Captain America vs. Agents of SHIELD.

I love the new trailer for Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but I get the distinct impression that it's going to kick Agents of SHIELD in the balls. Without going into too much detail, AoS is suffering from a bizarre problem of portraying SHIELD agents as "the good guys" while having them do objectively terrible stuff like wiretapping, kidnapping and shooting civilians, and dumping American prisoners overseas with no money or ID. In most episodes so far, the antagonists have seemed more sympathetic (from a real-world standpoint) than the ostensibly likeable heroes, which is actually more confusing than the way SHIELD was depicted in The Avengers: ie, as an ethically ambiguous government agency, run by a decidedly shady individual. CA:TWS seems to be going the Avengers route with regards to SHIELD and Nick Fury, which is seriously going to screw with AoS's weirdly happy-go-lucky attitude towards acting like assholes in the name of homeland security.
This trailer is really promising on so many levels. Captain America has one of the few origin stories that I actually enjoy on its own merits, unlike Batman, Superman and Spider-Man, whose origin stories are all very overplayed. Cap appeals to me as a hero for the oppressed and downtrodden, in a way that I don't think is really covered by the other classic superheroes. A lot of his power is tied up in marketing and patriotism, which has the potential to be very subversive because he looks like this all-American cheerleader dude but Steve Rogers' own principles are a lot more liberal/socialist/anti-establishment than you might expect. There's a reason why there's a whole subgenre of fanfic dedicated to Steve Rogers in the 21st century, making public media statements in favour of LGBT rights and feminism, you know? So I'm really psyched to any possible hints of this in the trailer, including Cap walking past a giant banner of his own face. WHAT WAS THE PUBLIC REACTION TO AN AMERICAN ICON RETURNING FROM THE DEAD?

I didn't actually think much of Captain America as a film in itself. It's a great origin story and I loved the casting, but the central supervillain story is pretty dull, and the final third of the film is weak as a result. Overall I don't really rate it as highly as Iron Man or Thor, which is odd because I do love the concept. Which I guess is why I'm more prone to reading Captain America fic than Iron Man. The Iron Man movies basically give me what I want to see in Tony Stark's story, but what I wanted from a Captain America movie was way more focus on his pre-serum life in 1930s Brooklyn, his relationship with Bucky and the Howling Commandos, and the way he tackles becoming a public figure. For me, the most exciting moment in this trailer is when someone tells Cap that he "shaped this century". That line has a real ring of epic superheroism to it, in a way that the first Captain America movie never really managed.
The other main thing I'm looking forward to is the way this movie links to the aftermath of The Avengers. Iron Man 3 did this to a certain extent, but it was definitely focusing inwards on Tony Stark's own problems, whereas this movie is an ensemble cast featuring Black Widow and Nick Fury in fairly prominent roles. Also Falcon, who I am looking forward to SO MUCH, oh my god. Falcon!! I was surprised to realise that after watching this trailer, I was actually more excited by the appearance of Falcon than the hints of the Bucky/Cap storyline? I don't even know why. I guess Anthony Mackie is just that charming.

Some more deep & meaningful thoughts

• This movie may as well be called Captain America: Blue Steel. Chris Evans' face is so ridiculously sculpted and pouty, what the hell. PLUS: snazzy new modern haircut. CAPTAIN AMERICA IS A SUPERMODEL. Or an action figure. A perfectly sculpted action figure with frosted tips and an unrealistically exaggerated waist-to-shoulder ratio.
• Actually, maybe a better title would be Captain America: Red, White and Blue Steel. But whatevs.
• I'm quite impressed by the way this trailer told us ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about the actual plot, and yet still managed to be really intriguing and exciting? 
• TWO helicarriers? Steady on.
• God, I hope there's a A LOT of sassy, bitchy Cap in this movie. People keep thinking he's stolid because he's so moral and heroic, but Cap dialogue can totally be deadpan and hilarious.
• Cap and Black Widow are bros. This is giving me life.
• I'm not wild about Black Widow's straight hair but this doesn't matter at all because Black Widow is amazing and deserves twelve of her own movies, stat.
• Speaking of Black Widow, is Scarlett Johannson the only woman in this movie? IN THE WORLD? I counted 973 men in this trailer but only one gurl. Step it up, Marvel. 
• There's gonna be a scene where Steve tragically draws pictures of all his dead friends, right? Right?

PREVIOUSLY: If there's no such thing as a Captain America venereal disease PSA, I'm gonna be so disappointed.

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Only Lovers Left Alive: The one movie you MUST see next year.

Note: There are no plot spoilers in this post! I was going to hold off until the movie was on general release, but apparently that's not until Spring 2014 and I just couldn't wait.

I can't overemphasise how much I loved this movie. For sheer entertainment value it's tied with Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing for my favourite film of 2013, but it wins out in terms of sheer oddness and originality. The premise is already brilliant (Tilda Swinton! And Tom Hiddleston! As a pair of immortal vampire lovers!) but the plethora of promotional clips and images can't prepare you for what the film is actually like. Most notably, the fact that OLLA is genuinely -- and intentionally -- hilarious. I was lucky enough to see it at the BFI Festival in London this weekend, and the entire audience was laughing all the way through, often loud enough to drown out some of the dialogue. It's a delightful, sly kind of humour. Not remotely based on the kind of horror movie homage jokes you might expect from a movie that falls into the genre of "vampire romance".

Eve (Tilda Swinton) and Adam (Tom Hiddleston) in Tangier.

OLLA avoids almost all cinema tropes associated with vampires, which is pretty impressive when you consider that people have been making vampire movies since the birth of cinema. Obviously the film retains some essential aspects -- blood-drinking, avoidance of sunlight -- but they're treated quite casually. There's also a noticeable absence of the kind of sexual/romantic vampirism tropes we're used to seeing, with the main vampire characters acting less like voracious, eternally youthful predators, and more like lethargic intellectual shut-ins. The focus is on Adam and Eve's relationship, and how their lives are shaped by immortality.

At one point Eve's little sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska) tells Adam and Eve that they're snobs: an accurate but not necessarily insulting summation. Eve is constantly surrounded by books, and her best friend is Christopher Marlowe -- another vampire, heralded by multiple Shakespeare jokes because director Jim Jarmusch is a Marlowe conspiracy theorist in real life. When you're several centuries old, you can't really avoid becoming an intellectual elitist, with our immortal vampire protagonists becoming understandably condescending towards humanity. While the word "vampire" is never actually uttered onscreen, Adam refers to humans as "zombies", depressed by the repetitive nature of their stupidity and destructiveness. But despite all the ageless hipsterism, it's Adam and Eve's mutual love of knowledge and new experiences that keeps them going. This may be an undead romance that takes place entirely at night, but it's still a very warm and affectionate film. As Eve explains to her husband when he's feeling low, "Life is about appreciating nature, surviving things, nurturing friendship, kindness, and dancing."

Of course Only Lovers Left Alive is a romance: it's right there in the title. I just wish there were more love stories like this in mainstream cinema. I love romance, but most "romantic" movies either weigh me down with dismally stereotyped gender roles, or are way too serious and depressing. Both problems caused by the genre being seen as girly and frivolous, unless it's couched in hours of agony, betrayal, and deceit. OLLA is a story about two people who find each other endlessly charming and appealing, which is a bizarrely rare occurrence in romantic movies. Most of the time, love stories are told from the beginning, or during a time of upheaval and strife. But with Adam and Eve, we're just getting a glimpse into the middle of an incredibly longstanding and complex relationship that could potentially last forever.
In that way, it may be the most romantic movie I've ever seen. Both characters have this immense fascination with each other, but it's completely relaxed and balanced, each accepting the other's faults. Not to mention the comforting physicality between the actors, who spend most of the movie draped all over each other. They have chemistry in a way that's oddly difficult to describe, because it's so rare to see a movie where the central romantic couple just lie around on top of each other all the time without it turning into a sex scene. When I first saw the above image of Swinton and Hiddleston together I assumed it was a one-off, but in fact every one of their scenes is like that -- and somehow, it never becomes saccharine or awkward.

Adam
Apparently Jim Jarmusch sold this role to Tom Hiddleston as "Hamlet, as played by Syd Barrett", which I find pretty hilarious because that description is Tom Hiddleston catnip. The character is perfect for him: the ideal comedy role for an actor who's known for Shakespearean angst and tortured antiheroes. And yes, he's very funny. Both Eve and the film itself have this wonderfully affectionate yet mocking attitude towards his depressive, angsty nature. It's not exactly a parody of sad goth moping, but it's not far off. He is truly suicidal, and it's presented as a serious aspect of his character, but it's offset by the fact that he's the archetypal misanthropic artist. Lurking in a house full of antique musical instruments, he accidentally spurs on his own cult-like fanbase of music nerds by refusing to have any contact with the outside world.
It's a long time since I was in a fully fledged vampire phase, but I still retain a real love of gothic media. And believe me, this movie is as goth as they come. Adam lives in a deserted house on the outskirts of bombed-out Detroit, wears nothing but black, and languishes in a permanent state of emo sulk. He's a beautiful study of the reclusive artistic genius, his human hanger-on Ian (Anton Yelchin) constantly in awe of his effortless cool -- which is mostly generated by his impenetrably self-absorbed, depressive nature, and love of wearing dark glasses at night. There's a scene where he plays Paganini's Caprice No. 5 on violin, while wearing an antique velvet dressing gown. Good luck finding anything more beautifully gothic than that.

Eve
There are some famous actors who only ever play parts who look like themselves. The worst examples I can think of are Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, who both suffer from a combination of the Tim Burton Curse and having very eccentric dress sense in real life. Helena Bonham Carter's costumes in Les Miserables and The Lone Ranger are virtually identical to her clothes in real life, making it too difficult to differentiate between the actor and the character she's playing. And to a certain extent, Tilda Swinton does sometimes fall into that category. The difference is that she's a good enough actor to carry it off, even if there have been occasions when she dressed like Jadis the White Witch in real life. Her red carpet fashion choices may sometimes look like movie costumes, but that doesn't mean for a second that you don't wholly believe in her performance.
Eve's costumes were simultaneously Swintonesque and perfect for her onscreen character. Swinton likes to wear a lot of draped, tailored robes and suits, with an emphasis on fabric choices and very little reference to current fashion trends -- ie, very similar to Eve in terms of superficial appearance. Eve's clothes reflected her way of combining the timeless (embroidered robes) with the modern (pale suede skinny jeans), which contrasted with Adam's uniform of black jeans/black t-shirt, which he may well have been wearing for the past forty years. Their respective costume choices seemed to play around with the two characters' relationship with time, since Adam is (unintentionally) far more concerned with present-day events, while Eve sort of skates past without getting truly invested.
Eve's character may have superficial connections with the 21st century in the form of an iPhone and a modern-looking jacket, but being played by Tilda Swinton helps a great deal when it comes to seeming ageless and otherworldly. I also noticed that she looked a lot more contemporary in scenes when she'd be seen by humans, such as traveling on the plane (as a posh-looking middle-aged lady), or hanging out at a nightclub (where she and Adam wore their matching sunglaasses and leather gloves). Otherwise, she wears robes or gowns, unable to pin down to any fixed location or time period. Adam, on the other hand, is tied down by a huge collection of material possessions, obsessed with antique musical instruments and wearing clothes that immediately characterise him as a rock musician -- even if that's the one thing he doesn't want to be.

Aside from Adam and Eve, the rest of the costuming is minimal because the rest of the cast is minimal. Mia Wasikowska's character wears a girly babydoll dress that immediately sets her apart from the mature appearance of her sister Eve, while Anton Yelchin is a typical slouchy rocker dude, with a drawling voice to match. At one point John Hurt's Christopher Marlowe was supposedly wearing a 500-year-old waistcoat, but my favourite detail for his character was his crutches, which I believe (?) was a reference to the real Christopher Marlowe having a lame or broken leg.
If there's any justice in the world, Only Lovers Left Alive will end up with a serious cult following. Not only does it manage the near-impossible feat of being a fresh take on the vampire genre, but the worldbuilding is deliciously deep and rich compared to most movies aimed at a horror/fantasy audience. It really makes me wish that more so-called art filmmakers were willing to work with "genre" fiction rather than rejecting it as populist nonsense. Despite being a movie about culture snobs, OLLA disproves one of the favourite myths of current pop culture snobbery: that "paranormal romance" is purely the realm of shallow and frivolous storytelling. It's a complex and beautiful love story, blood-drinking and all.

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Agents of SHIELD: Eye Spy.

Previously on Agents of SHIELD: The Asset.

This week's episode didn't really have enough... content... to deserve a full review. So! Have some bullet points.

• Clark Gregg really was performing at maximum Cute Dad status in this one, wasn't he?
• I can't tell if Skye's incredibly awkward ~emotional bonding~ dialogue is just bad writing, or if she's purposefully trying to get on Coulson's good side in order to better infiltrate SHIELD. Either way, this show still appears to think that it's OK for characters to literally narrate their character development directly to the audience??
• If Skye is trying to infiltrate SHIELD by getting all friendly with Coulson, I assume that Coulson will see through it. Then, in the finale, there'll be a revelation scene where he's all, "I'm disappointed in you, Skye," and then she'll decide to side with SHIELD after all. Coulson always plays the long game.
• Agent Ward was marginally less dull than usual. Partly because the glasses gave him a distinguishing feature so he could avoid looking like a walking mannequin.

• I read some interview with the actor who plays Ward, where he said he'd been given advice by Nathan Fillion on how to navigate being a central actor in a Whedonverse TV show. As in, how to tackle being passionately loved by thousands of superfans. But seriously: this guy is NOT Nathan Fillion, and AoS is only barely a Whedonverse show. It's Whedon-adjacent, at best. And Agent Ward is the kind of square-jawed personality vaccuum that would only show up in shows like Buffy or Firefly so the main characters could make fun of them.
  
• When Ward was tying to talk about girls with the security guard guy, I think it would've been pretty funny if the guard had just looked at him, completely stone-faced, and said, "No, I'm gay." That's a good gay joke, not, "Haha, the straight guy has to ~seduce a man." It would've turned the tables on Skye's comment about the guard being straight because he looked like a slob -- particularly since Ward is the most clean-shaven and in-shape guy ever, and is almost certainly straight himself.

• Was anyone else really disappointed when the weird mask dudes turned out to just be transporting diamonds? Particularly since the crowds didn't seem to be reacting to them NEARLY as much as they should've been. Honestly, I thought the first couple of minutes of this episode were VERY Doctor Who, including the music. The revelation that it was all about diamonds made the whole thing seem totally banal, after that. Particularly since having a crowd of guys in masks walk through a major public thoroughfare is a completely stupid way of keeping your diamonds safe.
• That being said, I think the secret eyeball spy people are the first genuinely interesting antagonist we've had so far.
• Did anyone keep their eyes open during the eye surgery scene? Anyone? Anyone? 

Do they all go to the same SHIELD hairstylist, or what? They look like triplets.

• THANK GOD Melinda May finally got something to do in this episode. I could've done with more interactions between her and Akela, though. Obviously. I'd like to imagine that Akela will be back in later episodes, but TBH that seems pretty unlikely.
• Are they spending all the budget on location shoots, or what??
• I really hope they go a little further with the whole FitzSimmons business. Have you noticed that Coulson actually refers to them in the singular, as if FitzSimmons is one entity rather than a nickname given to two people? SHARED CONSCIOUSNESS, PLEASE.

This episode was reasonably entertaining overall, but the dialogue is still weak, and the worldbuilding/character backstory is still nonexistent. NOT WEIRD ENOUGH. NOT INTERESTING ENOUGH. More detail, for the love of god.

The pitch for Agents of SHIELD was a show about the ordinary background humans of the Marvel movie universe. The normal folks like Coulson, who get the job done, but don't get much credit or media attention. The general expectation was that we were getting a slice-of-life show, but in a slightly weirder world than our own. Instead, Coulson's team are (STILL) a collection of overly simplistic cliche characters, who we barely ever see doing anything more "normal" than eating a snack and playing poker on their zillion-dollar secret airplane. The scientists have multiple PhDs before the age of 25! There's a cute young hacker! Both the agents are stoic and badass! Please. Rather than going for the personal angle, AoS is relying on single-episode storylines that just aren't smart enough to measure up to shows like Torchwood, The Middleman, or even the X-Files. To put it bluntly: it's bland.

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The Fifth Estate: Don't. Just, don't.

It often feels kinda cheap to ~review a movie just to tear it apart, but OH MY GOD The Fifth Estate was so terrible that I need to do this for catharsis purposes. And also to warn you that unless you're a die-hard Cumberbatch fan, you need to avoid this movie like the plague. Even the graphics over the intro credits were bizarrely cheesy -- ironically enough, since there's actually a scene in the movie where Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Bruhl, doing his best with some bad material) makes fun of Julian Assange for using shitty graphics during an early Wikileaks presentation. The overall tone was that of an early-2000s TV movie with an inexplicably high budget for casting world-famous actors in meaningless supporting roles.
To give you an idea of what you're in for if you do masochistically decide to watch this movie: it includes an actual scene where ~hacker code~ is projected across Benedict Cumberbatch's face while he types. JUST LIKE A CYBERPUNK MOVIE FROM 15 YEARS AGO. For real. If you were to ask me, What's the worst possible cliche you could include in a supposedly-serious movie about hackers? I'd answer immediately: code being projected across someone's face while they type. For those of you who have managed to miss out on this classic ~cyber~ movie detail, it was used during the hacking scene in Jurassic Park. Which came out in 1993. Not only this, but there's also at least one scene where Assange and Daniel Berg communicate via chat, while on opposite sides of the same table, and you see the chat scrolling across the screen and spoken in a voiceover at the same time. Needless to say, the chat is full of perfect grammar and punctuation, which as we all know is exactly how people communicate on the internet.

I'm not going to go into whether Benedict Cumberbatch managed a "realistic" portrayal of Julian Assange, because I generally think that there's more to biopic acting than just doing a super-accurate impersonation. Let's just say that Cumberbatch's performance was one of the only good aspects of the movie, and that the interpretation of Assange as an egotistical liar felt pretty accurate. It was the other characters that were the problem.

Most decent biopics fall into one of two categories: entertainingly fictionalised, or slavishly well-researched. The Fifth Estate had the potential to be a political thriller or a serious character study of Julian Assange, but it fell somewhere in between and ended up being neither. The dialogue was cheesy as hell, but the events themselves seemed relatively accurate, along with pointless but noticeable details like Assange's clothes and Domscheit-Berg's laptop. The worst result of this clash between ~realism and entertainment was the enormous cast of accomplished character-actors, who were all disastrously underutilised. You ended up sitting through a seemingly never-ending stream of "hey it's that guy!" scenes, but instead of seeing any actual characterisation or drama, it would just be Anthony Mackie and Peter Capaldi and David Thewlis reciting godawful TV-movie dialogue to each other yet again. There is literally a scene where Stanley Tucci and Laura Linney (both US government officials) have this painfully embarrassing exchange:

Laura Linney: These computer geeks are more dangerous than we ever could have predicted, Jim.

Stanley Tucci: Welcome to the revolution!

Yes, they really did use the phrase "computer geeks". 

Worse still is the depiction of women. I don't have any particular problem with fictionalising real people to make a biopic more interesting, which is just as well because The Fifth Estate was clearly fictionalising a lot. There is no way those characters could be that boring and cliched in real life. Unfortunately, the filmmakers were fictionalising for all the wrong reasons, particularly when it came to female characters. Laura Linney was OK, but every other woman in the film was like some godawful 1950s stereotype, from nagging girlfriends to background secretaries to worried to mothers to the gaggles of interchangeable one-line Assange groupies. Meanwhile, there were about a million scenes where groups of white men stood around exchanging portentious dialogue about Hacking or whatevs. Noooope.
Daniel Berg's girlfriend ended up with the worst depiction of all, reduced to a friendly office girl who (inexplicably) falls for him and then spends the rest of the movie either lying in bed waiting for a sex scene, or nagging him about how dinner's getting cold. Literally nagging him about how dinner is getting cold. If you google this woman IRL, her Twitter bio reads: "Open Government, freedom + transparency activist, chairwoman Pirate Party Brandenburg, Eastern Germany-socialized feminist." I know Julian Assange had a hissy-fit about this movie being a hatchet job, but TBH I think this woman has way more to complain about.
For the rest of the agony, I'm just gonna give you a bullet-point list. This movie includes such a rich and diverse array of shittiness that I can't face going into any more detail.

• At least 70% of the dialogue was expository.
• ... including multiple scenes where characters read newspaper articles or websites out loud to each other.
• Seemingly unintentional allusions to dated cyberpunk movie tropes, ie secreal scenes in a Berlin squatter club full of punks and hippies, prseumably to give the illusion that hackers are, like, so cool, man.
• Were they trying to make the "hacker conference" scenes look cool? Or were they making fun of hacker conferences for trying to look cool? I genuinely could not tell. 
• Constant jump-cuts to new locations, with the city name scrawled across the screen in vaguely ~computery~ typeface.
•  The only excuse for this many montages is if you're including a teen-movie-style makeover scene. Unfortunately, that never happened.
• A scene where Cumberbatch was forced to deliver dialogue that sounded exactly like something from Sherlock. ie, "What must it be like to think like these boring, pedestrian idiots?" etc. One of the many, many times we started laughing out loud in the cinema. TERRIBLE.
• They completely failed to point out the irony of Assange's obsession with covering up his personal life/the inner workings of Wikileaks. Considering the fact that the movie was colossally unsubtle in every other area, I'm gonna go ahead and assume that they just... didn't bother with this really obvious angle??
• Noticeably terrible cinematography that coincidentally means you can't drink to dull the pain of the rest of the movie, because you'll just end up nauseated.

At its most basic level, The Fifth Estate failed to be entertaining and failed to be anything remotely resembling a thoughtful portrayal of a very complex story. Despite the fact that there were at least ten scenes where characters literally stood around explaining what was going on, it was as if the movie expected us to know everything already. Which isn't too unreasonable, because most people going to a Wikileaks movie probably know the vague outline of the narrative already. But it sure as hell made for some boring viewing.
P.S. In the interests of balance, there was one non-terrible aspect to this film: Alexander Siddig. The only character I actually cared about, partly because he was played by Alexander Siddig and partly because his story was more human than anyone else's. If The Fifth Estate had included more scenes where Laura Linney helped Alexander Siddig flee across the Egyptian border and fewer scenes where people stood around explaining what Wikileaks was, then it would've been significantly less unbearable to watch.

P.P.S. I expect this movie was meant to be thought-provoking, but the main question I find myself asking is: Does Julian Assange really dye his hair?

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Costume design TED Talk: From Clothing to Character. (Plus some notes on Sleepy Hollow.)

I thought some of you guys might be into this: A TED Talk about costume design! Kristin Burke is a pro costume designer and has a lot to say about the way costumes influence our perceptions of characters onscreen. Which, as you probably know, is my #1 favourite topic. It's an interesting talk, and the YouTube comments are still at the stage where no one is having a flamewar about Hitler, and someone has actually asked a pretty sensible question, ie: "HOW DID SHE GET OUT OF THE TRUCK?" (... Now you have to watch the video to find out how she got into the truck.)



I actually found out about this video because I follow Kristin Burke on Twitter (@frocktalk), so I've also noticed that she designs the costumes for the Sleepy Hollow TV series. A job which seems to involve being very patient with the hundreds of people who are obsessed with whether or not Ichabod Crane (an 18th century time traveler, more or less) is ever going to change his clothes.
So many Sleepy Hollow fans are fixating on this detail that I've even had a few messages about it myself, despite the fact that I haven't even watched past the pilot episode. I'm afraid I'm not gonna start recapping Sleepy Hollow, but I will repost my thoughts on Ichabod Crane's costume:
Obviously I'm psyched that people are paying attention to the costumes in this show. But! I don't really think it's valid to criticise the showrunners/designers for having Ichabod wear the same outfit in every episode. Off the top of my head, here are just a few reasons why this is the case: 

1. People in the 18th century didn’t change clothes as much as people in the 21st century. Back home, he was probably used to wearing the same clothes for weeks on end, just washing undershirts every couple of days.
2. As soon as he starts wearing modern-day clothes, he’ll immediately start looking like a modern-day guy with a ponytail. The show needs to keep him in the 18th century costume for more than a couple of episodes, purely to remind the audience that he’s from the 18th century. It’s a visual cue.
3. Changing into 21st century clothes is likely to be an Important Moment in the show, because it’ll prove that he’s truly adapting to modern society. Most likely, they’ll ease him in with some old-fashioned-looking modern clothes.
4. Costume designers are not idiots. They almost certainly know way more about the historical period than the audience does. Part of their job is to do as much research as possible, and any changes to the ~accuracy~ of the costumes will be for practical reasons, such as characterisation, storytelling, or budget.

Sometimes, historical "accuracy" should be ignored in favour of making the end product as comprehensible and entertaining as possible.

See also: A fan's introduction to costume design.

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Agents of SHIELD: The Asset.

PREVIOUSLY: Agents of SHIELD, 0-8-4.

This episode was super important because it guest-starred our first Harry Potter crossover actor, future supervillain Professor Quirrell. Definitely a step up from last week, because the science maguffin was way more central to the overall plot. Last week's gamma bomb was kind of embarrassing because they made it out to be this catastrophically big deal, but in the end Fitz just used it to blow a six-foot hole in the side of the plane. Sure, "Gravitonium" is a silly name, but the whole Big Whirring Gadget/evil Tony Stark-alike idea is a classic sci-fi plot, and this show works best when it's playing around with familiar genre cliches. "The Asset" managed a decent balance between sci-fi ridiculousness, heist shenanigans, and character development. Way better than last week's decidedly transparent excuse to get the team to bond during their first mission.

The only problem with the underground bunker/pseudoscience schtick is that I end up comparing Agents of SHIELD to The Middleman... and AoS does not measure up. Which is kind of a bummer, because Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen are good writers, and AoS has the whole weight of Marvel behind it. Meanwhile, The Middleman had about a fraction of the audience, no well-known actors in the main cast, and was still snappier, funnier, and more consciously genre-savvy -- while still being goofy and child-friendly. I'm still enjoying AoS, but the backstory development and worldbuilding is disappointingly slow-paced and lacking in detail. Plus, they need to dial back Ward's screentime by about 90% and replace him with more Melinda May, for real.
Skye is becoming more and more likeable with each episode, mostly because they seem to be emphasising how young she is. The one thing I really DON'T want is for her and Ward to end up as a couple, particularly since he's now taking on a mentor role. Wouldn't it be great if Skye was just characterised as the immature teenager of the group, and Ward continued to be her mentor with no sexual tension whatsoever? Of course, it's possible that there's no romantic tension whatsoever, and I'm just reading into this because we're trained to expect ~romance between two characters like Skye and Ward. Sadly, I don't know if this show is smart enough to buck that trend. Unless they make some seriously shocking changes (ie, Ward turning out to be evil; Skye going full-on Rising Tide terrorist halfway through the season), any kind of Skye/Ward romance plotline will be a heteronormative yawnfest.

I was glad to see this episode focusing on one of my favourite topics: the unethical nature of SHIELD itself. It's just too bad that I can't tell which side the writers are trying to get us to support. In the Skye/Quinn scenes, they did the thing where the villain points out a bunch of completely true and accurate criticisms of the "good guys", but we're meant to discredit him because he's evil. A bit of ambiguity is a good thing, but it felt a lot like the scene went slightly too far and ended up characterising SHIELD as the bad guys.
If you look at the events surrounding Quinn, Dr Hall and the gravity device, SHIELD does not come out looking like a force for good. First of all, Dr Hall is functionally a prisoner when he's working for SHIELD: miserable, lonely, and transported around like dangerous cargo. Quinn is amoral and greedy, and frees Dr Hall for his own ends, but all Dr Hall wants is to do the right thing. He wants to destroy the gravity device, and save the world from further screw-ups -- from both Quinn and SHIELD. Dr Hall distrusts SHIELD so much that after years of working for them, he's willing to sacrifice his own life to avoid them getting their hands on dangerous technology.
Dr Hall aimed to sacrifice himself and Quinn's lackeys/shareholders in order to prevent more disastrous consequences. In turn, Coulson sacrificed Dr Hall in order to save his own team and everyone else in the building. The end result is that SHIELD now has another hugely dangerous secret weapon under its control, and has just helped create a new supervillain (even if they don't know abuot it yet). I'm not saying that SHIELD are 100% bad, or that they don't save people's lives... but they're doing some massively unethical stuff, and I don't think the show is working very hard at discussing this in an intelligen way. Plus, everything Quinn said about SHIELD targeting Skye's weaknesses is true. SHIELD is not the nice Big Brother: it's creepy as fuck.

Miscellaneous

• The agent that Coulson speaks to at the end of the episode was in The Avengers! Agent Tyler.
• But why, in a show where half the main castmembers are white men, are they airing episodes where all the main guest actors (Quinn; Dr Hall; the SHIELD agent trucker) are also white men?
• We're three episodes in, and Melinda May has still not really been given anything to do??
• More scenes where Coulson picks out suits, please.
• Agent Fitz eating popcorn! Luv FitzSimmons. LUV THEM.
• IDK about you guys, but I was totally fine with the line where Fitz suggests that Skye distracted Quinn with her boobs? I don't really feel like it devalued her, particularly since one of the main reasons she probably blended into the Malta party was because she's a hot girl, and hot girls are essentially invisible in a lot of situations because people assume they're just there for decorative purposes.
• Skye's hair and makeup are gorgeous, but I'd feel happier if we actually saw her working on them, rather than her just being another effortlessly gorgeous TV beauty queen.
• Ward has got to be one of the blandest characters I have ever seen. He's so bland I don't even dislike him as much as I did last week. I can't muster the energy. (Commentary from @queerly_it_is: "I can't decide if it's a sad accident or some kind of meta statement about white male hero characters." WORD.)
• Coulson continues to be the main highlight. The whole ~muscle memory~ thing was about 30 miles away from subtlety, but I don't really give ashit. Clark Gregg is awesome in this role, and right now his performance is saving the show from tipping over into sheer stupidity.
• I really enjoyed the opening scene. The trucker-guy agent gave us a fun look into the variety of jobs SHIELD has to offer.
• Let's watch Chloe Bennet's music video from when she was a minor pop star in China, and still went by Chloe Wang!

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Agents of SHIELD: 0-8-4.

Previously: Marvel's Agents of O.M.G.

Ah, the second episode. The one where the shine begins to wear off the frenetic energy of the pilot’s introductory scenes, and we must get down to the dirty work of establishing a believable character dynamic. The one where they spent all their budget on Samuel L. Jackson, so 90% of the story has to take place inside the plane. The one where Clark Gregg wears a really nice suit.

I already suspect that Coulson's superpower is removing skeeviness from situations that I'd ordinarily find stupid or gross. In this episode it was the old ~seductive latina~ thing, merged with the ever-popular "evil ex-girlfriend" trope. The only reason they got away with this is because it made sense within the narrative, and the Camilla Reyes/Agent Coulson interactions were just... really good, basically. The hot ex-girlfriend is a staple of episodic TV, because it's an easy way to introduce a single-use love interest without the hassle of building up a new relationship. If she's attacked to a manly hero dude, then she's usually there to reinforce his hetero cred and inject some romance into his character arc. If she's the ex-girlfriend of an unappealing or socially maladjusted male character, then she's a hilarious punchline.

The only show that springs to mind as being good at this is Starsky & Hutch, because it was the 1970s and everyone was dating like five people at once. Bizarrely, I get way fewer douchebag vibes from Starsky & Hutch than most mainstream cop/adventure shows airing in the 21st century.
I found it quite easy to buy into the fact that Coulson has a history with Camilla Reyes. Not because Clark Gregg is Dreamboat #1 and therefore prime Peruvian secret agent affair material, but because of the characterisation points I mentioned in last week's review. Phil Coulson's defining traits are all tied into his kindness and reliability. He is nice, sensible, and respectful. In other words, he's the ideal character for a casual ex-girlfriend storyline. He obviously doesn't have time for a relationship, he's pragmatic and mature enough to have short-term flings with no hard feelings afterwards, and when we get to the actual ex-girlfriend episode itself... Coulson's not gonna wind up looking like a douchebag.

The most noticeable thing in this episode was just how simple everything was. I'm getting the impression that Agents of SHIELD is aiming to be child-friendly, but unfortunately this is translating into the character exposition being kinda patronising. The main purpose of this episode was team-building, but they didn't need to have Coulson literally narrating his team's developing relationship when we could see it happening onscreen. Show, don't tell! Jeez. Avatar: The Last Airbender is suitable for eight-year-olds, and still contains some of the most sensitive and interesting characterisation I've seen on TV. If they can do it, so can SHIELD. Not to mention the fact that plenty of little kids watch Marvel movies like Iron Man and The Avengers, which are full of adult concepts and complex relationships between the main characters.

I'm really, really enjoying every appearance from Fitz and Simmons, but Ward is definitely still the weak link for me. Most of the team are still pretty two-dimensional, but that's OK. Coulson is good enough to keep the show ticking over until we get some more character development, and it's only episode 2. Unfortunately, dedicating this much screentime to Ward is not helping the situation. He's just another well-meaning white male soldier character in his late twenties, and he's really too banal to provide much of a foil to Skye's stick-it-to-the-man outsider attitude. I'd be more into Ward if he was gay, or explicitly very conservative/Republican/pro-surveillance (as a counterpoint to Skye's anti-government streak, and Coulson's benevolence), or even if he was just more of an asshole. But as it stands, I'm not watching SHIELD for another vaguely angsty young white male hero: we have the rest of the Marvel universe for that.

Aside from FitzSimmons (who I would happily see remain in their science-BFFs holding pattern ad infinitum), I'm most impressed by Skye. Not because I find her particularly likeable, but because her characterisation is by far the most solid in the team. Rather than being the outsider/audience-viewpoint character she was in the pilot episode, she now seems very... young. Which is kind of tricky to define, because TV tends to divide characters into either teenagers (Teen Wolf) or adults (Torchwood; X-Files) without much middle ground. And it's often very difficult to tell just how old the "adults" are meant to be, because any character between the age of 17 and 27 can potentially be played by a 25-year-old actor.

Even though Skye, Ward, and FitzSimmons all look about the same age, I think Skye is meant to be about 19 or 20. College-age, anyway. Whereas Ward is a military professional in his late 20s, FitzSimmons are both old enough to hold multiple PhDs, and May and Coulson are both around 50. Skye may be a brat, but she's brattish in a way that makes sense.
I loved the maguffinish nature of the maguffin. VERY X-Filesl. Nonspecific alien bomb threat! Gamma radiation! Science things! Who cares, as long as it all ends with everyone drinking Friendship Beer and watching a rocket launch. However, I did have a problem with the whole jock vs nerd schtick, which is the only thing I've seriously disliked about SHIELD so far. Maurissa Tancharoen and Jed Whedon are awesome, and I thought they were above writing well-trod cliches like an irritable jock character yelling "TELL IT TO ME IN REAL ENGLISH!" while a dorky scientist spouts technobabble and waves his arms around. There's a fine line between affectionate parody and just playing into old stereotypes, and somewhere in between the first two episodes, they crossed it. Here's hoping it's a one-off incident. 

Miscellaneous

• Sorry I didn't have much to say about Melinda May this week. I really like her, but right now I feel like we're still waiting for a May-centric episode? Mostly I'm just psyched to see a middle-aged female character onscreen. If they could move Ward into a background role and give May the rest of his screentime, that'd be great, thanks.
• LOVE the little cubby-hole beds on the plane.
• They had some pretty cool camerawork on the plane, just during the everyday walk-and-talk scenes. I think they're tilting or moving the camera somehow to give the illusion of movement, even though the plan is, you know... obviously a set.
• When Coulson told Skye to use a coaster, I was kind of hoping it would be a ~tech coaster~ that would make the bottle stick to the table when the plane turned upside down, or something.
• A couple of commenters mentioned the Tahiti/"It's a magical place," thing last week, and yeah, it's definitely... something.
• Simmons' costumes are still definitely my favourite. Ward and Skye are still just variations on generically bland TV clothes. Fitz is OK, but his clothes suffer from the fact that they don't look worn-in (to me, at least) so he looks like he just bought an entirely new wardrobe. Coulson, obviously, is Professionally Handsome as always.
• Skye/Ward is a terrible pairing. I anti-ship it. Nope nope nope. 
• This week on "stupid opinions I saw on Tumblr", I noticed someone describing the yellow inflatable life-raft as an inflatable pool. Dude. Dude. Why would they have an emergency inflatable pool on the plane??
• Skye has really great hair.

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