Huh… so apparently, Lucy Lawless has signed on for next season’s Agents of SHIELD. Because clearly, like George Takei, Mark Hammill and Summer Glau before her, she has realized that there is no point whatsoever to taking any role that can’t raise her autograph fee at comicons is useless and to be avoided at all costs.
And of course, this means that all geeks who have sworn off SHIELD will have to start grudgingly watching it again.
Now, the only question is what color will her hair be?
Mark Hamill better be playing Baron Zemo!
see… there you go…
I’m giving S.H.I.E.L.D. another season to wow me. Season one barely “meh’d” me.
Mikey: yeah, I know. That was sort of my point with that part. I know a lot of “geeks” hate the show. But the show is sort of exactly what it promised to be (and not what people were expecting) and I like it a lot.
My point being, now Lawless will be there and she brings enough geek cried that people are going to. Be like “dammit…. I have to watch again”
Of course, it’s till not going to be a superhero show, so people will still hate it. 🙂
What if she’s La Contessa Valentina Allegra de la Fontaine? That’d be very cool.
Andy, no it would be dumb. I mean, I don’t really care. I just care that she’s a good character. But the thing that’s awesome about the show is that they DON’T weigh it down with references that no one would understand. I’m a huge comic nerd. But I know that even amongst current comic readers, no one knows who the Contessa is.
I’m confused by the venom of this post. What on earth is wrong with an actor taking a job acting? Without having any clue as to her professional life, she might be taking this role simple because it was the best offered, not as some kind of grand contemptuous conspiracy against fandom…
Joe: I’m not being venomous at all! Just silly. I actually love the show (as I’ve said) and I like Lucy Lawless a lot. (I’m actually a fan of all the actors I mentioned).
I just think that at this point it’s clear that she LIKES doing geek shows. Clearly Takei, Glau and Hammill do, and they’ve all said as such, as has Ming-Na, who I didn’t think to mention in the post.
I loved Season 1.
The whole first season of that show was “some kind of grand contemptuous conspiracy against fandom.”
*shrugs* I loved it.
By most accounts, whatever people thought of the beginning of the season… the second half or so was worth it.
http://io9.com/which-episodes-you-must-watch-to-catch-up-on-agents-of-1572676925
Yet, oddly Arrow does weight the show down with lots of references that only comic nerds understand and it also manages to be hugely popular, even beyond comic nerds. For whatever reason, DC TV shows tend to pull that off very well.
Chris it would be awesome if you had to say her full name every time you referred to her.
Speaking of Ming-Na, I just saw the Street Fighter movie the other day. She was Chun-Li.
Mind…… Blown
Rod & Mikey (and Andrew, a little): That’s just what I’m saying. It wasn’t a conspiracy against fandom. Whedon said from day 1: “This is not the comic book. This is not a villain of the week. This me exploring my vision of the MCU.” It’s not that he doesn’t care about “fandom” (a word I kinda hate, especially in this context) its that he knows it doesn’t matter. As I’ve said before, there are 250,000 current comic readers in this country. Period. That’s it. And that’s not Nick Fury/SHIELD fans or even Marvel fans. That’s all of them. AoS has 8-9 million viewers every week. That’s who he’s aiming for. Requiring a working knowledge obscure comic trivia that at best maybe 20,000-30,000 people would get would hurt the show.
Michael: Except, they don’t really. Arrow has random allusions to comic book stuff, name drops and the like, but it really has nothing to do with the comics. Felicity is a name from Firestorm, but the character has nothing to do with her comic counterpart whatsoever. They’ll do stuff like fight in a parking lot on the corner of Denis and O’neill and no one needs to even know that that’s a joke.
My friend Connie is a huge fan of the show. She and I talk about it every week. But she has no real back knowledge of Green Arrow and doesn’t need any. That’s what makes the show work, but even then, it only has 1/3 of the viewers of AoS. It just gets away with it because CW has lower expectations than ABC.
I dont necessarily think you need to take or adapt stories from the comics to keep the audience happy. But i do think you have forty eight years worth of stories to draw on for ideas and story and characters to draw on for your show.
I think it’ll be interesting to see how it does at 9pm. Going against NCIS, the highest rated drama with 15 million regular viewers didn’t help.
LOVE ARROW. Hopeful but concerned about Flash. Didn’t really read the books. Also, I might be missing references, but it hasn’t really hampered my enjoyment of Arrow.
Similarly, my 7 year old did not realize the Vincent Price knock-off character on the new Scooby Doo episode we just watched was ripping off the intro to Thriller.
Andrew: they did draw on it. You got hydra, Garrett, howling commandos. But it needs to end there because 7,980,000 of the 8M viewers don’t care.
In general what has made comic (and other scifi) adaptations better these last few years is NOT trying to just storyboard the original work. They are different mediums, with different audiences and usually (Sin City being a good exception) trying to just copy it for fanboys doesn’t work (see Watchmen)
I don’t get that last statement. I never read Watchmen in my life, yet I watched the movie and loved it. But you aren’t the first person I’ve heard criticize the movie. What do you feel is wrong with that movie?
Michael: It’s not a good movie. It’s a pointless beat-em-up action movie. Which actually has its place… I like the movie Sucker Punch for instance… But that doesn’t make it “good.” In Watchmen’s case, it’s upsetting because the book IS VERY GOOD.
So last semester I assigned both the book and film to my lit class. Of the 22 of them, I think 2 of them had previously read the book and 3 had seen the film. Once they had all done both, they without exception felt let down by the film.
It works fine if you’re going to see a bunch of special effects and fighting. But viewing it as an actual “film” it fails in a way that Avengers doesn’t.
Connie: yeah. Arrow is a great example. It knows its a niche show. They aren’t looking for an Emmy. But they found a target audience (which is not the quarter million comic fans) and they shoot for it very well, picking up who they can from the quarter million along the way.
I’d argue that you were influenced by having read the comic first. I felt it was more than a fighting film. There was clearly a very nuanced story about power and responsibility to use it. The flashbacks told the story in a subtle yet powerful way. The characters were amazingly well developed and the ending scene brilliant.
I understand that if I had read the comic first I would probably be let down. But I didn’t read the comic first and what I saw was a strong story that had just enough interspersed action to keep me from getting antsy in my seat.
Nah. I do a lot of seeing movies then reading and vice versa. I know how to separate. (I know most people can’t) and in some cases I like the film better.
Even when I don’t think the movie is as good I can still acknowledge its values. I also assigned Wonder Boys last semester. The book is better but the film is very good (and I saw the film first). By the same author, Mysteries of Pittsburgh kind of sucks as a film (despite having Mena Suvari, one of my favorite actresses)
I’m not saying watchmen is the worst movie of all time. It’s not. It’s not even the worst comic movie. I used it purely as an example of a film that is hurt by some of its attempts to mimic the book.
That said, it has other failings… the one most geeks point to, the lack of a giant squid, is annoying as a fan but doesn’t really bother me as much because even though I think it makes the story better, I don’t think it would have worked as well in the film. But what they did doesn’t work either. Ozy’s plan makes very little sense in the logic of the film.
Also, in the name if doing “cool stuff” a lot of the film ends up being corny and alienating non-geeks. For instance: bullet time, village people, batman nipples, four legged chicken, and especially the hallelujah sex scene in the clouds.
I’ve never really been terribly into DC other than Batman, especially compared to my love for Marvel, but I am a bit disappointed in the lack of cohesion for the DC screen productions. You just had a good series of Batman films that now exist on their own and will never tie in to anything. They are starting their own cinematic universe, but so far it has one movie with only three more planned (Batman vs. Superman, Justice League, and a Man of Steel prequel it seems). Meanwhile they’re about to have four live action TV shows in Arrow, The Flash, Gotham, and Constantine and yet all four of them also exist in their own unique little worlds. Del Toro at least wants Constantine to exist in the Justice League universe (and therefore the rest of the DCCU) but DC hasn’t confirmed that it will. I think they’re really missing out on not having Flash and Gotham exist within the same universe as Arrow (yes Gotham seems as if it will at least in part take place earlier in time, but it can still do that and be a part of that same continuity). I’d even suggest tying it in with Smallville had they not already appeared in that show. Though from what I just read at least their animated series are sharing a continuity.
Flash does exist in the same universe as Arrow. In fact, Arrow introduced Flash. Flash is a spin-off of Arrow.
Ah, that’s a good start (I’m a full season behind). And I see where I misread the part saying that Arrow’s producers hadn’t spoken to anyone about any tie-ins. It mentioned that that included The Flash, which I took meant Flash wouldn’t be tied in, but now I see that they meant Arrow, and by extension Flash, aren’t tied in to anything else.
Also, out of curiosity, what DC animated series? The only DC animated series that is still ongoing is Teen Titans Go, which is pretty much nothing more than a series of one-off and what-if episodes (all of the principle characters have died in more than one of the episodes).
Sorry, animated movies, not series. Justice League: War and Son of Batman are apparently the start of an animated movie universe.
You misread. Arrow appears in the first episode of Flash and there’s a rumor of a crossover event.
The producers and star have said the want to be part of DCCU but the DCCU brass hasn’t agreed (yet). Constantine wants this too but same issue. The problem is you’re asking for the fanboyish thing I’m warning about “wouldn’t it be cool if these things tied together” which is a lot of hard work to do and do well. As opposed to say the MCU or the DCAU which were built to be connected from the beginning and wrote very well to be cohesive.
Which was basically my point, that I think it would have been wise to have taken that into account on DC’s end, that they have these series they’re starting and this movie universe they’re starting, perhaps they should work them together rather than letting everybody run off and do their own thing resulting in multiple individual universes. Which can still be interesting of course, but I think a shared universe adds a depth that individual projects don’t have.
The problem is DC (and by this I really mean Warner) wants the franchise because they saw Marvel/Disney do it, and it means a lot of money. But Marvel spent 8 years and 6 films building to Avengers. Longer if you count the first Hulk movie which they acknowledge was a failure.
It was carefully planned and crafted with well acknowledged “phases” and editorial and production direction. And they worked hard at making real movies. Not just action films.
Warner doesn’t have that. They have the dark knight trilogy. But that was meant to be stand alone. Man of steel they didn’t really know what to do so they tried to have Snyder remake dark knight with superman in it.
Now they want avengers, and they’re trying to plan, but they’re a decade behind Disney so they’re trying to start in the middle.
That is “problematic”
A lot of conversation happening here, wow.
– Arrow’s comic references work so well because they’re just regular people. Nobody is “above and beyond”, it’s not like Superman shows up and starts shooting laser beams out of his eyes or anything like that. It’s all very down to Earth, so even if you have characters like Dead Shot or Huntress or whatever, they don’t feel overly comic booky at the moment. That’s why it works so well. Meanwhile, in SHIELD, you have Deathlok and everyone immediately kind of groans, not only because it feels comic booky, but because the costume feels comic booky.
– As someone who watched Watchmen first, I really truly enjoyed it. I think the comic was drastically better, and had a lot of great elements (like all the backmatter) that didn’t work in the Theatrical release. I felt as if the Extended Cut worked fairly well, but was still lacking in a cohesiveness that the comics had, but that’s just the nature of the adaptation. You couldn’t do everything, and have it flow the same way, but they still came close IMO.
– DC is rushing this Justice League film, and it makes me want to vomit every time I hear a rumor or a casting announcement or anything that doesn’t directly involve just Batman and/or Superman.
– I’d love for the DC TV shows to connect in some way that didn’t force you to watch all the shows. Maybe a single crossover episode once every 2 or 3 seasons, or shared Villains or whatever. I think it’s going to bug me that Gotham exists in its own little Universe and Constantine exists in its own as well. As long as we don’t encounter a “Quicksilver” issue, I think I’ll be fine though. It’s always weird to see the same exact character used and portrayed by different actors in tandem with another project using the same character.
– Lucy Lawless announcement is awesome. I’m glad that there are certain “Geek” actors that show up in all geeky shows.
Link: • Definitely a good point on Arrow. It’s not that I don’t think a show with super powered individuals can’t be accessible. Obviously, Smallville had it’s fans. It’s ratings were comparable to Arrow’s. The Hulk series did well in the 70s. Wonder Woman did extremely well. Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman as well. Lois and Clark was a smash success. Today, we have True Blood.And next year there’ll be half a dozen superhero shows on the air.
But SHIELD wasn’t supposed to be about super heroics. I’d argue that the Deathlok stuff was the worst part of the show
• Watchmen I think would have been a fine movie in the 80s or even the 90s,. It’s certainly at least on par with the Burton Batman films and probably better than the Schumacher ones. As Michael Strauss pointed out, it’s better than a lot of random generic action films. There’s more story to it. It’s way better than Man of Steel, which I think is a horrible film even for a mindless action movie. But, it’s still a superhero movie, and it came out 2009, a year after the second Nolan Batman film and a year before the second Iron Man movie. Star Trek came out that year, and Avatar and a Twilight Movie and a Harry Potter and Terminator Salvation. People were really starting to take sci-fi/comic/fantasy films seriously and Watchmen sort of pales in comparison to those movies. To be entirely fair, that’s also the year of the first Wolverine movie, the first GI Joe, and the 2nd Transformers, and even though the all did better than Watchmen at the box office, they’re nowhere near as good as films in their own rights. Watchmen takes a lot of flack, but honestly it’s just mediocre, and since the source material is so rich, that just “feels” disappointing.
• DC films… yeah, I mean, as I’ve been saying a lot lately (all over the Cap/Thor rants) I really HOPE I’m wrong. I’d love it if Batman/Superman and Justice League are great. But they don’t feel great. Even laying aside my little gimmick here where I’m supercritical of everything and trying to approach it as a literary/film scholar, and just looking at it as a pure fan: every time Marvel/Disney has leaked something in the last decade I get excited. Every time Nolan leaked something for Batman I got excited. I’m not even a Guardians of the Galaxy fan and I can’t wait to see that movie. I’m actually a big fan of Ben Affleck, but every time I hear something leak about Batman/Superman, I think “ugh, God… they’re totally just trying to make a movie that panders, aren’t they?”
News broke today that Whedon actually junked the initial Avengers script and started over from scratch when he got the directing job because he wanted to make a good movie. It is not a perfect film, no… but it is good. And hey, it turned into a blockbuster, so great. It *feels* like Warner/DC isn’t trying to make a good movie. It feels like they’re trying to make a blockbuster. Throw as much shit as you can at the wall and see what sticks.
• My problem with wishing for TV crossovers is that TV crossovers pretty much work like comic book crossovers. There are two reasons to do them. 1) because you have an amazing story that can only be told through synergy of diverse products. 2) You want cross promotion and you’re hoping that people from the popular show/book will be forced to read the less popular one. Right now, DC has exactly one super hero show… Arrow. It is not perfect, but I like it. It’s not deep or meaningful… it’s a show for giddy teenaged girls… of which I apparently am one (so is Connie, that’s what we talk about most of the time we’re giggling over it). Flash, we know is a direct spin-off, so we’re expecting the same kind of show. Constantine and Gotham are looking entirely different in tone and audience. Arrow is planning a Flash crossover, because they want to give it a rub, but at 3million viewers, and already being the lead-in, how much rub do they really have to give?
So some TV crossovers end up being astounding. Homicide and Law & Order did this. They created stories together that were too big for either show on their own and they really took advantage of the crossovers. But more often than not, what ends up happening is you get a popular show like ER starting a story and you see the conclusion on Third Watch, a show that I bet you don’t even remember, because no one fucking watched it!
But even within the L&O universe, crossovers were actually really rare. Most recently they did one with Chicago PD, which wasn’t even a “crossover.” One character from Chicago PD was on L&O:SVU for 2 min. And then two from SVU guest starred on their show for an entire episode. Because they were really trying to get people to watch Chicago PD. It’s like suddenly deciding to put Wolverine in every book.
So sure, there could be good crossovers, if they’re really well planned , but mostly they just turn into gratuitous money grabbing stunts… just like in the comics. Do you really have some burning desire to see Zero Hour or Armageddon 2001 on TV?
So I kind of liked Watchmen, but I see Mav’s point about it not being a great movie. Something about the pacing didn’t seem to translate well to film. The overall arc of the plot works, from my perspective, but there are chunks that don’t feel like they fit in a movie. (I did not read the comic.)
Mav and I are definitely teenaged girls. Seriously, just look at us. This is probably why we both want to see Guardians of the Galaxy. (OK, maybe not.)
This got me thinking about crossovers versus spinoffs, though. Buffy and Angel i thought kinda worked, even after they ended up on different networks. There was a brief Hawaii Five O/NCIS:LA crossover, but I don’t know if I liked that because it was done well or because I will watch anything with LL Cool J in it.
I just like a sense of familiarity, those shows play in the same sandbox, so why not just use the same toys when necessary?
Like I said, because sometimes when you play with the same toys you get Zero Hour.
^ Yeah, but that wasn’t really necessary, haha.
Yep, exactly my point.