subtitled] Let them come. They will never find it. [rumbling is heard and something breaks down the door, the stones killing Jan] [the tower keeper closes Jan's eyes and sees a machine moving away as HYDRA agents come in] [a car drives up with the HYDRA symbol on the hood] [HYDRA agents try to lift the lid of a coffin] Hydra Lieutenant: Open it! Quickly, before he… Johann Schmidt: It has taken me a long time to find this place. [to the Tower Keeper] You should be commended. [to one of his soldiers] Help him up. [one of the soldiers helps the tower keeper to his feet] Johann Schmidt: I think that you are man of great vision. And in this way we are much alike. Tower Keeper: I am nothing like you. Johann Schmidt: No, of course. But what others see as superstition, you and I know to be a science. Tower Keeper: What you seek is just a legend. Johann Schmidt: Then why make such an effort to conceal it? [opens an old tomb and picks up the glass cube from the skeletal remains of an old Viking] The Tesseract was the jewel of Odin's treasure room. [he turns to face the tower keeper and deliberately drops and smashes the glass cube] It's not something one buries. But I think it is close, yes? Tower Keeper: I cannot help you. Johann Schmidt: No. But maybe you can help your village. You must have some friends out there. Some… some little grandchildren perhaps. I have no need for them to die. [A big tank outside turns his guns towards the village threateningly.] [referring to the carving of the tree on one of the tower walls] Johann Schmidt: Yggdrasil. Tree of the world. Guardian of wisdom and fate, also. [he presses a button on the carving of the tree and it opens up to reveal the real cube] And the Führer digs for trinkets in the desert. You have never seen this, have you? Tower Keeper: It's not for the eyes of ordinary men. Johann Schmidt: Exactly. [he closes the box containing the glowing cube and turns to his soldiers] Gove the order to open fire. Hydra Lieutenant: Jawohl! (Yes!) Tower Keeper: Fool! You cannot control the power you hold. You will burn! Johann Schmidt: I already have. [He shoots and kills the tower keeper]