Captain America: The Winter Soldier - The Game is Changing

Those of you who read my last blog post may have caught this update from me just after I got myself caught up on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.:

UPDATE: Marvel wins

Just got caught up on #AgentsofSHIELD after seeing #CaptainAmericaTheWinterSoldier; holy mother of continuity am I a happy fanboy right now.
— Asher J. Klassen (@AsherJKlassen) April 6, 2014

I was over the moon when Agents actively tied its events into the opening events of the Winter Soldier movie, but those of you who have seen the film know that it's a gamechanger for S.H.I.E.L.D.. And it should be, as the first fully S.H.I.E.L.D.-focused movie in the Marvel repertoire. I suppose it could be argued that The Avengers fits that criteria, but that film had a very different agenda. Joss Whedon's writing for The Avengers was an exercise in team-building, creating meeting point for an ensemble of headlining characters that had to feature them all equally. And it was beautiful. But The Winter Soldier is a movie very much about one guy dealing with a new life, a new worldview, loyalties, secrets, and red tape; it's a conspiracy movie, not a slugfest. The writers get that, and they nailed it. Not to mention that Kevin Feige straight-up told us it was going to be a "political thriller".

According to the clip below, we only have to wait til Tuesday to see the blowback from the film hit Coulson's team of operatives. I'll be waiting with bated breath.

What Went Wrong?: A Woeful Wonder Woman Washout

Start this critique off by watching this little gem: 

This is another one of those things that I've been following obsessively for a few months now. I have Nathan Fillion to thank for that, after he tweeted the first promo image of cosplayer Rileah's costume for this project. I was pumped. Being something of a medieval history buff, especially in the area of arms and armour, I was excited to see some thought being put into interpreting Wonder Woman's garb via her Greek mythical background. The costume looked practical for once, something that could actually serve a hero in battle instead of something that she might be caught in walking sidewalks at midnight on East Hastings. I checked out the studio that was making this happen, Rainfall TV, and was suitably impressed. I decided to keep an eye on this endeavour, and two as often as I could spare them.

Rainfall's promotional images

Rainfall released the video this morning, and I'm still crying a little inside. 

Here's my rant constructive criticism on Comic Vine: 

It looks like we're all agreed (mostly, at least) that they did a solid job with the costume design. We finally get to see a practical Wonder Woman outfit that still holds true to the original aesthetics. I think that's really cool. But let's not kid ourselves about this being some off-the-cuff fan-made video. No, it's not a licensed DC product (you can tell, because it hasn't caused open war on the internet yet). But the production studio, Rainfall TV out of Los Angeles, can do better than this. They have done better. This project's been hyped on Twitter and their site for months at this point and the promo shots they release were superb. But in the end they churned out a poorly rendered FX demo reel with no story. It's a bit of a letdown. Nah...it's a massive letdown. I thought we had something here.
On the upside, we now know it can be done: it's possible to put Wonder Woman on the screen without her looking like a hooker. There's just enough Greek armour in that costume and enough badass in those Amazons to make Themyscira believable. All that's lacking is writing...so for those of you who haven't already, check out Scott Lynch's proposed shot-breakdown for the opening scene of a Wonder Woman film (http://scottlynch.us/blog/2013/06/26/in-the-wake-of-man-of-steel-a-timely-proposal/). Read it, and visualize Rainfall's aesthetic (minus that godawful flight scene...), and then join us in kicking DC's tires until they wake up and realize that this is something that's both doable and desired by superhero enthusiasts at large.

Scott Lynch, my disappointment is on your shoulders. If your written vision for a Wonder Woman film wasn't so mind-blowingly beautiful, I might have been perfectly happy with the computer generated plot-less schlock I sat down to this morning. Alas, you set the bar too high. All that remains is for us perform whatever superstitious ritual involving lumber or intertwined digits you choose to put stock in and wait until such time as Grant Morrison releases his graphic novel. With luck we can sit down with a soothing beverage and immerse ourselves in the master's work, eventually emerging content in the knowledge that someone still gets this character. I won't pretend that I understand Wonder Woman, but I like to think I can tell when such an iconic female hero is being done justice (pardon the pun, if you can), and this recent video isn't it.

It's likely Morrison will publish another socially-conscious masterpiece, as is his wont. He will raise the bar yet again, and DC will cower a little lower at the prospect of having to portray a woman with any sort of substance on the screen. Voices will be raised in a cry to have Joss Whedon write the movie, not understanding that he is contracted to Marvel until 2015 and will likely never work for DC. The cycle will go on, and I'll find myself blogging sorrowfully about this every eight months or so.

I apologize in advance.

Review: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - "We're not exactly a team..."

Joss Whedon just handed us some of the best (geeky) television you're likely to find...again.

I was going to start this post with "Marvel just handed you...", and then realized that Marvel actually has very little to do with this show. I'm reasonably sure you all now now what I'm talking about here, since a significantly large chunk of the world just finished watching the pilot of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. And yeah, it was frakking great. But yes, back to Marvel, and how little we can blame them for the sheer level of awesome on the screen. As we all know, everything Joss touches turns to gold: vampire slayers, Shakespeare, talking toys, you name it. This time, it isn't even just him. This show's credits include Jed Whedon, Jeph Loeb, Mark Millar, Bryan Hitch...big guns in the comics industry and brilliant creators every one. This show is going to survive because of the sheer creative force it has behind it. And because it's not DC...

I went there. I have innumerable issues with the way DC Comics is running things these days, and you can read my griping in previous posts. Not all their content is terrible; Jeff Lemire is writing a pretty damn solid Green Arrow storyline right now and giving that title the creative stability it was pining for ever since the reboot, and hell if I don't find myself loving Arrow in all it's artifical CW-ness. I'm a sucker for a Mike Grell homage. But DC has none of the brilliant consistency that Marvel has managed to weave through its properties, and the damage is ever so painfully visible. Marvel is seeing none of the massive conflict erupting over the canonical validity of Chris Nolan's Batman trilogy, which has nothing to do with DC's monthly titles except having influenced a "new" (2008) way of drawing the Joker, and the more recent post-New 52 Man of Steel, making yet more costume changes to Big Blue. Kudos to Jeff Lemire for gradually bringing the Emerald Archer abstractly in line with Arrow, since that's pretty much the extent of DC's storytelling cohesion. If they were on top of their game to the same extent as Marvel, there would be a Wonder Woman movie in the works to complement Grant Morrison's upcoming graphic novel. We'll just keep dreaming...

With the immense success of The Avengers on the silver screen came the launch of the Marvel NOW! event, a regrouping of Marvel's properties into what Skye would call the "brave new world". In a genius move they canonized the events of that most recent blockbuster, moving fan-favourite Agent Phil Coulson off the screen and into the comics. He features in the Secret Avengers title, a good read, if you get the chance, with more than a passing resemblance to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. There are obvious differences, of course. The "brave new world" of Agents is new to the idea of superheroes, while the universe in the comics is anything but. I think I understand why this is so effective: Marvel is solving the long-standing issue of new readers in a way DC never considered. New readers approaching superhero comics have long faced a dilemma; with decades of back-issues piling up, where's a gal or a guy to start reading if he wants to get a handle on a character's backstory? Instead of taking their comics titles back to origin and retconning 70-odd years of story coughnewfiftytwocough, Marvel decided to tell their heroes' stories from the beginning on the silver screen and bring their comics to bear on a similar course. It's an elegant solution. In the words of Mike Peterson, it's no longer a disaster, "it's an origin story."

So, yeah. Coulson's back in action, there's a serious Iron Man 3 connection in play, and between the flying cars and witty banter this new show has enough Whedon-level awesome to keep me watching for...well, forever, really. It will be great fun to see how the show leads into the upcoming Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, and The Avengers: Age of Ultron feature films. As for comics, the show offers a great new jumping in point for those intrigued by the world of superheroes. So with beer in hand I applaud you, Joss Whedon. You've done it again.