Review: What Happened to Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D?

It’s pretty clear that most of us were very excited for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Joss Whedon! Avengers! S.H.I.E.L.D! TV! Agent Coulson! So much awesomeness packed into one show, it almost couldn’t be true. After the first episode was screened at Comic-Con this past July, many were calling it the best new show of the whole season. There was so much hype and expectation.

And then it aired. It was nothing like what I imagined. I suppose I expected a masterful Whedon-esque combination of Avengers and Firefly: a team of misfits in a zany, challenging situation, forced to work together to survive and fight the baddies. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. does technically fit aspects of this concept. They are certainly misfits, their situations are challenging, and they fight some bad guys. So while it fits the Whedon requirements, it does not stand on the same legs. I was unimpressed with the cheesy pilot, but I hoped it would get better week after week. Which brings us to now: five weeks in, and just as disappointing as the pilot. 

I hoped Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. would be as sleek and powerful as Avengers, as engaging and bizarrely comedic as Firefly, as kick-ass and empowering as Buffy, and as offbeat and heartfelt as Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Instead, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is just…goofy. There were moments in the pilot where I honestly thought to myself, “God, I was Robert Downey Jr was here for this re-write.” So the first problem: Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg). Coulson was endearing in the Marvel film franchise because he was the only ordinary guy in the cast. He alone represented the American everyman, the business behind the party, the ringleader. His blandness was sweet and appreciated amongst a Norse God, a egotistical Iron-crazed billionaire, muscles incased in ice for seventy years, two leather-loving, neurotic assassins, and an explosive green monster. But on his own, around men and women just like him, Coulson barely stands out. Whedon and his team attempt to make Coulson a little less ordinary by shrouding his miraculous Jesus-like rising in mystery. Though he continually says that he repaired himself on a beach in Tahiti, the rest of the team allude to something much darker that even Coulson doesn’t know. What starts as an interesting plot point quickly becomes over-referenced and just plain tired. 

It seems that even Whedon and Co. recognized that Coulson is too boring to lead the show, so they bring in Skye (Chloe Bennet). Skye is introduced as the audience-surrogate. She’s a hacker who is essentially plucked from the back of her van/home and brought onto the S.H.I.E.L.D. team for her computer whiz skills. She is chatty, smart, and quick and guess what! She’s so unbelievably annoying that following her becomes grating and exhausting. We are often meant to sympathize with her, and we’re clearly meant to find her endearing, but she’s anything but. 

Like Skye, the rest of the team are one-dimensional and uninteresting. The only interesting character, Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen), the apparently kick-ass pilot with an intriguing S.H.I.E.L.D.-based history, is given little screen time, few lines, and has essentially no personality. These characters are little more than types: the quiet, rule-abiding muscular military man, the interchangeable neurotic scientists who mostly just bicker and spout made-up monster-fighting scientific knowledge (the two have absolutely no chemistry, by the way).

Perhaps Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. could have been redeemed itself if it was as polished and engaging as the Avengers, but instead the show is flat and static. It’s gimmicks are hardly entertaining and instead seem forced and mostly fake. At the end of the pilot, Agent Coulson drives off with Skye in a little red convertible that happens to fly. It was so silly that I actually laughed out loud. The team flies around the world in a clunky airbus that typically looks like it was pasted onto a standard blue sky background. The bad guys are almost always scientists-gone-wrong who’s wrong-doing ways are quickly solvable. The few that actually feature some sort of superpower are hilarious – their powers are not exactly ‘powers’ as they are sloppily-written enhancements. The special effects should never be called “special;” they’re trying and sloppy.

So, clearly there are a lot of problems here. I know I’ve been harsh in this review, but it’s mainly because I was very, very excited about the show’s prospects. I really wish this worked as a television show, I really do, but its ties to the Avengers will always leave me wanting more. The Avengers took two years to complete (and probably plus some). Each Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode is completed in a matter of months, maybe even weeks. Now I’m not saying that the superhero genre can’t make it on television (Arrow proves that it can every single week) but I think Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. proves that this sort of ambitious superhero pilot just doesn’t translate onto the small screen as it does on the big screen. Here’s hoping that Whedon is just putting all his creative energy into Avengers: Age of Ultron!

The Case for Captain Marvel

The i09 is reporting that the awesome Battlestar Galatica star Katee Sackhoff is rumored to be in negotiations to join the Marvel universe as the long-awaited Captain Marvel. Will she get a stand alone film? Will she appear in Avengers: Age of Ultron? Still no word. 

If Carol Danvers does finally grace the big screen, there are a few things we are going to have to insist on:

1. She must kick ass.
2. She must kick every man’s ass.
3. She will not be used in a romantic storyline
4. She must retain all of her powers from her comic
5. She’ll be known as Captain, not Ms.
6. She’ll wear an appropriate costume that she can actually kick ass in

My hope is that Danvers will appear in Age of Ultron (as she does in the comic) but will instead survive. I’m even willing to see her introduced as Ms. Marvel if it means her actions will promote her to Captain, and then lead-in to a Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers feature film. 

Marvel, don’t play with us here. It is time for a female-led feature film. Just today, Marvel Studios president Louis D’Esposito was quoted promoting his interest and desire in a female-led film. He told Comingsoon that

 “There’s obviously a drumbeat that is banging louder and louder that we want a female lead superhero….[W]e have strong female characters in our films from Black Widow to Pepper Potts to Peggy Carter and you never know. Maybe there’s an offshoot film with one of them. Or Captain Marvel, you know?”

Why, yes, Mr. D’Esposito, I do know. Tumblr knows (seriously, just type in Captain Marvel today and see the outpouring of support). All of woman-kind knows (that’s half of the planet, Mr. Esposito, in case you need a reminder). I wish I could put into sufficient words just why this is important. The moment I attempt it, however, I falter to truly express its potential power in film today. Carol Danvers represents not just a female superhero but a feminist female superhero. She is flawed, she struggles, she fights, and she tries to do what is right. She has super powers, but before that she is a woman and she is a person. Just as Tony Stark was the perfect, seriously flawed man-made superhero to grace our screens in 2008, Carol Danvers is the right choice for 2013 and into the next few years. Her latest incarnation represents not only Fourth Wave Feminism but also post-war survival and realism. She is a victim of war, a survivor of large-scale destruction, and a genius built for twenty-first century brilliance. 

You see, the amazing thing about Carol Danvers is that she is no different from Captain America or Iron-Man or The Hulk. Her condition is a result of her brilliance and desire for human betterment (Yes, it went a little wrong, but hey, she got some pretty awesome powers out of it). If Esposito, Marvel, and Disney are concerned about the marketing and success of a female-led superhero film, I ask them to pause and consider the material. As films like The Heat and The Hunger Games (and as I’ve already detailed in this post) prove, female-led films are pulling in huge numbers and serious box office money when they are portrayed not as shrill stereotypes but as the truthful, strong women they are. If they have a strong story and a strong character, audiences will come. Danvers has exactly that. She’s got the story, she’s got the character, and she has so much to contribute to the Marvel universe.

So, Mr. Esposito, give her a shot. Carol Danvers (along with all female viewers) has waited her turn, it’s time to give her moment. 

The Sexist Star Trek? The Problems with Uhura, Carol Marcus, and the Absence of Strong Women

Like most nerds, I saw Star Trek Into Darkness the very first moment that I could. So there I was, Friday evening, ready to take in the glorious Abrams production and revel in the wonder of the Enterprise. It was rather marvelous in most regards, but I was not expecting, however, to spend two hours with almost exclusively male actors dominating the scenes, the dialogue, and the action. I was amazed to see the once bad-ass Uhura (Zoe Saldana) transformed into a weak and meek girlfriend. Felicia Day writes that Uhura serves “as a vehicle to humanize Spock” but she does even less than that; in her role as girlfriend, she stands behind Spock (Zachary Quinto), and in her role as linguist, she serves as a man’s speaking device and little more. In the 2009 original film, Uhura was awesome: she was strong, fierce, confident, and more capable than any of the guys. Here, she’s nothing more than a man’s prop, used for her mouth and her voice only.

Uhura’s weakness is nothing compared to that of Carol Marcus (Alice Eve). Marcus is literally a throw-away woman with no substance, character, and purpose. She exists to please the womanizing Captain Kirk and, of course, the woman-hungry male audience. While I don’t condone this (this actually infuriates me), I prefer it to the smart girl disguise that Abrams and his films present this in. Marcus is presented as a Feminist-Trekkie’s dream: a smart, bad-ass chick who’s brilliance earns her a spot on the Enterprise. But she doesn’t have a spot on the Enterprise. Marcus (the daughter of the film’s actual villain) sneaks her way on to the Enterprise because she doesn’t apparently deserve, warrant, or earn a real spot aboard the famed vessel. She only uses her brain when instructed by Kirk, Bones, or Spock – she never actually gets to utilize her supposed intelligence in her own right.

Then, of course, there is the now infamous bra and undies moment. Carol Marcus has just revealed her true identity to the clearly-interested Captain Kirk. She takes him to her quarters to prepare for the torpedo inspection, which for some reason necessitates her to change. She tells Kirk not to look (because apparently he needs to be present in the room while she changes) and, because he’s Kirk, he looks. We then see Marcus in her bra and underwear from a figure-flattering angle. This moment is sexist and pointless; there is absolutely no use for this moment and its very inclusion suggests that Abrams and his editors deliberately kept it to appeal to the horny theatre viewers (and since it has been included in nearly every TV spot and trailer, this should be extended to every horny commercial/TV viewer). It is such a dumb ploy for idiotic views that it literally cheapens the entire film.

What’s worse is that J.J. Abrams responded to all the backlash about his sexist work on Conan. He tells Conan that he included this moment because “it was a sort of balance. There’s a scene earlier where he’s (Kirk) not dressed either, so I thought it was a trade-off.” He then shows a clip from a deleted scene that features the villainous John Harrison/Khan (Benedict Cumberbatch) showering.

The very idea that Abrams thinks this explanation should satisfy the nay-sayers is beyond insulting and just wrong. This comment suggests that Abrams has no understanding of sexism’s history. A shot of a shirtless Chris Pine and nearly naked Alice Eve will never “even out” because they will never be viewed in an equal light. Women or men that look at shirtless Pine will never ogle him the way horny people will stare at Eve. She is a piece of meat, up for the taking by every audience member that so chooses to take it, while Pine is just a hunk (also to be noted, this shirtless Pine moment occurs just after Kirk has enjoyed a threesome with two naked alien women). Abrams then cues up the Cumberbatch clip. Yes, this clip is sexy and definitely meant to get some women going, but his point his rendered useless when he admits that the clip was deleted. This scene did not make the final cut of the film yet Eve’s did. The men didn’t need to be objectified in order for the film to succeed, but the women did.

This leads me to another recently undressed woman, but this one has not received as much attention as I would have expected. In Iron Man 3, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) is kidnapped by Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce) and then forced to undergo his evil (and rather supernatural) transformative process. We find Potts waking from the final effects of the process strapped to a horrific metal device, wearing nothing on top but a bra. She continues to wear this bra throughout the final epic battle scene. Not only is this unsafe (see my last post, por favor) but its again cloaked under a disguise of her brilliance and sheer power. Like Eve’s undressing, Potts’s bra is depicted to empower her for the feminist-viewing sake, but it’s not. They are de-clothed by men for the purpose of men’s interests and pursuits. Iron Man 3 presents Pott’s half-nakedness as though its her choice and her empowerment, but she’s de-robed twice in the film by men. Tony Stark (RDJ) de-robes her when he decides it’s his time to defend her, literally removing the Iron Man suit from her body and placing it on his own. Killian then de-robes her when he induces her with his creepy process.

So, I ask, where are the strong women in action films? Why do filmmakers like Abrams and Shane Black pretend that they have these strong women in their films when they have systematically developed weak women who are used more as men’s toys and props than as capable female characters? Why are there no strong women who are truly empowered by their own needs and desires tearing up the summer box office? Along with Uhura, Carol Marcus, and Pepper Potts, we have the great literary character but also possibly the weakest, meekest, most tragic Daisy Buchanan in Baz Luhrman’s dizzying and disastrous 3D Great Gatsby. Besides Daisy, we’ve got the nameless sexy nobodies in the one millionth installation of Fast and Furious, the strippers and nagging wives in The Hangover, and some more nameless boobs and asses in the latest Mark Wahlberg muscles and guns flick.

Where are the strong ladies in Star Trek, in Superhero movies, and in the movies in general? Why are we being depicted as nothing more than our bodies and some brains, when convenient for the men (of course)? There is not a single woman on the big screen right now holding down even a remotely Feminist front. So why not? I know even asking this question what the big studio response could be: strong women are not profitable, there’s no audience for it, yadda yadda yadda. But I ask: how on earth do they know that? One of the largest films of 2012 featured a strong Feminist woman that was both profitable and is raking up hits on Netflix and in DVD sales (Hunger Games). Why is Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) alone in the cinema? I don’t know the answer to this, but I know that the answer is more obvious than we think. Studios want money, and through the years, men have guaranteed them money. But as the Hunger Games proves, that equation does not mean that women cannot make the same money. Now let’s get some strong women on that big screen.

– The Nerdy Girl