Linkspam and TV talk
Nov. 2nd, 2014 07:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
next_to_normalUgh, is Firefox being super buggy lately, or is it just me? (Or my computer, or the amount of tabs I keep open, lol.) It keeps freezing up so that I have to force-quit and restart. I had to do it about three times today and lost a significant portion of my linkspam and THAT MAKES ME ANGRY.
* I think this is a new trailer for Mockingjay. IDK there have been so many.
* Much as I'd like to see Cristin Milioti with her own sitcom, I haven't been too impressed by A to Z and can't say I'm sad to see it cancelled.
* Brian Williams is kind of hilarious talking about his daughter Allison playing Peter Pan in NBC's live show.
...I definitely had one other link in this section pre-crash, but I can't remember what it was, so DAMN YOU FIREFOX.
And the usual slew of Marvel things:
* ICYMI, here's the Age of Ultron preview that aired during last week's Agents of SHIELD (it's the trailer recut with the party scene that apparently was shown at Comic-Con this summer), and I don't know why they didn't just make this the trailer in the first place, because it is exactly the humor and team interaction the other one was lacking.
* Plus, here's the badass lumberjack Steve clip from the Marvel announcement, and, although it's mostly clips from existing movies, there is actually already a teaser for Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 and Part 2, which let's not forget are four and five years away, respectively, because that is not in any way reasonable.
* And someone gave away their cameo appearance in Age of Ultron, which I'm assuming is supposed to be a surprise, but kinda makes sense given what we know already.
* Hope you weren't expecting a standalone Black Widow or Hulk movie, because neither of those is happening. Try again maybe in Marvel Phase 20?
* Here's the official Agent Carter preview, which is the same as the one I linked earlier, just with less of someone filming their TV with their iPhone, lol.
I also meant to talk about Agents of SHIELD during my Arrow/The Flash flailing, but didn't get around to it. First of all, I understand the impulse to compare the two, even though they're actually rather different, since they're both - sort of - based on comics properties and it's easy to fall back on the Marvel vs. DC narrative. And yes, it's obvious DC is winning television while Marvel is dominating the movies. Of course, the DC shows, although they are obviously in the same universe as each other, they have NO connection to the DC movieverse (as evidenced by the recasting of Barry Allen for upcoming Justice League movies, which is a shame because Grant Gustin is the adorablest. Then again, that adorableness would stand out like a sore thumb in the grimdark "no jokes allowed" DC films). And it's easy to say that being essentially a movie tie-in is what has hamstrung Agents of SHIELD so thoroughly, though it didn't have to be the albatross it has been. If they'd been smart, they'd have premiered AoS at midseason, so they only had six to eight episodes to establish the premise before Winter Soldier blew it up, instead of spinning its wheels for an excruciating sixteen eps.
But the main problem AoS has always had - and still to some extent suffers from, even if the plots have gotten better - is that the original characters created for the show were flat, cookie-cutter stereotypes and the show gave us no reason to care about them. Whether it was the writing or the actors or a combination of both, there was just nothing there. And I don't know if using more established comics characters would have helped, but the recent introduction of Adrianne Palicki as Bobbi Morse shows just how much BETTER the show could've been right out of the gate had they introduced more characters like her. Granted, I'm a Mockingbird fan from the comics, but I think I'd be enjoying her appearance even if I knew nothing about her. Frankly, I'd still be fine jettisoning the entire cast, save for Coulson and May, and replacing them with Bobbi, Triplett, and even Hunter, who I kinda suspect is only there to be Bobbi's ex because Jeremy Renner wouldn't do a TV series, lol. All three have made more of an impression in their short tenure than the original cast did in the entire first season.
That's not to say the show hasn't improved, because it absolutely has. Season 2 is MILES AWAY better than season 1, and the change in format has done wonders for it. For one thing, it works a lot better when the team is the underdog, rather than employees of an omniscient intelligence agency with unlimited resources. But more importantly, they've now set up Hydra as the rival spy organization. I vastly prefer it as more of a spy vs. spy show, rather than a team just chasing after superpowered people and MacGuffins every week. The show tried to weave in long-term villains and mysteries, but none of them were in any way compelling (hey, remember when the Clairvoyant turned out to be a fat lot of nothing? Or the endless mystery of Coulson's return, which they never actually explained beyond "magic" but it doesn't even matter because NO ONE CARES?).
If you're going to hamstring the show by not letting them lean on the actual superhero stuff in the Marvel universe (either because the actors playing the superheroes don't want to do TV, or because they are saving certain characters for the films, or simply because they don't have the budget to do superpowers properly), then why not emphasize the part you CAN do? SHIELD is a spy organization, so why did it take a whole year to realize that Agents of SHIELD should be a spy show, not a superhero show?
And that, to bring this mini-rant full circle, is why you really can't compare Arrow to Agents of SHIELD. Because one is a superhero show, and the other is a spy show. Or it should have been.
* I think this is a new trailer for Mockingjay. IDK there have been so many.
* Much as I'd like to see Cristin Milioti with her own sitcom, I haven't been too impressed by A to Z and can't say I'm sad to see it cancelled.
* Brian Williams is kind of hilarious talking about his daughter Allison playing Peter Pan in NBC's live show.
...I definitely had one other link in this section pre-crash, but I can't remember what it was, so DAMN YOU FIREFOX.
And the usual slew of Marvel things:
* ICYMI, here's the Age of Ultron preview that aired during last week's Agents of SHIELD (it's the trailer recut with the party scene that apparently was shown at Comic-Con this summer), and I don't know why they didn't just make this the trailer in the first place, because it is exactly the humor and team interaction the other one was lacking.
* Plus, here's the badass lumberjack Steve clip from the Marvel announcement, and, although it's mostly clips from existing movies, there is actually already a teaser for Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 and Part 2, which let's not forget are four and five years away, respectively, because that is not in any way reasonable.
* And someone gave away their cameo appearance in Age of Ultron, which I'm assuming is supposed to be a surprise, but kinda makes sense given what we know already.
* Hope you weren't expecting a standalone Black Widow or Hulk movie, because neither of those is happening. Try again maybe in Marvel Phase 20?
* Here's the official Agent Carter preview, which is the same as the one I linked earlier, just with less of someone filming their TV with their iPhone, lol.
I also meant to talk about Agents of SHIELD during my Arrow/The Flash flailing, but didn't get around to it. First of all, I understand the impulse to compare the two, even though they're actually rather different, since they're both - sort of - based on comics properties and it's easy to fall back on the Marvel vs. DC narrative. And yes, it's obvious DC is winning television while Marvel is dominating the movies. Of course, the DC shows, although they are obviously in the same universe as each other, they have NO connection to the DC movieverse (as evidenced by the recasting of Barry Allen for upcoming Justice League movies, which is a shame because Grant Gustin is the adorablest. Then again, that adorableness would stand out like a sore thumb in the grimdark "no jokes allowed" DC films). And it's easy to say that being essentially a movie tie-in is what has hamstrung Agents of SHIELD so thoroughly, though it didn't have to be the albatross it has been. If they'd been smart, they'd have premiered AoS at midseason, so they only had six to eight episodes to establish the premise before Winter Soldier blew it up, instead of spinning its wheels for an excruciating sixteen eps.
But the main problem AoS has always had - and still to some extent suffers from, even if the plots have gotten better - is that the original characters created for the show were flat, cookie-cutter stereotypes and the show gave us no reason to care about them. Whether it was the writing or the actors or a combination of both, there was just nothing there. And I don't know if using more established comics characters would have helped, but the recent introduction of Adrianne Palicki as Bobbi Morse shows just how much BETTER the show could've been right out of the gate had they introduced more characters like her. Granted, I'm a Mockingbird fan from the comics, but I think I'd be enjoying her appearance even if I knew nothing about her. Frankly, I'd still be fine jettisoning the entire cast, save for Coulson and May, and replacing them with Bobbi, Triplett, and even Hunter, who I kinda suspect is only there to be Bobbi's ex because Jeremy Renner wouldn't do a TV series, lol. All three have made more of an impression in their short tenure than the original cast did in the entire first season.
That's not to say the show hasn't improved, because it absolutely has. Season 2 is MILES AWAY better than season 1, and the change in format has done wonders for it. For one thing, it works a lot better when the team is the underdog, rather than employees of an omniscient intelligence agency with unlimited resources. But more importantly, they've now set up Hydra as the rival spy organization. I vastly prefer it as more of a spy vs. spy show, rather than a team just chasing after superpowered people and MacGuffins every week. The show tried to weave in long-term villains and mysteries, but none of them were in any way compelling (hey, remember when the Clairvoyant turned out to be a fat lot of nothing? Or the endless mystery of Coulson's return, which they never actually explained beyond "magic" but it doesn't even matter because NO ONE CARES?).
If you're going to hamstring the show by not letting them lean on the actual superhero stuff in the Marvel universe (either because the actors playing the superheroes don't want to do TV, or because they are saving certain characters for the films, or simply because they don't have the budget to do superpowers properly), then why not emphasize the part you CAN do? SHIELD is a spy organization, so why did it take a whole year to realize that Agents of SHIELD should be a spy show, not a superhero show?
And that, to bring this mini-rant full circle, is why you really can't compare Arrow to Agents of SHIELD. Because one is a superhero show, and the other is a spy show. Or it should have been.
no subject
Date: Nov. 4th, 2014 12:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Nov. 4th, 2014 12:15 am (UTC)Sometimes I'll get the whole post back, other times it won't have the most recent changes - in this particular case, it "restored" the draft from two days ago, which was missing several links and a few paragraphs of rambling.