TV recap: Agent Carter season one, episode two - Bridge and Tunnel

Previously on Agent Carter, Peggy Carter has turned "double agent" to help clear Howard Stark's name. Battling sexism in the office and foes outside the office, she now has to work out who the mysterious Leviathan is, and what he or she wants with a truckload of bombs.

TV recap: Agent Carter season one, episode one - Now is Not the End

Agent Peggy Carter - charismatic, tough, loyal, brave, clever, and beautiful. Although we only saw her briefly in Captain America: The First Avenger, Peggy made an impression (and not just on Steve Rogers). It's enough of an impression that she managed to get her own television show - Marvel's Agent Carter, which has finally made its way to the UK. Here's what went down in episode one.

'This thing's moving too fast and it's heading for New York.'

Comic book review: Captain America - The Chosen by David Morrell andMitch Breitweiser

If you know me, even a little bit, you probably know that I am a huge fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In fact, I'm a full-on MCU fangirl.

But I've still never read a Marvel comic book, until now. I randomly picked a few Marvel comic books at the library, choosing based on title, look and plot, and the first one I delved into was Captain America - The Chosen.

Captain America lies dying in a bunker in Washington D.C. while in Afghanistan a young soldier, Corporal James Newman, is bone tired, missing his wife and baby, and ready to give up. When his convoy gets involved in a battle in an Afghan village, Newman is helped by Captain America. Or is he?

As a first comic book, I think this was a pretty good one. The first thing I noticed (obviously) were Mitch Breitweiser's gorgeous illustrations, and the colouring of the whole series. Set primarily in battle-scarred Afghanistan, there's a real sense of the way the colour is leached out of Newman's world in every panel. Everyone and everything is brown and yellow, covered in dust; even the American flag in the first panels of the first chapter is seen through a haze of sand.

Avengers: Age of Ultron - thoughts (and feelings) on the teaser trailer

Dammit, Hydra.
— Marvel Entertainment (@Marvel) October 22, 2014

Broken. That's how I'm feeling after watching the teaser trailer for Avengers: Age of Ultron, and it's no surprise, since all the Avengers seem to be broken as well.

The worrying thing is, this teaser trailer comes in at just over two minutes. How an earth will I cope with a two hour long film? Well, partially by analysing and filling in the gaps and coming up with theories for what I think is happening, which is exactly what I'm going to do with this teaser trailer. Warning: I'm not a Marvel expert, just a big MCU fan, and this post will be fandomish as all get out...

Ultron

For an evil entity, Ultron sure is appealing. Based on this trailer I wouldn't mind listening to James Spader read out the phone book. It would just be a very creepy phone book. 

We know that Ultron in the MCU is created by Tony Stark, and then the robot basically rebels and turns into a sentient being. Which clearly explains the narrative of this trailer, where Ultron crushes other robot suits and talks about having his puppet strings cut. It's frightening, but his words are also pretty poetic:

I'm going to show you something beautiful

Everyone screaming for mercy

You want to protect the world but you don't want it to change

You're all puppets tangled in strings

Strings

Now I am free

There are no strings on me.

The (old) Avengers

There is plenty to be worried about, based on the teaser, when it comes to Captain America, Black Widow, Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Clint Barton, and even Thor, who as a god from another world should be relatively immune.

Tackling them one at a time is easiest, although there clearly seems to be a common thread running through their story lines in Age of Ultron - that of either being reminded of their dark pasts, or having dreams/nightmares about their pasts.

The Black Widow is probably the character we know the least about (aside from Barton), even though we've seen her a lot. Worry no more, or a lot more, because some of her past is clearly going to be revealed. That glimpse of a row of girls in severe black ballet costumes seems to be related to Natasha - I don't know how accurate or based on the comics it is, but Natasha as a ballerina or as being able to dance is a popular trope among the MCU fandom. Whether we get to see the Red Room, I couldn't tell, althought there is a glimpse of what I assume is a hospital trolley and some surgical equipment right after a shot of Natasha in an empty office block.

Banner is so, so broken in this film. There are two glimpses we get of Banner in the trailer which frighten me - in both he is slumped on the floor looking like he's just seen his nearest and dearest torn apart, and like he's about to lose his mind. On the plus side, there was a glimpse of the Hulk kicking butt, so perhaps it's not all bad.

Stark is clearly feeling some guilt here, and not making friends among the Avengers, if we're going by the scene in which Thor picks him up by the neck in a fit of anger. Although Thor and Stark have fought before, so there may be nothing to read into there (I doubt that though). And could Stark's words - "It's the end, the end of the path I started us on" - be hinting at the Civil War storyline at supposedly will make up the second phase of the Marvel movies?

I can't comment too much on Barton/Hawkeye, since he's such an unknown entity - we didn't get to know him in Avengers Assemble since he was brain washed for most of the film. What I can tell is that he's got a new costume, and I really like it.

Thor is another hard one to pin down. He's got some anger, which I've already addressed, but the two standout glimpses we get of him are distressing - the look of pain on his face as he is borne out of the water (no idea what's going on there), and the fact that he drops his hammer. What could cause Thor to drop his hammer? The guy is not afraid of much, so it would have to be something shocking.

But let me be honest here, it's Cap I want to speak about the most. Already a broken man from the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, it looks like things aren't going to get much better for Steve. He's in the midst of all the fighting scenes we glimpse, and is he looking for Bucky in that shot we get of him kicking down the doors the massive building that looks like it's somewhere in Eastern Europe? But it's that dream/nightmare scene we see, where Cap is in a 1940s dance hall, that has me worried. It's not a memory, because we can safely assume Cap never went to a dance hall in his new Cap body, but he did talk about it with Peggy, and with Bucky, in Captain America: The First Avenger.  What if this scene has Cap seeing Bucky, who he's been hunting for since The Winter Soldier (almost two years previous in the MCU timeline I think) and Peggy dancing together? My head canon is really making me miserable. 

But not as miserable as that shot of a limp hand by Cap's broken shield. I'd like to stick my fingers in my ears and shut my eyes and pretend that broken shield isn't real, since it's supposedly made of an unbreakable metal, and I can kind of believe that if I believe my theories about some other people in this film...

The (new) Avengers

So, Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch has the power to alter reality in unknown ways, which leads me to theorise that some of the scenes we see of the Avengers suffering could come from her. What if she's altering what the Avengers see and hear? Eventually, Scarlett Witch joins the Avengers, but the last time we saw her she was locked in a cell and under the command of Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker (presumably somewhere in Europe if we're going by his name).

As was her brother Quicksilver, who in this trailer is the least angsty of the characters we've seen. Sure, he's shouting angrily alongside Scarlet Witch in a scene which Ultron narrates but mostly we see him moving very fast and fighting robots (at one point with Cap seemingly by his side/nearby).

Perhaps the scenes in Europe are where the Avengers find the Maximoff siblings, who I'm sure are good at the core, but who maybe don't start out that way. I don't think they're bad, but perhaps a little cautious, which makes them not trust the Avengers at first.

Everyone else

SHIELD has still not recovered, by the looks of it, although that won't keep Fury down. And I definitely caught a glimpse of Rhodey in the scene we see of the Avengers on the bridge. There's also a third female there I can't make out (Black Widow and Scarlet Witch being the first two, I think), possibly Maria Hill? Please be Maria Hill. And I'm sure someone said they saw the Vision in there somewhere, but I can't make him out yet. And I'm not sure what the creepy silver robots were, but they're not good.

Around the world

We've got some massively creepy looking castles, definitely in Europe somewhere, and also some scenes in snowy landscapes (Russia? Fits with the whole Hydra thing), and also in what is possibly South Korea (Cap having cars chucked at him). It seems the Avengers are truly going global in Age of Ulton.

Reaction

Basically, I've been broken since I saw the trailer, and there are a lot of reactions like mine out there. Here is one of my favourites though (and although this isn't a post about diversity, Bim Adewunmi has a point at number five...)

3. Not enough* Ruffalo mumbles (*never enough) 4. My poor, broken Cap! 5. Where all the brown people at? 6. *stares at Aaron T-J*
— Bim Adewunmi (@bimadew) October 23, 2014

11. James Spader's voice - hella formative. *shivers* 12. Cap kicking doors! 13. Cap kicking 14. CAP! (I luff him so) 15. Hawkeye, I guess.
— Bim Adewunmi (@bimadew) October 23, 2014

So what have we learnt from the first teaser trailer? Well, that Avengers: Age of Ultron is going to be painful. So I'm hereby setting up a support group. Let me know in the comments if you'd like to join - there will be lots of flailing, use of exclamation marks and swear words, and some cracking of hearts.

DVD review: Marvel Avengers Assemble

a (Chris Evans) and Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) in Avengers Assemble. Picture: Zade Rosenthal

"Phil Coulson died believing in that idea, in heroes. Well, it's an old fashioned notion."

Old fashioned it may be, but there's a reason we love superheroes so much, and it's all here in Marvel Avengers Assemble.

Captain America, Iron Man, the Hulk and Thor, they may not be a conventional view of heroes but that's the reason they work so well. Each has as many flaws as the average human being, but their actions elevate them to the status of superheroes.

I haven't seen the previous films leading up to Avengers Assemble, and while I think I would have benefitted from viewing them, this was still a brilliant watch.

The Avengers are brought together to fight Loki, an egotistical almost-god who wants to wreak havoc on earth as some twisted form of revenge for his own shortcomings. He harnesses the power of the Tesseract to open a portal that brings an army of mutant things and giant flying centipede types flowing into New York.

The film gets off to an action-packed start, with the blowing up of a research facility and the escape of Loki with the Tesseract. Having no other option Nick Fury, director of international peacekeeping agency S.H.I.E.L.D, calls together the Avengers.

What follows is two and a bit hours of spectacle and amazing fight scenes, all held together with a simple but effective plot - the good guys must win.

The numerous fight scenes, which are essential to the story, never seem gratuitous. Instead, they show us more and more about the characters, about their motivations and emotional states and their struggles to be who they want to be, and who society expects them to be.

Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson). Picture: Zade Rosenthal

The effects are amazing. So much of what we see on screen is actually green screen, yet the actors never look out of place or awkward.

Directed by Joss Whedon, who has a history of just being brilliant (see Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, etc) Avengers Assemble was never going to be a film afraid to gear itself towards sci-fi geeks - there are so many little details that would make the geekiest of fanboys and girls (like me) happy. Among the bits geared towards geeks is the launch of the giant S.H.I.E.L.D ship into the air, which is all the more jaw-dropping as you see it through the eyes of some of the characters unused to S.H.I.E.L.D. Yet at the same time, the film is mainstream enough that the average viewer wouldn't feel confused watching what's going on.

For all its high tech scenes, the best moments are those which show the heroes at their most human, or that involve those who have no super powers - Captain America and Iron Man constantly arguing, the Black Widow having to recall her past, even Loki's egotistical, sometimes childish attitude is an all-too-familiar human reaction, although magnified.

The most emotional moment for me came during a very human scene of loss and hope featuring one of the only non-superhero characters we get to know - the aforementioned Phil Coulson. It's Agent Coulson who inspires the superheroes the most, showing the real power belongs to those who seemingly have no power.

Loki (Tom Hiddleston). Picture: Zade Rosenthal

On the opposite end of the scale to the kind, principled Agent Coulson is Loki, the maniacal baddie of the film. Yet, I still loved him. Tom Hiddleston created a bad guy who really drew you in, and however heinous his behaviour there was always something compelling about him - the mark of a truly successful bad guy. Ultimately though, like the best bad guys, it was his need to be more that led to his downfall.

Unconventionally the end of the film wasn't the usual bad guys die, good guys prevail and are heroes kind of thing. It was much more complicated than that, and all the better for not adhering to cliche.

Avengers Assemble is two and a bit hours of pure adrenaline, a real rush to watch, and I can't wait for the sequel.