Musings on the abuse of power
So, superheroes.
I've had a few thoughts about them of late. weebleflip and I watched Painkiller Jane recently. It's a very, very low budget film which is effectively a superheroine origin story. As a film, it's a wee bit crap. As a feature-length pilot for a pretty damned decent TV series, it was promising, and indeed had all the hallmarks right down to the type and application of the special effects. It also had the suave, morally ambiguous love interest, the mute kid who knows the city's tunnels like the back of his hand, the wise-cracking street doc, the contacts inside the military and more, including a really fun bad-guy. So, having watched it, I hit Wikipedia and read more.
As it turns out, it was tangentially (only one name remains 50% the same) based on a comic series of the same name. And, having made the film, they did indeed make a TV series. It sank without trace, in large part I suspect because it too only retained the obligatory 50% of one name. Yep, they came up with a third origin story, a new set of enemies and weirdness and got rid of the whole cast of supporting characters. I really hate it when they do that.
All of which brings me to what I've actually been irritated about. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Excuse me whilst I spit. Firstly, they ressurect a character purely for a spin-off. I dislike that at the best of times. In this case, however, they bring back the chap whose shittily managed death was the laughingly bad catalyst for bringing together a bunch of misfits, only two of whom actually regarded him as any different from the rest of the faceless mooks around themselves, in order to get them all in one place to watch the deus ex machina end of the film. That adds insult to injury.
The real problem, however, is that the character in question was an evil piece of shit. Really. Watch "Thor". Watch "Iron Man". Actually, watch anything in which he appears. The man has the air of Nuremburg about him at the best of times, serving a potent authority secure in the knowledge that this makes him right and that any harm others suffer along the way is entirely justified. He's not even an hard man making hard decisions, beloved as Holywood is of that particular theme, but a minion with an obsequious air of humility, following orders. He's a posterchild for the banality of evil and now he's the one around whom they chose to build a series? I really do not understand his inexplicable popularity, but I am disturbed by it.
I've had a few thoughts about them of late. weebleflip and I watched Painkiller Jane recently. It's a very, very low budget film which is effectively a superheroine origin story. As a film, it's a wee bit crap. As a feature-length pilot for a pretty damned decent TV series, it was promising, and indeed had all the hallmarks right down to the type and application of the special effects. It also had the suave, morally ambiguous love interest, the mute kid who knows the city's tunnels like the back of his hand, the wise-cracking street doc, the contacts inside the military and more, including a really fun bad-guy. So, having watched it, I hit Wikipedia and read more.
As it turns out, it was tangentially (only one name remains 50% the same) based on a comic series of the same name. And, having made the film, they did indeed make a TV series. It sank without trace, in large part I suspect because it too only retained the obligatory 50% of one name. Yep, they came up with a third origin story, a new set of enemies and weirdness and got rid of the whole cast of supporting characters. I really hate it when they do that.
All of which brings me to what I've actually been irritated about. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Excuse me whilst I spit. Firstly, they ressurect a character purely for a spin-off. I dislike that at the best of times. In this case, however, they bring back the chap whose shittily managed death was the laughingly bad catalyst for bringing together a bunch of misfits, only two of whom actually regarded him as any different from the rest of the faceless mooks around themselves, in order to get them all in one place to watch the deus ex machina end of the film. That adds insult to injury.
The real problem, however, is that the character in question was an evil piece of shit. Really. Watch "Thor". Watch "Iron Man". Actually, watch anything in which he appears. The man has the air of Nuremburg about him at the best of times, serving a potent authority secure in the knowledge that this makes him right and that any harm others suffer along the way is entirely justified. He's not even an hard man making hard decisions, beloved as Holywood is of that particular theme, but a minion with an obsequious air of humility, following orders. He's a posterchild for the banality of evil and now he's the one around whom they chose to build a series? I really do not understand his inexplicable popularity, but I am disturbed by it.