S.H.I.E.L.D., Laws of Nature - Sep 29

And so, AoS is back. Opening S3 is “Laws of Nature”, a nice filler/introductory episode. It introduced Joey/Jose, a new character with the power to melt metal (and maybe other solids), as well as Lash, a giant feral InHuman of an arsehole, who goes around killing people. Whedon, whose demons back on BtVS had been known for their grotesque appearances, must be so proud of him – talk about a throwback, and it is primal!..

And then there is Ms. Rosalind, an international woman of mystery, who is running ACTU, a new incarnation of ‘real S.H.I.E.L.D.’. It aims to control the new InHumans, (who are set to appear all over the world), but actually may not be the evil organisation that Lash made it appear to be to the viewers. That said, given Coulson’s keen acumen and whatnot, it is only a matter of time until S.H.I.E.L.D. and ACTU are being full-out enemies, or at least – rivals.

Think back to S2. Ward is not in this episode, so we shall not be talking about him this time. Think about the ‘real S.H.I.E.L.D.’. Odds are, they were not exactly evil, and they did make peace with Coulson at the end of S2 – just for Jiaying’s InHumans to decimate them, because they followed Coulson’s plan, and died for because.

The same goes for senator Ward. Yes, it was his brother who killed him, but the man got the opportunity only because of Coulson’s decisions. (May’s as well, maybe, but she is not in this episode either, so we shall not talk about her much too.) Coulson found the senator useful? Then he should have dedicated at leastsome agents to protect him against Grant – but he did not. The result? Ward killed his family, but he had nothing to lose, while Coulson probably lost any political goodwill he had built by hanging over Scarlotti to Talbot and the US authorities – and now he is paying the price. Great decision choices there, ‘DC’.

Speaking of decision choices, there is Lincoln, who, apparently, is not with S.H.I.E.L.D. anymore. WTF with that? Obviously, the SkyeWard relationship is done. Obviously, there needs to be more than just ‘Skye/Daisy married Lincoln and had his babies’. But at the end of S2 Lincoln helped Skye and Co. defeat Jiaying’s forces, so whatever it was that caused his about-face really should be shown in detail. For the moment, though, Lincoln refused to come with Mack and Skye/Daisy, but has run away, seeking out his own way in the world. He will probably be back, helping the agency or being helped by them in few episodes – he is a part of the regular cast now, after all.

With Jemma, it’ll probably be much longer – she’s stuck on some alien planet, having learned some survival skills that probably equal Ward’s, waiting, but proactively, for the others to come and rescue her...and by ‘proactively’ I mean running for her life from...whatever it is that we weren’t shown – yet. We did get to see the alien moon, which is cool, so maybe we will get some Guardians of the Galaxy crossover action yet. Of course, if Fitz will lose Simmons to Rocket Racoon, this will just be wrong! His final scene in this episode, when he is screaming at the monolith because he had lost Jemma (at least for a while) is heart rendering.

On the other hand, Lance and Bobbi are back together for good. They have to be, of course, since the talk of a spinoff featuring them, and primarily them, has been in the works had been around since they appeared on S2, and now it is picking up steam, but anyways. Bobbi still has not recovered from Ward’s shooting her in the knee; Hunter is going after Hydra and Ward (so who is going to be helping Daisy/Skye with the InHumans? Only Mack? Considering that he does not like aliens and had been infected with some sort of an alien virus back in Puerto Rico...this will turn out to be a problem, one bets). That is fine, Hydra is a part of Marvel universe, but the question is – will Hunter be able to handle it? In the end – yes, he must because of the spinoff, but on the other hand? Ward might be evil now fully, but if he had been able to rebuild Hydra after AoS S2 and ‘Age of Ultron’, then he had to learn new skills, including organizational ones. How will Hunter be able to handle them, I wonder?

And so, this is it for ‘Laws of Nature’. It just introduced the new characters and plotlines, (conflicts, etc), and not even them, since neither Ward nor May have appeared in this episode. It should be noted, that on the latest ‘S.H.I.E.L.D.’ promotional posters, Ward is flanking Coulson alongside Skye. Why? Is he going to be redeemed? This is unlikely; even for his fans on the show, but no one probably saw Lincoln splitting off from S.H.I.E.L.D. and breaking up with Skye after S2 either.

...Anyways, ‘Law of Nature’ was very exciting to watch, but nothing in-depth. This is worrisome too – ever since S2 ended; TV had featured new shows that were clearly influenced by ‘Agents’, including ‘Killjoys’ and ‘Blindspot’. The latter, in particular, stars Jaimie Alexander, who had appeared as lady Sif on S.H.I.E.L.D., so odds are that lady Sif will not be returning to this show any time soon: being Jane Doe on ‘Blindspot’ pays better. That is not the issue; the issue is that those shows tend to stimulate excitement and nothing more; easily watchable and easily forgettable. Hopefully, ‘S.H.I.E.L.D.’ will not follow their example...

So this is it for this installment – a nice introductory episode, nothing more. Hopefully, the next ones will be have more depth.

JW and S.H.I.E.L.D. - April 21

Once more, Marvel’s “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” have a delivered a very good episode; but before we get into it, let us talk about a certain upcoming future film – “Jurassic World”. 

What is the film’s premise? 22 years in the future after the events of the first JP movie, InGen – or a similar company – has restarted the dinosaur theme park thing, making it bigger and better. When I say bigger, I mean literally – aside from the I-Rex, there was also a vastly oversized mosasaur (Tylosaurus?) that swallows great white sharks whole: in reality, mosasaurs were very big animals (8-12 m long on average), but that wasn’t big enough to swallow a modern great white shark (or its Cretaceous analogue – the Ginsu shark) whole; it would rip and tear into pieces first, instead. What JW presents here, though, is already an imaginary, impossible, artificial creature, making the producers’ use of the I-Rex redundant.

And as for the I-Rex itself... Aside from various rumors – that it possesses telepathy and similar amazing mental powers – there is the fact it is not a Rex! There is not any tyrannosaur in this monster’s genetic makeup: apparently, it was created from the DNA of Giganotosaurus and various abelisaurs instead. We will get to Giganotosaurus in a moment; first about the abelisaurs. They were a group of Cretaceous carnivorous dinosaurs, descendants of the Jurassic Ceratosaurus and the like; formidable hunters in their own right, they were smaller – on the average – than Tyrannosaurus was, or than Giganotosaurus, for that matter. They also had very small front limbs – even smaller than those of a T-Rex, though they had three or four fingers instead of T-Rex’s trademark two. The Carnotaurus from Disney’s “Dinosaur” film, for example, was an abelisaur – and it did not look anything like an I-Rex. Or the I-Rex does not look anything like an abelisaur – instead it looks like a carnosaur.

What is a carnosaur? It is a group of carnivorous dinosaurs, which in the Jurassic were represented by allosaurus, saurophaganax; in the Cretaceous – by Giganotosaurus, Carcharodontosaurus, Mapusaurus and so on. Compared to tyrannosaurs and abelisaurs, the carnosaurs were more gracile, so to speak: they had longer and thinner legs, lighter skulls, less powerful jaws (more designed to rip and tear rather than to grip and crush), and correspondingly – longer and stronger front legs and claws, as you can see for yourself in a museum, or a paleontology book, or online. The I-Rex has these features too – especially the front limbs – so why is it a Rex? You could have as well called it a “Megalo-raptor” or something along those lines, and it would be just as true! The real T-Rex should sue this impostor for the unlawful appropriating of its name or something...

Anything else? There is the blatant disregard or mocking of the modern paleontological discoveries – JP3 had its own share of problems, but at least its’ raptors had protofeathers, and the Spinosaurus featured there was not so much wrong, as it was outdated, just as the featherless raptors in the first JP films were. Speaking of raptors: for Crichton, in the original novel, velociraptors were not a name of a specific species, but a term that he used as a synonym for a generic ‘raptor’, to describe such dinosaurs as the Deinonychus (a bigger, stronger species of ‘raptor’ than the Velociraptor was) instead; once again, he was more scientifically accurate than his followers in the field of mass media are.

As for the latest incarnation of JP (-related franchise) raptors...yeah. They are still the size of Deinonychus, but are still – apparently – identified as velociprators by fans and filmmakers. The fact that they are featherless and scaly is only an extra insult to an injury, but still. The telepathically communicating dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and marine reptiles put all science (paleontology?) out of the window, which contrasts sharply with the main message of the film – artificial animals are bad, Dr. Frankenstein was wrong; man should not meddle with what he does not understand in the name of science, etc. I would not go that far to say that JW has been sponsored by creationists to discredit science in general, but discredit science the JW cast and crew do all the same.

(And on top of all the paleontological inaccuracies JW had some legal problems as well, mainly in regards to who had actually written the story – the WGA had to get involved; I’m not sure if it was Writers Guild of America East or West, but that’s not the point; the point is that the film hadn’t been yet aired, and yet there already are legal problems with it. Sad.)

While JW is dealing with problems legal and scientific, “Agents” have to deal with Hydra instead. Well, most of them anyways; Skye has to deal with her parents instead. So far, she’s got a delusional, perfectionist father, who puts insane into ‘insane genius’, and has physical prowess not unlike that of the Incredible Hulk, just like in the comics, and a mother, who is obsessed with research and protecting – and running – her town of Afterlife; a typical modern American family gone nasty, in the other words. To make things more complex (potentially), there is also Lincoln, a young man she may have developed a crush on; Raina, who is Raina, and Gordon, who may be Raina’s only friend in the world for the moment. Together, combined, these people may make life in Afterlife more complex...even if one forgets about the fact that Lincoln was captured by Hydra alongside his new potential friend Deathlok the Cyborg...and Skye’s mother appears to be the sort of a person who doesn’t like complications...then again, she had lived with Skye’s father, who is a complex character, in an insane sort of way...where were we?

Right, the rest of the team. They got Grant Ward and Kara Lynn, sure enough, but somehow this plot line did not have the same impact as the one dealing with Skye and her family did. Grant’s re-integration into the rest of the team just did not feel natural, but rather rushed; and the team itself appeared to lack the moral high ground that is needed, when dealing with Grant and 33; Coulson’s idea of a carrot – S.H.I.E.L.D. erases Grant’s memory and makes him a normal man – is flawed, and not just because this is a lot like the mental/memory manipulation that Whitehall and the rest of Hydra had practised... yeah. (And Kara Lynn was not even included in the negotiations – who did Coulson think he was by dealing with her in such a high-handed manner? Headmaster Dumbledore? Aye and Fitz almost got his throat slit for this.)

Moral ground aside, this plotline also feels rushed and forced: Coulson and Ward switched from arguing with each other at gunpoint to watching each other’s back within an episode (though that came as a surprise to Coulson, admittedly.) So did Lance and Kara Lynn, of course, but considering that Bobbi is getting rather friendly with Mack...who knows? Maybe the ship HunterBird is more broken-up than it initially looked like. True, there are rumors of a Lance/Bobbi spin-off going around, but, firstly, it all depends on the actors, and secondly, not unlike the “Agent Carter” plotline it could be a filler arc that takes place in the past (with more of agent Isabelle/Xena/LL thrown into the mix, maybe?), so all bets are still off.

And finally, the villains (not counting Grant and Kara Lynn). Dr. List is ruthless and efficient; Bakshi is back being charge and something of a creep; Cal and his ex-wife were already discussed (though it is anyone’s guess if they are villains or not); and there was an official mention of the good baron von Strucker too (and a possible tie with the upcoming new Avengers movie). Hydra villains are getting badder, basically – will S.H.I.E.L.D. be able to stand up to the challenge? Only time will tell.

Until next time!