BrokenFiction
Member
Totally agree. Looking forward to the Mandarin short on the Thor 2 Blu-ray.
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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. |OT| Tahiti is a Magical Place (to...Hey guys, I found it!)
- Thread starter TheOddOne
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Totally agree. Looking forward to the Mandarin short on the Thor 2 Blu-ray.
Then it's never going to bea big show. I think if they mined the Marvel universe for the show more and had more connections it would be a more popular show. Don't run away from what you are.
But most people won't be able to go "hey, that's Purple Man!" They want to avoid insularity, where its a show by comic people for comic reading people.
Then why have anything to do with the Marvel Universe? There are enough characters and they could actually write stories that introduce them to the general audience and get people excited. Use the show as away to draw both audiences in. It's not the comicbook fans that made their movies so popular.
I stopped watching the show because I find it boring and it doesn't draw me in as a comicbook fan. The show will be on another year and then it's going to be canceled.
Jest Chillin
Member
The show is one of many to play a part in fleshing out the entire universe. There's already several other shows planned to continue doing that. It makes no sense to load one show with a ton of characters when that would restrict options and opportunities for other shows as well as the movies.
It's also very weird that you acknowledge that it wasn't comicbook fans that made the movies popular but then turn around and cite how as a comicbook fan you find it boring so you think it'll be cancelled in a year. The ratings are no where near low enough to make such an assumption and with the change of pace it seems people who didn't like it early on have enjoyed the latest episodes. ABC also seems committed to the show, so we're a long way off from any kind of accurate prediction of cancellation.
Father_Brain
Banned
Insularity? This isn't the same universe as the comics. As the show has already demonstrated with the few canon Marvel characters/elements it's introduced to the MCU (Graviton, Blizzard, Victoria Hand, Overkill Horn), accessibility isn't much of an issue when the universe necessitates that those characters/elements be written as though they're appearing for the first time.
But it mostly hasn't done a very good job of that. Even if one sets aside the matter of established Marvel characters/elements, the series has really only given us a few half-assed scraps of world-building until the most recent episode.
Jest Chillin
Member
But the question remains, how do you do that without alienating viewers? Proper origin stories for more supers would necessitate even more one off procedural style episodes. Introducing characters in larger groups instead, would necessitate being heavily serial so the viewers could learn more about them... however that alienates casual viewers. That's not even talking about what the Producers and many in this thread have already discussed in that by being the same Universe as the Movies means that any characters introduced in the show would have to mesh with the movies. That means the same actors, the same story elements, everything. So tossing in characters left and right would limit the creatives working on the movies (which are vastly more important financially).
The show needs to stand on it own as well. It would fail horribly if all it was, was shots of various SHIELD bases with characters discussing the other things going on not shown in the movies. What we've seen is the story of one specific SHIELD team and the things they deal with. The various other shows coming down the pipeline will also show specific stories that are happening and when consumed alongside the movies all of these will be the MCU. However as TV Shows they can't be dependent on other shows and movies just as the movies can't be dependent on the shows. They have to stand on their own and that's exactly what AoS is doing. Building a show that can stand alone that also fits within a greater whole.
Choppasmith
Member
Speak for yourself, man.
Duane Cunningham
Member
It seems like he's talking about episodes yet to air, mostly. Who knows? Maybe they ARE good. The last couple are a promising start.
I'd be on board for a 13 episode miniseries maybe. Not a full multi-season show. You'd inevitably run into issues trying to keep it all canon.
Funky Papa
FUNK-Y-PPA-4
I get the impression that Marvel doesn't want to bring any characters to the show that could be used in the movies. This basically leaves a worthless galeria of baddies and some supporting characters such as Maria Hill, played by a TV actress that commands a manageable salary. It's a pretty dire situation. Marvel's One Shot films show that such show is still possible, but that would require more talent and creativity that anything we've seen in AoS so far.
This is a good idea.
Lone_Prodigy
Member
Are these on YouTube?
Funky Papa
FUNK-Y-PPA-4
I don't think so. Those were included in the Blu-rays.
Edit: Lizzy Caplan was so damn hot in Item 47. And there's some potential there for new, fun stuff related to AoS if they want to push that angle.
BlackNMild2k1
Member
You can find them all with a quick google search.
I have links to them all (from few months ago) that i would share, but im on a tablet and cant confirm that they still work at the moment.
Item 47 (not sure if this is all there is, or if there's a longer version somewhere).
Agent Carter
The Consultant
But why shouldn't the show have more one off, procedural episodes to help establish the world, and then, perhaps during second season, start stringing a continuous plot thread throughout?
When I think of some of my favorite shows, like The X-Files and Almost Human, the first season was front-loaded with one off, procedural episodes that established the main characters and their personalities, and built up the world the series was set in. Agents of Shield is 12 episodes in, and they've still failed to create a real identity for the series: What is this show about, and why should I care?
The cast is incredibly unlikable, with Coulson and May being the most interesting. The rest are eye-rollingly underdeveloped, and worse, unlikable. Skye has gotten better once they toned down the "I'm a Joss Whedon heroine!" forced snark and pop culture references, but we're 12 episodes in, and I feel absolutely nothing for the characters. J August Richards is one of the other interesting people on the show, and he's only in three or four episodes. Fitz and Simmons are so, so bland and boring, and, in my opinion, unnecessary characters. Ward is your typical all American hero agent, and he's boring.
When you have a cast of characters that the writers have yet to really find a voice for, you really should go all out in making your world and universe as interesting and compelling as possible. Considering that the writers of Agents of Shield have the Marvel fucking universe already at their disposal, you'd think that'd be a cinch to have a detailed, layered world where stories just burst from. We know that the movies will attempt to handle the larger, more well known storylines, but come on, Marvel has over 60+ years of history, with countless characters and tales to pull from, and with the Marvel Cinematic Universe only covering a small portion, AoS was a perfect way to expand the universe in the way a 2 hour movie can't, and more than likely won't, no matter how many feature films they produce with The Avengers, or Iron Man, or Ant Man, or Spider-Woman, or Ms. Marvel, etc, etc.
Yes, comic fans will be hyped to see a comic character show up on AoS, but that doesn't mean that noobs will feel excluded. After all, as far as the MCU goes, this is the first appearance of these characters, and so it doesn't matter. The non-fans will be familiar with this guys exactly because they showed up in Shield.
As for the other shows, like Luke Cage and Iron Fist, and Daredevil, and Jessica Jone's shows growing the universe also, there's nothing wrong with, in a connected universe, to have characters and elements introduced in Shield carry over to those shows.
Spike and Cordelia didn't first appear in Angel, and yet, as a noob who had never watched a single episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but got my first introduction to that universe through Angel, I didn't feel lost or confused by these characters that had history and depth.
If anything, shows like Luke Cage and Daredevil will benefit from having some characters from Shield cross over into their shows, especially during the first season. Hell, Marvel comics themselves do it all of the time, what with storylines and characters starting in one book, and crossing over into another, and concluding in yet another.
AoS was Marvel's big push into live action television, and in my opinion, they've botched it horribly.
Hell, not even Smallville, as terrible as the first season was, fumbled as hard. At least Smallville felt like a comic book television show. I'm not the biggest fan of Arrow, but I think they handled the introduction of spoilering, just in case some folks haven't watched all of Season 2,
Barry Allen
AoS is just a poorly executed superhero show. All of us were excited and wanted to like it, but 12 episodes in? That's nearly 12 hours of television. I don't think many of us would be as forgiving if a movie failed to excite and interest us in a 2 hour run time, and making films that do exactly that is incredibly hard because of that time frame. Shield has had 12. 12 mini movies to make us fall in love with the world and characters. And they haven't done a great job of it.
I haven't completely written the show off, but if it doesn't turn around in the next 12 episodes, I'm done with it.
Father_Brain
Banned
Characters don't need to be introduced in origin stories, and while I certainly don't advocate "tossing in characters left and right," I've been saying since the first couple episodes that the series can surely find a better balance than it has thus far.
Given that this show is about a team of spies traveling all over the world to investigate strange phenomena, I think you have a pretty limited imagination for what would constitute world-building in the context of this series.
But, and this is a much bigger issue than the above, SHIELD hasn't actually done a good job of standing on its own at all (outside a handful of the better episodes like 6, 7, and 12). The original characters are a mixed bag at best, and as far as plotting is concerned, it's regularly featured dull, unexciting villain-of-the-week plots that it expects us to care about because the writers tie them, however loosely, to buzzwords like "Extremis," "Chitauri," or "Asgardian," or namedrop Avengers periodically.
The Coulson mystery subplot is also a pretty huge offender in that regard. Not only has it advanced minimally since the pilot, but the writers assumed so much audience investment in it that it took them ten episodes to establish that anything was at stake for anyone besides Coulson himself, and even now, it's still not quite clear what.
Jest Chillin
Member
I'm going to try to reply to this without going point by point in an equally long post. AoS is not a superhero show. It's a show about a team of non-super agents of a clandestine organization dealing with a world in transition. There was never a plan to be littered with supers and within the context of the MCU, it wouldn't make sense for the world to be littered with them yet. Not liking certain characters is purely subjective and not the result of bad writing or execution. Especially with some of those examples you used (people will fight you over Simmons in this thread lol).
TV shows and movies are different. They can not be compared the myriad of ways you're trying to compare them. Budgeting, how they profit, what is considered appropriate running time for a single story, etc.. are all very different between Movies and TV. With the way that US TV is currently made, it takes time to flesh out characters and move plotlines along. Even the TV shows you used as examples (Buffy/Angel, Arrow) took time to develop and introduce characters. Buffy and Angel weren't connected nearly as closely as what Marvel claims they're trying to do with their Marvel TV stuff and Arrow doesn't look likely to be quite that connected either, but well see. The majority of your post though, seems to me like another case of you expecting SHIELD to be a certain kind of show when it was never intended to be that.
They really do have to be introduced in origin stories of some type. Not necessarily the Comic definition of Origin in terms of literally created within an episode of the show. But who they are and what they do needs to be explained at the very least in dialogue form. That eats up a lot of time in an episode and you can see how that can get out of hand when it's happening in every episode. For the 12 or 13 episodes there have been in SHIELD thusfar we've seen quite a few characters. Some new, some established, most of them recurring (they can't all be regulars). It seems like people just didn't have the patience to wait and see that these characters are recurring.
Trust that my imagination isn't limited, I simply gave an example of how the show would be if it were more closely aligned with the oft used suggestion of being even more closely intertwined with the movies. The characters are developing slowly, yes. But I don't have a problem with that in the least. They're brand new characters thrown together as a brand new team within the show. Why would I expect them to start revealing their pasts and motivations to people who are pretty much strangers, so quickly? Bonds need to form first and that happens through shared experiences. Like those adventures you say are boring. Personally, I didn't find them boring. They're definitely safe (for the most part) and that probably has to do with an 8pm timeslot and the goal of being a family show but boring is a bit of a stretch imo. That's ok though because I like the show. Also, it's really wierd that people are actually criticizing the show for using names and terminology that exists within the Universe. Like mindblowingly wierd. In comparison, Arrows in-Universe mentions of Central City were literally nothing but overheard news blurbs that had nothing to do with the episodes and no one complained about that at all.
As for the pace of the Tahiti mystery.. different strokes I guess? I can understand why you and others feel that it's been moving too slow and the writers could've certainly sped up that plotline. It's just something that never bothered me. But I also enjoyed Dollhouse and Firefly which also went with very adventure of the week episodes early with the intent of slow burning the bigger plot arcs. I enjoy that just as much as I do a faster paced plot movement. I don't need the show to feel big and bombastic every moment. I don't need the show to show major arc progression every ep or even every other ep. I enjoy watching the characters interact and I enjoy watching them solve the minor problems just as well. /shrug.
Father_Brain
Banned
How and why do canon Marvel characters demand more dialogue to introduce them than original characters like Akela from E4 or the stalker teleporter guy from E9?
A lot of this is agree-to-disagree territory, clearly, but that's not what I'm criticizing at all. It's that the writers are using those names/terminology in a way that feels like they see it as a shortcut to getting the audience invested in the story, which Arrow has almost never done based on what I've watched thus far.
The last episode advanced the Skye storyline more than the Coulson storyline has been advanced since the pilot. I'll leave it at that.
Jest Chillin
Member
They don't, unless they have powers, in which case the powers and motivations need to be explained. When those aren't explained you end up with characters like The Clairvoyant, which people are saying they don't care about because they don't have enough information.
Yeah, I think that's prime agree to disagree stuff right there. In SHIELD it's used as in-world pop references or in direct reference to an event or thing. In Arrow, the overheard news stories about Central City have nothing to do with plot and are simply there to introduce the viewers to the fact that there IS a Central City.
They even red herring'd the super collider in those stories as a false forshadowing.
I don't know about that really. Both stories had major reveals and both still have mysteries surrounding them. For Skye, we still don't know what her powers are, who her parents actually were (and by extension; if that matters), or who was after her and thus responsible for her parents death. For Coulson we don't know why he was revived, the specifics of how he was revived or why exactly The Clairevoyant wanted to know about the revival. But we at least know that The Clairevoyant is the one after that information. They're both sitting pretty equally though there is more focus on Coulson's remaining mysteries at the moment.
Rafa=FedKilla
Banned
Too bad for the Amadeus Cho embargo, he would
be great for Simmons to interact with.
be great for Simmons to interact with.
BlackNMild2k1
Member
Why is there an embargo? Upcoming use in a movie or different TV show?
I'm not sure if you need to spoiler past episodes but I'll do it anyway, also spoilers for a character in a upcoming episode
Were they implying Sky is an alien, and with Sif popping up soon, could she be an Asgardian? Or am I reading too much into it?
BlackNMild2k1
Member
No one is 100% sure, but popular speculation is that Skye is actually Jessica Drew aka Spider-woman. But your guess is as good as anyone else's at this point.
What's this speculation based on?
BlackNMild2k1
Member
Mysterious past, previously worked for HYDRA and then for SHIELD
and mysteriously disappeared parents.
Super powers.
There are some passing similarities to the marvel.wiki on her
http://marvel.wikia.com/Jessica_Drew_(Earth-616)
which led someone else to speculate that the Clairvoyant may actually be The High Evolutionary, who has a history with Jessica Drew in the comics and the power of clairvoyance (among other things).
Choppasmith
Member
What embargo? There's nothing holding him back as far as I know.
Rafa=FedKilla
Banned
I just joking brah, since veryonemis talking about wanting characters and concepts but Shield isn't using any. It's like the famed Bat embargo. O grab me.
Duane Cunningham
Member
Some of them are (The Consultant and A Funny Thing Happened Road to Thor's Hammer) also you can try Daylimotion, i myself uploaded Agent Carter to the later.
The Outsider
Member
So I went to my DVR yesterday and was about to watch the episode from this week. But then I realized there was no new episode and was kinda dissapointed. I think that's a sign that the show is getting better.
Funky Papa
FUNK-Y-PPA-4
The amazing thing about those shorts is that they show that Clark Gregg is a competent actor who can pull dry sarcasm, drama and comedy with sufficient aplomb. Yet his work in AoS is simply subpar. Coulson is boring, dry and monotone, which is pretty much the contrary of the Coulson we know from Marvel's One Shots.
This show needs some decent directors to make the most of the actors along with a new writing room.
Extra Sauce
Member
Even better, cancel the goddamn thing and pretend like it never happened.
Then, try again to do a good Marvel show.
Funky Papa
FUNK-Y-PPA-4
Mean. I can still see some potential in this show. I just hope they find the right people to head the second season, given that the current team still has their heads well inside their collective rectum.
Cornballer
Member
News is that
is coming to the series Feb 4th.
There should be a clip out soon.
Deathlok
There should be a clip out soon.
Funky Papa
FUNK-Y-PPA-4
I imagine they'll use that crippled centipede experiment turned SHIELD agent as the basis for Deathlok.
Because people overvalue "experience."
Orbis Tabula
Member
It's gotta be Mike Peterson.
Jeph Loeb has naked pictures of god.
I like the show as it is.
I don't need endless tie-ins to the Marvel Universe. And I don't need the show's characters to be revealed as other characters. Especially if they're going to be scraping the barrel with the High Evolutionary, Spider-Woman, etc.
The show works because of its team dynamic, not because X is making a guest appearance as Obscure Marvel Character Y.
I don't need endless tie-ins to the Marvel Universe. And I don't need the show's characters to be revealed as other characters. Especially if they're going to be scraping the barrel with the High Evolutionary, Spider-Woman, etc.
The show works because of its team dynamic, not because X is making a guest appearance as Obscure Marvel Character Y.
Spectromixer
Member
So I haven't watched since episode four or five. But now that
is going to be introduced I'm curious, have they had any other Marvel characters on the show other than Graviton's origins?
Deathlok
Victoria Hand. I think that's about it?
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