^ That would have been very Whedonesque.
Agents of SHIELD. Season 1 Discussion Thread
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For people of a certain age, I'm sure. Plus, the last shot with the car flying right at the screen was a lot like the last shot of Back to the Future.
They're positively enormous compared to Torchwood. Or the X-Files, or Fringe Division.
Well, Torchwood Three was a small group, but it was one of several. And Torchwood One was a pretty massive operation before its demise.
True but,
Torchwood One was destroyed
Torchwood Two was in Scotland and "strange"
Torchwood Four was missing
And Torchwood Three was basically responsible for monitoring the rift.
The real point anyway is that TV has a history of undersized organizations due to real world logistics and budgets.
Δ It wouldn't take a lot to have an establishing shot of walking into a SHIELD HQ that was a bit like the one in Men In Black, or a meeting of the 'special team' on the helicarrier. They could even reuse the helicarrier shots from Avengers.
Just something to say that despite following a small team, SHIELD's huge...
Just something to say that despite following a small team, SHIELD's huge...
Or, say, the flying car that appeared in the very first SHIELD comic over twenty years before Back to the Future . . . ?
Well sure, I can see why you'd only want to send 5 guys out to interact with a subject. But when it comes to tracking people down behind the scenes, or figuring out some complex mystery or motive, or defusing a potentially hazardous or destructive Extremis-style threat, I'd think you'd want to rely on more than just.... a hacker, a pilot, a couple of lab techs, and one black ops guy.
A Heroes for Hire series would be AWESOME.
I like the idea that SHIELD is working on cosmic/global threats and just don't have time and resources to get involved if they don't have to and using Coulson and his small team to handle these. Let's face it SHIELD is not going to come in full force in every episode of this series.
That could be pretty cool, it would need a certain panache or whatever but if done right...
I have no problem with the small team; it's a trope that makes sense. We're focusing on the task force that is the most interesting to watch. In Star Trek, there were twelve Constitution-class starships, but the TV show was about the one that was special. This show is about the SHIELD task force that is, or will turn out to be, the special one. I'm sure we'll see them utilizing SHIELD's vast resources as needed.
It's not surprising people would make that comparison. After all I'm pretty confident that more people have seen the 'Back to the Future' films than have read the 'SHIELD' comics.
It's often unfortunate, but the truth is that when it comes to the perception of the masses, it's not always as important who did what first, as it is who did what most popularly in "this generation". Whatever you call a generation these days.
Case in point, I saw somewhere a while back someone claiming the the Buffy comics were ripping off Twilight...admittedly there's a 50/50 chance they were trolling.
For the record though, I've never read the comics and 'flying Delorean' was the first thought that popped into my head too. Yeah there are other flying cars in pop culture, but the whole surprise reveal coupled with the wheels folding down and the car being modern (or in this case, classic) as opposed to some futuristic sky car *is* very reminiscent, even if the comics did all of it first.
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It's not a question of "Where's SHIELD?". They are SHIELD. We're seeing SHIELD in action, they just don't send an entire helicarrier full of personnel and equipment into every situation. Relax and enjoy, people.
Or was the car design from BTTF taken from the comics?
I had no problem with the allusion to BTTF. But the flying car has been around for awhile in the comics. Captain America uses it quite a bit.
More likely they were both drawing on imagery from prior movies, comics, pulp-novel covers, etc.
I mean, really, the idea of tilting a car's wheels sideways and having them turn into downward-pointing thrusters is kind of an obvious one, so it's not at all unlikely that multiple independent designers would've come up with it. I'm fairly confident that when I first saw the end of Back to the Future, I was not thinking, "Wow, I've never seen anything like that before." I believe it struck me as a familiar trope even then, or at least an unsurprising one.
Yeah, the flying-car thing is such a time-honored scifi gimmick that it just seems kinda odd that people would see it as a specifically BACK TO THE FUTURE thing.
To me at least, it's kind of like seeing a vampire in a movie and going, "Ohmigod, it's a homage to Twilight!"
Pretty much, BTTF isn't the only place with flying cars but the context of the scene, the quips and lines and the wheels folding under just felt very "BTTF" more than just "generic sci-fi flying car" like is in most sci-fi. And not being a Marvel reader I didn't know it was a direct reference to the comics. Still, the scene reminded me very much of the ending of BTTF.
I know it was in the comics first but when it comes to live action (and theatrical finishes like that) someone who was a kid during BttF can't help but to be reminded of it. It would have been nice if Cullson said "I couldn't help it" at the end. It would have been nostalgia for fans of BttF and the comic.
Just for nostalgia's sake: the equivalent scene in the first-ever SHIELD comic had Nick Fury in a snazzy sports car, being pursued by gun-wielding Hydra agents. Things are looking bad, but a switch is flipped on the dashboard, the wheels flip sideways, and the car takes off into the air. Next stop: the SHIELD Helicarrier!
Believe it or not, I still remember those pages, even though I haven't read that particular comic in decades . . . .
Believe it or not, I still remember those pages, even though I haven't read that particular comic in decades . . . .
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