A Reason to give Agents of Shield another look…

Let’s just establish one thing on the outset, I have no connection or insight into this show; these are again my impressions as the season progressed.

Agents of Shield was a show that had so much momentum going into its first season; it seemed poised to be a sure fire hit. Something happened on its way to stellar glory. I remember reading a blub somewhere that there were script problems that were requiring rewrites. Seemed reasonable, many shows take time to find their footing and direction.

When the cast was revealed, I remember thinking; “the world hasn’t been saved by people this beautiful since Starship Troopers.” Pardon me if I take a moment to begrudge the cast for its youth. But, hopeful good acting and well-crafted stories would win the day. Again how could they go wrong? This series was teed up by The Avengers movie. What could go wrong?

Then it premiered. Something seemed off kilter about it. The writing seemed a little hesitant and maybe rough in execution. A lot of the time it seemed was spent stalling for time. There were moments when, it seemed, the show wasn’t not sure what to do next. To be sure, the acting was good, good production value, but something was missing. It just seemed like writing was waiting for something to happen. One example is the Couson story which was served in drips and drabs instead of shooting forward as the character tried to determine what had happened to him.

Then came the episode that was basically an aftermath of Thor: The Dark World. Should have known then what the problem was but it still did not dawn.

It wasn’t until then that the problem came into full focus, (in my opinion).  The last few episodes started to put into place changes, events, and keyed to Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Then it hit me; the problem was the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This show was a slave to events in other media, namely two movies with which it had to align. This effectively put handcuffs on the writing staff. Story arcs that could have been played out at a pace set by the writers of the show had to align with the two movies. In planning the season of shows, instead of planning for what was best for the series, they had to service the movies.

Admittedly, the Captain America thing gave them a great season finale, but the Thor episode, (and I really like the Thor movie), dropped into the middle of the AOS’s season and effectively drove whatever storytelling they may have wanted to do at that point in the season.

The Star Wars people may want to take not of how well this kind of thing can be done since the plan seems to be to run TV shows and multiple movies all in a single cannon.

So AOS may have been hindered in its writing, but the good news is, again, the Captain America aftermath gave them a beautiful way to reboot the show and take it in directions not imagined in the first season. Like Arrow, the paradigm under which the characters have operated to this point, has shifted drastically and things such as resources and backup may become more limited for the heroes in both shows, making their tasks that much more difficult. (Not saying either show is “borrowing” storylines from the other, just an interesting coincidence). This gives the writers the opportunity to expand their TV universe in creative ways.

With no Marvel movies coming out in the middle of the season—I don’t think—the AOS writing staff will be free to tell stories at their own pace, develop story arcs that make sense and service only the show. That should improve it immeasurably.

Once last time, and it cannot be stressed enough, the season finale left the show in such an interesting place that it is in essence starting over from scratch as Coulson and the gang struggle to set things right. Again, the characters are interesting, aptly lead by Coulson and May. ( and I’ll be honest, I wasn’t sure Coulson could be an interesting character—though I like Greg Clark going back to his time on Old Christine—since he was just the stogy strait man in the movies, but look how far we have come.

So here we are. Full circle and back to so much promise. Let’s take that plane down to the end of the runway and see what she’ll do…assuming they still have a plane, they may need to drive to a hot spots for a while.

Star Trek Buffoons and other Random Thoughts

While I was on the elliptical trainer at the gym a few days ago, Star Trek: The Motion Picture was on Syfy. Always one to take advantage of a distraction while exercising, I decided to watch it as it had been a about a year since I had done so. (Watched it for the podcast The Movies that Weaned Us, available on iTunes)

I don’t know if it was the lack of oxygen and sugar in my blood or what, but I had a new thought about the movie.

In episodes of the original series, like The Galileo Seven, The Deadly Years, and The Doomsday Machine, (maybe even a few others—this is off the top of my head after all, so I hope I am naming the correct episodes), there was a senior officer, like a commodore, who would take command when things go wrong. Invariably, these senior officers make bad decisions and it fell to our band of STTOS regulars to resolve the situation by episode’s end.

As obvious as this should have been, it just occurred to me as I watched, that in this story Admiral Kirk had become the senior officer intruding upon the well-oiled workings of the Starship Enterprise. In the series, the offending senior officers were often the protagonists of the episode. At best they were over the hill buffoons who were less than helpful.

So had Kirk become this character? He was certainly stepping on Captain Decker’s toes, (payback for that whole doomsday machine incident, though, arguably Commodore Decker got the short end of that stick).

Kirk even made mistakes early on, not knowing Enterprise’s systems and ordering a phaser strike that couldn’t work. Decker even put Kirk in his place after that incident. That didn’t happen often to Kirk, Captain or Admiral.

Ultimately, however, Kirk got his act together with the help of the two halves of his personality, Spock and McCoy. Ok mainly Spock, but I always liked the moral grounding McCoy gave Kirk. Like Luke Skywalker, he was the best that ever was, (Starship captain for Kirk, Jedi for Luke), so unlike the cause more problems than solving officers who had preceded him, Kirk prevailed and saved not only the Enterprise, (again), but Earth, (again).

Or did he? Decker sacrificed himself, as did, Ilia.

But it was Kirk, whose decisions kept them alive long enough to be in a position to make the sacrifice. The ship was ordered into a hostile situation with no shields or weapons, tried to reason with the alien being even after it had killed one of his officers, and reasoned what V’ger ultimately needed to be whole. So as much as Kirk started the story as the intruding command, his personal journey took him to a place where he had regained the mojo that made him the leader he had always been, once again proving, the human adventure is just beginning…

Star Wars Digitized Effects and Character

Now that Star Wars is making its (another) triumphant return to the big screen…well let’s just get down to it:

Really, I am agnostic about the changes/updates/improvements (?) George Lucas decided to make to the original three movies. I think it should be said, however, that there were artists and technicians, (one and the same really when working on a movie), who poured their hearts and souls into the technical aspects of that movie and showed audiences something they had never seen before. To go back and redo that, to in essence say, what came before was not good enough is, well, unkind. But within Mr. Lucas’ rights. He owned the right to do so.

And to be fair, the technical changes he made did not change the storytelling in any way. It simply showed the optical effects in a way that Mr. Lucas felt was more effective for the story, but they did not change the story. For example, once you saw the glowstick for what it was when Ben Kenobi is fighting Darth Vader, you couldn’t unsee that. So to fix that was the right choice to make.

When Han was chasing the Stormtroopers and rounds a corner to find, what, the Stormtrooper locker room at shift change, was a great improvement. In this case, Harrison Ford’s reaction as he comes face to faceplate with so many troops was perfect and worked even better than the handful of troops as presented in the original cut of the movie. Kudos, improvement achieved.

All except one.

There was one change that I feel did hurt the movie. Now to be sure, it didn’t ruin the movie or destroy my childhood, but it is painful to watch because it took a character moment and changed it. It took away a character’s journey.

Consider: Han was facing Greedo, who had gotten the drop on him. What had lead to this moment was Han’s illegal activities concerning the gangster Jabba. Suffice it to say, Han was not the most upstanding of citizens. Faced with capture or death, Han being the survivor that he was, killed his opponent.

That scene said a lot about Han. It set the tone for everything he did for the rest of movie and showed the growth and change through which he went through the next two movies.

But that was changed when instead of coldly murdering his opponent, Han instead, in an act of self-defense, was forced to kill Greedo. It softened that moment needlessly and took edge off the character of Han. Was it tough to like a guy who killed right after being introduced? Maybe. But what a great introduction to the character.

Besides it just looked terrible. Greedo was sitting across that table and shot maybe three feet and missed?!? Han didn’t need to kill him. He could have just gotten up and walked away from the table.

When Han was talking to Jabba, and walked around him, there was that bit where he stepped on Jabba’s tail. In that scene they did what they could and it worked on a level that you could tell what had just occurred. The problem was it looked bad. It was not a convincing optical. But it made sense and the viewer could go with it because it was Han being Han with a little show of defiance stepping on Jabba’s tail like that. Pushing his luck, you could say.

Though it didn’t look great at least it made sense.

Greedo firing first and missing made no sense, (how do you miss at that range), and looked terrible as a special effect. That little head jog that was digitized into Ford’s neck looked weird too.

But all that said…I really do love these movies—all six of them no less, yes I find enjoyment in all six—and look forward to the continuing adventures in a galaxy far, far away…