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| Image Courtesy en.wikipedia.org |
Note: Sorry this is about 2 days late. I had a meeting that night and was really busy yesterday. Hopefully I will get reviews published a little sooner in the future!
Wow! I
mean, WOW! The season 4 premiere for Agents
of S.H.I.E.L.D. was pretty much incredible!
Somehow this show manages to continue improving, even making up for
earlier rough patches with the introduction of two new bona fide
superheroes. The characters that we have
learned to care about over the course of 2-3 seasons are all back and look to
be on new, creative arcs. The series has
expanded to the point that it feels a lot more like “S.H.I.E.L.D.”—a global
peacekeeping organization with facilities across the globe, virtually-unlimited
resources, and its fingers in just about everything. These two factors—superhero conflict (in which
the heroes aren’t S.H.I.E.L.D. agents) and S.H.I.E.L.D. as a massive
organization—make the series feel like a better version of season 1. Having said that, the premise of this series
from the beginning was that it would focus on normal humans living in a
world of super-humans, and season 1 did deliver on that premise. But seeing actual heroes fight up close—and
seeing regular human agents caught up in events dealing with people and objects
they can’t understand—is a good continuation of that original premise.
I think for my review I need to
start from the element which I was most concerned about going into the episode
and which I was looking at the most closely:
the effects. After all, Ghost
Rider is a very effects-heavy character who needs to be generated with a lot of
CGI, and this is a television budget!
And all things considered, I was largely pleased with the effects for
this episode. The car itself looks
absolutely amazing in motion. Ghost
Rider’s flaming skull—the biggest concern—was surprisingly good, particularly
in motion. When he wasn’t moving the
skull lost something, but I think that if they use it sparingly—and keep him in
motion as much as possible—they can easily sell this level of effects. The effects for Quake’s powers were as good
as ever (they’ve pretty much got that down to a science after 2½ seasons!), and
those two were the biggest special effects needs.
However, there was one effect
which I wasn’t very happy with: the
Zephyr landing. In the promo video of
that scene on YouTube it just looked like Ming Na Wen was standing in front of
a green-screen and the Zephyr looked obviously fake. I thought they did fix that some for the
episode itself, but it still wasn’t quite up to par. Considering that they could throw a car in the
air and set a dude’s head on fire, I was a bit disappointed that they
couldn’t land a plane convincingly!
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| Image Courtesy www.screenrant.com |
Moving on to the characters
themselves, I was very happy with how they introduced and developed Ghost Rider
in this episode. Robbie Reyes was front-and-center
from the beginning of the episode up until the end, but they did not spoil any
of the mystery regarding who he is. His
introduction as part of the opening fight sequence was handled very well: the criminals are terrified of him, and we
quickly see why when he attacks them.
The rocket launcher explosion propelling the car into the air and then
getting transformed into the Ghost Rider car in midair was an awesome sequence
and a great introduction to the car.
Holding off on showing the full Ghost Rider transformation until later
in the episode—and only showing the reaction to his brutal murder of the white
supremacists—was a good decision since it maintained the mystery. Even when they did start delving more into
the mystery of Ghost Rider they did it in a way that simply raised more
questions: why does Robbie say he’s
not the one deciding who dies when he’s the Rider?
Honestly, I think Ghost Rider is easily
the best part of this episode.
Quake also receives a good
reintroduction in this episode: as we
saw in the season 3 finale she is off on her own fighting crime. I really liked seeing the new ways that she
applies her powers, such as flight and using her kicks to manipulate her
power. Near the end of season 3 I
remember that she used punches to channel her powers against Hive, so seeing
the development, especially now that she is on her own, is really cool. I also thought it was smart for them to avoid
having Daisy actually spell out what she is doing and why, considering that
she’s been doing it for months and doesn’t really have anyone to lay it out to. Instead, Coulson and Mack bumble their way
through a defense of what Daisy is doing:
she is systematically dismantling the Watchdogs by stopping their
weapons deliveries and stealing their money.
Considering that season 2 teased Daisy becoming the new leader of the
Inhumans after Jiaying, I am curious if this mission is going to get tied into
Raina’s prophecy in some way. I do think
they could have done a better job explaining why Daisy latched onto this
particular mission to fill up her time while she studiously ignores the fact
that Lincoln died, but I suspect that will come out at some point in the near
future. For now, I really like the new,
darker version of Daisy while she is a lone vigilante on the run from
S.H.I.E.L.D. and I hope that they will stick with it for a little longer.
Speaking of the inter-season time
jump, I thought that they did a very good job of subtly filling in some of that
gap in explaining how the characters got to where they are at the beginning of
season 4. Coulson is no longer the
Director (for reasons that aren’t explained) and is instead busy doing about
the same thing the team was doing at the beginning of the series. May is responsible for training and leading a
STRIKE Team. Fitz is working with Dr.
Radcliffe, who though he was exonerated for his part in Hive’s plan is still
under strict monitoring to make sure he doesn’t take another “mad scientist”
turn. Simmons is the new Director’s
“S.A.D.I.S.T.”—“Special Advisor to the Director In Science and
Technology.” All of this is revealed in
a very subtle manner over the course of the episode, and that works very well.
At the same time, it may be a
little too subtle for anyone who hadn’t already read the synopsis to
figure out exactly what is going on.
Hopefully next week’s episode will answer some of these questions and
fill in a little more information, particularly with regard to the new Director
that no one seems to trust.
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| Image Courtesy www.screenrant.com |
I was definitely a fan of the way
they built up the tension between the members of the team (regarding Simmons’
favored position with the Director), as well as the intrigue and mystery
surrounding this unknown character. It’s
pretty clear that none of the original Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. trust the
Director; it is less clear why this is.
Are they upset because they put in all the work to revive S.H.I.E.L.D.
and an outsider is getting the glory now that the agency has been
relegitimized? Are they suspicious of
his motivations? Do they even have cause
to distrust him? Those questions have
not been answered and will definitely need to be answered eventually. For now we have a character we are encouraged
to mistrust but whom we still have not seen.
And this actually makes him more interesting for having been built up so
much.
One other positive that I noted
in this episode is with the character of Aida.
I thought that the actress did a very good job of portraying her
robotically, and the audio distortion was a good added touch. I am extremely curious to see where this
story is going to go from here. I
remember talking over the summer some time about the different types of Life
Model Decoys: those which are designed
to look like an agent and serve as body doubles (c.f. Fury, Nicholas J.) and
those which are designed to actually be agents and go into dangerous
situations so that they get destroyed instead of living agents. It sounds like Aida is designed to be more
like the latter, but the Asimov’s Law of Robotics twist (she can’t kill) makes
it sound more like the first one. It
does seem like a safe bet that something is going to go wrong and she will turn
into Ultron 2.0 or SkyNet or something, but I think it’s just as possible that
she won’t go that obvious route!
Either way, the addition of a robotic artificial semi-intelligence to
the series is quite intriguing.
At the end of the day, the only
other major negative for this episode in my opinion is that I am concerned
about the level of “shipping.” Is this
series going to set it up to where everyone has to have a love interest and
they all have to be in trouble? I do not
have anything against exploring romance and romantic relationships in
media. Love is an important part of
life, and a show without some exploration of it feels incomplete. At the same time, life is about much more
than romance, and any show where romance is used as a primary plot-mover no
longer interests me. Hopefully this show
will manage to strike the proper balance between exploring character
relationships (including romantic ones) and exploring all the other
interesting things about their characters!
So there’s my late review of the
season 4 premiere! For the most part,
this was an awesome episode and one which really set a good tone for the
upcoming season. I am excited about the
exploration of magic. Ghost Rider is a
great addition to the cast. The effects
are largely good (though not movie-quality, of course). Ultimately, everything works well to make me
excited for the rest of the season. And
that’s pretty much what a season premiere is supposed to do!
What did you think of “The Ghost”? Do you like the direction this show is
going? What magical characters and
elements do you want to see in the future?
Let me know in the comments!
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