Nick Fury Agent Of S.H.I.E.L.D

Curiouser and Furiouser

Nick Fury Agent 
Of S.H.I.E.L.D
USA 1998
Directed by Rod Hardy
20th Century Fox
88 Films DVD Region 2

Okay... so anybody buying this 88 Films iteration of the 1998 TV movie of Nick Fury Agent Of S.H.I.E.L.D may do well to adjust their set. Quite literally. I thought at first that 88 Films had just presented it in an open matte transfer but, nope, they squished it. Resetting your TV set to a 1.33:1 (or 4:3) aspect ratio should do the trick for you.

Now then. TV and movie adaptations featuring the Nick Fury character have always been problematic, mostly because of the time factor and the misunderstanding of producers to not set the original Marvel stories they are telling in their original time zones. So, this is a nod to the original Nick Fury, back when he was a white man and ran S.H.I.E.L.D in the Marvel comics of the same name... except, because of the contemporary setting of when these things are made, that’s as much of a problem for this 1998 version of the character as it was when he changed skin colour and was played by Samuel L. Jackson in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films... time is a big problem...

So Nick Fury was, in the Second World War, Sergeant Fury of Sgt. Fury And His Howling Commandoes comics... alongside characters such as Dum Dum Dougan. The MCU movies at least had Dougan and a few of his buddies fighting in that conflict in Captain America - The First Avenger (reviewed here) but, they didn’t have the guts or, at least, a credible reason... for having Sam Jackson join that particular adventure. Similarly this 1998 version also has Dougan but, again, no back story which makes any sense...

You see, when Jim Steranko evolved the characters because Marvel wanted a secret agent comic book in 1968, to tie in with the popularity of spy movies and TV shows at the time, Fury was promoted to being the top Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D but, of course, when the recent MCU movies and even this TV movie were made, unless they set all of these films in the 1960s (which is what they damn well should have done... idiots!), then Fury can no longer have that back story (although, come on people, if they could find and excuse for Bucky to survive the intervening decades then surely they could have done something for Jackson's excellent iteration of the character).  And everybody knows that Captain America fought in WW2 along with the original Human Torch and Namor, The Sub Mariner but... yeah, don’t get me started on these intelligence challenged reboots! And don’t be giving me... Ultimates... either. As far as I’m concerned, Ultimates stands for ultimate cop-out.

Anyway, the point is, in order for this TV movie/pilot to work correctly, by this point, Nick Fury as played by David Hasselhoff (looking and acting way more like Fury than Jackson does, to be fair... although I think Jackson mostly does a good job in his ones), should be in his seventies. So, yeah, the World War II back story got dumped again. 

What we have is an action yarn which, for a 1998 TV movie feels like... a 1980s TV movie to be fair. Hasselhoff is surprisingly good as Fury but also leans into the heightened comic book delivery of the character to be fair... as do many of the other actors in this and not for the better. For instance, Sandra Hess as Baron Von Strucker’s daughter is horribly over the top and also injects her character with the exact same, highly sexualised response to killing people that Famke Janssen did in Goldeneye (reviewed by me here). And it’s no accident obviously because, some of her dialogue towards the end of this comes almost straight out of Sean Bean’s mouth in that same movie. 

Yeah... the script writers didn’t do a good job here but at least it’s peppered with some outdated but amusingly silly dialogue such as “H.Y.D.R.A’s been jerking our chain six ways to Sunday!” to match the constant... erm... expressionistic performances on show here. 

And by contrast, actors who tone it down just a little, such as Neil Roberts as an early version of the character later played by Robert Redford in the MCU films, come off as somehow less charismatic because of the over-the-top nature of the surrounding performances. 

So it’s Nick Fury pulled out of enforced retirement to rejoin S.H.I.E.L.D in their latest battle with H.Y.D.R.A and all the shenanigans that implies. Including virus laden missiles aimed at the Twin Towers in the US and an LDM (aka Lifesize Decoy Model) turning up in a totally expected piece of deus ex machina... but at a time it couldn’t possibly have been brought into play. Yeah... not even going there, don’t get me started. Sometimes comic book inventions like this need to be left alone, as they perhaps should have been in the later TV show Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D (reviewed by me here).

It’s action packed, corny and, although quite dated by today’s standards... well, let’s just say that I’m surprised this wasn’t successful enough to usher in the TV show they were obviously hoping for. It’s not that bad... at least it surely wouldn’t have been then.  Of course it’s a lot less timeless than many, much older films and shows but... for the dull and dingy 1990s, this one should have performed better, I feel. 

And that’s me about done with Nick Fury - Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D I think. To put it in perspective, it’s not great and I don’t think I’d particularly recommend it to anyone one but, at the same time, I realise that it’s a hell of a lot less dull and certainly more entertaining than the modern Nick Fury TV show Secret Invasion (reviewed by me here)... so make of that what you will.