Fantasy world

I have been enjoying immensely Marvels’ Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. with its whip-smart wit, cracking, if contained, action and slow building of characterisation.  It has Joss Whedon’s influence all over it (not suprising, given that he is now in charge of Marvel’s cinema franchise for the comic Avengers and directed the first episode to get the series off the ground).  So far there are no heroes with ‘organic’ superpowers which is its high concept, dealing more with human ambition and greed.  Agent Coulson, who was thought killed off in Avengers Assemble, holding a terrible secret that maybe even he isn’t fully aware of, marshals laconically a team of incredibly good-looking people – after all, this is escapism not gritty reality (incidentally, for all American criticism of British dentistry, last night I saw a close-up of Bruce Willis in Armageddon with malformed teeth overlapping each other like in a slate quarry – having never noticed this before, is this character-acting as a roughneck driller or the double standards of the US entertainment industry?).

Like traditional James Bond escapades, it – largely, referencing the film from which it sprang occasionally – takes place in a black box – this action could conceivably, allowing for suspension of disbelief, be occurring in our world without us being aware of it.  Part of this illusion involves using real-world locations, unlike William Boyd’s posting of 007 to the fictional African state of Zanzarin in Solo.  However, this can run into trouble if the proper background research isn’t done.  The villain in the third episode has a hideout on Malta, which seemingly is immune from all international law.  Further, the smooth bad guy derides in a speech the US government, the EU and S.H.IE.L.D. and their collective reach.  This posits that Malta is outside these institutions, like some central Mediterranean version of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, despite the Maltese being part of the EU since 2004 and the government in Valetta has even adopted the Euro, not as a reserve but as its national currency.  It’s a small hiccup that could have been resolved by setting it in Northern Cyprus, but it would have gone unnoticed by the majority of people.

Whedon, in advance publicity of Marvels’ Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. had said that, though proud of Avengers Assemble, it was imperfect and flawed.  Nevertheless, as his creation, he loved it – “When I think of a great film, I think of something that's either structured so perfectly like The Matrix or made so lovingly like The Godfather Part 2. There was haphazardness in the way it comes together - not just the people, but the scenes. I don't think you'd look at it and go, 'This is a model of perfect structure'. You'd go, 'This is working. I like it'.”  I felt much the same, the film being visually impressive but lacking a core to revolve around and a feeling of redundancy – once you’ve saved the world, where do you go from there apart from saving the world again, which, given this is fiction and not real life, is repetitive.  Roger Moore had his reservations about, in my opinion, the worst of the James Bond series, Quantum of Solace, particularly the infuriating jump-cuts – “there was a bit too much flash cutting [and] it was just like a commercial of the action. There didn't seem to be any geography and you were wondering what the hell was going on.”  Many felt Daniel Craig carried the film and that is true, because it was a passenger overall.  Though my views can taken in isolation, it is comforting to know that industry figures share my angles as well.