tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6250269071385467004.post1244053984832159007..comments2024-01-23T19:26:48.882-05:00Comments on Julian Perez Conquers the Universe!: TV Review: "Agents of SHIELD"Julian Perezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16276143599750947248noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6250269071385467004.post-58257707938319312732023-01-23T18:34:15.739-05:002023-01-23T18:34:15.739-05:00Meh. It's decent but not really all that good....Meh. It's decent but not really all that good.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6250269071385467004.post-63462005073148705732022-01-04T17:12:00.315-05:002022-01-04T17:12:00.315-05:00Great blogGreat blogRebeccahttps://www.rebeccagellar.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6250269071385467004.post-57031038658025931942013-10-04T08:21:07.181-04:002013-10-04T08:21:07.181-04:00Last night's episode was even better. It was b...Last night's episode was even better. It was basically about how despite the fact three of the main characters are underestimated non-field agents, they ultimately are the best people for the job. It was a cheap show for 2/3rd of it, a "Die Hard" scenario in an enclosed space. This is the kind of thing TV can do well: tense, tight, small adventures.<br /><br />HYDRA was a major plot point. And there was a cool cameo.<br /><br />I stand by my statement Ming Na Wen is the cast's secret weapon; she's like a Ninja. <br /><br />Agents of SHIELD giving humorous nicknames to things is an old Marvel tradition. Remember the robot lion in the X-Men's Danger Room, "Fluffy?"<br /><br />Imagine if someone did an Avengers movie in the 80s! It'd have Black Knight, the Monica Rambeau Captain Marvel, Hercules, Namor, Doctor Druid, the team would be based around Hydrobase, and stories would include the Mansion Under Siege, the Skrull Civil War, and the Council of Cross-Time Kangs. Weeeeird. <br /><br />I was about to say, the open-top Batmobile did reflect the 1964 one. I'm still wondering where the rocket engine came from. Julian Perezhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16276143599750947248noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6250269071385467004.post-49851374034754982212013-10-02T08:06:40.715-04:002013-10-02T08:06:40.715-04:00Correction: the '64 Batmobile wasn't "...Correction: the '64 Batmobile wasn't "convertible," more an "open-top roadster."<br /><br />David Morefieldhttp://davidmorefield.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6250269071385467004.post-20346230123580859462013-10-02T08:03:46.284-04:002013-10-02T08:03:46.284-04:00Gotcha. I kept picturing Superman knocking on a d...Gotcha. I kept picturing Superman knocking on a door, and couldn't figure out why that was a problem. Maybe if you'd said "door-busting..."<br /><br />The real problem was that then, as now, the tail wagged the dog. So the comics, trying to deliver to readers the Superman they'd seen on TV, wasted lots of time on petty con-men and bank robbers instead of super-villains and space travels.<br /><br />re: Batman '66. A lot of it's a generational thing. The Adam West movie was one of my first exposures to the character, and I was young enough to be won over by the sheer spectacle. Unlike Reeves' Superman, West's Batman spared no expense; everyone was in accurate costumes, they built the cave, the car, a cycle, a 'copter and a boat, and so on. It was a comic come to life, which seems to be what you're wishing for, as well. The difference is at age 7 or so, you don't pick up on the humor so you can't be "insulted." <br /><br />If you get a chance you should try watching some Season 1 episodes to see how close they are to comics of the day. There's even a few moments I'd call "moody" if never "grim." The real problem with that show is that it was built on one joke -- "What if real people talked and acted like they do in comics" -- and one joke can only go so far. Plus when you start crazy, the only place to go is crazier, and too soon it became just a vehicle for aging stars to show up and chew the scenery as camp villains. Anyway, nothing in the show is nearly as goofy or lame-brained as the "Outsider" saga running in the books at the time, or one-off's like "The Man Who Quit The Human Race," let alone the era that preceded it, with Batmen in rainbow, zebra, anti-matter, alien and baby(!) varieties.<br /><br />re: the show reflecting a narrow slice of time. Legend has it producer Bill Dozier grabbed a handful of Batman comics off the rack for a plane flight and put together his plans for the show based on those. At the time, they would have included Aunt Harriet, the bat-phone, a convertible batmobile and the Riddler, a very big presence on the show but only recently resurrected in the comics two decades after a single appearance in the 1940s. <br /><br />Actually, Harriet may have been a longer-lived element of the books had Alfred not come back from the dead in, again, an effort to bring the comics in line with the TV show.<br /><br />BTW, after all this, I forgot to watch the second episode of SHIELD last night. =:-0David Morefieldhttp://davidmorefield.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6250269071385467004.post-50437226672965578632013-10-01T16:43:47.423-04:002013-10-01T16:43:47.423-04:00By that I meant George Reeves's show, with the...By that I meant George Reeves's show, with the budget of 1950-whatever, there was trouble translating to screen, so Superman's mighty feats were limited to knocking down doors and bending rubber prop guns. You can't do Superman on a budget, just like you can't do John Carter of Mars on a budget.<br /><br />You can never argue with either what people find sexy or what they find funny. That said, I never really got the joke with the Batman show. It must have been a blast to film, though, like the Ocean's 11 movies: George Clooney clowning around and camping it up with his really rich friends!<br /><br /><i>Wasn't as happy as you to see the "Extremis" angle featured as I really didn't go for it in IM3, but what the heck. <br /></i><br /><br />Well, this is a pretty direct way of saying, "hey, this IS in the Marvel Movieverse."<br /><br />Reading science fiction writers of the past 10 years like Vernor Vinge and Iain Banks go nuts over nanotechnology and predicting it will make your teeth beautiful and be a floor cleaner or a dessert topping? It's like reading 50s science fiction writers and how they used to use radiation as a snake oil that could do anything. I guarantee in 40 years it will look just as goofy once the properties become better defined. <br /><br />I'm reading some of the Carmine Infantino Batman stories now after reading about them in Batmania. I'm surprised how many of the details we associate with the TV show are actually from that narrow slice of an era, like Aunt Harriet and the Hot-Line.<br /><br /><i>As hinted, a bigger challenge than "selling" straight superheroics here is going to be convincing viewers that a government agency could actually employ good guys. </i><br /><br />I like that they acknowledge that parts of the premise of the show might just be a little creepy in light of current revelations about government agencies. Heck, the first episode was about 1) making a whistleblower a part of the cast, and 2) creating an entire plot with a down on his luck single Dad that shows NO, this agency ISN'T about keeping a boot at the neck of the little guy.Julian Perezhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16276143599750947248noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6250269071385467004.post-64922210506582399852013-10-01T08:50:28.793-04:002013-10-01T08:50:28.793-04:00I liked it, too. Probably not as much as you, but...I liked it, too. Probably not as much as you, but it was a good start.<br /><br />I don't get the "George Reeves's door knocking reference" but I do agree that show was hobbled greatly by budget, even though it didn't run away at all from its roots. "Batman" ('66) was, at least at the beginning, arguably a dead-accurate interpretation of the comics of the day (which, sorry fanboys, is why it was funny) but it did usher in a long era of "play it safe" tactics where show-runners tried to have their cake and eat it too, capitalizing on the cool visuals of superheroes but at the same time saying, "this stuff is stupid". Linda Carter, I would argue, threw herself into WW with irony-free conviction (several years before Chris Reeve would do the same for Supes, with more acclaim) but the first season of WW was played as camp and the later ones were blunted into generic action/spy fare.<br /><br />And as you say, the flip side of the "camp" coin is to over-do the "serious" angle, which betrays a similar lack of faith in the source material (no costumes, all-black costumes, hyper-violence), and is the reason DC's movies don't work at all for me.<br /><br />Wasn't as happy as you to see the "Extremis" angle featured as I really didn't go for it in IM3, but what the heck. <br /><br />Re: Coulson as Picard: I would amend your analogy to say he has a "generic, bland slab of beefcake as second-in-command." This guy (forgot his name already) has the furthest to go to win me over, just as Riker is the character I think ST:TNG could most easily survive losing.<br /><br />As hinted, a bigger challenge than "selling" straight superheroics here is going to be convincing viewers that a government agency could actually employ good guys. It's almost like the Obama administration hired Whedon to do PR work to rehabilitate the NSA and IRS in the eyes of TV watchers.<br /><br />I really like the idea of Coulson as "always an LMD." It so fits with the persona of Jackson's Fury: keeping a dark secret from even his closest aide, not to mention making sure he can trust his right-hand man by constructing him in a lab. But it would also be kind of disappointing since, as noted, Coulson is the arguably most endearingly human and in a way heroic figure in the filmic Marvel universe (including the guys in capes and armor). Maybe we'll find out his brainwaves are patterned after a (now old or even deceased) hero-worshiping kid...say maybe one named Rick Jones. Anyway, the "artificial life form" angle would at least satisfy the "Coulson as Vision" crowd as all it would require is a kick-ass upgrade.David Morefieldhttp://davidmorefield.comnoreply@blogger.com