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Agents of SHIELD: Season 3 - Discussion (SPOILERS LIKELY)

This assumes that the ATCU is the stronger party, which I don't buy.

For one Coulson was able to get a Helicarrier up and running in secret, had the Bus 2.0 built, a fleet of quinjets he keeps fueled plus an aircraft carrier, according to last season several shell companies to generate cash with, and the ability to hack the freaking Whitehouse in a few minutes just to get in touch with someone, knows how to disappear rather quickly, at lest two superhumans on the payroll, tolerance of the last guy sent after him, global reach, and SHIELD knoiws what the fuck its doing.

The ATCU has support of the US government going for it but as such is likely only limited to within the US, can't catch crap on their own, don't have the foggiest idea wht they are doing since its pretty much established that they are increasing the levels of clusterfuck their ops devolve into, and are outmatched tech wise by SHIELD.

For pete's sake the ATCU's first appearance involved getting schooled by three SHIELD agents and Coulson getting a picture of Price letting him get info on her when the ATCU was still supposed to be a secret organization.

To me, it's a separate issue. The question isn't whether SHIELD could win in a fight, it's whether the bad guys would get away while SHIELD is fighting the ATCU.

Except the ATCU isn't just focusing on bad guys, they seem to go after anyone with super powers like the gestapo.

Seriously if this were an X-men tv series the ATCU would be the bad guys.

Should Coulson really be helping people like that?
 
The whole shoehorning-in of the Helicarrier to make a cutesy with AoU made no sense whatsoever given the then-current state of the AoS storyline and still makes no sense now.

It wasn't in the movie to tie in with AoS; it was in AoS to tie in with the movie. Joss Whedon as much as said that he ignored the TV shows when he wrote the movie, because it had to work as part of the movie universe first and foremost. Also, the movie script would've been written long before the second season of the show. In a recent interview that I'm too lazy to track down a link for now, Kevin Feige said that you could get one and a half to two seasons of a TV series done in the time it took to make a single movie. So the movie was written -- and the Helicarrier included -- while AoS was still in its early first season. The filmmakers included the Helicarrier for their own reasons that had nothing to do with the show. The show just piggybacked on the movie script and crafted their stories well after the fact -- giving Coulson's team credit both for finding Loki's scepter and rebuilding the Helicarrier in order to make it look like the events of the movie were affected by the events of the show, even though the show was not a factor at all in the writing process of the movie.

It's essentially the same sort of thing I do when I write a Star Trek novel that retroactively explains or sets up the events of an episode or movie. The writers of the episode or movie weren't influenced by me in any way, but I create the illusion that the events of my novel helped bring about the events of the episode/movie. In my case, the book comes out years after the fact, so it's obvious that the influence goes one way. But if I'd been able to release a book at the same time that the movie it tied into came out, it would create the illusion that the movie was following my book's lead, even though it wasn't.
 
Only an idiot punches so hard that he breaks all the fingers in his or her hand, which is not that difficult considering it's unlikely that anyone spends their spare time punching pillows. Now imagine that you were twice as strong as you are now, but the bones in your hand were exactly as fragile as they are now and you're punching a face that might as well be a wall? Or what if you were 3 times stronger than you are now but the bones in your had are still normal? Your bones don't get proportionately denser with respect to increased strength. Punching is stupid, it's hard to do it right, and even if you do it right, you usually walk away with serious damage, if you even get close to letting it loose.

Brass knuckles let you punch at %100 with out turning your own knuckles into paste.
 
The whole shoehorning-in of the Helicarrier to make a cutesy with AoU made no sense whatsoever given the then-current state of the AoS storyline and still makes no sense now.

It wasn't in the movie to tie in with AoS; it was in AoS to tie in with the movie. Joss Whedon as much as said that he ignored the TV shows when he wrote the movie, because it had to work as part of the movie universe first and foremost. Also, the movie script would've been written long before the second season of the show. In a recent interview that I'm too lazy to track down a link for now, Kevin Feige said that you could get one and a half to two seasons of a TV series done in the time it took to make a single movie. So the movie was written -- and the Helicarrier included -- while AoS was still in its early first season. The filmmakers included the Helicarrier for their own reasons that had nothing to do with the show. The show just piggybacked on the movie script and crafted their stories well after the fact -- giving Coulson's team credit both for finding Loki's scepter and rebuilding the Helicarrier in order to make it look like the events of the movie were affected by the events of the show, even though the show was not a factor at all in the writing process of the movie.

Of course it wasn't in the movie to tie-in to AoS. That's not my point.

I meant the helicarrier being shoe-horned into the show, not the movie.

Coulson's team being involved in finding the scepter is fine. That didn't strain credulity.
 
Someone will have to explain to me the science behind brass knuckles. Seems to me they would just cut rather than increase the force of a punch. Well, I guess if they're heavy...

Perhaps a practical demonstration....
 
I meant the helicarrier being shoe-horned into the show, not the movie.

Coulson's team being involved in finding the scepter is fine. That didn't strain credulity.

Ahh, okay. Yeah, I agree there. The Dr. List/scepter angle leading into the movie was quite well-handled, a very nice job of dovetailing. But setting up the Helicarrier as a big mystery subplot in multiple episodes and then handwaving it away in two minutes the week after the movie came out was just clumsy.

I don't have a credibility problem with it, though. In both the movie and the show, the Helicarrier was Fury's project; Coulson was playing a support role. So I can buy that. It was just awkwardly handled from a storytelling perspective.
 
The simple fact is, Price has the upper hand here. Her agency is authorized and government-approved. Coulson is running a rogue operation with little support beyond Nick Fury's own resources. It's a fight he probably couldn't win. So he's trying a different tack. The weaker party often has to make compromises, to accept the inevitable and try to bring about change through subtler methods. You can't win every battle by just charging forward. When facing a superior force, you have to accept that superiority and try to work around it or redirect it.

This assumes that the ATCU is the stronger party, which I don't buy.

For one Coulson was able to get a Helicarrier up and running in secret, had the Bus 2.0 built, a fleet of quinjets he keeps fueled plus an aircraft carrier, according to last season several shell companies to generate cash with, and the ability to hack the freaking Whitehouse in a few minutes just to get in touch with someone, knows how to disappear rather quickly, at lest two superhumans on the payroll, tolerance of the last guy sent after him, global reach, and SHIELD knoiws what the fuck its doing.

I mean, sure, SHIELD could probably win in a fight, but then what? They're still an illegal cabal. They still have no legal authority, they still have to stay in hiding, they still have to avoid the feds. Power is about more than battle.

The ATCU has support of the US government going for it but as such is likely only limited to within the US,

I don't buy that. In real life, things like the raid on Osama bin Ladin's compound in Pakistan have proven that the United States doesn't consider pesky little things like "other nations' borders" to be a real barrier when it wants something. I see no reason to think the ATCU wouldn't hesitate to trample on others' sovereign borders if they can get away with it.
 
I don't buy that. In real life, things like the raid on Osama bin Ladin's compound in Pakistan have proven that the United States doesn't consider pesky little things like "other nations' borders" to be a real barrier when it wants something. I see no reason to think the ATCU wouldn't hesitate to trample on others' sovereign borders if they can get away with it.

Well assuming they actually give a crap about inhumans that pop up outside the US, especially since they can barely get the job done on their own turf.

Come to think about it I don't think the ATCU has managed to capture any live inhumans, hell they couldn't even capture one that was practically handed over to them. So next week where judging by the preview they are chasing after Lash, I expect it to not go well.
 
Powers Boothe joins the cast in a recurring role. He seems to be playing a different character that he did in the first Avengers.
While it's great to have Powers Boothe in a recurring role, it's too bad he's not reprising his role. Not even for continuity sake, but because I would be interested to learn more about the World Council and how it works the Marvel world.

Actually, ComicsAlliance has confirmed that it is the same character; he just wasn't named in the movie. I thought I'd posted this yesterday, but apparently not.
 
Powers Boothe joins the cast in a recurring role. He seems to be playing a different character that he did in the first Avengers.
While it's great to have Powers Boothe in a recurring role, it's too bad he's not reprising his role. Not even for continuity sake, but because I would be interested to learn more about the World Council and how it works the Marvel world.

Actually, ComicsAlliance has confirmed that it is the same character; he just wasn't named in the movie. I thought I'd posted this yesterday, but apparently not.

Interesting.

My general hypothesis for the legal scheme behind the original SHIELD was that it was an international security agency authorized by a treaty to which almost every sovereign state had become party ("the SHIELD Treaty"), given jurisdiction by this treaty over paranormal or fantastical events and technologies (references in "0-8-4" to 0-8-4 issues as overriding national sovereignty), and the SHIELD Treaty established the World Security Council as the body supervising SHIELD. Given what appears to have been the U.S.'s pre-eminent role in operating SHIELD and proprietary statements made by U.S. officials about SHIELD, I speculate that the SHIELD Treaty specified that the Director of SHIELD would always be a United States official (similar to how the head of NORAD is always a U.S. flag officer) and that the U.S. Secretary of Defense would lead the WSC and control SHIELD in the event of the Director's death (given the way Alexander Pierce seemed to be in charge of SHIELD in CA:TWS after Fury's apparent death), with guaranteed spots at lower ranks within SHIELD for non-U.S. citizens. Since the WSC clearly had a limited number of slots in its appearances in The Avengers and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, I further speculate that elections are held by all SHIELD Treaty parties for specific states to serve on the WSC, the way U.N. Member States hold elections for specific states to serve on the U.N. Security Council.

Given that the U.N. is established to exist in Season Two of Agents of SHIELD, I think it is safe to assume that SHIELD was never a U.N. agency per se, and that the World Security Council and United Nations Security Council are separate entities.

All this raises the question... does the World Security Council still exist if SHIELD has been dissolved and the SHIELD Treaty repealed? I would have presumed the WSC would have been dissolved, too, especially since most of its members were killed by Hydra. But there again, maybe its surviving members have taken advantage of that fact to preserve the WSC itself separate from SHIELD, and to perhaps they're making a play to reassert the WSC on the international stage. Maybe the WSC will work a deal to start supervising the ATCU the way it did SHIELD?
 
Powers Boothe joins the cast in a recurring role. He seems to be playing a different character that he did in the first Avengers.
While it's great to have Powers Boothe in a recurring role, it's too bad he's not reprising his role. Not even for continuity sake, but because I would be interested to learn more about the World Council and how it works the Marvel world.
Actually, ComicsAlliance has confirmed that it is the same character; he just wasn't named in the movie. I thought I'd posted this yesterday, but apparently not.
Ah, good news! Thanks for sharing that.
 
I feel like Powers Boothe can join Nick Blood in the list of actors whose real names could be comic book characters.
 
*Sigh*

My reliance on DVR technology continues to betray me. "Why watch it now when I can watch it later?"

Anyway, just got around to watching the first episode and: Wow! Some crazy stuff going on.

Nevermind all of the stuff now going on with the "What's wrong with you? You're a "Something We Cannot Mention Due to Copyright Restrictions from 20th Century Fox," but the villain we see in the hospital?! Wow! That's a huge, bold, move!

Simmons is trapped in the Marvel Phantom Zone.

And Skye/Daisy.... Wears a tight-fitting tank-top very, very well.

Good beginning, have lots of high hopes for the rest of the season!
 
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