Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

The show has been very good at balancing disparate elements. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

And the problem with DD's ninjas wasn't that they were undead, it was that they were facepalmingly stupid racial stereotypes with no depth to them.

I probably would have been more coy and mysterious about supernatural elements like the Hand a while longer— like they were in the first season, and still have been with Madame Gao— but I think the way the Hand were used had other problems, mostly to do with just not being shot very well, That and having to follow a truly great take on the Punisher, but then not being able to leave him behind.

Not that I'd want to lose Jon Bernthal entirely, but you can sort of see how they wanted to draw a very neat dividing line between the two stories in episodes 5 and 6, with their high-gloss Yakuza, offices, parties, and court drama, but they kind of give up on that fairly conceit early on. The murkiness as the two stories collide is probably intentional, but not really working because the setup was weak.

At any rate, my point is that magic can work in this kind of setting, the way it's worked in Thor. It's about maintaining a consistency of tone. And personally, I kind of like the idea of magic leaking into Ao S after Dr Strange hits. The whole draw of this series is that it can react to the movies and deal with their larger implications. Yet Age of Ultron and Civil War didn't seem to get the attention they warranted, and Season 3 seemed to be about building its own arc with the Inhumans...but actually didn't really seem to have a lot of Inhumans, what with them getting killed off by Lash or the Watchdogs, and then having Hive take up all the spare screentime.

So yeah, too early to know for sure, but I'm prepared to take this as a step in the right direction.

edited 22nd Jul '16 8:10:29 PM by Unsung

Thor didn't contain magic so much as "Sufficiently Advanced Technology", as acknowledged by both Thor and Jane. Far from being not explainable by science, both Thor films involved numerous scenes of Jane and Selvig explaining it using science, and the Asgardians have rarely been treated as anything other than aliens using high-level tech.

That's exactly what I mean. They could easily let that question play out in the series post-Dr Strange: approach it rationally, try and understand it from a scientific viewpoint. Magic is real, but what is magic? Is it really 'magic', or just a scientific process we don't yet understand? The Asgardians could very easily cut the knot here by saying the difference is largely moot, an academic distinction if they even consider the difference to exist at all.

The characters don't necessarily have to reach a conclusion or anything, just react to it in-character and in-universe. Like I said, consistency of tone.

edited 22nd Jul '16 8:36:20 PM by Unsung

Hmm. Confession time. I liked the first Ghost Rider film. It had Sam Elliott in it, for Odin's sake. He automatically raises any film he's in to the level of at least watchable. He was the only reason I eventually sat down and watched "The Big Lebowski", which I ended up loving. You can take the piss out of Ghost Rider 2 all you like, I've never watched it. Reason why? No Sam Elliott.

If Sam Elliott was in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I'd probably watch more of it too.

Disagree entirely. The Hand bullshit in Daredevil seemed so out of place because Season One was mostly grounded (as grounded as you can get in a show about a guy who wears tights and beats up villains at least) and made a big deal about that. It's a huge leap to go from fighting gangsters, drug dealers and crooked land developers to supernatural karate zombies. If it weren't for the references to the Avengers, you'd almost think Daredevil season 1 was taking place in its own universe.

Agents of SHIELD meanwhile has been over the top from day one. They have flying cars, Asgardians, and a bad guy who was a dead body possessed by some ancient evil. And for better or for worse, they've made it clear they exist in the same universe as the movies since day one, and in fact try to use that as a selling point. True, they didn't use magic, but they were never as grounded, "gritty" or closed off as DD season 1 tried to be.

edited 22nd Jul '16 9:58:31 PM by comicwriter

I didn't care for the Inhuman arc personally. Season 2 was good, Season 3 went off the rails with HYDRA being some doomsday cult in service to an alien god that was actually the failed experiment of another alien race.

The Inhumans kept me glued to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., but I get why that direction isn't to everyone's tastes.

And I also don't see Ghost Rider showing up as a tonal dissonance.

Yippie I ohhh ohh ohh

Yippie I aye ye ye~~~~

edited 22nd Jul '16 10:56:45 PM by higherbrainpattern

I feel like Shield is the best place to debut Ghost Rider right now. Like someone said earlier, the show has been over the top since the beginning. We've gone to another planet, we saw the team fight humans with alien powers, we even saw Hives full form (by that I mean just his face). Netflix up to this point has been consistent with its grounded tone, the new Luke Cage trailer shows no signs of change in that tone either, at least until Iron Fist comes next year. We'll see how Ghost Rider does on this show, then maybe they'll decide on making a Netflix show for Johnny Blaze, if at all.

edited 23rd Jul '16 12:56:39 AM by clockworkboy

I think the actual problem with season 3 was not the Inhuman theme itself (aside from "there could have been more of it), but that the first half of the season was so awesome and so tightly written (Remember the episode in which they pulled Jemma back from the alien planet? The Episode which showed her on said alien planet? The one in which the team were hunting Ward? The one in which Lash's true identity got revealed? The one in which Ward kidnapped and tortured Fitzsimmons? Yeah, all this happened in those first episodes), that the second half of it felt a little bit like a let-down, even though it was still good.

Also, in general, Ao S is a show which can't win. No matter what they do, there is at least one group of fans which complains about the direction the show takes.

On a certain level that applies to every ongoing work of fiction ever. Or at least every ongoing work of fiction with more than a few dozen fans.

Yeah, but Ao S also has to deal with a group of people who are still judging the show by its first season and another group which is apparently hate-watching the show. That makes it really hard to win anyone over, because everyone is more critical from the get go. Nobody is ready to give the show the benefit of the doubt.

Yeah, there are the people who stopped watching in the first season and think that it's still boring, no matter how many people say that it's changed. And then there are the people who watch it only for the Marvel references or to be a MCU completist, in which case they may or may not actually like it. And then there are the 'shippers, some of which latched onto Skyeward and refused to let go, even when Ward was revealed as a villain and thus try to explain away everything he does or say how the writers are stupid.

And then there are the people who actually enjoy the show.

I didn't say it was good, I just said it was there.

Ooh, new poster for the show.

I'm just happy that Jojo will be back...I hope that means Joey and James will be back, too. (I just noticed, why is it that so many Inhumans have names which start with "J"?)

And I missed Mike last season....

Looks like the shotgun axe is now a permanent feature...and do Fitz and Simmons have new weapons, too? I wonder if that's the invisible gun....

edited 23rd Jul '16 6:57:49 AM by Swanpride

Ghost Rider's Charger◊.

Damn I wanted Blaze travelling across the U.S fighting monsters and trying to get back his soul, or Ketch battling evil in N.Y. Plus the bike is just way cooler than the car.

Both are still possible. Having Robbie Reyes in the show doesn't preclude other characters from showing up elsewhere.

...You should look where you're pointing that gun, there, Coulson.

Early season 3 was good, though, wasn't it? Man, that feels like a long time ago. Longer than season 2, somehow, which I thought did a really good job of setting up the Inhumans, actually. Huh.

edited 23rd Jul '16 3:32:47 PM by Unsung

That is one ugly car...but I guess the thing on the top of it looks cool.

Is Ward actually going to stay dead?

That's the only thing that bugs me about Ao S. The sneaking horror that the show-runners may bring him back.

The blower (the thing on top) kinda looks like they took part of the engine out and shipped the car in pieces, some assembly required. But I think that's just the lighting and reflection and camera angle...it's not a great shot.

You may still think it's ugly but here's a full shot of the same model.