Marvel’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D

S.H.I.E.L.D Of Dreams

Marvel’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D
TV Series Seven Seasons 2013-2020
Marvel

Warning: Big spoilers throughout.

I’ve been holding off writing about Marvel’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D for seven years now*, mainly because when it first started, it was an okay show with not much I felt I could say about it in a seasonal review. So my plan was always to do a small general round up review of the show once it had finally finished and, after a couple of years of resurrections when the show was threatened with cancellation but then managed to stay afloat, which is a hard proposition in today’s television landscape, that point has finally come.

The show’s big pull in the beginning was the ‘return from the dead’ reappearance of Agent Coulson after he was stabbed through the heart by Loki in The Avengers (aka Marvel’s Avengers Assemble, as it’s known over here in the UK). So Clark Gregg was back as Coulson and we got introduced to various members of the S.H.I.E.L.D team as well as an inadvertent newcomer to the group. So we had regulars Ming-Na Wen as ‘tough as nails’ killing machine Melinda May, Chloe Bennet as Daisy ‘Skye’ Johnson (who would become Quake after gaining superpowers a few seasons down the line), Elizabeth Henstridge as super scientist Jemma Simmons, Iain De Caestecker as her co-super scientist Leo Fitz and Brett Dalton as Grant Ward... in the initial line up.

And when it started it was a modest kind of weekly ‘mission impossible’ affair, sometimes linking into cleaning up loose ends from the various Marvel movies and pitting the agents against Hydra and various super powered enemies... sometimes taking The X-Files route to building up the mystery of whoever the villain of the week would be. And there were some intriguing but well telegraphed plot lines and outcomes... and others that you didn’t see coming and kept the programme fresh. Coulson’s seeming immortality and his discovery that he had been brought back to life by Nick Fury through the use of untested alien technology led to its own problems and a long running story arc and then, just as you kind of knew he would, the young heroic, well liked and trusted leading man character of Grant Ward turned out to be a double agent villain working for Hydra at the end of the first season and became, for a few seasons, the teams ultimate arch enemy.

Like the Marvel comics it was inspired by, there are sometimes deaths of characters but Agent Coulson, who dies a few times over the course of the show, was always brought back through one contrivance or another, sometimes with or without the prosthetic, weaponised arm which replaced the one which a fellow team member had to cut off to stop him from being infected by an alien virus (or some such... it was a while ago). That team member was one of a new batch of regulars and semi regulars played by Henry Simmons (as Mack), Natalia Cordova-Buckley as the super-speed powered Yo Yo, Nick Blood as Lance Hunter, Adrianne Palicki as Bobby Morse, Joel Stoffer as mechanical alien being Enoch and Jeff Ward as Deke Shaw, who is the grandson of Simmon’s and Fitz loved up couple from a bleak, future time line. Oh... and in Season 7,  Enver Gjokaj reprising his role as Daniel Sousa from Agent Carter, who hooks up with the gang in the 1950s and stays with them as they try to return to their own time... yeah, give me a minute, and I'll get there.

And there were also some heavy hitting regular guest stars turning up in the show from season to season too, such as Bill Paxton as an enemy double agent, Kyle Machlachlan as Daisy’s super villain father she never knew who rebelled against The Inhumans (if I’m remembering properly) and John Hannah as the scientist who helps Fitz develop the Lifesize Model Decoys (LMDs) who were in the original comics, before the technology gets the better of them and the regular team all spend most of a season imprisoned in a crazy AI universe and embedded into different versions of their characters.

So the thing about Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D is that, every time you think the show was just about played out, it kept reinventing itself. For instance, Brett Dalton reprised his Grant Ward character a couple of times after he got killed, first as a superpowered evil alien God who took the form of Ward and then, later, as a nice guy iteration of him in the AI mirror world that Fitz’ lady robot traps them all in. So interest was held a number of ways such as, in one season, the introduction of Gabriel Luna as that season’s regular character, Ghost Rider. And then, before you knew what hit you, the finale of one season finds the gang all up in space in the far future, trying to stop an alien race from enslaving what’s left of humanity after a future timeline variant of Daisy has destroyed the Earth. All in a days work.

When they get back to their own time, now as fugitives from S.H.I.E.L.D, they are trying to stop the same timeline re-occurring and, frankly, failing at it a lot of times over. And then the next season would be a search through space trying to locate Fitz and then, when Coulson has died and an evil alien using his body clone has also died, he’s back as a mechanical, sentient alien being rebuilt by Enoch and the gang are all time hopping through various points of Earths history, trying to stop an evil alien race from changing time so S.H.I.E.L.D aren’t there to stop them in the future. That last is basically Series 7 of the show and, yeah, it’s a fantastic finale to a series that, as I said, just kept getting better and better. I loved how the seventh season shows’ opening credits emulated the media of the period that they were in from week to week and I double loved that, when Coulson got vapourised in the 1980s, Deke took his downloaded memories and rebuilt him on a TV set as a ‘Max Headroom’ version of Coulson, while they were waiting to rendezvous with the rest of the team who had accidentally jumped into their future, where Coulson’s body is rebuilt again.

The show is fast paced and has all the Marvel stuff you would expect... the budget allowed for some nice special effects and usually at least one or two battles a week. Not to mention a strong series of plot arcs performed by a bunch of actors who, honestly, really are brilliant at these roles. I don’t know if the same is true on the set but certainly they seem to have some good chemistry together on screen. I like how it managed to retain a certain freshness by around season three where the structure and milieu of any given season was never the same as the one before. I also like that they at least tie up the character line of Agent Sousa from Agent Carter and allow for both his death (he has to die because the history books said he did) and his resurrection as the S.H.I.E.L.D agents manage to fake his death so he can reappear in the future as a member of the regular team. It all sounds silly but it’s all quite well written and I did appreciate this show. If Disney deem to release the seventh series on Blu Ray at some point then I’d probably pick up a box set and rewatch all these through one day. Although, the way they’re going with their stupid Disney Plus channel, that’s looking less likely I suspect.

So there you have it. If you’re a fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe iteration of the Marvel properties (there are a few, rare MCU character guest appearances too, from time to time) then you’ll probably have a good time with Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D, especially by the time you hit the fourth season and the changing nature of the programme starts to assert itself. Definitely give this one a go but don’t miss out on Series Seven, which, by the logic of what I’ve been telling you, is the best season yet.

*at time of writing.

Overlord

Horrors Of War

Overlord
2018 USA Directed by Julius Avery
UK cinema release print.

Cry havoc... and let slip the dogs of war. Or, in this case, let slip the reanimated corpses of French villagers given a substance which turns them into crazed, mixed up super soldiers.

When I first saw the trailer to Overlord, a month or two ago, I found it interesting that J. J. Abrams was producing what looked to be a new entry into the ‘zombie nazi’ subgenre but I figured, at the very least, that meant there would be some money thrown at it so it might be worth taking a look. It could go either way in terms of quality and the trailer wasn’t really giving a good flavour of what the final product might be. So I went and saw this the opening night of its UK release and... by golly I’m glad I did.

Overlord is one heck of a well made horror movie, directed by Julius Avery and, well, it’s just extremely competently made and is entertaining as you could hope for. As far as it being a zombie Nazi movie... well technically it’s not. Most of the reanimated people in this are not actually German soldiers and the one Nazi officer who does benefit greatly from the effects of the super serum that the typically stereotypical ‘bespectacled German war scientist’ in the movie is developing isn’t... well, he isn’t dead. There are a few reanimated corpses of note though so, while not absolutely a ‘zombie Nazi’ film in its absolute correct definition, the juxtaposition of those two elements certainly throws it into roughly the same kind of area, if genre categorisations are your thing.

The film tells the story of a unit of soldiers flying into France to blow up a communications jamming unit on top of a Nazi controlled church (more like a fortress, truth be told). However, after they are shot down, the few survivors of the incident manage to find each other and regroup to carry on the mission. The main protagonist is Boyce, played absolutely wonderfully and with a fine mix of both confidence, righteousness and vulnerability by Jovan Adepo. Now, the only big problem I had in terms with suspending disbelief in a film about reanimated corpses taking a super serum is that, heck, you would not get that racial mix happening in the US army in the 1940s. The soldiers would have been segregated into different units but... if you can get past that, Adepo really owns the character and gives the audience someone to believe in and care about.

Another member of the troop is Ford, the tough and slightly enigmatic member of the unit. He also brings a nice quality to the film and all the way through I kept thinking how much this character would have been well played by Clint Eastwood back in the 1960s or 1970s. Now I knew it wasn’t Eastwood’s son playing this role (for my thoughts on him, read my review of Pacific Rim - Uprising here) but, once I’d stayed behind for the end credits and found out the actor’s name was Wyatt Russell, it all made sense. Closer investigation showed his full name to be Wyatt Hawn Russell and he is, in fact, the son of Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn... so looking back I must have been picking up on a vaguely Snake Plissken vibe to the character. He does really well in this movie too.

Now, it has to be said, the film is pretty intense and brutal in places, even before the surviving troops befriend one of the local French women, Chloe (again, played quite brilliantly by Mathilde Ollivier) and get embroiled with a triple mission of blowing up the tower, stopping the mad experiments which are taking place in the basement of the fortress and rescuing Chloe’s younger brother. One of the reasons it is so intense and, for once, had me on the edge of my seat, is because the whole ‘war is hell’ angle is played up so well that it more than holds its own against the horror element. Scratch that, I would go as far as to say the way in which the conflict between the Nazis, the American soldiers and the occupied French villagers is handled is absolutely what gives this film its edge over a lot of others where they might not necessarily take up the amount of time to pitch the setting right. In fact, apart from a gooey mess of a body found in the early stages of the film, the horror B-movie (with an A-movie budget) doesn’t even start to emerge until about a third to a half of the way through the story. When it does it’s equally fraught, as Boyce finds himself on his own midst the enemy in the compound for a while... something the director really ramps up by using a lot of hand held camera during these passages. Heck, even Boyce’s parachute jump at the start of the movie is an absolutely drawn out, nerve stretching suspenseful sequence and it just keeps getting more intense from there.

The other thing about this is that the film doesn’t skimp on is showing the brutality of war and what both sides are willing to do in the conflict. There’s one sequence in the middle of the movie, when the German officer who is built up as the main villain of the piece is being ‘interrogated’ by the Americans, where Ford is seen to be almost as brutal as the Nazis in his methods of acquiring the information he needs to know. To be fair, you’re definitely rooting for Ford again by the end of the film but this movie really takes no prisoners when it comes to being fair about what people are capable of doing for their respective side of the conflict. For example...

The film is full of clichés such as the soldier who is perceived as nasty but then turns out to redeem himself and have a heart of gold by stopping a bullet for the child he pretends to hate. The soldier in question is played by John Magaro and, like any of these actors, you could see them holding their own in some of the great war movies such as Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. Ditto for the cliché of the war photographer who’s not really a soldier but ends up going through hell (played here by Iain De Caestecker from Marvel’s Agents Of SHIELD). The thing is, though, because the film is so dark and raw when it needs to be and doesn’t really flinch in the ‘horrors of war’ department, I really didn’t mind the clichés inherent in some of the character types. Indeed it’s kind of comforting that they’re there in a way and, of course, it makes for really useful shorthand in telling the story quickly. And with Jed Kurzel’s wonderful score backing up the visual intensity... sadly unavailable as a commercial stand alone release when I tried to buy a copy of the soundtrack, CD or otherwise... you really do feel it when the action gets going and things get a little insane.

One other thing about this movie I should probably warn you about, if you’re not a die hard horror fan... there’s a lot of blood and viscera in the film. You will see a person, for example, shot in the head and then, with his face half hanging off, dose up on the serum before beating everybody else up. This is war and when the bullets start flying, sometimes when you least expect them to, then the director doesn’t look away when it comes to throwing in the guts and gore. Not necessarily an element which I particularly look for in a film but, if the story atmosphere calls for it then I don’t think you should skimp on it and this seems to be the view shared by the film makers on this one, to be sure.

So that’s my take on Overlord, a movie which I wasn’t too hopeful about but which I’m really glad I saw. This is quality B-movie exploitation shocks done just right and with, for once, a big enough budget to be able to pull it all off credibly. If you are into horror movies, or war movies or, as like this, a thrilling combination of the two, then you should definitely put Overlord near the top of your list because it’s all put together extremely well. Oh... and if you have already seen this and you were in the 8.20pm screening at Enfield Cineworld in Row E on the opening Wednesday... get a life. You don’t need to be texting on your phone all the way through the film. Turn the damned thing off and watch the bloody movie.

In Fear

In-fear-ior

In Fear
2013 UK
Directed by Jeremy Lovering
Playing at UK cinemas now.

I’m not really sure that I’m inspired to say too much about this movie, in all honesty. Other than it’s fairly effective for a lot of the running time and that, its does what it does very well... for the most part.

It’s not a horror film and neither, really, is it a slasher film... although some people could probably put together an effective argument for the latter and that’s the kind of the genre film I was expecting it to be. I guess psychological thriller, for want of a more appropriate term, could fit this film to a certain extent and it firmly belongs, I think, in that strange, unspecified genre which could be formed if you lump together films like The Hitcher and Duel.

The one really good thing about it is that it was, despite having seen the trailer, not quite what I was expecting, although it did try to follow certain horror film genre rules at a few points and tripped itself off by tipping its hand too early, for sure.

The film is a three hander and, when I say it’s a three hander, I really mean it. Actually, for most of the first two thirds it’s only a two hander but, certainly, there are only three people in the cast in total and, though I suspect budgetary concerns may have played a part in that decision, it certainly bows down before the basic aesthetic of not showing, for example, a sequence in a pub which the two characters talk about and which seems (although it doesn’t really) to have repercussions for them later in the movie. However, I also think there could have been a couple more people in it at a certain point, and I’ll get to that in a little bit, but I can certainly admire the writer’s decision not to include a cluttered jumble of cast, at any rate.

The set up is simple. Two young “almost lovers” Tom and Lucy, played by Iain De Caestecker (the little Scottish guy from Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D) and Alice Englert (who played Rosa in Sally Potter’s Ginger And Rosa... reviewed here) are on their way to a festival and trying to find a hotel that Tom has checked them in to. But with phone and sat nav signals fairly absent they get lost (and deliberately misdirected) on the country roads around their destination and terrorised by the local psycho. That’s the set up and I guess in some ways it’s pretty dreary. What I wasn’t expecting, though, is the fact that the majority of the film is actually set in their car and the director uses this to firmly establish a “please don’t get out of the car” vibe which, of course, he breaks every so often to set alarm bells ringing in the audience and to stretch the tension out like the surface of a drum. And, as I said above, for the most part it’s very effective and the director plays with your concept of what you feel the safety zone is and it’s all supported by very good performances by actors who seem to thrive on making all the stupid and idiotic decisions characters who are IQ challenged tend to make in these situations.

Unfortunately, that last thing is a double edged sword because the characters really are stupid and as you worry about them more, the more you lose respect for them. Any credibility that these characters could really be as lost and misdirected as they seem to be, flies out the window when you wonder what would happen if logic is applied judiciously to the situation... something neither of the main protagonists seem to want to apply and when the main antagonist of the movie turns up, you really would have to be completely switched off to not recognise the character for who he is. Which is a shame.

Now, here’s my thing, with regards to this particular movie. I was, despite all of the above, on a white knuckle ride for about two thirds of the running time and then, like something which is stretched too far and too soon, I suddenly reached a point where all anxiety stopped for me, I stopped caring about the characters and wondering whether they would get killed or not and, frankly, found myself looking for a clock and trying to figure out what I had to do next after the movie had ended. All tension had disappeared because the director had piled too much on too quickly. And I think this is where the movie could have done with a few more characters. I think a pause was needed by about this point. We needed, in my opinion, to see Tom and Lucy get to absolute safety... before seeing all that destroyed and the rug pulled from under us as their comfortable sanctuary was quickly demolished and they were in danger for their lives again. That, I think, would have helped maintain my interest in the movie and helped ratchet the tension back up to the level it had soared to earlier in the film, giving me cause to care again. But this didn’t happen and instead, when the last, dynamic set piece was played out, ending in a kind of semi-denouement (which I personally think was the right call but which I suspect, judging from the loud protestations at the screening I was at, is going to leave a lot of people unsatisfied), I felt no tension or interest in the ending. I was already working through other things in my mind as I watched and that’s kind of a shame.

But there are some good things about the movie, such as the inevitable “survival” betrayal of one of the characters which is a button pushed to serve as an object lesson by the mad psycho villain and I suspect younger, less jaded audiences who aren’t familiar with these kinds of films will probably get a lot more out of it than this old hand, to be sure. And it’s effective enough for a lot of its running time. Certainly, if you have nothing better to do, then it’s not a bad film to give some of your time too, although I do feel certain kinds of people may come out of the screening a touch angrier than they went in.