The Delivery Plan Is Just As Interesting As The Content
November 7, 2013 5:26 PM Subscribe

Badass Digest reports on the next step in Marvel's ongoing cross-platform adaptation of their comic book properties to video media. Another example is that ABC's "Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." will apparently crossover with both the new Captain America and Thor movies, the later of which has also garnered some positive coverage from Badass for reasons other than the crazy aggressive experimental delivery plan.
posted by Ipsifendus (226 comments total) 10 users marked this as a favorite

Going to see Thor 2 in 30 minutes, longer letter later when I can read the feminist link.

In the meantime: I am so happy to be living in the geeky comic movie golden age. Yeesssss, come to me, my Jessica Jones series, my precioussss.

oh wait crap I don't have Netflix and don't need/want it dammit first-world problems
posted by nicebookrack at 5:34 PM on November 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

Unless the quality of MAoS improves dramatically and fast, it shouldn't be crossing over or tying itself into anything Marvel wants to take off. I cannot believe the episodes that made it out the gate so far.

Biggest pet science peeves that have nothing to do with the actual problems with the show: the biologist and the electrical engineer/physicist somehow use a rotary evaporator on a plane. The villain in the gravity episode organizes the chemicals in his acids/bases cabinet by company (red lids, Sigma Aldrich, left hand side; blue lids, Fisher Chemical, right hand side) on top of storing wine in there.

Both Thor and Cpt America look like they'll be of a significantly better vintage though.
posted by Slackermagee at 5:35 PM on November 7, 2013 [4 favorites]

Boy it would sure help if Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. were any good.
posted by 2bucksplus at 5:36 PM on November 7, 2013 [17 favorites]

The gravity guy episode was decent, the rest have been yawnfest and about half the casting reminds me of the not very golden era of Glen A. Larson.
posted by George_Spiggott at 5:37 PM on November 7, 2013

Other hope for Netflix partnership: that executives realize how many and how much fans will pay, myself included, to see mundane geeky non-actiony fanservice by their favorite characters, e.g. hours and hours of Tony Stark mocking other heroes and whining when they ignore him, Captain America learning to use Google, Thor helping Girl Scouts sell cookies, etc. I am perfectly serious.
posted by nicebookrack at 5:39 PM on November 7, 2013 [22 favorites]

It's an ambitious plan. I hope they can make it work, but everything will depend on the details. Daredevil could be a great series, for example. Arrow shows that you can do street level heroes and action on TV. But can you do it for a Netflix budget? And can you do Luke Cage and Iron Fist as separate series? An Iron fist series that has Danny punching dragons in K'un-L'un would be awesome, but it would cost ten million dollars an episode.
posted by Kevin Street at 5:40 PM on November 7, 2013

I literally just finished watching the second episode of SHIELD.

Someone please tell me it gets better.
posted by griphus at 5:48 PM on November 7, 2013

Biggest pet science peeves that have nothing to do with the actual problems with the show:

My favorite so far: somebody jumps out the back of a jet that is not likely to be doing less than 300MPH. They're all breathing okay so altitude is almost certainly well below 20K'. Somewhere between 15 and 30 seconds later a guy with a parachute jumps out to save the first person, catches that person, pulls the chute, hurray.

But unless that second person turns out to be superpowered with the power of flight, there's just no way -- not making up as much as two miles of horizontal travel distance in maybe 2 vertical miles at the same time as catching up the vertical distance: even if you allow the rest, the first person smacks into the ground before the second guy is halfway there.
posted by George_Spiggott at 5:48 PM on November 7, 2013 [2 favorites]

Oh, and why couldn't they be Heroes For Hire in the miniseries? Probably because Defenders sounds a lot like Avengers.
posted by Kevin Street at 5:49 PM on November 7, 2013

I mean I'm not even looking for good. Just better.
posted by griphus at 5:50 PM on November 7, 2013 [6 favorites]

Luke Cage, people! I'm pretty psyched.

Agents of SHIELD, well, I'm beginning to feel like I'm kicking it while it's down, but nope, this does not make it more interesting.

Iron Fist!
posted by Artw at 5:50 PM on November 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

Yeah, the hacker's whole "will she betray the group" bit is so, so old at this point. Of course she is not. If she did, the show would end as she's the audience POV character in that she looks confused whenever any of the other agents start spouting off about Science Stuff until they can go all, "As you know..."
posted by robocop is bleeding at 5:51 PM on November 7, 2013

Also I would so be into a The Last Iron Fist Story movie.
posted by griphus at 5:52 PM on November 7, 2013 [2 favorites]

I think it's a bit early to give up on SHIELD. Yes it does need to improve but it's had some good moments and it could end up going either way. Some of the most beloved series of all time had rough first seasons as they got their bearings.
posted by localroger at 5:52 PM on November 7, 2013 [4 favorites]

"Someone please tell me it gets better."
posted by gauche at 5:52 PM on November 7, 2013

Someone please tell me it gets better.

Some claim so with the last one. I suspect expectations being lowered to ground level is a factor.
posted by Artw at 5:52 PM on November 7, 2013 [3 favorites]

One of the things that bothers me about Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D is that it seems way too under populated. They've got this huge plane but only six people on it? There's not even a co-pilot.
posted by octothorpe at 5:53 PM on November 7, 2013

Honestly, it's Torchwood without the nasty-ass sex.
posted by George_Spiggott at 5:53 PM on November 7, 2013 [6 favorites]

How Game of Thrones changed Thor 2's world for the better (Spoilers)
posted by homunculus at 5:55 PM on November 7, 2013

They've got this huge plane but only six people on it?

I think of it as a portable underground lair.

There's not even a copilot.

Automation.
posted by localroger at 5:56 PM on November 7, 2013

I mean like at this point I care about the characters on Dracula more than SHIELD which is a statement of some gravity if you've actually watched Dracula.
posted by griphus at 5:57 PM on November 7, 2013 [4 favorites]

I prefer my Better Off Ted version of Agents of Shield.
posted by The Whelk at 5:58 PM on November 7, 2013 [2 favorites]

I'm looking forward to the episode where Skye finally beats Agent Cleft Chin at chess. After he storms out, she turns to look out the window and gives a big thumbs up to the glowing guy sitting crisscross applesauce on the plane wing. Dr. Strange returns her thumbs up, mouths "Call Me," then flies off.

I'd be willing to forgive the whole James Franco as Strange stuff I've been hearing for that.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 5:58 PM on November 7, 2013 [2 favorites]

"Also I would so be into a The Last Iron Fist Story movie."

This! And Gotham Central should be the new Fox series. Go ahead and make Ed Brubaker rich, he won't mind...
posted by Kevin Street at 6:01 PM on November 7, 2013 [2 favorites]

I'd be willing to forgive the whole James Franco as Strange stuff I've been hearing for that.

i would actually be fine with this
posted by Sticherbeast at 6:05 PM on November 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

All of a sudden, I have a mental image of Mos Def as Dr. Strange. I like it, and I don't care what anyone else thinks.
posted by Sticherbeast at 6:06 PM on November 7, 2013 [9 favorites]

The only correct answer to the puzzle that is Strange is Ron Swanson.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 6:07 PM on November 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

I mean, if Andy is Starlord, then anything is possible.

Also, Adam Scott is the Vision. Like in real life.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 6:08 PM on November 7, 2013 [2 favorites]

Someone please tell me it gets better.

So what you're saying is that you want us to lie to you.
posted by elizardbits at 6:08 PM on November 7, 2013 [8 favorites]

The only correct answer to the puzzle that is Strange is Ron Swanson.

I didn't expect that mental image, but I'm very okay with it. An unflappable Strange who's not impressed with your shit.
posted by Sticherbeast at 6:12 PM on November 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

Unless you really enjoy the execs laying on the 'Snowden, Manning, and Drake are fucking traitors who should rot in hell and were probably doing it for millions of dollars' thick and heavy around episode five, I would bail while you're still not too invested Griphus.

There was a pretty serious full court press on the issue.
posted by Slackermagee at 6:27 PM on November 7, 2013 [2 favorites]

I hope somebody bundles all this stuff into a convenient, chronological torrent package, because otherwise it sounds like a lot of effort.
posted by turbid dahlia at 6:29 PM on November 7, 2013

Unless you really enjoy the execs laying on the 'Snowden, Manning, and Drake are fucking traitors who should rot in hell and were probably doing it for millions of dollars' thick and heavy around episode five, I would bail while you're still not too invested Griphus.

I mentioned this in the other thread, but considering that it is 99.99999% intended to tie in with The Winter Soldier at the end of the season, that may be intentional. The TWS trailer has a definite "WTF, Fury? This isn't the America I would be happy to name myself after!" vibe to it. Of course, it could just be shitty plotting, given the mediocre-at-best quality of the episodes so far.
posted by zombieflanders at 6:31 PM on November 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

I was excited for Agents of SHIELD after watching the pilot. I thought it would be a fun, interesting show, with small views into a big universe. So far, it just feels like a B-grade rip off. Coulson worked as a sidekick... he doesn't work as a main character, and everyone else on the plane lacks any kind of charisma. I'm not sure if it's the actors themselves or the direction; Ming-Na Wen, at least, has proven she has talent, but in this show she's just an expressionless cipher.

It will deserve its cancellation, which should come soon, if ABC has any mercy.
posted by sonic meat machine at 6:31 PM on November 7, 2013

I hope somebody bundles all this stuff into a convenient, chronological torrent package, because otherwise it sounds like a lot of effort.

I don't know...you'd have to somehow find a geek on the internet who was really into documenting, classifying, and organizing superhero stuff.
posted by straight at 6:33 PM on November 7, 2013 [14 favorites]

Let it die. Please, let it all die soon.
posted by goatdog at 6:47 PM on November 7, 2013

But why? Is it really so bad that one TV show doesn't match your expectations? It's not the only superhero show out there, and it may get better with time.
posted by Kevin Street at 6:51 PM on November 7, 2013

I mean, I'm a DC fan, and there was over a decade of shows like Birds of Prey and Smallville before Warner Brothers started to get the slightest inkling of how to do superhero TV. But I never wanted them to cancel the earlier shows. I just didn't think about them.
posted by Kevin Street at 6:53 PM on November 7, 2013

Does anyone else suspect that the super strong dude from the MAoS pilot is going to take the name Luke Cage? He off handedly mentioned his old name was done.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:55 PM on November 7, 2013

The other problem with Agents of SHIELD is that they clearly hired the lighting director from General Hospital.

Honestly, there are so many well-shot and lit shows on telly these days, there's really no excuse.
posted by smoke at 6:56 PM on November 7, 2013

Honestly, it's Torchwood without the nasty-ass sex.

OTM. I watched the first few episodes and thought "This is Torchwood without any of the elements that made Torchwood entertaining." OTOH, it isn't as bad as Dollhouse, so that's a step up.
posted by octobersurprise at 7:02 PM on November 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

The villain in the gravity episode organizes the chemicals in his acids/bases cabinet by company (red lids, Sigma Aldrich, left hand side; blue lids, Fisher Chemical, right hand side) on top of storing wine in there.

The acids and bases need separate secondary containers at the least, I'm not disagreeing with you, but FWIW, I have seen multiple labs that store champagne and/or beer in the same cold room as their active strain collections and/or radioactive substrates.
posted by maryr at 7:07 PM on November 7, 2013

It will deserve its cancellation, which should come soon, if ABC has any mercy.

Well, it got a back 9 orders, so it's got a full 22 episodes to run. I can't imagine it going anywhere anytime soon.
posted by crossoverman at 7:11 PM on November 7, 2013

The Agents of Shield are too human. I mean, they live in a world of super heroes and I get that they're supposed to be human, not super human, but... C'mon, they live in a world of superheroes! Let's have one stick around long enough to care about! It's a comic book!

But that's just me.

Also, the lab is totally the sickbay from Firefly, and that bugs me.
posted by maryr at 7:14 PM on November 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

The plane is totally Serenity.

(And that's awesome.)
posted by kmz at 7:21 PM on November 7, 2013 [2 favorites]

PSA tangentally related to this thread:

Thor: The Dark World has TWO bonus scenes after the movie (a mid-credits scene and a post-credits scene) so be sure to stay until the very very end.
posted by Jacqueline at 7:28 PM on November 7, 2013 [2 favorites]

Just saw Thor, lots of good fun and plenty of eye candy for the ladies.

The crossover isn't what you think and isn't a big deal.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:33 PM on November 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

The plane is totally Serenity.

"HQ? Hi, yeah, it's Phil. We can't make it. Yeah, well, tell your 0-8-4 to suck it, we're doing a bottle episode."

*Melinda May nods, points at Phil*
posted by maryr at 7:33 PM on November 7, 2013 [2 favorites]

But it is fun.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:33 PM on November 7, 2013

I mentioned this in the other thread, but considering that it is 99.99999% intended to tie in with The Winter Soldier at the end of the season, that may be intentional. The TWS trailer has a definite "WTF, Fury? This isn't the America I would be happy to name myself after!" vibe to it.

Yeah. They confirmed they've cast Saffron Burrows as Victoria Hand, who's Deputy Director of HAMMER, the organization that SHIELD becomes after Nick Fury is ousted and Norman Osborn takes over. That pretty much locks the idea that they're going to do "Dark SHIELD," quite possibly with Robert Redford in Cap II as a Norman Osborn analog. (Since they can't use Osborn himself.) I really don't think the show actually intends its "The security state is great!" to be taken at face value.

That said, I've still been incredibly bored with every episode I've seen, so ... whatever.
posted by Amanojaku at 7:40 PM on November 7, 2013 [2 favorites]

Now that I think about it, I would love to see the Iron Patriot armor from Iron Man 3 show up as something Cap has to contend with in Cap II.
posted by Amanojaku at 7:41 PM on November 7, 2013

Saffron Burrows as Victoria Hand is bad casting. Like Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill or Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff bad casting.
posted by Auden at 7:45 PM on November 7, 2013

Slightly off-topic: Is Thor 2 more bearable than the first? Because if there was one thing that the Thor mythos was missing and really needed, it was a fish-out-of-water romantic comedy.
posted by DoctorFedora at 7:47 PM on November 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

Other hope for Netflix partnership: that executives realize how many and how much fans will pay, myself included, to see mundane geeky non-actiony fanservice by their favorite characters, e.g. hours and hours of Tony Stark mocking other heroes and whining when they ignore him, Captain America learning to use Google, Thor helping Girl Scouts sell cookies, etc. I am perfectly serious.

Loki running a daycare, for example.
posted by orrnyereg at 7:47 PM on November 7, 2013 [4 favorites]

I found Thor 2 to be really uneven. When it was good it was freaking awesome (pretty much every scene with Loki, Darcy, or Selvig) but most of the rest was kinda boring. Worth seeing but I'd only give it 3.5 out of 5 stars.
posted by Jacqueline at 7:52 PM on November 7, 2013

Slightly off-topic: Is Thor 2 more bearable than the first?

I thought Thor 1 was fine, if a bit short and Thor 2 is much, much better. There's a bit more history and time spent in Asgard or various parts of the nine realms. It's very funny at times, along with several fantastic action sequences.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:53 PM on November 7, 2013 [2 favorites]

Thor 1 was my last favorite of the MCU movies but I loved any and all of the New Mexico scenes, or anything with Darcy, and I didn't hate it, so.
posted by The Whelk at 8:00 PM on November 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff bad casting

you are a bad person who thinks bad things and should feel bad for your badness
posted by elizardbits at 8:13 PM on November 7, 2013 [10 favorites]

I hope the heavy use of her in the WS trailer means we get ALL THE NATASHA.
posted by The Whelk at 8:14 PM on November 7, 2013 [5 favorites]

I am surprised to find the blue so down on MAoS. It is middling with occasional moments of brilliance, in my view, but previous Whedon-produced shows (Firefly excluded) took at least half a season to escape the monster-of-the-week trap and get to the point where they began to realize their potential. Half-a-dozen episodes in, Buffy or Angel were flailing much worse than this is.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:21 PM on November 7, 2013 [4 favorites]

IMMEDIATE (I'm in the theater bathroom) NONSPOILERY THOR 2 REACTION:

You cannot tell from the ads that this is the FUNNIEST Marvel movie. Seriously. 20% badassery, 80% gleeful cackling.

Also every movie is now required to feature Jane+Darcy, galpal science ninjas. EVERY. MOVIE.
posted by nicebookrack at 8:21 PM on November 7, 2013 [4 favorites]

but previous Whedon-produced shows (Firefly excluded) took at least half a season to escape the monster-of-the-week trap and get to the point where they began to realize their potential.

Yes, but this particular project is coming after a very popular movie from a company that has decades of stories. Fans know all the good stories and what's possible, so they're disappointed to see AoS be so consistently bland.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:28 PM on November 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

I thought Thor 1 was fine, if a bit short and Thor 2 is much, much better.

I thought Thor 1 was great, if a bit long and Thor 2 is much, much too long with WAY too much exposition. But it is hilarious.
posted by crossoverman at 8:30 PM on November 7, 2013

Half-a-dozen episodes in, Buffy or Angel were flailing much worse than this is.

The sixth episode of Buffy was the episode "Angel", where it started to hit its stride. Though admittedly full stride didn't happen til the end of the season one finale, episode 13.

Angel started much more strongly.
posted by crossoverman at 8:32 PM on November 7, 2013

Thor 2 is much, much too long with WAY too much exposition.

I consulted with several scientists and based on their calculations, it's been proven that you're alarmingly wrong.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:33 PM on November 7, 2013 [3 favorites]

Thor 2 was great. Swap Asgardians for Jedi, and it's the Star Wars prequel we all thought we were going to get back in 1999.
posted by Uncle Ira at 8:43 PM on November 7, 2013 [2 favorites]

I hope somebody bundles all this stuff into a convenient, chronological torrent package, because otherwise it sounds like a lot of effort.

IT'S EIGHT DOLLARS A MONTH. THE NEXT EPISODE AUTOLOADS WHEN YOU'RE DONE WITH THE LAST.

I do not fucking understand you people.
posted by incessant at 8:44 PM on November 7, 2013 [19 favorites]

Angel started much more strongly.

It was a spinn-off with an established character base and pre-packaged concept (SUPERNATURAL DETECTIVES) and the first season is patchy and uneven- basically the more they used Cordelia, the better it went (because Cordelia is the best character in the Buffyverse). Buffy hit a good stride from the pilot, lost it, picked it back up again by the last three episodes ("Witch" notwithstanding") and started strong again in the second season before dipping back down and then getting true footing by the middle and running with it on a long sprint for like, another two seasons.

So yeah, first seasons aren't always indicators of quality - all of Fringe's first season seems to have to lead up to the final ten seconds of the last episode of season one, and once it found it's Big Concept (alternate universes) it hit it hard and found a voice. The first season of Supernatural was so generic as to be nonexistent and I just a few days ago dressed up as Dean with all the necklaces and plaid and leather jackets so I guess it still works. First seasons aren't always indicators of quality, and SHIELD isn't BAD right now, it's just PAINFULLY BORING and KINDA GENERIC.

Painfully boring and generic are fixable things.
posted by The Whelk at 8:44 PM on November 7, 2013 [5 favorites]

Because if there was one thing that the Thor mythos was missing and really needed, it was a fish-out-of-water romantic comedy.

I think the stuff with Loki and Asgard is so strong that it vastly outweighs any other problems in the movie. Who would've thought you could design an actual Rainbow Bridge that looks majestic rather than silly? Thor's battle scene with the Frost Giants is a fine spectacle but also does more to develop his and Loki's (and Odin's) characters than most such superhero slugfests. I love how Loki's plan involves lying to everyone and is simultaneously less traitorous and more malevolent than it appears.

The stuff with Thor on Earth is more banal than I would have liked, but the actors are charming enough to spend some time with, and I thought it made for a pretty effective contrast with the Asgardian stuff. I really like that Thor's big sacrifice at the end is made not to save New York or the world, but just a dinky little town.
posted by straight at 8:45 PM on November 7, 2013 [4 favorites]

My friends tell me that the problem with AoS is the catalog models (i.e., the entire cast other than Coulson and May) and that the problem will be solved by having characters you care about to start with. My sense is that if they can't figure out how to write new characters, I'm not sure I trust them to write the ones I like--which I think as an old DC fan, I can safely talk about the perils of.

I just notice that i'd rather watch Sleepy Hollow, Arrow, Dracula, hell, Reign (Sexy Gossip Tudors) over Agents of SHIELD. And I don't care about watching Thor 2 to be up on it for SHIELD, though having seen the post-credits scene on Youtube, at least they let the character I most expected to see on the chopping block make it that far, so I don't have to not see it in cranky disgust.
posted by immlass at 8:51 PM on November 7, 2013

My 12 yr-old son loved all the Marvel films and the whole lead up to Avengers; we saw them all together. SHIELD was going to be our Tuesday show we'd watch together, we were psyched for it. Not blown away by the first episode, but still tuned in next time. Effects were super cheesy but hey, it's TV, we kept watching. When we both groaned at the flying Corvette, that was probably the turning point. This week when it was starting I asked if he wanted to watch and he walked away, saying it was lame, and went up to his room to play guitar.
posted by chococat at 8:55 PM on November 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

Personally I just hope AoS sticks around long enough and improves enough to do a swinging 60's Steranko SHIELD episode and do justice to it. Just replace Fury with Coulson.
posted by jason_steakums at 9:08 PM on November 7, 2013 [2 favorites]

It was a spin-off with an established character base and pre-packaged concept (SUPERNATURAL DETECTIVES) and the first season is patchy and uneven- basically the more they used Cordelia, the better it went (because Cordelia is the best character in the Buffyverse). Buffy hit a good stride from the pilot, lost it, picked it back up again by the last three episodes ("Witch" notwithstanding") and started strong again in the second season before dipping back down and then getting true footing by the middle and running with it on a long sprint for like, another two seasons.

I disagree that Angel started slow or was overly reliant on Cordelia -- Doyle's entire plotline had happened by halfway through S1, and they'd integrated Wesley by the end of the season. Touche that it's a spin off though, so sort of an unfair comparison.

Buffy I do agree started slowly, but by the finale of S1 I think it had hit its stride with Buffy's death, and S2 and S3 were a couple of my favorite seasons of the series (and that series is very close to my heart). That's probably the best argument for sticking with SHIELD as I've heard.

Except that Dollhouse was boring and got even more boring. I wanted to like it, it *seemed* like something that I would like, but everyone was just too "cute" or something. And the characters on SHIELD are like the characters on Dollhouse but more so and worse at fighting. Just dull and twee, and not even in an aggressive way like on The Mindy Show or The New Girl, I guess because this is a "drama" so it has to keep its characters from being sitcom-y? To be honest, I can't even tell the characters on SHIELD apart, except for the Violent Creepy Guy, who I guess is supposed to be attractive but is Gift of Fear-ing me just way too much for me to actually think so.

Maybe if Joss Whedon collaborated with Ryan Murphy they could make a good show? Or it could be a long ode to the suffering of the female protagonists, since they're both into that.

Anyway, I'll check back in if/when SHIELD gets to S2, but right now it's one of those shows where I'll put it on, and then forget it's on literally as I'm watching it, so that I wonder away for huge chunks of it, and eventually when I wonder back into the room I find out that the episode has finished and Hulu has already started playing some other show instead.

The first season of Supernatural was so generic as to be nonexistent and I just a few days ago dressed up as Dean with all the necklaces and plaid and leather jackets so I guess it still works.

How many necklaces were needed?! And did anyone know who you were? I've gone as "Marlon Brando" for Halloween before in what sounds like a very similar outfit, but everyone just thought I dressed like that and was being a blower by not wearing a costume.

And did you see the most recent episode? As I was watching it I kept wondering if, you know, that was really the episode, if they were being serious and it wasn't just a spoof with a big reveal that was going to take us into the *actual* episode. But no, that talking to dogs and pigeons shit was really it. Who dropped the ball there?! Sad, too, because I usually like the funny ones. "Mystery Spot" is a personal favorite.
posted by rue72 at 9:22 PM on November 7, 2013

Are people still watching Arrow? Because I had to bail out this week. I don't know what the turning point was (maybe the fact that Moira Queen's legal team consisted of one former Stargate doctor, or maybe the insipid Lance family) but I switched channels halfway through and all my wife said was "'bout time."
posted by Ber at 9:23 PM on November 7, 2013

An Iron fist series that has Danny punching dragons in K'un-L'un would be awesome, but it would cost ten million dollars an episode.

I would prefer a take on Iron Fist free of the Chinese-ish myth. Also please cast a real martial artist like Scott Adkins.
posted by fatehunter at 9:26 PM on November 7, 2013

SHIELD isn't BAD right now, it's just PAINFULLY BORING and KINDA GENERIC

And the actors have negative chemistry and the directing is painful as hell. It's boring, generic, AND bad.
posted by aspo at 9:26 PM on November 7, 2013

Yes, but this particular project is coming after a very popular movie from a company that has decades of stories.

And thus it has a lot of people giving it notes. I see a show where Marvel and Disney and ABC are all trimming away all of the interesting weird stuff and pushing to include what might play well in Peoria. Tell me, does anyone who knows Whedon's style at all think he was searching for a way to end the pilot and suddenly had a light bulb appear over his head as he burst out, "Aha! I have it! Coulson has a vintage Corvette... that can fly!!!" I suppose we are lucky he didn't blare "Born To Be Wild" out of the sound system as they flew off.

No, there are other people's thumbprints all over this. Still, there is scope for cautious optimism. The actors are still finding their footing within the characters* and the first half-dozen episodes of anything on network TV are still effectively the pilot as the producers are obliged to cautiously restate the aims of the show for latecomers. I am still interested enough to keep watching as they rub it shiny.

*In this house, we often append the phrase, "... she said sternly," to any dialogue from Melinda May.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:34 PM on November 7, 2013 [2 favorites]

And did anyone know who you were?

YES. One guy at a bar in the East Village basically grabbed me when I sitting at the bar and went "Dean Winchester?"

So I said . "Who's askin?"

He said "Where's Sam?"

Shrug. "Damn hippie hiking retreat."

"Cas?"

Shrug "Hell if I know." (quick drink the beer).

"Cool."

"Awesome."

Walk off. Turns out the guy paid for my next beer. Extra Awesome.

Necklaces? I was wearing the Dean totem thing, an Icelandic rune, and a Vodun hex bag thing around my neck.

Mystery Spot

The Mystery Spot
posted by The Whelk at 9:35 PM on November 7, 2013 [2 favorites]

I'm still watching Arrow, though I haven't seen this week's episode of anything. The superhero stuff and the flashbacks are what's interesting right now. I'm meh on the current Lance dynamic (with the obvious exception) but the family stuff--on the Queen and Lance side--have not been as good this season as it was last year, where it was a real strength. I'm also completely meh on Summer Glau as the stone cold bitch running the show for the other half of Queen Consolidated.

It's all over the top and some of it is silly, but basically Arrow is Dynasty with bow and arrows plus the flashbacks. This still makes it way more engaging than SHIELD.
posted by immlass at 9:35 PM on November 7, 2013

"I would prefer a take on Iron Fist free of the Chinese-ish myth."

But that's what makes the character interesting! Without it he's just generic guy with a super fist.
posted by Kevin Street at 9:36 PM on November 7, 2013

And thus it has a lot of people giving it notes. I see a show where Marvel and Disney and ABC are all trimming away all of the interesting weird stuff and pushing to include what might play well in Peoria. Tell me, does anyone who knows Whedon's style at all think he was searching for a way to end the pilot and suddenly had a light bulb appear over his head as he burst out, "Aha! I have it! Coulson has a vintage Corvette... that can fly!!!" I suppose we are lucky he didn't blare "Born To Be Wild" out of the sound system as they flew off.

The car thing is actually just a reference to the flying cars SHIELD's had in the comics since the 60's. But yeah, the thing about show notes, I do kind of worry that the TV show is in sort of a "look but don't touch" holding pattern where the movies get first dibs on all the good stuff. That first episode should have hit with a bigger name backbench character (say White Tiger level) instead of Random Dude on Extremis (which made it feel way too much like a random X-Men "Cerebro got a hit, let's swoop in before the Sentinels! Oh no, now we have to save the civilians from the mutant we came to save!" plot). We should be getting a constant string of b-list heroes and villains, one of Marvel's huge strengths for a show like this is the deep, deep bench. Perfect show to have the New Warriors or Power Pack or the Wrecking Crew or the Serpent Society show up.

It's really too bad that Spidey's over at Sony, because a Daily Bugle TV show would have been perfect for a whole man-on-the-street view/hero and villain of the week thing. Well, and it's also too bad in a general sense because Spidey and the ever-lovin' blue-eyed Thing are the hearts of the Marvel Universe and they can't even use 'em.
posted by jason_steakums at 9:57 PM on November 7, 2013 [4 favorites]

For the announced shows, I can see Daredevil working easily. He's a classic character with decades of continuity. Just pick the right people and this one will be fine.

Jessica Jones could work. Alias was almost a TV show in comic book form already. She's a PI taking cases that involve superpowers and is hiding the fact that she's got a power of her own.

Luke Cage is way more problematic. Imo, his original appeal is tied to super-cheesy 70s Marvel concepts, which were ripped off from blaxploitation films. Modern day Luke Cage has lost the cheese - and while he may work as a part of the Marvel universe, I'm not sure what makes him different from other heroes.

Iron Fist also comes from the 70s, although in his case it's Shaw Brothers Kung Fu movies mixed with Lost Horizon and who knows what else. That stuff is his mythology, it's what makes him unique. In a series they could play with it like Arrow plays with Oliver's past on the island.

Put 'em together and you've got Heroes For Hire, and that's always been a good concept. The Defenders were something different, an "anti-team" made up of characters that weren't supposed to team up with anyone.
posted by Kevin Street at 9:58 PM on November 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

Luke Cage is way more problematic. Imo, his original appeal is tied to super-cheesy 70s Marvel concepts, which were ripped off from blaxploitation films. Modern day Luke Cage has lost the cheese - and while he may work as a part of the Marvel universe, I'm not sure what makes him different from other heroes.

I think they could still work the Hero for Hire angle with him, he was at it on his own before Iron Fist joined him. Also, one core piece of Luke Cage is that he was in prison - wrongly accused, but he still had the struggle of someone who was convicted and then worked hard to make a better life for himself on the outside, only to run up against society shunning people who served their time and paid their debt. That's a strong hook for a thoughtful show, but I don't have high hopes that they'll mine that vein.
posted by jason_steakums at 10:04 PM on November 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

That does sound interesting! Maybe he got his powers after leaving prison, everybody thinks he'll be a super villain (heavy SHIELD surveillance), and he's determined to prove them wrong.
posted by Kevin Street at 10:09 PM on November 7, 2013

And the actors have negative chemistry and the directing is painful as hell. It's boring, generic, AND bad.

This is pretty much what I thought about any Whedon series (save Firefly) at the outset. I have never rewatched the first season of either Buffy or its spinoff, and I gave up on Dollhouse before it reached the end of its first hour for being generic and tedious. However, I am still deriving enough enjoyment from this to watch next week. I dunno, maybe I am doing it wrong.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:14 PM on November 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

There's a surprising amount there with Cage that's not often utilized. It could be a much heavier show about race than Disney's probably willing to do, especially considering the explicit reference to the Tuskegee Experiment in his origin. He's also the epitome of the working man in the Marvel Universe, lots of fertile ground to explore class issues.

Still, I'm kind of bracing myself for some kind of awful Shaft 2000-esque clunker until I know more about who's involved with the production.
posted by jason_steakums at 10:16 PM on November 7, 2013

What annoys me more than anything is that they seem to be pretending that no-one knows about weird stuff or superheroes yet, which means that mutants can't exist in the Marvel Cinematic Universe(I guess due to fox owning the rights or something)

Seems like the perfect opportunity to introduce Deadpool in order to offset the (too)pretty cast...
posted by MrCynical at 10:45 PM on November 7, 2013

Does seem to me that Shield's dropping unresolved plot threads faster than anything I've ever seen, and that gives me hope that S2-onwards will pick up the pace when they start resolving all these threads.

Really, really hope that Shield turn out to be the bad guys, though. Magic bracelets that stop you going near electronics are just beyond the pale when your audience leans heavily geek.
posted by Leon at 10:57 PM on November 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

I am not sure how anyone could make a series of people fighting super villains with exciting technology as boring and turgid as AoS is. It's pretty amazing in some way. I took if off my DVR when I realised that I was fast forwarding through the 4th episode, hoping it would make it more interesting. It's just so grimly leaden in all ways that it's hard to believe it's a Whedon show in any way.
posted by lesbiassparrow at 11:02 PM on November 7, 2013 [2 favorites]

As someone who's been reading Marvel comics since the Silver Age, I really, really wanted to like "Agents of SHIELD," but I am finding it not all that enjoyable.

Clark Gregg is still likeable, but they haven't given Coulson much to do other than be the generic team leader.

I've liked Ming Na Wen in other things, but she seems miscast as a grizzled combat veteran. I think she could play some sort of SHIELD agent convincingly, but this role seems wrong for her. Put Michelle Yeoh in the same part - yeah, I know, not on a TV budget - and I might buy it. The cheap-looking, too-short scenes that pass for her fight choreography aren't helping either.

Fitz and Simmons are typical science-geek characters, so far not that interesting but, to me, not a huge drawback either. Elizabeth Henstridge is quite pretty, in a Jennifer-Garner's-little-sister kind of way, so I don't mind watching her at all.

The biggest problems are Ward and Skye. The show seems to want viewers to invest in them, but are both generic characters that seem, in this instance, to have been just slightly Whedonized so that they could be played by younger, less-interesting versions of, respectively, Adam Baldwin and Eliza Dushku. The writing for both has been dull, and the actors have done nothing to elevate it.

Overall, I agree with those who'd like to see more explicit use of the existing Marvel universe, besides just a gadget of the week and a couple of throwaway lines of dialogue referencing a superhero.

Lastly, the visuals of the show need a serious upgrade. It's not just that they can't match the movies' effects budgets - the whole thing just looks very conventional and flat, with no visual flair at all.
posted by Nat "King" Cole Porter Wagoner at 11:54 PM on November 7, 2013 [3 favorites]

Okay, you can't call a show Agents of SHIELD and then have your cast wandering in (and out of, in Skye's case) their civvies. Secondly, AoS is just Buffy the Vampire Slayer reskinned. Skye = Buffy, Coulson = Giles, Fitz = Xander, Simmons = Willow, Ward = Buffy's Boyfriend of the Season, and May is a hodgepodge of Faith (badass), Spike (sarcastic outsider), and Jenny (person with history with ~~Giles Coulson).~~
posted by entropicamericana at 12:33 AM on November 8, 2013

(red lids, Sigma Aldrich, left hand side; blue lids, Fisher Chemical, right hand side)

Although we're not really looking for credible scientific best practice here, are we? We're looking for stuff that's absurd in a way that's clever enough to be amusing. Sorting by lid colour might not quite hit the spot, granted.

Somewhere between 15 and 30 seconds later a guy with a parachute jumps out to save the first person, catches that person

I believe there's a leak in the spacetime continuum such that the laws of physics from neighbouring toon world leak through to some extent: not quite enough that people who run off cliffs stay in one place windmilling their feet until they look down, but quite enough to ensure that people who jump out of the same plane are always above one another (and the upper one always falls faster than the lower one until they meet).
posted by Segundus at 1:22 AM on November 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

And their face and hair are strangely unaffected by free fall.
posted by homunculus at 1:36 AM on November 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

During the 70s I was a big fan of The Defenders - at least during the reigns of Steve Englehart and Steve Gerber and Keith Giffen. What I liked was that they were essentially a team of losers (with the exception of Dr Strange, of course. And, I guess, you wouldn't want to call the Hulk a loser as such), a bit like a garage band superhero team, and that they weren't the Avengers was very much a feature rather than a bug. Gerber's run was very funny, at least as good as Howard the Duck if not better, although just as scattershot - one plot involved brain and mind transplants such that one character is carrying his own brain around in a bowl, while the evil mastermind has his consciousness transplanted into a baby deer (which the Hulk thinks is Bambi); another involved a parody of EST. It was also prototypical of Giffen's run on Justice League with J.M. de Matteis.

I suspect the TV series won't be as interesting as that, though. I only saw the first episode of this SHIELD thing, and I was waiting for the last episode of The IT Crowd to come on, so it wasn't the focus of my attention and did nothing at all to attract it. It seemed to be mostly people standing around smirking at each other, waiting for one of the characters to do tests on something until - "I've done the tests and got a result - TIME TO RUN AROUND!" So they run around.

It was unlucky enough to be on TV the same weekend as the last episode of Breaking Bad, which might seem like an unfair comparison. However, Breaking Bad was symptomatic of where the best of TV production has got to now, while Agents of SHIELD seemed to be a generic show that could just as easily have been made in 1968 (in fact a 1968 version would have been a lot more stylish and relied a lot less on people standing round explaining everything to each other - cf Man From UNCLE and Mission Impossible). When something so generic is getting so much attention, are we not, perhaps, being manipulated a little too easily?
posted by Grangousier at 1:57 AM on November 8, 2013 [2 favorites]

One of the things that bothers me about Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D is that it seems way too under populated. They've got this huge plane but only six people on it? There's not even a co-pilot.

You're forgetting about the camera crew, director and staff, makeup, wardrobe, second unit, craft services, etc.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:29 AM on November 8, 2013 [2 favorites]

The sixth episode of Buffy was the episode "Angel", where it started to hit its stride. Though admittedly full stride didn't happen til the end of the season one finale, episode 13.

Agreed. I think season 1 is under-rated.

Angel started much more strongly.

I...I...I...do not know what to sputter to that... Angel season 1 is literally unwatchably bad! Gut-wrenchingly terrible! Icky! Every episode is See How We Are So L.A.?????

apropos of nothing, I'll point out that I thought Angel ended strong--it was just getting better and better, whereas Buffy had been moldering for a long time, God love it, by the time it ended.
posted by Fists O'Fury at 5:32 AM on November 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

Angel season 1 is literally unwatchably bad!

Not in its entirety: Angel does once explain why he doesn't dance. Still, thirteen episodes to reach that fifteen seconds is the very definition of a long drive for a short day at the beach.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:00 AM on November 8, 2013 [2 favorites]

My wife got me to watch Buffy after a) showing me "Once More, with Feeling" before anything else (because I love musicals) and b) promising that we didn't have to watch any episodes from S1 except the pilot. That second decision was made during S01E02.
posted by griphus at 6:08 AM on November 8, 2013

(I should probably clarify that I really enjoyed Buffy but probably would not have been able to last through Season 1.)
posted by griphus at 6:10 AM on November 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

(I should probably clarify that I really enjoyed Buffy but probably would not have been able to last through Season 1.)

Likewise. To me it is one of those shows (see also Babylon 5, Seinfeld, probably ST:TNG) where introducing it to someone who has never seem it, you are likely to say, "I'd recommend you start with the second season." Not every show hits the ground running, and ever fewer shows get the chance to find their pace before being yanked offstage.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:15 AM on November 8, 2013

I watched the pilot of AOS and it was just shockingly bad. There wasn't a single cool moment in it. I mean, Heroes was a little corny too, but it had genuinely cool moments. AOS was so corny it reminded me of that TV show from the 90s with the transforming Dodge Viper (I believe it was called "Viper") and the version of La Femme Nikita that was on USA.
posted by nathancaswell at 6:52 AM on November 8, 2013

The eighth episode of Firefly (Out of Gas) is where the show really gelled and laid a solid foundation of who they character were and why they were together. It's a textbook example of how to write an origin story for an ensemble cast.

AoS doesn't feel like it's anywhere near that point and has a smaller cast. Add in the fact they went from 13 to 22 episodes for the first season and I wonder if the show is going to be spend too much time spinning its wheels before gelling.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:20 AM on November 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

Dollhouse was a really interesting show buried in a lot (a LOT) of crud. I need somebody to edit down the two seasons into the miniseries it really wants to be. There were so many great actors on that show creating moments of awesome, but they were all supporting cast, not the leads. And I don't generally go for dystopian terror, but woof, it was compelling.

I'm still watching AoS, and hoping for improvement, but as of this point it hasn't really managed to give me any real flashes of something deeper beyond Coulson and May interacting (their conversation at the end of the most recent episode had a spark to it - not just in a shippy way, although I'm sure that's a thing too, but it was just more than the show has been able to provide up until now. Besides, I don't have a crazy-full tv watching schedule, so it's not displacing anything else I'm more interested in.
posted by PussKillian at 7:31 AM on November 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

this particular project is coming after a very popular movie from a company that has decades of stories. Fans know all the good stories and what's possible, so they're disappointed to see AoS be so consistently bland.

Can I just point out that not everyone in the audience is a dyed in the wool fanboy? I've been enjoying the movies - Avengers was loads of fun, I found Captain American quietly impressive, Thor 1 was more entertaining than I thought it would be, etc...but I haven't ever really been a Marvel reader (when I was into comics I was a DC guy), so lots of this is new to me. They might also be trying to bring in an audience that doesn't know all the stories and what's possible. It might help if we don't think of the entire series as fan service for the existing base.

That being said, I thought the show started with a lot of promise but it has been pretty inconsistent and weak at times so far. They need to stop trying to push a relationship between Skye and Grant, because there is no chemistry there. Coulson needs to be more developed, as does May (I'm sure every Marvel fan out there knows everything about her, but I don't and at this point she's just a badass with a enigmatic history). I'm hopeful that it will pull together, but I also think that there's some tremendous pressure happening here from the network side - Wheedon and others probably have execs from ABC and Marvel looming over every decision and there needs to be some time for that side of things to work itself out and get comfortable with allowing some risks and things to develop.

I can recall two other hotly anticipated series with big, pre-existing fanbases that started off pretty weak in their day too - ST: TNG and ST: DS9 both have horrific starts. Two seasons worth. But they went on to become very solid shows that both satisfied the existing fans and drew new ones. Networks are a little too quick to kill their new shows these days I think, and I'm seeing some glimpses of AoS becoming something interesting, providing it's given a chance. It's an interesting premise - a group of normals dealing with the problems of a super-powered universe - but that's also very different from any other mass media super-hero inspired title out there. We don't have the person in tights to centre everything on.

It may never come together. I hope it does, because I think it's an interesting concept that could be a lot of fun - the Scooby gang from Buffy with kick ass technology and resources going up against super villains.
posted by nubs at 7:58 AM on November 8, 2013

My plan for Agents of SHIELD is the same as my plan for any show that loses me early on (I gave it two episodes and gave up): I'll start watching again if I hear it's gotten good.

Do I think that's going to happen? No. No, I don't.

I could get over the weird lighting and crappy audio on the dialogue (I had to strain to hear what they're saying sometimes) if the show had characters I care about. It doesn't. They're bland and boring and they have no chemistry at all, and I just cannot make myself give a tin shit about any of them except Coulson, but he has no one interesting to bounce off of.

This is a pretty fundamental issue with the show, and fixing it would require a serious retooling, and basically bringing in a whole new cast of characters. I mean, it's not impossible that this cast will eventually gel, but it doesn't seem all that likely, either. And sure, one can point to shows where it did happen, but those are the exceptions - most shows just fail.
posted by FAMOUS MONSTER at 8:17 AM on November 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

I really hate Skye. OK, hate's too strong a word. But she feels very... Magic Pixie Dream Girl? Mary Sue? Somewhere between those? I feel like I might like her in print, in a comic, but she just doesn't work with the rest of that cast. If we're going with Whedonverse analogies, I think she's meant to be Simon - outsider, not part of the team, doesn't share the same morals/ethics/motivations, but needs to be there in the end - but she's not quite differnt enough, not seriously so. (Ward is Jayne, Coulson is Mal, Fitzsimmons are Kayley, May is Zoe. There is no River, Wash, or Inara.)

Or maybe Skye just needs a better non-super-power than Social Networking.
posted by maryr at 8:17 AM on November 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

(I'm sure every Marvel fan out there knows everything about her, but I don't and at this point she's just a badass with a enigmatic history)

I thought the same thing because I never read Avengers stuff, but, nope, she's was made up for the show. The utter lack of characterization is exactly what it appears.
posted by griphus at 8:18 AM on November 8, 2013

Joss Whedon is much better at continuing series than he is at creating them. None of his first seasons are ever the best.

Buffy Season One is totally fine, especially considering the fact that there were zero expectations coming in. It's solid, with some great episodes, and there are some subtly revolutionary things here and there. Killing off the principal in "The Pack", for example, presaged the idea that not everybody gets out of a Whedon show alive.

Angel Season One is pretty blah, relatively speaking. It's like Buffy Season One, except not quite as charming. It wants to be dark-ish and adult-ish, which makes it harder to have scrappy charm. It doesn't really get going until the reveal at the end of season.

I love Firefly, but to be honest, it didn't really get going until "Our Mrs. Reynolds". I might be a heretic here, but I actually agree with the network about the pilot. It's slow and dull, and it doesn't have to be. All of the ingredients are there, but the pilot's plot is wispy and all over the place. If I was a new viewer, especially one who wasn't already in love with Joss, I would not have understood why this made it to air. "The Train Job" wasn't a great substitute, but at least it showed character through action.

Dollhouse was a perfectly good show once Patton Oswalt showed up. Until that point, it was yet another show where it would be very hard to tune in every week, unless you already had faith that Whedon would eventually deliver. It didn't help that the foundational conceit of the show required the main character to be a blank slate. (Even when her slate got de-blanked, there wasn't a whole lot to Echo.) That said, Dollhouse will always be the Sylvie and Bruno to Buffy's Alice in Wonderland and Angel's Through the Looking-Glass. It was inventive and intelligent, sometimes trippy to the point of being psychotronic, but was it ever anyone's favorite show, in the same way that Buffy, Angel, and Firefly were?

I haven't seen an episode of MAOS. I'm afraid that I'll just be disappointed if I start.
posted by Sticherbeast at 8:19 AM on November 8, 2013

I really hate Skye.

The feeling understandable. The show wants to make her the star and favorite and it just isn't working. She's fine as part of the ensemble, but not good when they want to focus on her and that's all the show wants to do.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:40 AM on November 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

I can't tell whether to be impressed or horrified by this Charmin tie-in.
posted by zombieflanders at 9:00 AM on November 8, 2013

I think the thing that really gives me a sinking feeling about Agents of SHIELD (and a not-so-good feeling about the new deal) is knowing about the upcoming Thor tie-in, and having heard that there will be a Winter Soldier tie-in--which makes more sense--at the end of the current season.

So basically these guys have invented the crossover event for TV and movies. Crossover events suck in comics for the most part. I don't know why I'd expect visual-media crossovers driven by the same editorial teams/concerns to be any better.
posted by immlass at 9:22 AM on November 8, 2013

That Charmin pun is gold.
posted by jason_steakums at 9:22 AM on November 8, 2013

Not in its entirety: Angel does once explain why he doesn't dance.

hahaha oh yeah! I freaking love that scene.

But: agreed. It's not worth wading through the gut-wrenching awfulness of demon lawyers, demon directors, demon actors, and any other ZOMG LOOK IT"S DEMONS IN TEH HOLLYWOODZ GET IT??? stuff they could cobble together. Oh, god, and the harping on the dreary singles bar stuff...it's painful just to think about it... I really thought there was simply no hope for that series. Can't believe how good it got before the end...
posted by Fists O'Fury at 9:57 AM on November 8, 2013

I'm in that minority who really liked Dollhouse -- but only after I learned to accept and kind of see around Eliza Dushku's character, which is unbelievably tiresome. The other characters are, without exception, fantastic and the acting and writing and cleverness of the script is everything MAoS isn't.
posted by George_Spiggott at 10:10 AM on November 8, 2013

I suspect I was the only person in the world running around screaming "There's going to be an Iron Fist show!!!" last night.

I'm glad they're including Jessica Jones and Luke Cage shows as well because they seemed to develop as characters with real life problems in the New Avengers issues I read.

Also, these shows need Misty and Colleen. Sometimes I feel like female heroes are underrepresented in the films.
posted by dragonplayer at 10:13 AM on November 8, 2013

(Best things about Dollhouse: Fran Kranz, Enver Gjokaj, Amy Acker, and the two coda episodes, one at the end of each season, which are radically different from the rest of the series and read much more like Whedon side projects than anything on mainstream television.)
posted by George_Spiggott at 10:17 AM on November 8, 2013 [2 favorites]

A good list but you forgot Dichen Lachman. In fact, once you got past Dusku, the acting in the second season of Dollhouse was through the roof. There were some really great performances in that cast. And once again, my mind circles back to why I hate Fox.
posted by Ber at 10:39 AM on November 8, 2013 [2 favorites]

There's one episode where they put the same personality in Lachman and she is so much better at it due to a thing called acting. But really, it just wasn't a great show. Was there the possibility of something interesting poking out of the wreckage? Maybe, but they were never going to unearth it.
posted by Artw at 10:43 AM on November 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

Ber, I literally cannot hear the phrase "try to enjoy myself" now without a cold chill going up my spine. One day someone's going to re-edit Dollhouse into half-hour episodes by cutting out all all the Echo/Caroline scenes that don't really serve the plot (which is most of them) and the series will get its due.
posted by George_Spiggott at 10:46 AM on November 8, 2013

There's one episode where they put the same personality in Lachman and she is so much better at it due to a thing called acting

The same thing happens when they do the same with a ten year old actress in the coda.
posted by George_Spiggott at 10:50 AM on November 8, 2013 [2 favorites]

They should try it with a rock.
posted by Artw at 10:53 AM on November 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

I have just realized that between Marvel's alliance with Netflix and Netflix's affection for Arrested Development, a Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. miniseries is no longer out of the realms of possibility. Oh my god.
posted by nicebookrack at 11:06 AM on November 8, 2013

Nextwave is the Marvel movie I wish Edgar Wright would actually make. Ant Man schmantman.
posted by Grangousier at 11:22 AM on November 8, 2013

I'm apparently in the minority here but I have found each episode of AoS to be an incremental improvement over the one before. I agree with some of the criticisms here: they need better lighting/more interesting cinematography and much better fight choreography and some episodes have been really obviously hamstrung by budget constraints, which is all the more jarring in a show that deliberately ties itself to the biggest-budget big-budget blockbusters around.

Skye's not anybody's favorite character, but then again, neither was Buffy on Buffy, or Angel on Angel...basically Captain Mal is the one "series main character" that ever managed to be really interesting and that was more Nathan Fillion than anything. In that show, Simon got to be the mostly-bland hero-type that audiences were all annoyed by, instead, and really I feel like Mal:Coulson::Skye:Simon, anyways. In short I think Skye's a really thankless role that will probably never be anyone's favorite character in any case, but they need her to drive the show.

I'm enough of a Marvel fanboy that I can live with all that, though. What's going to drive me nuts is the holding-pattern business. By which I mean - well, I remember reading an interview with Matthew Weiner talking about writing Mad Men and he describes (I'm paraphrasing, probably badly, based on my vague memories of an article I read probably a year ago) how he was having a tough time writing the first half of a season until he realized that he had all this story to tell and he was just trying to fill space until the actual story stuff started up later, and so once he realized that he got rid of all the "filler" and just told the story ASAP, things were fine. And Mad Men is a totally different genre and style of storytelling so even when it's moving quickly (for Mad Men) it swaggers along at a leisurely pace compared to a lot of shows. But I look around at the shows I love, love/hate, or hate, and in almost every case it comes down to pacing. The Good Wife's a great show but its best feature is the insane, breakneck pace of every episode; they've had episodes (especially the last couple) which could have been an entire season's worth of plot in other shows. Person of Interest doesn't shy away from tying up loose plot threads and creating entirely new ones in rapid succession, either. The Walking Dead is at its best when a lot happens quickly, and at its worst when they spend an entire season at Herschel's farm having slight variations on the same conversations with each other over and over. (That's really my biggest pet peeve in TV-land right now, characters having basically the same conversation with each other, over and over. Dear Supernatural, I love you, but this is why you need to get rid of Ezekiel, and do something with Crowley, right the fuck now.)

And that's my big problem with Agents of SHIELD right now. I don't know if it's because it's stuck waiting for Winter Soldier to drop, or what, but it's clearly got some interesting story to tell - what happened to Coulson, whatever the planned story arc for Skye is re: her investigation into SHIELD, what the deal is with Melinda May, and so on - but right now it's just...stalling. Only having major plot developments in the last scene of any episode, except during the season finale, sweeps week, and the season premiere, is just pure 1990s-era TV.

It sounds like Thor 2 is pretty good though, so I'm excited about that.
posted by mstokes650 at 11:23 AM on November 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

I feel like they made a weird call with Ward where at first it was like, ok, he's the hyper-confident specialist who really knows his shit but now he's going to be in over his head in this new world that he was just plopped into, so his arc is going to be a him as a big fish coming to terms with being pulled out of his small pond and thrown into the ocean... and then, nope, instead he's still competent, still gets by just fine, just needs to catch up on the new lingo.
posted by jason_steakums at 11:32 AM on November 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

IT'S EIGHT DOLLARS A MONTH. THE NEXT EPISODE AUTOLOADS WHEN YOU'RE DONE WITH THE LAST.

It's free on Hulu, and of course over the air. For $8/month one could get a Netflix membership and watch a ton of higher quality shows than AoS.
posted by Thoughtcrime at 12:31 PM on November 8, 2013

Thoughtcrime: The four new Marvel shows are going to be Netflix Originals, released on Netflix.
posted by Jacqueline at 12:36 PM on November 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

Nextwave is the Marvel movie I wish Edgar Wright would actually make. Ant Man schmantman

I agree in theory UNLESS Paul Rudd is actually cast as Pym(?), because HELLO my boyfriend, meet my other Marvel boyfriends
posted by nicebookrack at 1:17 PM on November 8, 2013

Oh also could we please please please not ever have Abusive Pym in the movieverse? It was a stupid, stupid story in the comics that just ruined an otherwise fun character. Scientific Adventurer Pym and Scientist Supreme Pym are my jam, but it always comes back to one stupid abuse story.
posted by jason_steakums at 1:28 PM on November 8, 2013

Yeah I don't want even so much as a sly winkwink nudgenudge shoutout to the domestic abuser stuff anywhere remotely near Movieverse Antman. Movie Ant needs to be the lovable "win back the crowd" guy who wipes popular memory clean of bad feelings and forever alters characterization for the better, like RDJ as Tony Stark. (Pre-RDJ Iron Man was not a notably funny/snarky guy and at the time everyone was busy hating him for his Civil War asshattiness, and if you claim differently you are a lying liar and/or my past hate trumps yours for ferocity.)
posted by nicebookrack at 2:35 PM on November 8, 2013

Thoughtcrime: The four new Marvel shows are going to be Netflix Originals, released on Netflix.

My superpower is amazing(ly bad) levels of reading comprehension.
posted by Thoughtcrime at 4:01 PM on November 8, 2013 [2 favorites]

Dear Pixar,

Please advise your Disney/Marvel subsidiaries to not even attempt going anywhere near Vaughn's Runaways if there's the slightest chance of fucking it up.
posted by mikelieman at 5:03 PM on November 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

Ok. After reading the wikipedia page, it appears you got my memo already. Thanking you for your assistance in resolving this potential issue.
posted by mikelieman at 5:23 PM on November 8, 2013

Dear Pixar,

Please advise your Disney/Marvel subsidiaries to not even attempt going anywhere near Vaughn's Runaways if there's the slightest chance of fucking it up.

Yeah but Whedon already fucked that one up in it's original medium.
posted by davros42 at 5:35 PM on November 8, 2013

Yeah but Whedon already fucked that one up in it's original medium.

I discount Whedon's run on Runaways.
posted by crossoverman at 9:03 PM on November 8, 2013

(I *did* say 'Vaughn's")
posted by mikelieman at 12:01 AM on November 9, 2013

Thor’s Jaimie Alexander Fans The Flames Of Rumorville By Talking About Warner Bros. Superhero Films & Wonder Woman
posted by homunculus at 1:08 AM on November 9, 2013 [1 favorite]

Yep, she definitely fanned flames at the Thor premier.

Otherwise, seems like a fine choice for Wonder Woman. I thought Sif would have a larger role than the one she did in Thor 2, but what was there was good.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:03 AM on November 9, 2013 [1 favorite]

I just came buy to pretty much say what Grangousier said about The Defenders.
If it can't have your Hulks and Dr Stranges and Silver Surfers, and it avoids Nighthawk and Val and Hellcat and Son of Satan and Devilslayer: what's the point?

Call it Heroes For Hire, crib what you need to from ~~Minority~~ Mighty Avengers current story (the H4H defend Hell's Kitchen from the Armies of Thanos), and do that.
posted by Mezentian at 8:21 AM on November 9, 2013

Yep, she definitely fanned flames at the Thor premier.

Zounds!
posted by homunculus at 9:38 AM on November 9, 2013 [1 favorite]

Thor 2 was so fun! My spouse took me to see it last night in all its digital 3D glory (well, he knew if he didn't I'd just run off and see it by myself anyway). They had a guy dressed as Thor imperiously directing ticket-holders to "realm number 2" and otherwise keeping in character--remarks on his attire resulted in a flare of temper and a gruff, "Do I appear as one gaming to you?".

My spouse enjoyed himself as well (despite my gleeful crows of, "There's my boyfriend!" The moment Tom Hiddleston appeared on-screen).

As for the movie itself, lots of action and wonderful moments of humor. Loved the more realistic look of Asgard (I was unaware of the GoT influence but it explains a lot). The nod to Viking influence definitely appealed to me. No more flashy, Wrath-of-the-Titans silvery stuff. The braids, the costuming, the scenery felt more realistic. Well done there.

Amazing how Hiddleston's Loki steals every scene, even when paired with the admittedly eye-candyesque Helmsworth as my childhood crush, Thor. I understand Helmsworth's on a starvation diet of 500 calories a day now after bulking up for the movie. He looks every inch the Norse Demi-god of the comics, no question.

But he simply can't compete with Hiddleston, charming even when's just sitting on the floor, insouciantly reading a book while all hell breaks loose behind him.

I know you are thinking, "Ha, misha, I don't think that word means what you think it means. 'Insouciantly', really? Who reads a book that way?!"

Tom Hiddleston's Loki, that's who. And instead of failing as the obviously gimmicky trope it is, the scene just underscores why Hiddleston is perfect for this part. Loki's affected "I cannot be bothered by such trivial concerns" nonchalance is totally in character for the Trickster. He simply cannot help performing even the simplest act in the way most calculated to get a rise out of his intended audience. It's in his nature; "This is my design" and all that.

So what if his audience in this case--the Guardians of Asgard--are otherwise engaged fighting for their lives? If even one of those valiantly struggling warriors should happen to glance his way, his satisfaction at deflating their holier-than-thou patriotism with his fingernails-across-the-blackboard tactics will know no bounds.

Jaime Alexander has grown on me. I hated the actress in Kyle XY, but although her part in this installment was small (maybe due in part to the spinal injury she received while filming), she was indeed luminous as Sif.

I think the Darcy scenes were overdone, even though I like the actress and was glad to see her back. I felt like they were written in to give her more screen time rather than adding much to the storyline, but that's a small critique overall. I also felt The Collector tag felt Harrington and too Tim Burtonesque. (though I did get a laugh from my husband with my "And with six gems, you get the Golden Sonic bonus!" quip.

Other (non-spoilery) fun times: Idris Alba returns, the actor from Chuck playing Faldir.
posted by misha at 9:51 AM on November 9, 2013 [2 favorites]

Other (non-spoilery) fun times: Idris Alba returns, the actor from Chuck playing Faldir.

Dream crossover: Alice from Luther meets Loki
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:05 AM on November 9, 2013 [1 favorite]

I saw Thor 2 last night as well. I do love me some Hiddleston, but Hemsworth really does a good job as Thor and I get why Jane fell hard for him so quickly. Golden god from the stars falls into your lap, turns out to be honorable and plain-dealing and with a big heart...you gotta take your opportunities, right? Also, I feel you, lady on the train.

It was a bit too exposition-heavy and felt rather disjointed in the way the story unraveled and scenes transitioned, but that didn't harm my overall happiness with the movie too much. There was a lot to be delighted with.

(Although, and I suppose this is a mite spoilery, so avert your eyes those who have not seen it yet...

I wanted more Frigga and her storyline and her relationship with Loki and wish she had had more time because lord, is there a lot of juicy stuff there.)
posted by PussKillian at 10:13 AM on November 9, 2013 [2 favorites]

Golden god from the stars fallI into your lap, turns out to be honorable and plain-dealing and with a big heart... you gotta take your opportunities

Oh yes. Despite how objectively little time they've spent together, Thor/Jane are just so charming. I love how they spend June's exam scene sneaking goofy grins at each other. And when Jane shows her stuff about the quantum thingie, Thor beams like "That's my scientist girlfriend, the genius!"

Also, now that I have seen the movie and RTFA, I agree with Badass Digest: Thor 2 makes this feminist very happy, too. From the link, about Jane: "Foster spends very little time in the film doing nothing. She is a character of purpose and action, and that's important." I'd extend that to all the the women characters, who are active, competent, and very human. It's a high-quality Bechdel test pass; in a story seemingly all about Manly Medieval Men, there are nonetheless women who talk to and are supportive of each other, and saving the day is a team effort. It may be a comic book movie, but it means a lot.
posted by nicebookrack at 1:08 PM on November 9, 2013 [1 favorite]

Thor 2 is by no means a very good movie, but it's a fun one - like the first one it's not afraid to be a superhero movie that's all about crazy Kirby stuff and mythic scale conflicts and so on... I suspect Guardians of the Galaxy will be giving it a run for its money for "silliest Marvel movie" though.
posted by Artw at 12:18 AM on November 10, 2013

I suspect Guardians of the Galaxy will be giving it a run for its money for "silliest Marvel movie" though.

It's weird, for a universe that combines Norse Gods and superpowered soldiers and men in Iron suits, etc. I'm not sure if my brain will make the leap to a talking tree and a raccoon with a rocketlauncher.
posted by crossoverman at 2:26 AM on November 10, 2013

I'm already there on the racoon with a rocketlaucher.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:39 AM on November 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

I think Marvel is constantly testing the waters to see where the line of "too ridiculous for mainstream audiences" is and Rocket Raccoon's a good test of that. Like, it was a very common opinion that Thor and Captain America would come across as too comic-booky for mainstream audiences until they tried it. If Rocket Raccoon works out, maybe we can get MODOK!
posted by jason_steakums at 10:10 AM on November 10, 2013

Which, really, is what they should be using Agents of SHIELD for. It could be kind of a test bed for what weird Marvel concepts fly with audiences in live action.
posted by jason_steakums at 10:17 AM on November 10, 2013

Saw Thor last night and it was fun but kind of a mess.
posted by octothorpe at 2:00 PM on November 10, 2013

Just back from the theatre, and What Octothorpe Said. Not exactly Citizen Kane, but beautifully rendered and hitting most of the points you want out of a Marvel movie.

Do not leave the theatre during the animated major actor credits. There's an easter egg scene before the crawl starts.
posted by localroger at 3:01 PM on November 10, 2013

It sounds like there are two easter eggs, unless I misunderstood (I only read the first paragraph since I haven't seen the film yet - Spoilers!)

Thor: The Dark World After The Credits Detailed Explanation
posted by homunculus at 3:17 PM on November 10, 2013

Ouch. I missed the second one thinking the first was THE stinger. Oh well.
posted by localroger at 3:55 PM on November 10, 2013

And this is where people who have NOT YET SEEN THE MOVIE respectfully leave the train. I shall return once Thor 2 has entered my eyeballs.
posted by The Whelk at 3:57 PM on November 10, 2013

I mean like at this point I care about the characters on Dracula more than SHIELD which is a statement of some gravity if you've actually watched Dracula.

I like Renfield (AKA Xaro Xhoan Daxos).
posted by homunculus at 4:05 PM on November 10, 2013

And this is where people who have NOT YET SEEN THE MOVIE respectfully leave the train.

Okey dokey.
posted by homunculus at 4:06 PM on November 10, 2013

Yeah I don't think "there are two easter eggs in the credits" is exactly spoiling anything if we don't talk about what they contain. Which your link does, but well it's well marked itself as being spoilerific.
posted by localroger at 4:36 PM on November 10, 2013

Yes, stick around for the end credits, as the art is fantastic. Plus the revelation of what Darcy really is fascinating, but totally left field. Agents of Shield makes more sense now, though.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:39 PM on November 10, 2013 [2 favorites]

BRANDON IS A MEANIE

Also, why are so many shoes in here?
posted by The Whelk at 12:26 PM on November 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

YAAAAYYY THE WHELK SAW IT

Now we can talk about the Special Guest!
posted by nicebookrack at 2:18 PM on November 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

THE OUTFIT SO TIGHT
posted by The Whelk at 2:19 PM on November 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

Also, yeah that was way ...way funnier then I was expecting. I walked out with a big grin on my face going "It's like someone accidentally slipped in a few pages of a crack fic here and there."

Also Darcy torments an intern, my fic is still CANON COMPLIANT
posted by The Whelk at 2:31 PM on November 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

I feel like the writers on Thor 2 were definitely paying attention to the fic writers out there, because whiter else pantsless Selvig?
posted by Uncle Ira at 2:41 PM on November 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

"How am I getting reception in here?"
posted by The Whelk at 2:41 PM on November 12, 2013

"you might want to try the stairs to your left"
posted by The Whelk at 2:42 PM on November 12, 2013

Also Asgard looked way less fakey and CGI.

Also, SarcastiThor!

"Yes that is totally helping!"
posted by The Whelk at 2:44 PM on November 12, 2013

"How is space?"
"Space is good."

and Thor politely hanging his hammer

and the squeaky sound of Thor and Malekith sliding down the glass
posted by nicebookrack at 3:44 PM on November 12, 2013

Best detail? In the post credits stinger we see the building they bounced off of in the background. It has repair scaffolding where they landed.

Tee hee hee.
posted by The Whelk at 4:04 PM on November 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

"OUR ONLY COMPETETION WAS TEN YEARS OLD"

As someone who thought Jane was a bit if a cypher in the first movie, I freaking love this version of Jane Foster, she's LITERALLY that "OTP Jane/Science tumblr meme" from a few weeks back.
posted by The Whelk at 4:09 PM on November 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

This started making the rounds weeks and weeks ago and it was basically the movie.

"How do I get to Greenwich?"
posted by The Whelk at 4:17 PM on November 12, 2013

"I love how you explain things."

Thor is just so puppy butt in wuv with her. It's so charming and adorable and he's to make the NORSE DEMI GOD WHO FLIES into a relatable character.
posted by The Whelk at 4:20 PM on November 12, 2013 [2 favorites]

Maybe someone should send Thor a Highlander DVD so he can know what he's getting into with that whole immortal falling in love with a mortal thing.
posted by localroger at 6:10 PM on November 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

She can make herself Asgardian long lived via SCIENCE
posted by The Whelk at 6:22 PM on November 12, 2013

Jane and Bruce need to have a sit-down heart-to-heart about What Science Can Do (For/To) You.
posted by nicebookrack at 8:51 PM on November 12, 2013

All I want: A short scene in Avengers 2, possibly part of a montage, where Jane and Bruce are just screaming at each other in the distance in a lab. It can be a silent background visual joke, that's okay. I just need this.
posted by The Whelk at 8:58 PM on November 12, 2013

And then Dummy sprays them with a fire extinguisher.
posted by nicebookrack at 9:06 PM on November 12, 2013

OR.

Jane and Bruce enthusiastically present Steve and Cap with their latest invention. A seriously impressive set of goggles.

Tony: I'm not wearing those.

Bruce: It's a remote Synaptic Energy Profiler.

Tony: Little help here?

Bruce: It's like a night vis-

Jane (pointing to various things on the goggles): They use a remote tracking relay sensor to pick up and match electro-chemical signals from nearby processes, like brains, and then automatically compares them against our database of profiles in realtime to identify possible compromised subjects based on energy expenditure, heat readings, even chemical profiles using quantum possibility analsysis and-

Bruce: It's like the glasses in They Live.

Jane: I don't get that-

Steve: Glasses to see the bad guys, the ones hiding in plain sight?

Jane points at Steve.

Jane: What he said.
posted by The Whelk at 9:07 PM on November 12, 2013 [2 favorites]

Just to interpose a minor snark, so ignore me, but do you think Young People will feel angry and betrayed when they find out that Science is actually the practise of systematically and painstakingly conducting and recording experiments and extrapolating models and predictions based on the tabulated data rather than just a new name for Magic?*

Also, if you're on the Jubilee Line at Charing Cross you need to go to the Overground and change at London Bridge in order to get to Greenwich, otherwise you'll end up at the O2, which is probably not where you want to go, but I expect that's been mentioned before too. I only say it now because I actually live three stops down from Charing Cross and I meet enough lost and angry tourists already. It's pretty good for Tate Modern though, if that's your bag.

*Actually, the scientific method can, in a lot of ways, be seen as a development of Hermetic Magic, but that's a completely different can of worms.

Mmm. Worms!
posted by Grangousier at 2:40 AM on November 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

Something I just realized after seeing last night's teaser for next week's SHIELD -- Apparently the events of Thor 2 just now happened in the SHIELD universe. So events in all of these connected properties -- the movies, the TV show, and probably the streaming stuff next year -- are taking place in Marvel universe time at the same pace we are seeing them released here. There is also a little takeaway line in Thor 2 that Thor has been gone for 2 years -- in other words, real time since he left at the end of his last movie.
posted by localroger at 9:50 AM on November 13, 2013

I might watch that one. Maybe.

Meanwhile the Netdlix shoes all seem to be getting some decent name writers, something AoS could probably do with.
posted by Artw at 10:56 AM on November 13, 2013

Quick, give me your Netdlix Shoes so I can explain this convergence thing.
posted by The Whelk at 11:01 AM on November 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

:-(

And put your pants on.
posted by Artw at 11:07 AM on November 13, 2013

I've figured out all the problems with Agents of SHIELD

The article gets a lot of things right, including last night's episode being enjoyable because of the character details introduced in Fitz.

But I'm joining the "Skye has to go" camp now, because her continued presence is just ridiculous. People with superpowers are infinitely more believable and likable than that character.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:48 AM on November 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

Woodboy needs to go on the fire too.
posted by Artw at 1:27 PM on November 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

He's slightly better, but the bar is low. Hopefully they fall in love and decide to drop out of the rat race, retire to a the suburbs and start a spinoff.

Perhaps Skye is that series Cordelia, bratty side character who matures into an smart adult that can handle being a major character. Except we still have to deal with her being a major bratty character who has superhuman computer hacking skills
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:56 PM on November 13, 2013

I still think it's early days and Tuesday's ep was a good sign. How many people were on the FITZ+SIMMONS must go wagon before Fitz turned into a human being this week? Teasers have been dropped for all the characters and in a lot of ways it's been like an origin story mashup as we get background without much substantive story or character development.

This is also Marvel's first venture into TV with what amounts to their movie rather than comic franchise, and if you think back their first ventures into movies were a bit tentative too. But the series can make up much more quickly what the movie franchise series had to. Thor 1 was a bit of a flop at the box office. Marvel has shown a better than typical for Hollywood ability to pivot and fix things like that.
posted by localroger at 8:00 PM on November 13, 2013

Thor 2 was pretty damn excellent. As long as Marvel can keep up this level of quality, then I am fine with them dominating popcorn entertainment.

That said, and this is more of a speculative thing than a critical thing, I sort of wish Kat Dennings and Natalie Portman could switch roles. I like the idea of Jane Foster being sort of eye-rolly and casual, whereas Darcy could be brittle and well-mannered. You could still have Darcy as the comic relief, but just with a different tone. Like, "I can't believe that I worked my ass off for all these years, at all the best schools, just so that I could perennially play catch-up with a pantsless mentor and a supervisor who dates a literal god."

Also, the monster featured in the credit cookies reminds me ever so much of my cat, who is a tubby and clumsy British shorthair.
posted by Sticherbeast at 8:08 PM on November 13, 2013

the monster featured in the credit cookies reminds me ever so much of my cat

Motion capture. Do you know where your cat was during auditions?
posted by localroger at 8:12 PM on November 13, 2013

Motion capture. Do you know where your cat was during auditions?

That I do not know a precise answer to this question is all that gives me hope.
posted by Sticherbeast at 8:13 PM on November 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

Thor 1 was a bit of a flop at the box office.

It made $445 million on $150 production budget and say another $100 million for advertising. Is that really considered a flop?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:45 AM on November 14, 2013 [1 favorite]

$150? That is a Blair Witch-like return on investment.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:10 PM on November 14, 2013

LOL on $150 without the M but really, in the early days after Thor 1 was released the buzz was not good. I suspect the Marvel films must be doing very well overseas, an assumption which is supported by the current US revenues compared to the "expected overall earnings."
posted by localroger at 7:58 PM on November 14, 2013

I liked this week's Agents of SHIELD. But then, I'm an easy mark and have been enjoying it from the start.

It was nice to see a focus on Simmons last week, and now Fitz this time. The last character who really needs development to make us care is Melinda May. We see her talking with Coulson, but that doesn't say much about what she's like. Pair her up with Skye on a story, maybe. It'd be interesting to see how they'd get along.
posted by Kevin Street at 1:15 AM on November 15, 2013

May is fine as a character. It's Skye and Ward that are annoying as hell.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:20 AM on November 15, 2013 [1 favorite]

Being a badass cypher is not a character.

Agents of SHIELD feels more like a Buffy reimagining than a show about SHIELD. Coulson = Giles, Skye = Buffy. Fitz = Xander, Simmons = Willow, Ward = Angel, etc. (I still don't know if I got the names of Fitz and Simmons right.) AND WHY DOES IT ALWAYS LOOK SO CHEAP?
posted by entropicamericana at 6:35 AM on November 15, 2013

Being a badass cypher is not a character.

I don't see May as a cypher. She's clearly badass, but went through something that caused her to take a desk job, until Coulson managed to convince her to come on the team. With just a few strokes, you've got a decent character.

Unlike Skyard.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:51 AM on November 15, 2013

Coulson knows when not to push. He's not a bruiser. He doesn't yell like Nick Fury. He's not a soldier like Cap. Negotiating with difficult people and figuring out how to get the most out of them for the overall good is something he and Cap have in common, though. Cap does it by appealing to their decency. Coulson does it by giving them just enough rope. It's a very particular skillset and really undervalued.

Problem is, when Thor or the Hulk or (especially) Stark is being difficult, we accept it because no one else can do what they do and they're worth the trouble. Also, any one of them could crush us.

With SHIELD, we are supposed to route for the team and believe it is strong because of what each person brings to the table, just like the Avengers. It's harder to swallow with regular people instead of superheroes. Also, May seems like she could do Ward's job (which so far is mostly fighting people, though we are also supposed to believe he speaks a bunch of different languages and he can fit in anywhere in the world, which, given his temperament, I find hard to believe).

I did feel that this week's episode did a much better job of exploring that team stuff, though. I liked seeing Fitz in the field. What I wanted to happen in that episode was for Skye to almost screw everything up because this thing with Ward and Fitz (?) was actually a field test that she and the rest of the crew were just not clued in on because their status wasn't high enough. I really thought that's where the whole thing was going. Maybe it would have been a field test for Simmons, too, except she did the jumping out of the plane without a parachute deal and they figured that was good enough.

Sky is like a spoiled toddler who gets into everything. I'm a big proponent of transparency and STILL find her annoying. She wants to do whatever without any consequences, too. They sorta addressed this with the boyfriend episode, but her response just made her more annoying. How come the other kids get to go out and play? I said I was sorry! Yes, I'm a traitor, but I'm cute and I have hacks and stuff! This sucks! It's not fair!

Ugh. And Coulson is being such a Good Dad about gently addressing her family stuff.

Quick poll--how many people in this thread even give a damn about Skye's parents?

Now, how many want to know the whole Coulson "it's a magical place" backstory?

I suspect the answer to the latter far outweights the answer to the former. Not to mention that Ward has some family backstory, too, briefly alluded to in the pilot, and not only has it not resurfaced, but frankly I couldn't care less about that, either.

Fitz and Simmons are adorable, though.

And throwing away a perfectly good sandwich is just criminal.
posted by misha at 3:40 PM on November 15, 2013 [2 favorites]

I suspect the thing with Skye's parents and the fact that Coulson is putting up with her are related.
posted by localroger at 3:45 PM on November 15, 2013

My theory is that each member of Coulson's team represents an idealized part of himself (like Batman's villains), and together they form a kind of super-Coulson that operates far more quickly and effectively than he could alone. Maybe he spent some time thinking about the Avengers while recuperating and came to the decision that small teams can be more effective than big operations.

Anyway, the team was already formed when Coulson met Skye, but something about her nosiness resonated with him. She refuses to take anything on faith, and maybe that fits with his own confusion about his resurrection and general concern about how much the bosses have been lying to him. So he broke protocol and made her part of the team. On one level he wants to prove to her that the system works, but on a deeper level he's hoping she'll keep searching for answers, because there are quite a few things he'd like to know too.
posted by Kevin Street at 8:01 PM on November 15, 2013 [1 favorite]

Ok so Thor? Holy crap, better than I expected.

HERE BE SPOILERS

The armaments were deliciously Walt Simonsonian, to the point that I half expected to see Asgardians with M-16s. And flying longboat fighter craft!
I haven't been to a 3D movie in ages, but either it's improved a lot or they did exceptionally well with it in Thor. The Asgardian funeral ceremony alone, wow.
Yeah so can we just have a Frigga vs Hel movie next? Thor's mom's a badass and there wasn't enough screen time for it. Also I really want to see the big screen version of Hela.
Also a Sif and the Warriors Three movie. I like new Fandral a lot, the only thing that could improve him is if he were played by a young Carey Elwes. What I need in the next movie is more Warriors Three and especially more VOLSTAGG! He's not quite Volstaggy enough yet.
Seriously, so many kudos for the way they've made Thor work. He was not an easy character to make work in a movie franchise, and I'm very impressed with how deftly they've done it. Like the Walt Simonson-style rocket launchers and gun emplacements mixed with Norse mythology, and Star Wars-esque fighter battles, they've just created a world where you can drop that shit in and it works. Probably the biggest surprise of any comic book movie for me is that they're able to drop all this thoroughly comic-booky stuff in without trying to make a joke of it or make unnecessary compromises. Thor 2 out-Avengered Avengers for me in this way. Like, I could see this team easily pulling off Beta Ray Bill, and ol' Horseface isn't an easy sell. Hell, I'd trust them to make Frog Thor work great.
The mainstream, Hollywood version of Thor has treated Jane Foster better than the comics ever have. I feel like Joss Whedon's hand is a bit farther-reaching in Marvel Studios than they let on, because that's not something I expected.
Like the only thing I'm disappointed in is that they didn't introduce Balder and the Enchantress and Skurge the Executioner. Because I want so bad for them to crib Simonson stories for those characters, especially a movie version of Skurge standing alone at Gjallerbru from this team.

posted by jason_steakums at 11:45 PM on November 15, 2013 [1 favorite]

(MORE THOR SPOILERS because I just saw it, dangit)
Also, re: Balder, it would really punch up the Norse mythology end of things to have Balder as a contender for the throne and a Loki vs. Balder plot in the next one.
</spoilers>

One of the things that the movies have really made work is that it takes the "Norse gods are really aliens" approach (splitting the difference between the implication from the comics since the beginning and the explicitly alien Earth X take), but while they've got the alien part down pat, they really should be putting some more Norse mythology in besides the names of characters and settings. Also, one of the most interesting things they ever did in the comics post-Earth X, imo, was to take the "aliens living out a manufactured mythological story created by an egotistical Odin" thing from that story and turn it into a Ragnarok Cycle premeditated by Those Who Sit Above in Shadow (the gods above the gods) that the characters become aware of and break out of, and there's a lot of mileage in there for the movies to use. Having the best of both worlds with the alien stuff and the mythology stuff means they need to come across as gods, too, which is one of the few things the movies are lacking in.

Also, bring in other pantheons, because I needs me some big screen Marvel Hercules (it's criminal that we can't send a time machine back for a young Brian Blessed!). A movie or Netflix series version of the Marvel Ares miniseries would be incredible (and also, yeah, on the topic of Herc, sign me up for movie/Netflix Hulk + Amadeus Cho in a heartbeat, and also, Marvel, see if you can't tweak Ruffalo's contract to get a Netflix series homage to the Incredible Hulk 70's tv series with a touch of the first half of the X-Files-esque Bruce Jones Hulk comics and the 90's Bruce Greenwood series Nowhere Man for inspiration), and since I don't really care for DC Ares as a Wonder Woman villain, it would be a good business decision from Marvel </panderingtothesuits> to kind of head them off in a "Marvel already did Ares so maybe we should use Cheetah or go full WWII" way with the (hopefully) inevitable WW movie, which is just gravy for me.
posted by jason_steakums at 12:41 AM on November 16, 2013 [1 favorite]

I needs me some big screen Marvel Hercules

Seconded. Those in favor?
posted by mikelieman at 4:40 AM on November 16, 2013

There are two (non-Marvel) Hercules movies slated for release in 2014. And one 'em (Thracian Wars) is based on a comic book.
posted by Kevin Street at 1:21 PM on November 16, 2013

When Marvel started their own studio, I think everyone chalked it up to them being ticked that the studio got most of the money from their previous projects. But now that Marvel has gotten the hang of the movie biz, I think they're doing something nobody expected; instead of, like the studios, bending and smushing all their content to fit the model of what works for a movie, they're pushing the movie (and now TV) formats toward their own comic book mold.

So you get things like the massive integration between multiple properties, which I don't think any film franchise has ever done on this scale (to the point where the writers for SHIELD knew which week Thor 2 would be happening in their own timeline) and pushing some tropes much further than any film studio would be willing to do, and doing those things in perfect seriousness without the usual camp or lampshading.

They can do all this because they're not a movie studio doing, in addition to a bunch of other projects, a comic book movie now and then. They're a comic book franchise that is making its own movies. And to the extent that their earlier movies sucked, it was often because of the kind of reticence a film studio might have shown. Now that they're getting the range Marvel is using the movie technology to create their own art form, which is more like comics than movies as we've always known them.
posted by localroger at 1:29 PM on November 16, 2013 [3 favorites]

Now that they're getting the range Marvel is using the movie technology to create their own art form, which is more like comics than movies as we've always known them.

And I love that they are doing this... for now. I think the problem becomes that eventually - and by eventually, I mean 2015 - when there are four Marvel/Netflix shows, there's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and there's Avengers: Age of Ultron - in the wake of Guardians of the Galaxy (which seems like an entirely different franchise), it's almost too much to keep up with. And people won't see all the films and all the TV shows and it will be hard for people to understand where everything fits.

For me that's always been the trouble with trying to get into mainstream superhero comics - never knowing when to jump in or where and knowing that I haven't absorbed 50 years of continuity and need to read some parallel narrative comics from another series to even understand everything that's going on in a current series. I hate when there's occasionally an asterisked aside in a comic book that says, * See Other Series You're Currently Not Reading to Understand What Doctor Strange is Up To Here

I mean, I can understand the attraction, but I feel like mainstream audiences eventually won't keep up and won't want to keep up and will stop devouring Marvel superhero films because soon there will be at least two a year - along with all the TV shows.

As much as I'm excited to see how Disney translates this kind of thing into the Star Wars Universe with the Sequels and side projects, I fear the same thing there as well - oversaturation and the audience feeling like they need to invest more into a Star Wars film than they have need to before, because it's become more and more pervasive. But still, give me my Boba Fett movie and my Young Lando film, too.
posted by crossoverman at 5:16 PM on November 16, 2013

I mean I'd credit the writers with messing with what they assume is their fanbase but what are the chances of that.
posted by griphus at 5:23 PM on November 16, 2013

These are not smart, funny writers. These are people who write Chuck.
posted by Artw at 5:29 PM on November 16, 2013

I think Marvel is so far getting this right. Maybe not so much, initially, with SHIELD -- though I think we're just going through the "blah origin story" phase there -- but with the movies, they're doing the massive continuity thing but also making it hold together if, for example, you had never seen any of the other movies and just walked in to Thor 2 because it's a 3D candy movie.

I used the phrase "getting the range" with a sense of exactness. What they are making is something new; it's not movies as we have known them, but it's not comic books either because each big production does have to explain itself well enough to stand on its own. SHIELD isn't doing that but it's a different thing, an experiment I think, and I suspect that after four or five more episodes a lot of the objections will be met. I also suspect Marvel is watching the response and calibrating how they'll try the next thing.

I am not a comic book person, and I find what Marvel is doing fascinating. The original movies, hewing more to the known Hollywood formula, the original Iron Man, Hulk, Thor 1, Captain America, ranged from mediocre to okay-plus. Then they got the range with Avengers. And Iron Man 2 and Thor 2 have both been great, unapologetic forays into the land of comic book tropes. I think SHIELD is working its way there at the pace of a TV series that has to tell 8 origin stories. (Anyone remember that Babylon 5's entire first season was an origin story in the same way?) I am personally ready to see what they come up with next. Even if it does involve Skye.
posted by localroger at 7:43 PM on November 16, 2013

griphus: ""He's acting like a robot version of himself" says Skye to Simmons about Coulson in a totally offhand comment that ends the scene because it is just funny and not foreshadowing so obvious it may as well be forepaint."

I really think that was intended to be a joke, because of the scenes in the last episode where Coulson got a physical and they made a big deal out of his scar. The robot explanation is supposed to be unlikely now.

crossoverman: "I mean, I can understand the attraction, but I feel like mainstream audiences eventually won't keep up and won't want to keep up and will stop devouring Marvel superhero films because soon there will be at least two a year - along with all the TV shows."

This is a valid concern, but from Marvel's point of view it may be a plus. I think the big studios are trying to create their own version of Apple's walled garden, except in their case it's shared fictional universes. The idea is to create shared universes that cross over into different media, that are so rich and detailed that you can't follow all of them simultaneously. So you go with Marvel comics and see their movies and watch their TV shows, or you go with Star Wars and do the same. But few people will follow everything in both.
posted by Kevin Street at 8:37 PM on November 16, 2013

"He's acting like a robot version of himself" says Skye to Simmons about Coulson in a totally offhand comment that ends the scene because it is just funny and not foreshadowing so obvious it may as well be forepaint.

Yep, I thought that was heavy-handed, too. I'd have gone with:

Simmons: I'm worried about Agent Coulson. He's not really himself these days, is he?"
Fitz: "I know, right? Maybe we should check for pods in the Med Lab!"
(Nervous laughter, furtive look around the lab, obvious relief that the lab is the same home sweet home as always)
Delighted, in nison: "it's a magical place!"
posted by misha at 11:00 PM on November 16, 2013

griphus: ""He's acting like a robot version of himself" says Skye to Simmons about Coulson in a totally offhand comment that ends the scene because it is just funny and not foreshadowing so obvious it may as well be forepaint."

We were watching the episode and I said to my wife, "people on Metafilter think Couson is some sort of robot" and then right after I say that we hear that line.
posted by octothorpe at 7:58 AM on November 17, 2013

...the last episode where Coulson got a physical and they made a big deal out of his scar.

I was thinking just the opposite: the physical results and the scar are the misdirection. There's an ongoing thread in the show of Coulson being deceived (knowingly/willingly or not) by people he trusts -- Tahiti, Skye, the Peruvian militia commander, his former mentee, Skye, the "kidnapped" scientist, Skye, Victoria Hand, Skye -- and why wouldn't SHIELD replicate the scar and fake his physical results?
posted by griphus at 8:06 AM on November 17, 2013

First 5 minutes of the latest one actually feels somewhat Marvelish.
posted by Artw at 9:14 PM on November 19, 2013

I wouldn't say it's good, as such, but it feels more like there's a point to its existing.
posted by Artw at 9:49 PM on November 19, 2013

It's getting the range. All the characters still have a lot of backstory which, if they'd dropped it all on us at once, we'd be complaining about infodump. The last three episodes have all added depth to characters we were complaining were flat in the opening. And I have to like this one ending with Colson finally realizing Tahiti is a cover memory. I am looking forward to the next few eps more than I was Monday.
posted by localroger at 5:47 AM on November 20, 2013

Gal Gadot is History’s First Movie Wonder Woman

Charlie Jane Anders: I still don't want to see Zack Snyder's take on Wonder Woman
posted by homunculus at 3:33 PM on December 4, 2013

Days of Future Past Writer On Why They Swapped Kitty Pryde For Wolverine
posted by homunculus at 3:37 PM on December 4, 2013

Yup, I also have no interest in a Zack Snyder Wonder Woman - and I hate she's being introduced in a Supes v Bats film.

Days of Future Past Writer On Why They Swapped Kitty Pryde For Wolverine

I actually think that's a reasonable excuse, even though I've had quite enough of Wolverine.
posted by crossoverman at 8:14 PM on December 4, 2013 [1 favorite]

I actually think that's a reasonable excuse

Sure, NOW they're all concerned about logic and continuity...
posted by mikelieman at 3:27 AM on December 5, 2013

It's time travel. As the article notes, all they have to do is change the method of travel to make it work or adjust the timeline. Instead they make a decision that allows them to cash in on the main face of the franchise.

Colour me cynical.
posted by nubs at 11:07 AM on December 5, 2013

Fox wants to build the new Fantastic Four with the help of the X-Men
posted by homunculus at 4:10 PM on December 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

Stupid rights issues keeping Doctor Doom and the Thing and Spidey out of the Avengers' sandbox. Fox and Marvel Studios and Sony should just team up and split the gigantic piles of endless money, but it's too late without rebooting a few of the franchises and derailing long-term movie plans.
posted by jason_steakums at 11:02 PM on December 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

It’s Officially Official: Drew Goddard To Write And Direct Daredevil Pilot Episode, Serve As Showrunner.

I find this acceptable.
posted by Mezentian at 7:56 AM on December 7, 2013

Interesting, Goddard has bounced back and forth between working on Abrams' projects and Wheden's projects. Didn't know that was allowed.
posted by octothorpe at 1:08 PM on December 7, 2013

« Older I am the one who clicks | “Why is art going in here? This is the ghetto” Newer »

This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments

MetaFilter

The Delivery Plan Is Just As Interesting As The Content
November 7, 2013 5:26 PM Subscribe

Tags

Share

The Delivery Plan Is Just As Interesting As The Content November 7, 2013 5:26 PM Subscribe

Tags

Share

The Delivery Plan Is Just As Interesting As The Content
November 7, 2013 5:26 PM Subscribe